Bliss and Grit

We are sadjoy to announce that this is the final episode of Bliss+Grit. Coincidentally it's publishing almost exactly at the 4-year mark of when we began. This has been such a fulfilling project for both of us. It's created huge shifts in our personal evolution and a chance for us to connect as friends who live long distance to one another. But most importantly it's meant so much to hear from all of you that it's also had a useful and beneficial impact on your lives. It's been so touching to receive so much feedback that this little podcast we started created so many shifts for all of you. You can listen in to hear all the details of why we are moving on and where we are headed next, but a couple of easy links to find us are: www.vanessascotto.com www.brookethomas.me www.liberatedbeing.community On intagram: @vanessascotto @brookethomas108 @liberatedbeing

In our recent conversation with Matt Kahn we talked about his first golden rule: you've done nothing wrong. It's timely then that we both are up against some old internal narratives about things we have done "wrong" or that are "wrong" about ourselves. As always, we are examining these truisms from the inside out. In this episode we look at what hooks us into narratives about wrong-ness, and ways to work with that when it arises. How do we un-velcro ourselves from seeing ourselves as the thoughts or beliefs? How do we invite genuine tenderness in for the one who believes they are wrong? And if and when this pattern shifts- what are we when we're not wrong? What happens when we don't view our lives through the lens of "mistake".

Matt Kahn is a spiritual teacher and empathic healer who is the author of the bestselling books Whatever Arises, Love That, and Everything is Here to Help You. His newest book, The Universe Always Has a Plan: The 10 Golden Rules of Letting Go is what we gathered together to discuss today. Currently, we are all living through a global pandemic together. Instead of a typical "book interview" instead we discuss how the new spiritual paradigm is relevant to our current challenging times. As Matt says, we have all be invited into a collective, global dark night of the soul. So what does dark night ask us to shed? What does it offer us as we are transmuted by it? And how can we use our spiritual paths for our own and the collective's greater good instead of upholding old ideas that turns us against ourselves or creates a bypass. We discuss the role of nervous system regulation, surrender, the potency of stillness, and lots of spiritual myth-busting. You can find more of Matt's work at www.mattkahn.org Show notes live at www.blissandgrit.com. We also see clients privately, and you can find more information about our practices at the website as well.

Can we bio-hack ourselves into better states of mind and being with embodied “positive thinking?” Today we are discussing neuro-reprogramming methods and the effects they can have on your body and mind- including ways in which they can create harm. Last year we both engaged with a program called Dynamic Neural Retraining Systems (DNRS) and in some ways this conversation is an update on how that program helped us since so many of you ask. (We have experienced health shifts and reduced anxiety just to name a few.) From a larger perspective though, we are having a broader conversation on how we can all better approach our own thoughts and feelings to get true healing results. We discuss what worked best for us in terms of navigating our mental-emotional loops, as well neuroscience and practical tips for how you can become your own best ally and create transformation in your life. Sign up for our newsletter at www.blissandgrit.com

We speak a lot about trauma and healing from trauma on the show, but we've never done an episode that truly asks the question, "What is trauma?". Drawing on inspiration like Dr. Edith Eva Eger and Peter Levine we look at if PTSD should drop the "D" for disorder, what it means that trauma is a charge, and if that's true, how do we "discharge" that charge? It's a very humanizing and hopeful take on trauma and we hope it's helpful to all of you.

Today we are discussing healing that is not a part of our individual histories, but instead is carried in us- in our very dna- from our ancestors. It might seem like a not-so-cheery New Year's Eve episode, but actually we find this point of view to be surprisingly relieving. It opens up so much space to meet our experience and tempers some of the more shame-oriented points of that personal healing can sometimes take on. We discuss what ancestral trauma feels like when it arises, and some of our own experiences as we discovered that the pain we were sitting with was truly not personal. As we see this, it can open up a whole world of tenderness for ourselves and all that we are doing to clear pain, as well as so much compassion for all of humanity and the wounds that we all sit with and bring up to the light to be transmuted.

Co-dependency has been such a big pattern for both of us that we’re back again deepening our conversation on the differences between co-dependency and interdependency. Meaning, what would an end to co-dependence look like in relationships? The pictures we can receive about what it means to heal co-dependency can be someone who does not empathize and is not moved into service by the suffering of others. This couldn't be farther from the reality of empathic souls. Of course we care when people suffer, and of course we want to help- often it’s genuinely loving to offer our support. All of this is to say that there is no formulaic answer, it’s more about bringing awareness, attunement and discernment to our relationships. However, we do have some tips to offer based on our experience that can help you gain insight into when you’re interdependent vs codependent. Join us as we explore our own shifts away from co-dependent patterns and all that can arise as we open our hearts in relationship to others. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or on the hosts Brooke Thomas and Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com, where you can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Join us on instagram at @blissandgritpodcast

Today we are speaking with our special guest John Prendergast. This is our second time speaking with him to our great delight. John beautifully integrates the awakening path with psychotherapy. He is a licensed Therapist,and a former adjunct professor of psychology at CIIS. He is also the author of two books, today we are talking with him about his most recent book. The Deep Heart. We talk all about what he means by this phrase “the deep heart” and what can happen when we are able to land there and experience it. We get into themes around developmental trauma, how we meet the existential emotions like loneliness and grief, and important themes around how we are able to experience safety as we open. You can find more of John's work at listeningfromsilence.com

*This episode contains upcoming changes to the format of Bliss + Grit. Please tune in to stay up to date. It’s different to change to get out of pain then it is to change out of an intuition or a new vision. In this weeks episode we’re exploring meeting change and transformation, and most specifically, what happens when something you love changes; when rather than moving away from something painful, you’re getting the internal signal to change something you love or have valued in the past. This conversation is arising out of a recent process of change we are having with Bliss + Grit, but holds so much relevance to the conversation of transformation at large since one of the primary fears that can arise in an unfolding process is the fear of losing something or someone we value. Together we explore the new change that has presented itself for Bliss+Grit, how we navigated that, how we’ve met other changes in our lives like divorce, and how we can hold ourselves as we go through the process of transformation. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or on hosts Brooke Thomas and Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com where you can find episode resources, information about coaching sessions and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Today we are talking about how ingrained the impulse can be to always automatically look at “What is it about me? What am I doing wrong? What do I need to heal? What’s wrong with me that I am... being judgy, feeling angry, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted?” Are these feelings a signal that there is yet more material we need to heal so that we can always be “better” at tolerating things? Or are there perhaps things that we are accurately perceiving are out of alignment for us, or are taxing or overburdening us? In this episode we talk about: - How we can begin to notice if we are always scanning ourselves internally with the intent of figuring out “What’s wrong with me?” - How we can then learn to turn our attention to our outer world and see honestly what we the things are that are just genuinely not a good fit for us. - What conflict avoidance has to do with the pattern of always making it about how we need to heal ourselves. - How we may be imagining that our path will lead us to being the kind of people who become reaction and/or preference-free. - Both the genius and the pitfalls of being adaptable.

We have talked about spiritual teacher misconduct before from the point of view of what to be wary of and how to choose an integrity teacher(s). In today's episode, as more allegations come forward about yet more spiritual teachers, we're talking about it from the point of view of how ideas about what awakening is can get things into troublesome territory. In this episode we discuss: - What awakening is not - How people use the word "awakening" in many different ways- sometimes to discuss enlightenment, sometimes to discuss realizations about the nature of reality, and sometimes just to discuss the awareness that they are on a spiritual path. - That spiritual awakening, or enlightenment, and psychological maturity do not go hand in hand. Each is its own process and "waking up" does not create automatic psychological health. - The troubles that putting other people on a pedestal can create - The tremendous importance of maturing into a heart-based way of living

This week we are answering a patron’s question about something that is up for them in their life. It contains a lot of nuance about how to be with other people’s emotions without feeling overwhelmed, as well as how to receive kindness and love without feeling overwhelmed by that either. The shortened version of the question is: “When I do let myself feel my emotions deeply I frequently get super overwhelmed and times that I am center of attention or receiving heartfelt love and support are still very uncomfortable for me in groups.  Why is it so difficult to feel deep emotion in myself and from others still?” In answering the question we talk about: The vulnerability of intimacy and connection Somatic approaches to receptivity and feeling safe in our bodies The energetic charge of trauma and how it makes a soma feel “too full” to be able to take in anything new How that charge can “off-gas” or burn off like clouds as we heal Conditioning around needing to be non-reactive and how to inquire about that Ability to receive joy and goodness and blocks to that How to shortcut shame at not being “farther along” in our healing process For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please go to www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

Today on Bliss + Grit we are speaking with our special guest Jane Clapp. Jane is a departure from our typical guest who speaks on spiritual awakening, but we love all that she has to say about trauma informed mindfulness and nervous system regulation interventions to transform overwhelm. She is a mindful strength and movement coach, a trauma informed embodied resilience expert and a Jungian Analyst in training. Brooke took a class with her called Fawn to Fierce that she really appreciated and we thought this topic of moving from Fawn to Fierce was perfect for all of us, and we are so glad we followed our intuition. We had a lot of fun with this interview and we are sure you will too.  In this episode we are speaking about:  - What the fawn survival strategy is and how it can look in your life  - How one can address trauma and limiting beliefs through somatic interventions - How to work with one’s nervous system in an intelligent way.  To find out more information about Jane Clapp and her upcoming Movement for Trauma training please visit www.janeclapp.com For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please go to www.patreon.com/blissandgrit  

In this episode we both speak about limiting identities we are each up against that are related to hiding. How might our genuine values be co-opted by ego identities that keep us small? How do these identities require an unfriendly imaginary audience? And when we engage in this kind of “othering”, via imagining other people as the judge and jury, how do we project an unfriendly universe onto everyone in advance of any actual friction? Once we can see that all operating, how do we untangle these subtle layers so that we can experience more and more of life without being led by the question, “Do they like it?”    In this episode we talk about:  Hiding and the fawn trauma response How the limbic brain can interpret the threat of being unliked as seriously as the threat of physical harm or even annihilation How we can quickly and unconsciously interpret others as enemies when we are caught up in making sure we are liked and/or seen as “the good one” The importance of both tenderness and anti-fragile approaches to loosen the hold these ego strategies have on us Show notes at www.blissandgrit.com/blog/imaginary-audience Support the show at www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

Today we are discussing what we could call living from truth. I had an experience not long back where a mentor of mine was asking me to say exactly what I wanted, and I noticed a freeze response. This opened up for me a new depth of experience around what it really can feel like to live from truth, as opposed to following the momentum of past conditioning and habits. Many of us say we want to be authentic or know our true nature, or the truth of reality, but what does that really mean? We’re kicking it off by getting into some teachings from Adyashanti, and of course diving into our own experiences and challenges in stepping into greater alignment with our inner truth.  In this episode we talk about:  Adyashanti’s teachings on truth and agency  Matt Kahn’s book, Everything is Here to Help You  What it means to follow a living path and meet life as an invitation How thinking incrementally and focusing on becoming “more aligned” can be helpful  The embodied experience of choosing truth  For more information on Bliss + Grit, or one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

Today we are talking with Dr. Gail Brenner, a clinical psychologist whose practice and teachings are unique because of her non-dual perspective grounded in deep and practical truths about peace and happiness. She is the author of two books, The End of Self-Help, and Suffering is Optional. We are primarily discussing her most recent book, Suffering is Optional. You can find more on Gail’s work at www.gailbrenner.com. In this episode we talk about:  What Gail means by “optional suffering” since we know we experience suffering in our lives.  What conditioning is and how it affects our lives.  What thoughts have to do with suffering.  The limiting identity of unworthiness and how it plays out in life.  How life without thinking is not, "lying on a couch like a blob".  The value and power of curiosity.    For more information on Bliss + Grit, or one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Flashback Tuesday] In the second episode Vanessa interviews Brooke so that listeners can get to know her a bit and hear the shape her path has taken and is taking thus far. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Throwback Tuesday] In the first episode Brooke Thomas is interviewing Vanessa Scotto about the shape her path has taken and is taking thus far. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Flashback Tuesday] In this episode we are speaking with our very special guest and friend Jeannie Zandi. Jeannie has been on our show before and today is offering some profound, must-hear insight on yin and yang that we are so excited to share with you.  Our conversation touches upon so much including what true power looks like, the imbalances our culture has perpetuated, what healing would look like through the lens of yin and how we can move forward together in dismantling the conditioning that has led to so much pain. For anyone exploring healing on both a personal and collective level this episode is for you. She put words to a revolution we’re just now realizing we’ve already been a part of.  Jeannie is truly such a force of love. She is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love.  A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living.  Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love. For more info on Jeannie and the upcoming course she speaks about in the episode please go to www.jeanniezandi.com  For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Flashback Tuesday] Our guest today, Neelam, is a direct disciple of Papaji, and she has been holding satsang internationally since 1996. She runs the non profit, Fire of Truth Satsanga. Neelam’s unequivocal commitment to truth helps students turn inward again and again to release underlying patterns of conditioning which block the recognition of their true nature as Presence. The clarity and discriminating wisdom that are intrinsic to this awakened state are given freely by Neelam through Spiritual Inquiry, as she invites her students into the same recognition of truth that her teacher Papaji transmitted to her. In Our conversation with Neelam we talk about coming to know yourself as presence, what trust in your true nature means, and how the genuine experience of that trust can change our lives, what true freedom is, and how we can discern the difference between when past is arising, and playing out it’s habitual patterns and using it’s built up momentum, and when we are actually present. We discuss in detail what Awakening and the capacity of the nervous system have to do with one another, what trauma actually is, and how to get out of the grooves and charges of the past so that we can truly be here and not in a remembered past or imagined future. We were also grateful that Neelam spoke so eloquently about tenderness and kindness as the true marker of if we are in the present, and how treating ourselves with tenderness can be the real alchemical agent. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Flashback Tuesday] In this episode we’re excited to catch up with each other and integrate some of what we have experienced recently in the presence of so many amazing guest conversations, in particular our recent one with David Thomas. We’re exploring conditioning, again, but after being with David we’re posing the question to ourselves “what if it’s all conditioning?” What if, while we are in ego consciousness, all of our thoughts are simply products of our culture and lineage that become habitual? And if so, what would that mean about how we can shift out of our chronic patterns of suffering? For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Flashback Tuesday] Today we are talking with David Thomas. David is a self-realization teacher, speaker, and writer living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Through the practice of Self-inquiry and meditation, he has acquired a deeper understanding of the inner self and true liberation. David now seeks to support individuals in their pursuit of self-realization through his writing and speaking. The insights he shares within his videos, quotes, and poems are created to help nurture the healing of individuals seeking release from their pain and suffering. All of his teachings come from his personal experience, so he gives an inside perspective from being lost in ignorance to finding the truth within. We were both immediately struck by what a bright light David is. He has a very clear way of pointing out what conditioning actually is- how we are programmed and how we lose connection to life. His clarity on what the Being is- what direct experience is- versus our thoughts about ourselves can really rock your world in this talk if you sit with it. And his insights on the dark times we are living in as a result of how we have been forced to shut down our hearts is spot on. David points out That the heart always sees the truth, is always speaking the truth, but we are so cut off from it that we don’t feel it breaking and crying out. He also talks about the power of rock bottom. That when you are really broken, that that is when you are closest to God- and you can use that as a way immediately into God. Listening to David you can really feel what it means to be a Being who is living from the perspective of eternity- who is out of the way we think about time, and who understands the creator natures we all have at core. It was an absolute joy to talk with him. You can find more of his work via his YouTube channel, which is Enlightened Mindz. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit  

[Flashback Tuesday] John J. Prendergast, PhD, is a psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and founder and editor-in-chief of Undivided: The Online Journal of Nonduality and Psychology. John met his first teacher, Advaita master Jean Klein, in 1983 and began studying with one of our favorite teachers, Adyashanti, in 2001. For 23 years John was also a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where Vanessa Scotto went to grad school. He is the author of an amazing book called In Touch; How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself. We first came across John on the Buddha at the Gas Pump podcast where we were immediately drawn to his simple, yet profound, integration of Psychology and Spirituality. After Brooke Thomas sat with him on a weekend retreat a few months back we knew we needed to bring him on for a conversation we could share with all of you. In this conversation we cover so many topics including how to trust yourself and tune into your intuition, how to access genuine safety, and why the Ego is doomed to fail. This conversation is a delight and a revelation that can affect you for years to come. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

[Flashback Tuesday] Today we are having a conversation with Loch Kelly. Loch is the author of Shift into Freedom, and the creator of the recent audio course offering through Sounds True, Effortless Mindfulness Now. He is a meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU. He has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians and practicing awareness psychotherapy in New York for 30 years. It’s also worth mentioning that he teaches in our favorite lineage, the human being lineage! Which makes him a perfect teacher to have on Bliss+Grit. We so admire how he talks about awakening as a normal developmental potential for all human beings, and how his approach is so practical and available. We talk about how the answer to any question related to relieving suffering is always the same: shift. We also discuss how to shift, and Loch offers several experiential practices throughout our conversation. So you don’t get to just hear about it, you can experience it for yourself. For more on Loch Kelly, please visit: https://lochkelly.org. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

For this episode we zoomed out and explored: What is Bliss+Grit about exactly? More specifically, after nearly three years, 127 episodes and lots of personal healing, inquiry, and exposure to different teachers and practices: What is our working model of healing and transformation? How does conditioning store in us and how to we untangle that? And, importantly, if we aren’t our conditioning, what are we? It’s an ongoing lived inquiry more than a nailed down blueprint, and it’s more about building bridges between systems that are evocative of human potential rather than of picking a team and declaring it the winner. But here you go, at this juncture, this is where we’re at!  In this episode we talk about:  How conditioning stores in the body, the mind, and our energetic patterns What do we consider optional suffering?  How do we de-condition ourselves?  What the nervous system has to do with it.  What are we when we aren’t our conditioning?  Our view of building bridges and connecting disciplines so that each of us can have our unique lived inquiry into our own lives, rather than a blueprint system.  For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please go to www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

In this episode we are sharing our conversation with our guest Jill Blakeway.  Jill is the founder and director of The YinOva Center in New York City and the author of several books, including her most recent book Energy Medicine. She is the host of CBS Radio’s popular weekly podcast, “Grow, Cook, Heal”, which Vanessa Scotto has been a guest on, a teacher of gynecology and obstetrics at the Doctoral Program at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and a renowned authority on alternative medicine and women’s health. For more information on Jill Blakeway go to www.yinovacenter.com. In this week’s episode with Jill, we discuss her new book Energy Medicine.  Together we discuss:  What resonant bonds are and why they’re important to understand Research that shows how the power of our minds can affect machines  Teachings Neale Donald Walsh with Jill on manifestation and choosing love vs fear  Proven healings that can happen through energy fields How interconnected we all are and the research that proves it How to adjust your energy field in working with patients  How “energized” cell medium was found to change cancer markers in cells  What a “meaning field” is and why that’s important  Research on charlatans in the healing and spiritual worlds  This conversation is fun and full of research and interesting facts on the existence of energy. We’re really excited to share it with you.  For more information on Bliss + Grit, to become a show patron, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com.

This is one of our favorite kinds of conversations: where the nervous system, trauma responses, and the spiritual path intersect. We are looking at the four F’s of trauma response: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. We are talking about how these normal, healthy responses can become identities and therefore keep us from fully nourishing lives. And in particular we are honing in on fawn, also called please, appease, or tend and befriend, since we haven’t spoken in as much detail about this particular response. But boy howdy do we know it from the inside out! If you consider yourself an empath, this one might strike a chord for you too.   In this episode we discuss:  The fawn trauma response, also known as please, appease, placate, or “tend and befriend”.  How we can continue acting out “stuck” trauma responses so frequently that they become meshed with our personalities and identities.  Examples of what the 4 F’s look like as identities.  How shame holds these responses in place.  How you can’t put down by swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme, which can be re-traumatizing, and ways you can instead tenderly begin to shift out of chronic states.  For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

This is the second part to last week’s conversation with the author, speaker, and teacher Will Pye on his newest book, The Gratitude Prescription. We first interviewed Will almost a year back on his book Blessed with a Brain Tumor and enjoyed our talk so much that we invited him back to hear more about what he calls ‘radical gratitude.’ As someone who had a spiritual awakening in the aftermath of receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, we find his teachings and recommended practices of gratitude to be very embodied, grounded and deep.  We left off last week discussing why truth can be difficult to meet if we don’t have self-compassion. We pick up again with Vanessa asking Will to speak more on how personalizing our suffering can be problematic.  In this episode we are speaking about:  How personalizing our narratives and experiences of suffering can increase our pain  How Will dealt with his own suicidal thoughts and depression  How removing the label from experiences like depression can shift our relationship to it  How building resilience is important in building the capacity to navigate difficult circumstances with a state of gratitude  Why a regular practice can be so important in shifting our experience of life  How to become more “grace-prone” We also have an extra bonus for you because towards the end Will guided us through a beautiful gratitude practice that you can listen to over and over again.  To find out more information about Will Pye please visit https://willpye.com/ For more information on Bliss + Grit, or one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com. To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

Today we are speaking with Will Pye for a second time! Will is an author, speaker, and teacher, and we had our first conversation with him about his first book, Blessed with a Brain Tumor, and today we are talking about his most recent book, The Gratitude Prescription.  The embodied practice of gratitude has become a centrally important part of our own practices this year, and so we wanted to talk with Will about the deeply experiential practice of gratitude and how it is fundamental to the functioning of the human being, and how it can actually change your life.  We had so much fun talking with Will that this is a conversation in two parts. Part 2 will air next week. And if you want to find more of Will’s work, visit willpye.com. In this episode we are talking about:  Gratitude as the realized state of God: the peace, love, and joy of what we are.   The setup of this realm that we tend not to look for the good or the abundance.  Gratitude as the mental practice of clarity.  The data on gratitude as a remedy for depression.  Gratitude is not a directive to bypass what is happening in the world.  How to absorb, or digest, gratitude and get its full nourishment.    To find out more information about Will Pye please visit: willpye.com. To become a show patron, please visit: www.patreon.com/blissandgrit For information on Bliss and Grit, including information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com.  

Today we are sharing the second part of our conversation with our guest Lisa Wimberger. Lisa is the creator of Neurosculpting, which is a self-directed neuroplasticity protocol. Specifically, it is a mental training process that quiets our fight-or-flight center and activates our prefrontal cortex, which is the mind’s seat of our compassion and empathy. We had so much to discuss that we made this interview a two-parter.  In this episode we are talking about:  How energy relates to your nervous system. The importance of focusing on your body in your spiritual practice.  How our past narratives filter our present moment experiences.  The trouble technology creates for your vagus nerve. How your “spirits design” can influence your choices.  To find out more information about Lisa and Neurosculpting please visit https://neurosculptinginstitute.com/ For more information on Bliss + Grit, to become a show patron, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com.

We have a special guest today: Lisa Wimberger. Lisa is the creator of Neurosculpting, which is a self-directed neuroplasticity protocol. Specifically, it is a mental training process that quiets our fight-or-flight center and activates our prefrontal cortex, which is the mind’s seat of our compassion and empathy. Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about. In fact, We so many shared passions and inquiries in common with Lisa that we are airing this conversation as a 2-parter. Stay tuned next week.  If you want more information on Neurosculpting you can visit neurosculptinginstitute.com In this episode we are talking about:  How meditation and spiritual paths can be used to dissociate further into a freeze pattern of the nervous system. Lisa’s extreme experience of a nervous system caught in freeze, and how recovering from this adaptation is different than someone recovering from flight or fight patterns.  Why going from freeze to “bliss” is too big a step.  How to consciously choose when we need to be in our limbic nervous systems versus when we can move to a different state. How the stories we tell about our lives (internally to ourselves) are built on the foundation of what information our nervous system’s received when we were very young.  For more information on Bliss + Grit, to become a show patron, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com.

Have you ever worried that if you were to truly shine as bright as you could you would make others uncomfortable? Or have you noticed moments where you shut down your own potential or thriving? You also may believe that your needs, your emotions or your presence is just simply too much for people. The fear of “being too much” can be a very common one, especially in empathic circles, and can create patterns of inhibition that keep us settling for less-than. We’ve experienced this fear in our own lives, in our own ways, and that’s why in this episode we’re speaking about: How we can manage our own aliveness to make others comfortable  How fear can tell us that our thriving will take away from others or cost us our connection  How to spot those protective strategies and move through them into embodying more wholeness in your life   How sometimes we can be “too much” for others, but that has nothing to do with our essential self  For more information on Bliss + Grit, on becoming a show supporter or on coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com 

Today we are talking about the rules we may have made in our lives, that at some point, gave us a frame of reference in how to navigate life in a sane and mature way. Also, those moments in life when we are asked to figure out if those rules are to be followed to the letter, or if a more subtle discernment is called for.  In our discussion:  The benefit of “rules” and how they can help us navigate new territory. How rules can also keep us in needlessly small lives. How to discern the difference between a useful rule and one that no longer applies. Learning how to trust ourselves and have faith in our discernment. How to let go of holding on to, “I hope I don’t screw up” and move forward in life. For more information on Bliss + Grit go to www.blissandgrit.com

In this episode,we are speaking about the phenomenon of spiritual teacher misconduct. From shaming and judgment to outright abuse, there is a long history of spiritual figures engaging inappropriately with those they’re meant to guide. Yet these days it seems as if there is a new teacher exposed every few months. This is a big topic, that we could barely scratch the surface on, but in light of our recent discussions on relationships and safety, and because we do speak about so many teachers, we felt like it was time to add our voices to the conversation. We touch on how this can happen, but more so, what signs we may look for to identify an unethical, unsafe or ego-driven teacher.    In our discussion, we cover many topics including:  How a spiritual teacher can benefit us  Polyvagal theory Intergenerational trauma  Co-dependency  The importance of recognizing the humanity in awakened teachers   We know that people within this community may have been harmed by a teacher and we want you to know that we love you, we support you and we value you. We hope we did some justice to this important topic. May we together help raise consciousness and eradicate abuse in all forms of relationship.    For more information on Bliss + Grit go to www.blissandgrit.com 

This week is a flashback Tuesday! This episode, titled The Implications of Basic Trust, originally aired in September of 2018. We both remember this conversation as the beginning of what felt like a big shift for each of us, the kind of epiphany that seems so obvious, but is in fact quite huge: that we can trust this life. Even when it’s agony. Even when it’s joy. Even when it’s boring...    By the time this began to be a real lived experience for us, we had sat with the phrase “trust your life” for at least a couple of years. So it was fun to listen back and note that understanding things and experiencing things are really different.    It was also maybe the first time that we mentioned what felt like a side project at the time: connecting the dots between nervous system states and awakening. Something that now feels very front and center to our mission, and is something you have heard a lot about in the last few episodes.

Our last several episodes have been circling around the theme of relationship and connection. This week we’re continuing the conversation by sharing our thoughts on what we could call, “the love language of presence”. We’ve noticed personally that what truly bonds us to others, and lets us feel loved, is presence in the form of interest and curiosity. Yet, our cultural and familial models are often missing this key ingredient. In this talk, we cover a tangible way to look at if you’re present, how ego-agendas can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, how an overstimulated nervous system can pull you away from presence, ways to experience genuine connection and how the conversation of ‘doing vs being’ can also apply to the way we communicate.

Today we are honing in on how we find safety in the world and in our relationships, whether those relationships are with intimate partners, or our children, friends, coworkers,etc. We are deepening the conversation from our last two episodes: the episode on awakened relating with Lynn Marie Lumiere, and last week’s episode on the “how” of self-love.    In particular we are using the lens of Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal theory to look more closely at what happens when we don’t detect safety, and the magical things that can happen when our nervous systems do detect safety and therefore do not have to be defensive. We ponder what even is defensive behavior beyond the caricatures we typically think of? What are the cultural stories that keep us from experiences of safety? How do we get out of the “you’re a problem, or I’m a problem” binary loop? Then we look at how healing really begins to happen, and how healing really takes care of itself, the more we can self-regulate and co-regulate.

If you’ve listened to the podcast in the past you know how much we value the practice of meeting ourselves with tenderness and love. In this episode, we are going into much greater detail about what it tangibly looks and feels like to heal through self-love. Our conversation covers everything, from neuroscience to personal experiences, to practical exercises where we can learn how to bring love to the parts of ourselves that need it the most. As we shift to meeting ourselves with a genuine experience of loving-kindness we can rewire and release the conditioning that has created so much suffering and havoc in our lives and step into a new, brighter experience of life.

Today we are having a conversation with Lynn Marie Lumiere, a psychotherapist and the author of the book Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships. Reading from the description of Lynn Marie’s book: Our natural state is to love and be loved. From deep within, we’re compelled to seek connection. Yet relationships remain a struggle—even for the most spiritually enlightened among us. Traumatic experiences, insecure attachment, and especially the false but commonly held belief that we are separate, both from each other and from the love we seek, can cause endless problems in our relationships. As long as our connections are built on this untruth, lasting love and harmony in relationship will elude us. In our conversation with Lynn Marie,we greatly enjoy shedding some light on how being able to contact the experience of awake awareness, or unity consciousness can take us way beyond the endless compromise push-pull game of the separate self, and the ways that“consciousrelationship” continue to keep us limited and constricted. You can find more of Lynn’s work at lynnmarielumiere.com. 

Today we’re showing our age by speaking about a concept from the book, The Seat of the Soul, that was written 25 years ago by physicist and author Gary Zukav that was just re-released. In this book, Gary describes the difference between what he calls the vertical path, or the path of the spirit, and the horizontal path, the path of form, and how where we choose to put our attention and energy can impact our lives. We thought this would be a fun and relevant conversation as so many of us, even on a spiritual path, still can get hung up on the horizontal “realm” looking a certain way. We also bring in wisdom from Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth, as well as personal examples of how we began to view life through the lens of the Soul, rather than the Ego.    Find our more information about us and Bliss + Grit at www.blissandgrit.com

This week we are having a flashback Tuesday! This episode was originally recorded in June of 2018 with our special guest Matt Kahn,and we figured we could always time travel a little! If you listen to Bliss and Grit on the regular, you are probably well familiar with Matt. But if you aren’t, he is an empathic healer and teacher who is very dear to my and Vanessa’s hearts. We hope you enjoy revisiting(orhearing for the first time!) this episode. Matt has an uncanny ability to bring the wide open miraculous and root it right down into our shared humanity. You can learn more about his work at www.mattkahn.org

In this conversation we are speaking about the difference between intellectual knowing and lived, felt experience when it comes to healing. We’ve all seen firsthand that knowing something often isn’t enough to create a transformation in our lives. For example, we can know that we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves yet continue to criticize ourselves relentlessly. This conversation seems simple at first, but in exploring our own path of embodied transformation takes a few interesting twists and turns through topics like intergenerational trauma, being forgiveness, and finding existence in your own body. 

This week we are deepening our conversation on co-creation by looking at how powerful handing your burdens over to God, Life, Source, whatever word you choose, can be. How do we let go of the ownership of our struggles, without bypass? And what happens when we do? Ultimately this conversation takes a close look at how we can be in such deep relationship with life that we know we are it, and that we are being supremely taken care of by it, even in the midst of suffering. And, when we hand our suffering over, we begin to live a life more akin to a delightful scavenger hunt than as an endless grasping and striving wind-drag.

This week we’re taking a deeper look at judgment. We are all familiar with the voice of the inner judge that is habitually dissecting people, situations and even ourselves. This judge may be more obvious and critical, or it may be more subtle, showing up as the voice of “great advice” you give others in your mind on how they “should” live. Either way, it’s useful to explore how is the judgment impacting you? What is it serving and creating? And most interestingly to us, what would life look and feel like if we lovingly released the habit of judgment through love and forgiveness? This conversation focuses on our own personal exploration of why and how releasing judgement has been an important part of our process these days, as well as covers forgiveness teachings shared with us by Matt Kahn. 

Today we are basically observing a different aspect of the nitty-gritty of transformation than what we spoke to last week. In this case, the moment when you are right up against the mechanics of your conditioning and you can truly feel the edges, or the wall to what you are even able to conceive of, or feel safe enough to receive, into your life. We talk about the simple and profound beauty of discovering what one would truly like to have in their life as the walls of conditioning crumble more. And about how powerful it can be to find the operating mode of being pushed forward by pain being replaced by the operating mode of being pulled by vision (as inspired by Rev Michael Beckwith).

We’ve been active in some pretty big transformational processes these days, which got us thinking about how rare it is for people to speak about the actual nitty-gritty of being a human going through these kinds of moments. From what happens in the brain and body when you’re in the middle of healing, to what may pop up psychologically as you uproot the causes of your suffering, we’re bringing some light to what it’s been like us to be up close and personal to our own active journey with internal transformation.

Today we are taking our “Turn Towards or Turn Away” episode a few steps farther. We are way out on the edge of what is an alive inquiry for us, in short, we are pondering co-creation. What is cultivating a deep relationship to life? How is what we are talking about different than, and also how is it related to, the, I’m gonna say it, the Law of Attraction or manifestation talk. I suppose we are at the beginning of pondering what a “law of attraction” looks like from a non-ego-driven, non-bright-siding or denial perspective. Where does it become not about the Me controlling life, but actually about deepening the intimate relationship we have with life?

In this episode, we’re speaking about a new paradigm for intimate relationship with our guests Amoda Maa and Kavi Jezzie Hockaday. Amoda and Kavi have been together for 16 years and have observed the unfolding of an unexpected relationship between them that appears to have a life on its own. They share with us a new vision for how relationships may evolve, as well as an exploration of the ways in which our conditioning can affect our perspective on love. We touch on the difference between conscious relationship and what we could call “awakened” relationship, what co-dependency is and how you may discern if your needs are actually a subtle form of co-dependence, and what it can look like to truly embody love. Then we touch on a topic that could be a whole episode in and of itself; how the frequencies of masculine and feminine are showing up in relationships today and what it could look like to shed the “inner patriarchy” in love. Join us on what Brooke called “a new planet” as we envision a new paradigm for love and partnership.    Amoda Maa and Kavi Jezzie Hockaday both write, teach and speak on awakening and love. For more information on retreats and offerings go to www.amodamaa.com or www.kavijezziehockaday.com. If you’re moved by this conversation in particular, please visit Amoda’s website for information about their upcoming retreat at Light on the Hill. 

After we aired our episode on healing the limbic system we got a similar question from many listeners, phrased in many different ways, but circling around a theme. The question essentially was: for those of us on a path, so much of our instruction, whether in various spiritual and psychological settings, is on how to turn towards our pain. How to really be with what we are feeling and experiencing. Yet Dynamic Neural Retraining Systems, which we had discussed in the limbic system episode, seems to instruct turning away. So what gives? So we wanted to really clarify what we are talking about when we discuss limbic impairment, and how understanding limbic impairment has been a very profound missing puzzle piece for both Vanessa and I. Yet it doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater either. So what is it to navigate the full nuance of coming home to ourselves, of turning towards our inner landscape, and at the same time to acknowledge that quite a lot of this inner landscape is not the “me” we think it is, and for some of us, what we call me is actually a habitual and established trauma loop, which does not need to be fed any longer if we want to be free.

For our conversation today we are joined by guest Judith Blackstone, who also was one of our mentors. Judith Blackstone, PhD is an innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. She developed the Realization Process, an embodied approach to personal and relational healing and nondual realization. She is author of several books, including her latest work Trauma and the Unbound Body. In our talk we speak about a subtle field of awareness within each of us that Judith calls Fundamental Consciousness. We cover how traumatic experiences are unconsciously bound into constrictions in our bodies, limiting both our personal expression and our experience of wholeness, as well as how when we discover ourselves as FC we can experience ourselves as an unbreakable, unified ground of being. Of course we also speak about how the Realization process has changed both of our lives, and how these practices can mean the end of objectification and co-dependency. For more information on Judith, her new book and her numerous trainings in The Realization process please visit www.realizationprocess.org For more on Bliss+Grit please go to www.blissandgrit.com  

Vanessa just recently returned from doing the DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System) program. You have heard us talking about this program and the book about it, Wired for Healing, in previous episodes, but this is the first time that we talk in depth about it. And because Vanessa was very freshly back from the weeklong program, it was a great chance for me to catch up with her and ask her all about it as we recorded an episode. Vanessa and I are deeply invested in conversations about where our paths and the habits of our nervous systems intersect, and we have been engaged in a years long, really lifelong, inquiry into how we can most usefully reset our nervous systems in order to have a different experience of our lives. It’s important to note that this is just us talking as friends about the program, not as professionals prescribing the program to any of you listening. We also talk about things that are akin to exposure therapy and so we would like to say that if you are a person with a chronic illness, anxiety, or PTSD please don’t take this episode as a suggestion of things to try out at home. It is really a tiny glimpse into a much larger program and that container is needed for safe and effective healing.