150: Bringing the Darkness into the Light
As we grow in whatever family and wider culture we're born into, we inevitably find out that parts of us are not welcome. Most of us are pretty adept at exiling or hiding those parts away. But what if, instead of labelling them, judging them, and trying to keep them out of view, we learned to turn towards them as if they were bearers of gifts? And what if we could learn that we are indeed made ...
34m Aug 16, 2020
34m
149: Our Mortality is our Gift to the Future
How would we live our lives if we understood our mortality to be a gift - one we were given by all those who came before us, and that makes possible the lives of those who will come after us? What kindness and forgiveness might we bring to our lives if we understood that each of us - especially those with whom we are in difficulty - is a brief flash of life in a universe-sized unfolding process...
34m Aug 10, 2020
34m
148: The Gift of Sadness
What if sadness isn't something to be avoided, but an opening, a doorway that we can step into? What if sadness could wake us up to what we most care about? And what if it could bring us into the orbit of others in a way that deepens our lives? Episode 148 of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might treat our inevitable grief as a call, a question, a possibility - and about how...
37m Aug 02, 2020
37m
147: Willing to be Changed
Most of us were never taught to admit we don't know - and as a result we hold onto our positions and beliefs no matter what. Others of us learned early on that the most important thing we could do was get along with others, and so we routinely give up what we see or care about in order to avoid disagreement. At the heart of both positions is a kind of distrust - distrust that we can still take ...
32m Jul 26, 2020
32m
146: Most of Us Are Dragged Towards Wholeness
Life keeps calling us to uncover and act on all the parts of ourselves we've so far left out, but much of the time we resist the call. Too painful perhaps, too unfamiliar. Sometimes, though, we find ourselves stepping right into exactly that unfamiliarity and making discoveries about ourselves the open up a whole world... and sometimes we find ourselves being that for others. Both require us to...
34m Jul 19, 2020
34m
145: Do You Want To Leave?
Somewhere along the line, many of us learn that voicing our needs directly - asking people for what we want - is to invite ridicule, shame or otherwise ask to be hurt. Our learning to undo that - to find out what we really long for, and to give voice to it - is a necessary, difficult and life-giving path to taking up our full size and place in the world. And it's also absolutely necessary for a...
30m Jul 12, 2020
30m
144: Blessings Often Arrive as Trouble
When we treat the pain of our lives as a mistake, we cut something off that could be deeply life giving - for ourselves, for our families, for our wider society. When we treat the pain of our society as a mistake, we cut off many avenues for healing, understanding, and for addressing the difficulties that surround us. A conversation about learning, with one another's support, to handle life's d...
33m Jul 05, 2020
33m
143: The Alchemy of Welcome
What happens when we confuse ourselves with just one part of ourselves – when we think we ‘are’ a particular way we’re feeling, a thought, the exam result I got… When we think we ‘are’ our job title, or our joblessness, our bank balance… In short, when we confuse ourselves with being ‘just one thing’. And how our forgetting our own variety in this way also has us forget and not see the richness...
34m Jun 28, 2020
34m
142: Bonus: The Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, starts September 2020
In this special edition of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, offered this year as a completely on-line programme beginning September 2020 (offered in partnership with New Ventures West), a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both ...
55m Jun 24, 2020
55m
142: Making the Unwanted Wanted
Life keeps on happening, and most of it happens whether we want it that way or not. Our ‘not wanting’ can easily lead us into pushing away life as it happens, and into exiling the parts of ourselves and others that we find to be unwelcome. But another way might be possible for each of us, a path we can practice that has us turning towards what happens with welcome. And this could be a way in wh...
38m Jun 21, 2020
38m
141: Just Beyond Yourself
Just beyond ourselves, just outside all the ways we’ve taken ourselves to be, just beyond our certainty and the familiar ways we know ourselves… Just here, beyond ourselves, something is calling all the time, something which we discover in our willingness to be affected by, to be changed by, the ‘other’ in other people and in the world. A conversation about the possibilities that come when we n...
34m Jun 14, 2020
34m
140: How to Kill a Living Thing
All the ways we try to protect ourselves from life by hardening our hearts, how this leads us to misunderstand love in ways that strangles the aliveness that's in ourselves and in others, and what we might do to exercise proper responsibility in how we care for each other. A conversation about our power to either recognise or smother the beauty in people, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thi...
31m Jun 07, 2020
31m
139: No Conflict With Anything I Do
It's a necessary part of our growing up that we learn to get along in the culture into which we were born. But, on the way, we easily lose touch with what is most life-giving for us, and cover up our truer desires with a crowd of wants and needs that help us to fit in, or stand out, or get ahead. So much becomes possible when we start to strip away the cloud of distractions from our truer longi...
39m May 31, 2020
39m
138: Nothing Missing
It's so easy to suspend our lives... to in one way or another miss out on being here because we're waiting for conditions to be right, to become a better kind of person, until we're saved. We can even suspend our lives waiting until we feel like 'nothing is missing'. But what if even the feeling of 'something missing' is what's calling us to inhabit our lives just as they are? A conversation ab...
36m May 24, 2020
36m
137: If We Were No Longer Pushing
How we exhaust ourselves (and often others!) by our attempts to push life around, to control it, to have things just our way. And what might happen if we learned to give that up, so we could discover what our hands might do when our bigger intentions are freed. A conversation about what happens when we let ourselves fall into life, and when we stop trying to herd cats, with Lizzie Winn and Just...
39m May 17, 2020
39m
136: The Jewel at the Heart of the Stone
When big change comes upon us, we can at first devote a great deal of our hearts' energy to a fight with the change - which often does nothing to help us. But our hearts are equally capable of something else - a turn towards bigger questions, and to the possibility that the change might be inviting us into a deeper relationship with life. Hidden here might be 'the jewel at the heart of the ston...
34m May 10, 2020
34m
135: How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything
How are we coming at life at this time? Are we careful? mindless? gentle with the things we are touching? Or careless, distracted, and in a self-important hurry at all costs? A conversation about paying attention to our lives, this week inspired by Amanda Palmer’s writing, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
40m May 03, 2020
40m
134: Bread & Butter People... or How to be a Welcome
There's a down-to-earthness about some people, an everydayness. When people are this way, there's no fear that they're putting on an act for you, that they may be different towards you when you are not there. And when each of us finds a way to be like this, we can be a profound welcome to one another. A conversation about ordinary, kind ways of being with one another, with Lizzie Winn and Justi...
38m Apr 26, 2020
38m
133: That Sweet Moon Language
Why we're all trying to get loved, why our covering that up gets us into all kinds of trouble, and what can happen when we start to get honest with one another about what's going on. A conversation about loving people without condition, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
38m Apr 19, 2020
38m
132: Unbroken
What does it take to remain hopeful about life when we're entering into the dark? How can we be beacons of hope to one another as we travel through the more difficult passages of our lives? A conversation about faithfulness to one another's wholeness, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
33m Apr 12, 2020
33m
131: How Long Will This Last?
The weeks of physical distancing we're in might, if we'll take it, give us an opportunity to develop a new relationship with time. What if time isn't a commodity to be consumed? And what would happen if we allow ourselves to encounter time as depth, or as play, or as presence, or as possibility? A conversation about giving up our frantic, fearful relationship with the finiteness of our time, wi...
33m Apr 05, 2020
33m
130: The New Normal
Here in London we're coming the end of the first week of lockdown as the world responds to the coronavirus pandemic and, like millions of others across the globe, we're wondering together about what to make of this time. And there are choices about how to relate to the experience of confinement and physical distance - choices that are marked by our willingness to not add unnecessary suffering t...
33m Mar 29, 2020
33m
129: And Joy
Here in London, it's spring, and the blossom is emerging with its brightness and beauty. At the same time, we humans are living with an unfolding worldwide epidemic that threatens lives and livelihoods. Can we learn to live in these times in a way that opens us to both grief AND joy, to both fear AND our responsibility for one another? A conversation about the necessity and power of including a...
36m Mar 22, 2020
36m
128: Seeing One Another
In many parts of the world, as we recorded this conversation, we're having to take up practices of physical separation from one another in order to keep each other safe. But there are ways, even when we are physically distant, that we can come into a deeper, more full contact with one another than we might usually experience, and such contact with one another's depth is also a return to ourselv...
35m Mar 15, 2020
35m
127: On Vulnerability
How can we face uncertainty in a way that brings us into closer contact with our courage, openness and compassion for one another? Can we find a way, when we feel squeezed, to not withdraw into ourselves in fear? And is there a life-giving, truth-bringing way of turning towards our inescapable vulnerability? A conversation about turning towards one another for support in an uncertain time, with...
38m Mar 08, 2020
38m
126: Never Too Late
"Perhaps," Lizzie says, "even our reactivity is a way to come home". There's a part of us that is reactive, a way in which we get triggered and gripped by our certainties about ourselves and one another. Another, more essential part, is a kind of depth and openness in which we can meet the world - and have the world meet us - with more depth and openness in return. When we're gripped by our rea...
33m Mar 01, 2020
33m
125: Being Loved by the Storm
It's so easy to be in a fight with our lives, as if there's a way we can win out over our fear, or grief, or some other experience we're wishing not to have. But often trying to win out leaves us small, and exhausted, and rigid. What if we were to take up a different relationship with what's happening, in which we know our experiences not as something to get away from but a way in which life is...
34m Feb 23, 2020
34m
124: The Freedom in Discipline
The discipline of regular, intentional practice can look like a constraint but - as Lizzie says in this week's conversation - when we approach practice with intention and kindness it can bring us an extraordinary freedom from our habits, preferences, and ways of going to sleep to our lives. A conversation about the gifts of enabling constraints that we choose for ourselves, and the ways in whic...
32m Feb 16, 2020
32m
123: If They Dance Together, Something Unexpected Will Happen
What happens when we meet the parts of ourselves we've kept out of view, and let them dance with the parts that we're more comfortable showing other people? What happens when we're willing to welcome the parts in others we usually try to push away? And what creativity and possibility open when we give up trying to control one another so that instead we can meet one another fully? A conversation...
29m Feb 09, 2020
29m
122: The Way I Love You
When we're in the midst of giant changes - the birth of a new child, the death of someone we love, or any other changes that life brings us - it's tempting to try and get life back to 'the way it has been'. Indeed, we often actively encourage the people around us to do exactly that. 'You'll soon be back to your old self', we say. But what if we could see that life's changes will change us howev...
36m Feb 02, 2020
36m
121: Telling is Listening
It may be hard to see, but how we listen greatly shapes what it is possible for other people to say to us. Can we catch on to all the ways we’re trying to control what we experience as we listen, and as we do so drop our need to control so that we can be a profound welcome to others? A conversation about the ways in which we share ourselves with one another, and about how we can receive with op...
34m Jan 26, 2020
34m
120: Safe and Sound
What if we could learn to behold one another's wholeness, rather than focussing so narrowly on the aspects of others that we fear or desire? To trust in one another's vastness and depth instead of relating to one another from defensiveness or a desire to control? It would, for sure, give us a way to know one another with a greater kindness and a greater truthfulness than we do now. Can you imag...
31m Jan 19, 2020
31m
119: Facing the Losses, Together
What if we knew ourselves as made up of many parts, as opposed to being a single ‘I’? Could we find a new way to relate to the parts that are afraid, hurt, resentful or ashamed? A way that at once treated them with great respect while remembering that there are always other parts which might yet have a voice?. A conversation about the ways we exile aspects of ourselves, and the possibility of t...
34m Jan 12, 2020
34m
118: The Art of Unselfish Understanding
What does it take to really understand one another, especially when what separates us can seem so great? What if it takes a bold act of unselfishness - setting aside our ordinary, rigid ways of listening and being prepared to encounter the unknown while simultaneously doing all we can to make it safe for the person speaking to speak? A conversation about a wild, courageous way to listen to frie...
28m Jan 04, 2020
28m
117: And Suddenly You Surrender
When we learn to relax our defensiveness, when we become less anxious to protect our borders – when we find ourselves surrendering to life – we become more loving. We regain our integrity and our dignity. A conversation about the ways we separate ourselves from life, and how we might return, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
31m Dec 29, 2019
31m
116: The Peace of Wild Things
Receiving our lives – actually allowing ourselves to inhabit, touch and be affected by the one life we’re in the middle of living – can be difficult for many of us. We have so many ways of spinning off into fear, or numbness, or distraction. But there are ways we can bring ourselves back into the fierce loving presence of life. A conversation about opening to what’s here, allowing ourselves to ...
33m Dec 22, 2019
33m
115: We Have Not Arrived to Explain, But to Sing
When life is dark or frightening, or when we feel stretched beyond our ordinary abilities, it's often our willingness to learn from others that can restore our capacity to respond. Other people, if we'll let them, can often give us the gift of another way of coming at life and, in particular, the gift of practices that can invite in us an entirely new orientation to the circumstances we find ou...
34m Dec 15, 2019
34m
114: Naming the Light and the Dark
'Light' and 'Dark' are both names, ways in which we can observe and respond to what's happening within us and around us. Our refusal to name can feel protective but in the end it isolates ourselves from one another and from life. Learning to name well can be a living bridge between us - a way of entering into conversations, understanding and action that would be unavailable to us if we turned a...
32m Dec 08, 2019
32m
113: A Very Narrow Bridge
Nachman of Bratslav, the precariousness of all of our lives, and the possibility that we might learn to give up amplifying our fear - indeed that we might find a way to walk through an inevitably risky life with joy. A conversation about faithfulness to our lives, practice, why joy isn't the same as happiness, and what becomes possible when we live as if we're all in this together, with Lizzie ...
36m Dec 01, 2019
36m
112: Love After Love
The culture we live in encourages us to live at a distance from ourselves. Many of us consequently live a life of frantic doing, as if the next project or achievement will be what saves us. Our living far from ourselves is often fuelled by intense self-criticism. But it's never too late to find out that underneath all our activity, life itself is always waiting to welcome us and that, in allowi...
31m Nov 24, 2019
31m
111: The Space We Need for Fire
Our lives can easily become an anxiety-fuelled rush of activity. But when we live this way - even when our packing every moment seems filled with excitement and promise - we easily smother our own creativity, learning, and the chance to be in meaningful contact with others. So how can we learn to live our lives in a way that gives more space for life itself to come through? A conversation about...
32m Nov 17, 2019
32m
110: All the Golden Openings
How might we approach life's inevitable interruptions and openings - the often unexpected events that change things, perhaps without our say-so? Can we find a way that opens us and changes us, rather than coming at life's inevitability with fear and resentment? A conversation about finding a way to keep faith with our changing lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
35m Nov 10, 2019
35m
109: The Anatomy of Annoying
How might we learn to relax our annoyance, to treat what irritates us as if it were the weather rather than something personal, and in so doing take our defensive reactivity down a step? A conversation about blame, kindness, and finding a way to be contactful with our experience, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
34m Nov 03, 2019
34m
108: What We're Really Scared Of
We need to draw the people we love nearer, smell their hair, enjoy them, drink them in. We need to let our hearts burst open with all the love. And experience the simplicity and sacredness of things. Even if we can only do it for one moment a day. It's the hard way but it's the only way. A conversation about vulnerability, and how love, fear and grief are inevitable partners, with Lizzie Winn a...
29m Oct 27, 2019
29m
107: The Cure For It All
Sometimes we try to be too big, imagining we should have super-human powers of control over the inevitable difficulties that face us. Other times we make ourselves too small, as if we have no choice at all. How might we turn back towards our lives by right-sizing ourselves? A conversation about breath, feeling life course through us, and facing the world with grace, with Lizzie Winn and Justin ...
34m Oct 21, 2019
34m
106: Never Just One Way
What would it take for us to allow ourselves the freedom to move in new ways, speak in new ways, love in new ways? And can we spot the subtle and not-so-subtle ways we and others are engaged in keeping one another moving along narrow grooves founded on the expectations that come with having a particular kind of body, a particular kind of history, and a particular kind of cultural background? A ...
32m Oct 13, 2019
32m
105: Everything I Have to Tell You About Love
We human beings change all the time - it's inevitable. But somehow we've got into demanding that our friends, family and partners are fixed - that they 'complete us'. What would happen if we started to live with the truth of our ever-changing natures? At the start of the 3rd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about walking a path together and being in nourishing relationship, with Liz...
31m Oct 06, 2019
31m
104: Remember the Moon
The more we try to control, the less we can receive from life. But there is a path by which we might, gradually, remember ourselves more fully and find ourselves reached by life, with all its gifts and all its challenges. At the end of the 2nd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about being porous to life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
33m Sep 30, 2019
33m
103: When Love Beckons, Follow
Can we catch on to the ways we contract from life so as not to feel its consequences? And can we learn to open, instead, so that the possibilities of our loving – other people, a calling, life itself – can come through, with all their pain and all their joy? A conversation about the radical opening that love can be, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
35m Sep 22, 2019
35m
102: Never Give Up
What's beyond our endless efforting, striving and comparing, and the often-merciless inner voice that keeps all of that going? And what might happen if we begin to relax our certainty that it's the way we have to be? A conversation about opening to our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
34m Sep 15, 2019
34m