PowerPivot

"this culture, the one that holds the power around us is a culture that asks us to suffer. It invites, it expects, it valorizes suffering. It wants us- It tells us that if we aren't hurting, it doesn't count... But let's bring it back to pleasure. What is the tiny thing that still feels good? " Is it the gift of giving, and the gift of receiving? Here is a link to Leela's recent guest sermon at No...

"I can't say as I'd know how to tell what it was like to take the road more traveled, because I'm not sure I've ever done that." Join Leela on a walk to sit near a pond and get close to the pond's inhabitants. And do some deep thinking in the quiet, of course. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/the-pond-and-the-gate Recorded 16 March, 2023.

How often do we stray from ourselves in pursuit of survival for ourselves? How often do we do things that put bread on our tables, but don't truly feed us? Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/straying-from-my-roots Recorded 1 March 2023.

"These shoes mean to me the ability to inhabit my gender. I, and this complex gender of mine, belong everywhere." Gender, complex gender, representation, bookstores, long distance love and... whole-cut Venetian loafers? Naturally, when Leela Sinha is doing the talking, it all fits together. Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/venetian-loafers Recorded 1 Marc...

Making space to find- and create- beauty where we need and want it. Cole Arthur Riley: https://colearthurriley.com/ The type of camera that Leela carried in zir pocket in Chicago: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Canon_MC Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/something-beautiful

"We don't have reentry protocols, because we're not supposed to need them. We're supposed to magically stay in touch just the right amount." They didn't not text you back because they hate you. More likely, for the last three days they've been trying to put just the right words together at just the right time in order to be there for you. And failing. Because life happens and life is a rolling dis...

"what I've noticed about myself is that, I have to realize that I would like it to be different ,that something bugs me. I have to realize that something doesn't feel okay before I can change it." Transcript and notes: https://dev.intensivesinstitute.com/captivate-podcast/know-it-is-not-okay Recorded 15 February 2023.

"You have choices. But the first, most important choice, is to celebrate who and how you are as an intensive." As an intensive, your phasic work cycles- and perhaps your phasic chaos cycles- are part of who you are. They are as much a part of you as the color of your eye. Learning to embrace those phases, instead of fighting them, will help us to accomplish our goals. We need the flow, the go-go-g...

A poem, a meditation, a gift: "In the face of the world being difficult, and impossible, and glorious, over and over again. In the face of destruction and creation. In the face of hope, and ongoing, grinding impossibility, I want to give you this: that the sun also rises. That the sun always rises. That the sun even now is coming up over the horizon." "Turning Toward the Morning" by Gordon Bok: ht...

Sometimes, almost always, some version of the solution has already been invented. What are we going to remember that we already know how to do? Let us take a mental tour of the Terrible Patents Division as we try to imagine- or re-imagine- sustainable solutions to some basic and persistent problems. Transcript and notes: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/innovation-invention-and-survival Re...

"If you think of depression as something that's kind of like the ocean, that comes up in waves. Sometimes you can float on top of it, and it's okay. Sometimes it'll try and drown you.... When the depression wave started to come up, I didn't have my little floaties on." Let's talk about depression. Let's talk about depression as what it is, which is an illness. For many, a chronic illness. With rem...

Intensives go like hell and then rest like the dead. Sometimes we go like hell and then... just stop. Let's talk about that. The Nap Ministry: https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/ Madeline Pendleton: https://www.tiktok.com/@madeline_pendleton Transcript and notes: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/intensive-stop Recorded 29 January 2023.

"…So I listened to a podcast this morning and oh my god, mostly, I'm just here to tell you to go listen to that other podcast. That other podcast is called Man Enough, which is not a podcast I necessarily would have picked up for myself. Although I like the premise. The interview was with ALOK Vaid-Menon, who is an Indian-American activist, speaker, and poet, who is nonbinary, and does a lot of pu...

"It doesn't matter why someone doesn't have housing, what matters is that they need housing." Healthcare outcomes are tied to housing. So shouldn't we include adequate, autonomous housing as a way to improve the overall health of our communities, and reduce the burden on strained health care resources? How can we, as business leaders and community members, achieve this goal and similar ones? Mina...

So often we know what we need to do… but how do we do it? How do we remove barriers and make it easy for ourselves to do the things we know we need to do- to use the tools that we already have? Transcript and notes: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/making-it-easy-to-use-your-tools Recorded 16 January 2023.

"When you know what you need, you can ask for it, or you can work toward it, or you can invite it...." Well, that seems simple enough, right? But how do we actually know what it is that we need? Is it a flash of insight, an appetite, a color, a feeling? A collection of words? What is it that awakens you in yourself, and tells you what you need, or what you want, to continue to become... you? Trans...

"It's about overestimating the need. And under estimating the capacity." Knowing our capacity, making realistic guesses about how hard things are going to be- even the things that "shouldn't" be hard- it's the work of a lifetime. But we can have exacting standards for ourselves and still learn to leave space and grace for our own frailties and failures. Transcript and notes: https://powerpivot2.ca...

Join Leela Sinha for a walk through the woods and a meditation on knowing, and hurting, and scrubbing away the aches and scars that live inside us. Full transcript and notes: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/heres-what-i-know recorded 11 October 2022

On rediscovering, and creating, active communities: places that people miss. transcript and notes: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/a-place-that-people-miss

The exact right pen. The exact right paper. The exact right app. The exact right tools for the job. Are they a necessity? Not always. Can we get the job done with a scratchy pencil and a cheap napkin? If we need to. But does it nourish us to have to have the tools the we visualize when we are imagining how to accomplish our goals? Absolutely. Notes and full transcript: https://powerpivot2.captivat...

It's 2023 and... we're not making resolutions. We are making connections: with our breath, with the sky, with each other, with the earth. And we are seeing that this time may be the time when our perceptions are sharpest, and when our patience is thinnest for things that we shouldn't have been patient with in the first place. Links: Marilyn Allysum, founder and Director of Tilopa Tai Chi Qigong Ce...

Stubbornness is a gift and a survival tool. But there are other ways to be smart and good in the world. And one of our gifts as intensives is knowing or intuiting how to respond to what is happening in the world right now : So how do we let go of stubbornness when the stubbornness is for its own sake? Notes and transcript at: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/how-stubborn-are-you Recorded 2...

"You are not a disappointment. You are a joy, you are a gift. You are all kinds of unknowable possibility." Sophia Lyon Fahs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Lyon_Fahs Notes and transcript: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/magic-we-are-part-of-everything Recorded 24 December 2022.

"How can you lead if you don't know that everything around you is a miracle?" Considering the magical essence of things, that language is too small for. The squirrels at the windowsill. Grass on the hand. And how we, as people, are part of the earth, of everything. And if everything is medicine, are we not, also, medicine? notes and transcript: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/magic-we-are...

How do we ask for help when we are too overwhelmed to ask for help? Packing for a move makes a great case study, and can remind us that there are times when we must trust someone's judgment that is not our own. And with that trust, friends, comes the beginning of community. Notes and transcript: https://powerpivot2.captivate.fm/episode/how-do-you-get-help