Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

What happens when you no longer want the dream you worked for (capitalism anyone, lol)? When the worked-so-hard-for-thing stops singing back? And can we make the trade for something riskier and more honest—prioritizing resonance over metrics and presence over pace? In this ep, we dare to embrace changes not as failures, but as craft, maturity, and a detangling (rebellion as practice!) from our cul...

What if we’re all just empathy dehydrated (an over-culture design!)—and the rehydration begins in our nervous systems and our emotional bodies. In this episode, we travel through a wild field of brain 🧠 neurons 💥 to connect with author, neuroscience educator, and my teacher @sarahpeytonauthor to explore accompaniment, the practice of bringing your full self into relationship and being willing to...

What happens when we swap our desperate (conditioned) grasping for certainty for a curious(ly awkward) embrace of confusion?  This episode invites you into a radical reframing of confusion—not as weakness or failure, but as an appropriate, even necessary response to our rapidly changing world. Cultural messaging tells us confusion should be avoided, fixed, overcome. That if we’re confused, somehow...

Death anxiety lurks beneath virtually everything we do. Our capitalistic drive for endless growth, our political polarization, even our addictions to consumption – all stem from our desperate attempts to buffer ourselves against the terror of our finite existence! Dr. Sheldon Solomon, pioneering psychologist behind Terror Management Theory, explains how when death is on our minds (ie, during pande...

What if breaking the rules isn't just about random acts of rebellion, but a sacred, messy practice essential for personal and collective liberation? Let’s explore the nuances of disobedience, how it (and obedience) lives in our bodies, and plunge into why we must regularly practice breaking smaller rules to prepare ourselves for breaking bigger rules when it truly matters–AKA right friggin’ n...

What if we approach dating (and LIFE!) with genuine curiosity rather than the calculated performance and feigned ambivalence? With a commitment to compassionate relating rather than just detached, dehumanizing game-playing?  Join Dana and her dear friend Leah Garza—Akashic Records practitioner/teacher, decolonial scholar, and tender menace in the dating world—to unpack how to practice (naive) rebe...

In this *spell* of an episode, magic, penetration, entanglement, and love emerge as steps toward understanding and willingness to be changed by others (sometimes oh-so awkwardly). We enter with the Buddhist concept of PENETRATION (via some bibliomancy!)—not just observing from a distance, but entering deeply into experiences and relationships to truly understand them—where Dana shares a recent evo...

There's room for personal growth in collective liberation—in fact, it's a critical component! Join Dana and her long-time teacher of nearly 13 years, Julia Frodahl, as they lean in and explore where our inner rebels come from, how we can show up for the consciousness revolution, the role of inner work as part of the Great Turning, self-compassion as a practice not a destination, cultivat...

Our attention is constantly being hijacked by systems training us to see ourselves as problems needing to be fixed. Let’s play with the phenomena of ‘perception drift’ (when you can’t see changes in/on you— grace à Courtney Cox) and ‘change blindness’ (when you can no longer see change around you) to explore how we’re perpetuating coloniality rather than tending to collective issues + why reclaimi...

What sparks of guidance illuminate your path through uncertain times? When chaos swirls around us, where do we turn for direction? This episode takes us on a magical journey down a wishing well (!!) to meet artist and oracle Mary Evans (Spirit Speak), who offers a revelatory tarot reading addressing three vital questions:  How can we use our creativity to support ourselves and the collective? What...

Crybabies, welcome back to the jacuzzi-verse! In episode 2, let's explore the boundaries between security and insecurity, safety and unsafety. You're invited to embrace security as an illusion—a product sold to us, someone else's imagination of a limited version of ourselves, a way to keep us obedient and clinging to comfort—because then we can start to create our own definitions. L...

Welcome back, crybabies! Season 3 is here and we're kicking it off with the brilliant relational astrologer, tarot reader, writer, and educator, Diana Rose (currently residing and thriving on the planet Venus).  In episode 1, we explore rebellion as an act of maturing aka radical adulting aka self-trusting in an era of systemic oppression, rising fascism, and huge planetary shifts. Just a few...

This is a special solstice, holiday slowdown medicine, between-season, late-stage-capitalism-sucking-your-life-juice-dry, you-might-need-support episode full of practical guidance and self-warmth tips!  Baba Ram Dass said, “If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family.” Whatever you may or may not be celebrating, this episode explores the importance of acceptance, a few q...

Falling apart is hard work, crybabies. But you know what's even harder? NOT falling apart and using all of your precious energy and attention to hold your sh*t together in some configuration based on someone else's polycrisis-inducing imagination for your life! In the LAST EPISODE OF SEASON 2, we'll be looking at why falling apart is a useful technology for these times, how to recog...

in this penultimate episode of season 2, we explore the essential role of DISRUPTION as a catalyst for inner & outer transformation. from protest movements to your own deepest inner work, let’s open up to disruption as responsibility, as intervention, and as disorientation from cultural conditioning toward a new personal and collective alignment. ~show notes~ uncommitted movement (@uncommitted...

it's ADVICE DOM time, crybabies. to the dungeon we go! this listener's SUBMISSION is a juicy one because it's about a reoccurring theme in season 2 + a reoccurring theme in HUMANING and just being alive on the planet right now in our "apocalypse era"— how do we live with all the anger!? how do we understand and tend to what's beneath it? is there a way to be with it a...

broadcasting straight from the heart of the jacuzzi-verse (in a quantum overlap with the heart of the western imperialist, death-cult empire!), let's talk about death, baby. but death and uncertainty as secret core drivers of our lives via the unconscious decisions we make, the people we gravitate towards, and the ways we feel about ourselves. so, let's take a cosmically unhinged journey...

it’s another trip to the magical library for some BIBLIOMANCY divination! let’s  explore the transformative power of rage, drawing connections between our big (sometimes scary) feelings and the boundless potential they hold when tended to with curiosity and compassion. as per always, you’re invited to take any divine messages received or needs met and carry them back into your daily lives. ~show n...

holy jacuzzi, crybabies! what if the criticisms we experience and feel (in our relationships with others, the world, and with ourselves) is actually our deepest longings & needs trying to be known? in this jacuzzi-verse layer, we tend to our inner critics with curiosity and compassion—unlocking a potential for more profound inner-allyship & understanding. we also untangle some tired-ass st...

welcome back, ever-evolving souls—it's ADVICE DOM time. to the dungeon we go! today's listener SUBMISSION is a two-fer. TWO Qs, ONE CUP full of As.  one question about what to do when you’re trying and not getting what you want + another about what to do when you’re getting everything.believe it or not, there’s a common answer to both. ADVICE DOM's got questions and answers! c'...

who really belongs in your support system? maybe not everyone who's there right now!! in this episode, we'll peel back layers and layers of your relationship to your relationships, explore what might be holding you in old patterns and feeeeel into support in our own miraculous bodies with some gentle somatic resonance practices! big work, tenderly.  we get bewildered, dance with the nece...

It's time for season 2's first field trip to the magical library, where we engage in the ancient wisdom of bibliomancy—using texts as tools for divination. Join dana, CONNIE the quantum (book) worm, and THE LIBRARIAN as the library serves up another oracular text so we can explore our relationship to cycles of life and death, beauty and tragedy, heartbreak and hope, grief and existence a...

what if brokenheartedness wasn’t something to get through, but an honored & trusted guide toward interconnectedness, courage, and grief as catalyst for heartfelt action?  in this episode we explore the wild paradox of love and sorrow, and the transformative power of embracing both…love in the time of broken hearts. dana shares her own personal heartbreak stories—including her biggest—plus, som...

to the dungeon we go! today's listener SUBMISSION is all about navigating honesty, transparency, and intimacy when running an online presence & business. we explore oversharing and vulnerability, authenticity and digital intimacy, and entertaining the possibility that saying the damn thing could get you more of what you want, not less. ADVICE DOM's got questions and answers! c'm...

wonder & awe, the keys to belonging and connection! or at least that's how we see it here at crybaby HQ in the bubbling cauldron center of the jacuzzi-verse!  yes, being human is complex. so much so, that we can forget we have agency—even under violence & oppressive systems—to choose how we show up. so let's swan dive into the wondrous nature of existence by opening ourselves to...