Curious Hearts

Sometimes everyday mystics are immigration lawyers. That’s the story of today’s guest. When I first met Zia, she was working as a local immigration attorney for a non-profit. (It is not a great time to be an immigration attorney, if you hadn’t noticed.) You’d expect someone with a caseload in the hundreds, hearing some of the most gut-wrenching stories all day would be hardened and jaded. But not...

Welcome back, Curious Hearts. And welcome to the most misunderstood and transformative spiritual practices there is. I did not understand humility for a long time — and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think humility has been twisted and used as a way to force people into submission. For a lot of us, "be humble" was code for "shut up and do what you're told." So when I was asked to explore humil...

I’m not interested in spiritual practices to escape the world. I long for practices that allow us to move authentically and skillfully in the world. That’s the kind of work this week’s guest, Aycee Brown, teaches. Aycee Brown’s new book Embody Your Magic is thesis in three short words. How do be bring our mysical, magical selves into our bodies and into the world.(One of my joys in hosting this po...

Welcome Back, Curious Hearts. I recorded this episode a couple weeks before you’ll hear it, and in that time there’s been a pretty significant change in my life. The details of the change don’t matter. What does matter is that I need the lesson right now just as much as anyone. When we resist change, we suffer. When we try to cling to the way things were, or what we think is “supposed” to happen —...

Ep. 36: Tann Cordell-Schneier: The Breath is Everything. Tann and I had never talked explicitly about our spiritual lives, but I have known for a long time how much she listens to the world around her. She has been my primary bodyworker for many years, and her way of practicing is unlike almost any other I have know. Her ability to be still, to listen to the body, and to do less is nearly unparall...

I love thinking about meditation as “spiritual showers.”You don’t only shower once. Ideally, you shower every single day. Forever. You don’t shower well enough once that you suddenly are clean forever. That’s how meditation is. That’s how all of our spiritual practices are. The reality of this magical universe is that it is chaotic and unpredictable and random. Chaos births the dancing star, or wh...

Conversations with folks like Neel are the reason I started this podcast. I wanted to normalize spiritual life. It’s so much more common to hear people share deeply personal stories — we talk about finances and sex and taxes and death so much more than our grandparents. We were taught not to talk about politics or religion. We talk openly about our politics these days. But somehow, spiritual life...

One of the greatest gifts of my work is the people: they’re people doing extraordinary work who are committed to their own growth. Sierra is no different — but in additional to all of that, I feel eternally humbled that she trusts me. I officiated Sierra’s wedding at Congo Square in New Orleans. If you don’t know Congo Square, you should: it’s the birthplace of all American music. Enslaved African...

Welcome back, curious hearts! Thanks for your patience with me during my Mardi Gras hiatus. These are high holidays for me, and the energy of costume making and celebration really takes over. And then recovering and getting back to “normal life” is its own effort. I seriously considered recording a whole episode about making my costume — including how I choose the theme, what I learned while I was...

My aspiration in the interview episodes of Curious Hearts is to reflect the extraordinary diversity of human spiritual life. Our internal worlds are the closest understanding we have of the Divine: vast, extraordinary, and always inspiring. No wonder we’re so curious. The magic of this conversation with Sam Reynolds is that his personal spiritual journey is a microcosm of how much is available to...

In this episode, I reflect on the practice of self-study and why it matters so much in moments of cultural upheaval, confusion, and pain. When the world feels overwhelming, it is tempting to turn all our attention outward. But lasting change asks something deeper of us. It asks us to look inward with honesty, curiosity, and care. I explore self-study as a spiritual practice found across traditions...

In many ways, Seán is the reason Curious Hearts exists. He was my first yoga teacher, and he led my teacher training, and has been a mentor and now a friend for many years. His commitment to anti-dogmatic practice is imprinted on everything I do, and without that north star, I would not be doing what I do today. In this episode, Seán and I talk about singing a lot. Like, a lot. Kirtan — the tradit...

My concept of the Divine and my relationship with It has changed over the years. As I grow and change, how I understand this vast unknowable mystery also changes. This is one of many places where religion and spirituality diverge. In our current world, I am aware of how risky it is to say that we cannot know God. Our limited human brains cannot fully fathom the unlimited immensity of Divine Power....

I met Michelle Cassandra Johnson through her anti-racist work for yoga studios, and have had the privilege to work with her over the years as her work as evolved — including doing deep grief work, ancestral work, and watching as she has developed a deep spiritual relationship with her beehives. This conversation is gem, just like Michelle. We talk about the relationships built with our ancestors,...

This is a quick episode because there isn’t must to say: instead, it’s time to DO. If you’re at home, find a blank piece of paper and some colored pencils or crayons. Or open the cabinet and cook something without a recipe. Make up a new song. Write a poem. Your access to creating something is the connection to your inner spark of the divine. That magic is available to you anytime, anywhere. Just...

One of the gifts of my work is getting to connect with other deep thinkers and feelers about the nature of the divine. What is “god?” When that word gets stuck in my throat, why is it getting stuck? What is our calling as divine beings in these human vessels? What do we owe each other? I think Court and I visited a lot of these topics in the course of our conversation. I love that I was deep in Sw...

This episode marks six months of Curious Hearts. It’s become a welcome ritual for me, even in the months where it has felt harder to get my thoughts together. This episode is one that I tripped over a few times before I could get it recorded. To me, this principle is both essential and challenging. It is, perhaps, the first principle I’ve shared so far that might feel more challenging that comfort...

Paige and I met at a workshop, and we were instant kin. She has a kind of grounded magic to her, a realness, on top of decades of yoga practice. I had the privilege of sitting by her side weeks after her husband died, and talking about the complications of grief. We could talk about how all our old practices had lost their juice, and how grief stripped us of what we knew. In this episode, we talk...

This episode is an exploration of the spiritual powers of gratitude, and why it’s archetypal across so many traditions — as a strong suggestion if not a requirement. May your day be full of reminders to feel grateful for everything you might otherwise take for granted, and may your gratefulness reflect itself into how you view yourself and the world. If this posts resonates, I invite you to share...

This episode is full of full-belly laughs and deep conversations about spirit and just how hard it is to be in the world right now. I am honored to call Reverend jessica young chang a dear friend, and I am so excited to share this conversation with you. There’s nothing else to say about it besides — you need to listen to this. I think I will need to listen and re-listen to it many times in the com...

To get to my own spiritual path, I first had to clear away the overgrowth of my brain. I am a smart person, but I was also raised by parents who valued education. I am incredibly grateful for that, and I still find a tremendous joy in learning new things and wrestling with complicated concepts. But one of the side effects of my rigorous academic upbringing was my reliance on logic and rationality...

Matt Candler is one of my favorite kinds of people. He’s humble. He’s funny. And he’s not willing to change paths. One of the hardest things for each of us to learn in the course of our lives is the way we used to do things isn’t the best way anymore. We often wrestle with the guilt of our old misunderstandings, or we feel that “sunk cost fallacy” in all the time or energy we spent in something th...

It took me all week to record this episode. The form and the content of this work are often the same. I often find that I live out these episodes for a week at a time before I can sit down to record. Recording an episode about Courage required courage. In many ways, this episode is a distillation of why this project is so important to me, and why I needed to share Curious Hearts with you. I need t...

In May of 2022, I took a leap of faith and traveled across the country to the Northwest Astrology Conference. I’m grateful for so much of what I learned in that journey, but perhaps most grateful for meeting my new friend Bear Hickman. Bear is an esoteric healer, astrologer, and psychotherapist with her feet solidly on the ground yet her magic is in full view. There is no shortage of f-bombs in th...

St. Theresa of Avila calls it the “Interior Palace.” Rumi talks about the treasure buried underneath our own house. It’s a truth that we’ve been fighting for centuries: you can’t buy this. No one sell it to you, and there’s no easy fix. The treasure you’re seeking is inside. What you’re looking for is already here, and you already have everything you need to find it. That’s the good news, and the...