Learning Conversation

12 min Happy New Year.  Laugh along with us as we explore three 'mustabtory' life lessons for this year or any year. In this Resource pod, Maureen wants to introduce REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) by reading from a book.  No seriously.  And, Maureen tells Pierre:  this will be funny.  Pierre, ever the skeptic, is doubtful.  Re-listening: it IS FUNNY.  BTW: Pierre writing here, Maureen is...

5 min Pierre gives the word today.  It's:  resentment. What is resentment?  What makes resentment? Psychologically how does it develop?  Maureen elucidates.   Pierre chimes in, suggesting somewhere underneath resentment is narcissism and it might be intractable.  Maureen calls BS on Pierre.  Pierre thanks Maureen.  WAIT! WHAT? YUP!   Nobody's head explodes, nobody 'gets into it with the other pers...

10 min Maureen puts the word "empath" up for an "LP" Learning Practice. The word is discussed a bit.  What it means to be empathic. What labeling oneself or others with word does.   Very soon thereafter, Pierre drops into a self-disclosure vortex, which you can hear him try to escape multiple times.  Maureen plays gentle guide and a very interesting discussion emerges about difficulties experienci...

12 min Maureen and Pierre dive into Stoicism.   Sam Harris's meditation app "Waking Up" has a section on the stoic path.  It's a series of mini-pods, about 8-15 minutes long that take you down the path of this philosophy with a view towards a better life. Maureen picks up on that and introduces several resources from her studies of philosophy which are now overlapping modern interests in classical...

20 min.  Work:   I have to do this vs. I get to do this What is work?   How does work work?   Is it good? This podcast is about Dr. Phil?   Maureen likes Dr. Phil.   Pierre asks who's Dr. Phil? Join Maureen and Pierre for an amazing journey in conversation from Dr. Phil, to children living in bedrooms, to rocks becoming organisms.  No really, all in 20 minutes.  You'll be AMAZED! Maureen brings up...

5 min. Today's word is:  Kindness Learning Practice features a 3-minute conversation about a single word.  Unrehearsed, without forethought of the word to be discussed, we practice the art of Learning Conversation.   If you want to practice with us by supplying a word and joining us:   contact us through our websites. Landscapes for Learning YogaHEALS

25 min.   Maureen and Pierre both had a bad night and are cranky.   Well actually sad.   It involves dogs.  Both need a little stress relief. Segue to Andrew Huberman's podcast on meditation. What forms of meditation are there?   Are they different? What parts of the brain do they effect? How do they work? Can they help me?    Check out the link to Huberman and listen to a discussion on meditation...

11 min.  Small practices lead to BIG things! Maureen and Pierre start off with new words - preppy slang, millennial slang -  samezies, prezzies, rezzies.   Have you heard the word:   adorkable?   Yup:   adorable and dorky.  It's from the  millennial generation.  What generation are you from?   Pierre and Maureen break it down and reveal. Conversation wanders into Chinese cup gardens, meditation pr...

5 min.  Maureen and Pierre practice conversation discussing the word:   black.    Learning Practice features a 3-minute conversation about a single word.  Unrehearsed, without forethought of the word to be discussed, we practice the art of Learning Conversation.   If you want to practice with us by supplying a word and joining us:   contact us through our websites. Landscapes for Learning YogaHEAL...

5 min.   Maureen and Pierre discuss the nuanced word:  jaded. Learning Practice features a 3-minute conversation about a single word.  Unrehearsed, without forethought of the word to be discussed, we practice the art of Learning Conversation.   If you want to practice with us by supplying a word and joining us:   contact us through our websites. Landscapes for Learning YogaHEALS  

12 min.  Maureen and Pierre talk about talking.   Reflecting on prior podcasts, we're learning conversation (small "L" small "C"). Inevitably we judge ourselves.   The ummms, the likes, the spacer words and sounds.   We're working on that!   HA!   Learning Conversation. Another part of Maureen and Pierre's reflection centers on the unique nature of conversation, its meandering, its casualness, its...

5 min.     Maureen chooses the word "listen."  Listen.  How do we train our mind / body to pause in a physiological state of self-regulation opening ourselves to listen to another human being, genuinely taking in and considering what a person says?  Join us in listening.  Listen to a Learning Practice on the word "listen." Learning Practice features a 3-minute conversation about a single word.  Un...

25 min.  Pierre and Maureen reflect on Thanksgiving and gratitude,  how it changes a person's brain and perspective allowing life to be savored. Maureen comments on the positive feelings created when a person experiences gratitude from someone else for their actions.   This according to Andrew Huberman.   Pierre comments on his weekly gratitude practice led by Xerxes Whitney, during Tuesday evenin...

14 min.   Maureen reflects on Kathy Kain's book Nurturing Resilience.  Kathy Kain is a resource in learning about trauma and social interactions, which Maureen sees as important for helping clinicians, but not just clinicians - teachers, social workers, parents, people.   Understanding patterns of behavior rooted in trauma is enlightening.  Why can this person or that person not see their 'self-in...

5 min.  Let's talk about death, orgasms, and comedy, shall we? Maureen and Pierre discuss the word:  Altruism.  Learning Practice features a 3-minute conversation about a single word.  Unrehearsed, without forethought of the word to be discussed, we practice the art of Learning Conversation.   If you want to practice with us by supplying a word and joining us:   contact us through our websites. La...

5 min.  Let's talk about death, orgasms, and comedy, shall we? Maureen and Pierre discuss the word:  Be & Bee.  (No, not the cordial / liquor!) Learning Practice features a 3-minute conversation about a single word.  Unrehearsed, without forethought of the word to be discussed, we practice the art of Learning Conversation.   If you want to practice with us by supplying a word and joining us:   con...

40 min.   Fasten your seat belts, Maureen and Pierre discuss food.   What is love of food?   How does food become a connection between two people, within a family, and more broadly create social fabric outside the home?  How is culture manifested through food - shout out to Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist. What are people's relationships with food? Pierre's Italian / French family e...

30 min.  Maureen and Pierre discuss forgiveness.   Forgiveness begins with Shakespeare.   Well, that is overstated.   This podcast on forgiveness begins with Shakespeare.   Not Portia's speech from the Taming of the Shrew, where she says:   "the quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven." The podcast starts with Pierre randomly finding a book on Henry V on a pi...

12 min.   Maureen and Pierre bring forward Alan Watts as a classical mind body resource.  An icon of the 1960's, Alan Watts was an Episcopalian priest who is known for bringing Buddhism to the west.   The double entendre of the interview is:  Being in the Way.  So often we spend our time trying to be somebody - the athlete, the business success, the well-liked person.  Sometimes we forget to spend...

17 mins. Learning about simple and personal applied strategies for grounded living after having spent decades looking for answers in the self-help aisles of bookstores.   The quickest way to meditate is by focusing on one of the five senses.  By focusing on the sense of touch, we elevate the body's signals of feelings over the mind's processing, and we ground to the present moment.  When we are in...

6 min.  Maureen and Pierre unpack the word "unfairness" in this 3 minute drill that spills over at the end.  Snap:  Pierre gives the word and Maureen spins the table.  Wait. What?  You can do that?   So, Pierre gives the word and starts in talking.  Interesting conversation about "learning conversation" and how we understand words differently.  Both Maureen and Pierre view hypocrisy as a higher fo...

35 min. Sadhguru baffles Joe Rogan (and the rest of us) with the REAL definition of soil, yoga, and the limits of our intellect to know who we are. Yoga is everything.  What? Yoga is everything? Explain. Both Maureen and Pierre comment on Joe Rogan's curiosity and difficulty in wrapping his (Joe's) mind around Sadhguru's explanations on life.  Although promoting healthy soil for the earth as a lif...

10 min. Pierre and Maureen take on a BIG subject in 5 minutes.  Well, no, actually 10 minutes. Check it out. Pierre relates the best explanation he's ever heard of why good triumphs over evil.  Maureen and Pierre rid on good and evil in Learning Conversation - volleying concepts and thoughts back and forth is a way of learning and exploring.  In this episode:  Chögyam Trungpa Rimpoche, Pema Chodro...

11 min.  Maureen and Pierre riff on play.  Yeah, that thing we did as kids.  Now we're reading about it as 'exercises' for healing stress.  Maureen and Pierre reflect on their own lives where sports played a big role in counter-balancing the stresses of growing up - fairly normal stuff.  Fast forward to therapeutic modalities and play, bodily movement, repetitive and intentional activities are rec...

11 min.  Maureen and Pierre discuss Peter Levine's Healing Trauma resource for understanding trauma as somatic experience. A resource not only for the traumatized, but for all of us who may learn to spot symptoms of trauma in others and be more compassionate.  Maureen is actually reading this book and recording her voice so patients without resources will have access to Peter's wisdom.  Dr. Levine...