Living Love

Episode 31  - The ProAction Cafe is a group conversation approach where people can offer peer support for each other's ideas, projects, and challenges. In this episode, I interview Ria Baeck, to learn the origin story of this method that she co-created with Rainer von Leoprechting. She shares how the rounds of conversations work and we explore how this conversation approach allows you to tap...

Episode 30: In times of fear and uncertainty, we need spaces where people can connect and offer peer support. In this episode, Beth Tener talks with Andrea Martin, also a facilitator, about an in-person space they’re creating called the Peer Power Hour , that allows people to help each other with our ideas, projects, and challenges. Andrea also shares about an initiative she started called Give an...

How can you create experiences of belonging and collective vitality, that support people’s creativity and thriving? Join Beth with her guest Bruce Nayowith as explore stories of how people have created environments of belonging in different contexts, as featured in podcast episodes 6-8 of Season 3. We explore how Minneapolis creatively engaged a diverse range of citizens to transform policies rela...

How can we restore a sense of feeling at home with nature? In this podcast, we explore the sense of disconnection between humans and nature in modern Western cultures and contrast that to indigenous worldview that values interconnectedness. Four Arrows, a.k.a, Donald Trent Jacobs, shares stories from indigenous cultures, and his new book "Restoring the Kinship Worldview" which offers 28...

This conversation explores how we can create spaces where artists of all kinds can foster a sense of belonging and creative exploration. With Diannely Antigua, a poet and educator, and Najee Brown, a playwright, photographer, and arts producer, we share the story of the SeaCHANGE Conference, a conference like no other. We gather creators of different identities, races, and ages and explore how the...

In many communities, we are in a crisis where many people cannot access affordable stable housing. Andrea Pickett shares her experience as a housing advocate who is also navigating the housing crisis herself. She's passionate about giving those with lived experience a voice on these issues. Janne Flisrand shares how the City of Minneapolis, with broad citizen engagement, created a systemic sc...

Join Beth with her guests Nancy Gabriel and Bruce Nayowith as they reflect on highlights and learning from episodes 1-4 in Season 3. We explore how to create intentional “pockets” where people try different ways of working together. The positive examples and inspiration from these experiences can spread. This episode offers facilitators, teachers, and coaches ideas on how to create positive enviro...

Conflict is a part of life. Instead of avoiding conflict or allowing it to split communities into polarized sides, how can we transform tension and conflict into creative responses and unity? My guest, Rosa Zubizarreta, author of From Conflict to Creative Collaboration , shares examples of innovative citizen engagement processes that allow people to feel a sense of psychological safety in speaking...

Episode 3: Season 3: As we gain a fuller understanding of what stress and overwhelm do to people, it has enormous relevance for classrooms. In this episode, Emily Daniels of The Regulated Classroom shares how she helps teachers create classroom environments where everyone feels a sense of felt safety. Emily has trained thousands of teachers and administrators in this framework, translating scienti...

If you’re hungry to find ways that groups can adapt to change in fluid, collaborative ways, this podcast conversation with Ria Baeck provides the nourishment of inspiration. She’s a facilitator and author of Collective Presencing, a book and web site exploring how groups can co-create. We explore specific ways that enable people to feel safe to speak and to be themselves in a group. Drawing on lea...

How do we create group experiences where people feel at home? How can we come out of separation back into healthy groups so we can co-create and learn together? In conversation with Bruce Nayowith, we explore the contexts that bring out the best in people. We weave insights from trauma-informed research and practice, neuroscience, and many sources, including Thomas Hubl, The Pocket Project, The Ar...

Welcome back to Season 3 of the Living Love podcast! One of our listeners said “This podcast reminds me that human relationships are the core of social change.” Sadly, in too many workplaces, classrooms and communities, we have people feeling isolated, unsafe, or not welcome. When people lack this warm connection with others, they can enter a state called “alarmed aloneness.” Whereas when people a...

Episode 10: Season 2 -  Join Beth and Nancy Gabriel as they reflect on highlights and learning from episodes 6 to 9 in Season 2. We explore how having the support of a group can help us in times of big decisions and in the hardest times of loss. These are stories of what belonging and healing can look like - the opposite of loneliness. When we accompany each other and acknowledge grief and fear, i...

Episode 9: Season 2 - Community and friendship can provide the support and comfort to cope with the death of a loved one. In this podcast episode, Beth shares personal stories of how her community created meaningful rituals to honor her husband after he died of cancer. She is joined by her friend, Adam, who brings insights from his training in hospice and Buddhist practices relating to dying and g...

Episode 8: Season 2 - In these times of great transition and change, we will encounter the experience of a crucible, where we have to face loss, letting go, and dying. How can we support each other through these most difficult times? In this episode, Beth shares her personal story of accompanying her partner going through cancer. She is joined by Greta Bro and they explore “the dark night of the s...

Episode 7: Season 2. How can kinship and community support us in the most challenging times, such as when we suddenly face the cancer journey? Beth shares the story of how she and her community supported her fiance, Rick, as he went through cancer. Her guest is Margie Zohn, a leadership coach, who was a close friend in those times. They share stories of how Rick brought humor and humanity into eve...

How do you decide when you reach a threshold or crossroads? In this episode, Beth talks with Tenneson Woolf, a facilitator, coach, and poet, about how we make big decisions, careful not to let fear be in the lead. We explore how we can slow down as we make decisions, on a personal level or with groups, and use listening and other methods to help with discerning. These two facilitators share a rang...

Join Beth and Nancy Gabriel as they reflect on highlights and learning from episodes 1 to 4 in Season 2. The fast pace of our lives gives us little time to slow down and feel. Yet, part of why we move so fast is we don’t want to feel. In our conversation, we discuss how the way out of this dilemma is to have kinship and support, to be with people who create space for us to be ourselves and discern...

This episode starts with a love story. You’ll hear about a relationship that had profound “growth-promoting” qualities for each of us. My guests, Simon d’Orsogna of Mind Beyond and Bruce Nayowith, reflect on the story with me. We discuss how we can find safety in human connection and we explore how listening allows people to feel held, seen, and understand themselves better. Plus, there are practi...

When the world around us is on overdrive and we are working to make positive change, we can end up in overdrive - and overwhelm. This episode explores how we can find strength and balance through connection with healers, meditation, and the spiritual path. My guest is Greta Bro, a psycho-spiritual guide who I worked with; she coached me to mimic nature’s cycles with times of action and growth and...

One way to see burnout is that “something is wrong with me” but in this podcast, we look at the deeper sources in the cultural norms that make it hard to say no and toxic workplace cultures. Jennice Chewlin of The Chewlin Group and Lori Hanau of Global Round Table Leadership talk with Beth Tener about turning to kinship and community in times of burnout. Listen and get inspired about how we can sh...

This first episode of Season 2 explores how we navigate the change when we are called to leave the status quo. Sometimes the need to change arises from exhaustion or heartache, other times it’s your choice. Katherine Golub of the Center for Callings and Courage and Nancy Gabriel talk with Beth Tener about the tensions of making the decision to make a big change, the big callings and the little gat...

Welcome back to Season 2 of the Living Love Podcast!  In Season 1, we talked about the spaces where we come together. In Season 2, we'll be exploring kinship through life transitions. I wrote a memoir, and this season, we'll be tracking the arc of those stories in conversations.  I look forward to exploring how we navigate life with the support of friends and community. See you later in...

Join Beth and Nancy Gabriel as they reflect on highlights and learning from the podcast episodes 6 through 9. They explore themes of how to create conferences which create transformational moments, the power of intergenerational collaboration, generosity, and how we can weave the arts into how we gather and work together. In this final episode for Season 1 on The Spaces Where We Come Together , th...

Spirit Matters were a series of gatherings, held in Toronto, that created circles where Indigenous wisdom keepers from many places connected with social justice leaders, students, artists, and healers. In this episode, I talk with Eimear O’Neill about how she and her late husband Ed O’Sullivan convened these gatherings, working in partnership with indigenous peoples to restore connections with lan...