Soul + Practice: Raw Conversations & Real Practices with Kathy Escobar & Phyllis Mathis

It's always fun to play with Jamison Escobar, Kathy's son. This year he is now working as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordinator for the LA Lakers and so this episode is about learning, listening, considering the challenges DEI is facing in our country at the moment and what we can keep doing personally and organizationally to cultivate greater equity and health despite so much resistanc...

It's November 2023 and we're less than a year away from a big ugly election. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves but we also want to make sure we recognize what's ahead and what's at stake and what we're feeling and others are wrestling with, too. Really, it's just a raw conversation because that's what we do here.

Phyllis's book--The Subversive Soul: the gentle revolution everyone needs--is now available on her website for download and we're so grateful it's in the world. In this episode she shares more about it and some of the major moments. It's got so much goodness in it. Her website is phyllismathis.com if you want to download your free copy.

This episode is our real transition into the new season. Last week's conversation was so important to not wait on and so in this one we do what we normally do after a break--ramble about real life, what's alive for us, what we're learning, what we're practicing in this season as we regroup.

Content Warning: Gaza War through the lens of Palestinian refugees. It's been a while and a lot of horrifying things are happening in the world. We decided to skip over the intro episode and just start this new season off with what's heavy on so many souls right now--what's happening in Gaza and the reality of over 10,000 Palestinian civilians killed so far. This conversation with our longtime fri...

Wow, this is our 60th Episode of Soul + Practice and our Season 4 Wrap, where we look back at the last 5 months of conversations and reflect on all the goodness before a 3 month summer break. Thanks for listening!

What an incredible conversation we had with our friend Melvin Bray, author of the 12 Steps Truth and Transformation Model, and co-catalyzer of a group of black men walking through the steps together and healing from patriarchy in community. We could have talked all day but this episode is packed with so many gems of wisdom and deep challenges for all of us. More on Melvin's work at collabyrinthcon...

Years ago at an event centered on Toxic Masculinity at The Refuge, someone asked the speaker, Regan Byrd, a Denver-based organizational consultant and black community organizer, what work related to toxic masculinity looked like for females. Her response was we needed to untangle from "internalized misogyny." It runs deep and damages us all.

We loved this conversation with Rabbi Charna Rosenholtz, who facilitates trainings and workshops for The Right Use of Power Institute in addition to her extensive work as a teacher specializing in psycho-spiritual growth and applications of spiritual wisdom. All roads lead to power and we need to respect it, honor it, process it, engage with it together if we want to embody healthier power persona...

Yeah, we need more honest conversations about death. We've had a few since Soul Practice started and were honored to hang out with our friend Becky Davis with The Natural Funeral for a conversation about death planning and healthier ways to navigate something that's going to happen to all of us. More at thenaturalfuneral.com.

Our friend Lori Wilson embodies curiosity and questions that connect humans together in simple but profound ways! The art of presence and remaining in a posture of curiosity takes practice (and is really hard in this world that thrives on certainty, statements, and positions) and we loved learning from her in this episode. Learn more about her work and sign up to get awesome questions in your in-b...

In this episode we process the angst of narcissists and how they are bald-face liars and what that does to our soul and our society. It sucks!

Trigger Warning: gun violence and traumatic mental illness story | In this episode we feel so grateful for the courage of our friend Heather Kopp to share her real and extremely vulnerable story as a mom of a son struggling with mental illness that contributed to a tragic shooting of 3 random people and his death by the police. The names of the victims are Andrew Alan Myers, 42, Jennifer Vasquez,...

Instead of trying to earn, find, or claw our way into a seat at the tables created by oppressive systems, what if we just built our own f'ing table?

Toxic skills--things we *can* do that are not life giving and we really shouldn't be doing. This idea of considering toxic skills was originally shared by our friend Deborah Loyd at a Refuge workshop a chunk of years ago and comes up a lot in our soul practice work. In this episode we explore how easy it is to default to toxic skills (and how we're often praised for them) instead of doing the hard...

Living--not just surviving--this harsh world is no small thing and one of the most brave and beautiful things we can do is be open to joy in the midst of it. This conversation with our friend Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui, founder of A Life in Progress and a brave and beautiful community, is raw and real and exactly what Soul + Practice is all about. Joy is the most vulnerable emotion and oh, we are...

In this episode, we unpack some of our reflections after a Civil Rights Learning Trip and Community Pilgrimage to Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma Alabama with a group of 16 of us who are part of the 12 Steps for Anti-Racism group using Melvin Bray's 12 Steps Truth and Transformation Model centered on untangling from supremacist logic that's embedded in us, confronting the truth of our histories...

We had such a rich and soulful conversation with our friend Dr. Lisa Pettit on engaged Buddhism and how the teachings of Thich Nat Hanh in community can change us and the way we move together in the world. We wanted to keep talking for hours! More on Compassionate Dharma Cloud Monastery in Morrison at cdcmonastery.org.

Oh, the patriarchy. We could do entire seasons on it but for today, we're just happy to get to hang out with our amazing friend Kay Neuhausel, a therapist and kindred. The patriarchy doesn't just affect women; it messes with all of us and the long, slow work of healing start with honest conversations and creating a space where we can name some of the things that look invisible to many but affect e...

In today's episode we dive into a conversation with Tim H, co-author of "Adult Children of Manifest Destiny: A 12 Step Program for People Recovering from Settler Colonialism" with Alietta R. Untangling from our history and how it's impacted us and our culture is slow and long healing work meant to do together. You can learn more about their work and order the ACMD workbook at acmdonline.com

We need more conversations about the realities of neurodiversity in relationship! We learned so much in an amazing conversation with our friend, Lisa Baba, who is the Director of Community Relations at the Temple Grandin School in Boulder. We could have talked for hours but this is a great start and hope that everyone who listens gets a little something that they needed.

After 3 extra weird years, could we have a little hope for 2023? As we start Season 4 and a new year, we're trying to be realistic and also more "clear" and "uncluttered." How are you feeling about this new year?

Fall 2022 was our Season 3 and we covered a lot of ground from the British monarchy to processing through the 4 Gateways as a pathway to greater health, guns and God, long COVID, story-telling, making it through the holidays, and election angst. Human-ing in this weird world is not the easiest thing and we hope Soul + Practice somehow helps. We'll be back in 2023!

Oh the holidays stir up so much trouble for so many of us in different ways. When Christmas is blue, what are some things that might help and how can we find our way through this season as best we can? All roads always lead to paradox.

We love playing with friends! Mark Yaconelli, storyteller, facilitator, and author of his newest book-Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us, joins us this week talking about the power of our simple and sacred stories. So much goodness packed into this episode and you can learn more about Mark's work at howstoriescansaveus.com.