The Gathering Room Podcast

We're not trained to think of a spiritually led life as being hilarious or silly or goofy. But as Martha reminds us, laughter is the beginning of prayer. In this episode of The Gathering Pod: Letting the Force Steer Your Life, she talks about the difference between spiritual faith and religious faith, and how to connect with and trust spiritual energy (aka the Force) to guide you. When you do, you...

Some people have a bullseye picture of their purpose in life and are headed straight toward it. However, this is extremely rare. Why? Martha says it’s because we live in a culture dominated by left-hemisphere thinking, which pulls us toward anxiety and socializes us to do as we’re told and acquire material wealth. In this episode of The Gathering Room podcast, Martha talks about following your cur...

In this episode of The Gathering Room, you’ll learn how little you really have to do. If you think that sounds too easy, change what you think, not what you do. Come see how! (Originally aired: January 8, 2023)   CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Facebook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...

Is there something you’re trying to get done? Something you really, really want, but you're struggling? While our culture teaches us to “never give up the struggle,” in this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha is talking about how taking breaks and allowing for rest can lead to unexpected improvements and breakthroughs. As many Gatherers know, Martha’s been working on watercolor painting for mon...

Have you been struggling to climb pyramids of power, education, wealth, or anything else our culture teaches us to value? Are you ready to find (or return to) your true nature instead? In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha is talking about the importance of “be-wilder-ing” ourselves and the transformative power of making authentic connections. She says that if we can get far enough from so...

There are times when really important things are happening, and we really care about the results. At such times, it’s hard not to get stuck in that awful place between hope and fear. In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha is talking about how hope and fear are on the same continuum. The moment you get attached to a hope, you’re also afraid it won't happen. And the moment you’re afraid of so...

Can you remember times when you’ve experienced pure joy? Martha recalls some key moments that led her to make joy her strategy for living, and she’s talking about it in this episode of The Gathering Room. The dictionary defines a strategy as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim." We all want to experience joy, and yet we have a society that tells us joy is not a s...

There’s a saying Martha likes that goes, “A hundred years before you were born, God drew a circle around the place you're standing now."  In other words, you are here because you are meant to be here—but  from this place, you can literally go in any direction!  So what is the best next step for you to take? That’s what Martha is talking about on this episode of The Gathering Room podcast.  She sha...

Did you know that joy is your birthright as a human? Finding joy is one of Martha’s favorite topics, and that’s what she’s talking about on this episode of The Gathering Room! Martha says that joy, like beauty, is its own excuse for being, and she shares ways we can look for and experience joy, even in the midst of difficulty. She quotes a Jack Gilbert poem that says, "We must have the stubbornnes...

Do you ever try to make forward-thinking plans, but then you get hit with surprises you never saw coming? Martha says it seems to happen to her about once every six months… For example, because of a recent trip to Costa Rica, where she happened to befriend the incredible women of Sleep-Works, she’s now a sound sleeper (and a morning person!) after a lifetime of insomnia. Trying to make plans in a...

Are you someone who likes making vision boards?  They’re a fun way to direct your attention—and because whatever we put our attention on tends to show up in our consciousness and in our lives, vision boards can be powerful tools for healing and for helping you manifest your desires. In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha shares how to create a vision board, starting with digging deep into y...

Did you know that we’re energetically connected? We all have the ability to feel each other’s energy: if someone is happy and calm, we can feel it, and when someone is angry or dangerous, we can feel that as well. What’s more, we’re each projecting our own energy all the time. However, when you’re not aware of the energy you’re giving off, you inadvertently create what Martha calls “energetic dark...

Waves of shame. They're icky, they're toxic, and they're not easy to escape. In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha is talking about how we can move past this particularly intense form of anxiety and swim on to better horizons. Shame attacks us at the level of basic self-identity and makes us believe that our vulnerabilities are permanent, personal, and pervasive. It also wants us to keep s...

Many of us have heard about the mind-body connection, but have you ever tried sense-memory therapy? Martha recently lost her sense of smell to a sinus infection, and instead of worrying that she'll never get it back, she's trying sense-memory therapy—she holds her favorite pine-scented candle close to her nose while relishing the memory of smelling that candle. Recalling positive sense memories cr...

Did you know you were born a creative genius? All of us are, Martha says, but we are socialized out of our genius by the structures of culture. Why? Because the culture wants everyone the same, but genius doesn’t homogenize well. However, your genius is still calling to you, and in this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha shares how you can recognize—and follow—its call. She says your genius wil...

The world can be a hard, inhospitable, downright hostile place, and people can quite often be less than kind. Yet Martha says that by practicing what she calls “kindness in motion,” we can start to change the whole complexion of the world.  Martha defines kindness in motion as “kindness while doing things” and she’s sharing how to do it in this episode of The Gathering Room. As Martha describes it...

How do you respond when you’re in a painful situation and there’s no way out? The answer is paradoxical. Come learn how to do it with this week’s Gathering Room! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Facebook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’ve heard of the fight and flight reflexes, but what about flop and fake? Flop and fake (also known as fawn) are two of the other responses in the polyvagal system, a theory about how our nervous systems adapt to stress and the environment. Fake/fawn is a people-pleasing response, and flop means you just lie there unable to drum up motivation.  In this special “Listen Again” episode of The Gath...

For this special “Listen Again” episode of The Gathering Room, Martha is sharing her conversation with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the brilliant creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a wonderful therapeutic model that Martha loves using! IFS provides an optimistic, empowering framework to help us focus on the different “parts” of our personalities so that we can shift into a state characterized by c...

Are you in the mood to make some magic?  Martha is! And in this special “Listen Again” episode of The Gathering Room, she’s sharing inspiration from Suzanne Eder’s book, What You Want Wants You , to help you reconnect with your true desires so you can follow the path to your soul’s fulfillment. While our culture teaches us to associate desire with selfishness and even depravity—a.k.a. “base desire...

Have you ever experienced synchronicity?  As Martha defines it in this episode of The Gathering Room, a synchronicity is any event or experience that seems to confirm or indicate that the universe is not random—that there's something making all this happen. Martha has been re-reading The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller, who writes about synchronicities and what she calls a “spiritual docking sta...

Has anxiety been keeping you from your life’s mission? In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha shares that the best way out of anxiety is not simply to calm yourself, but to get creative! When you take the creativity route, Martha tells us, you get so deep in the process of creating solutions to the problems that matter to you that it becomes literally impossible for your brain to be anxious...

Is there something you’re having trouble with that you’re trying to do perfectly? If so, you’re not alone… As Martha reminds us in this episode of The Gathering Room, we are all trained by the culture to strive for perfection and to look for it in others. However, you are not going to show up perfectly—because it’s impossible! If you show up not to be perfect but to connect, nobody will care that...

Pleasure is something that many of us may think of as an indulgence, but Martha says it’s actually the gateway to the things that really enrich our souls… And we access this pleasure by relaxing. 🍃 In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha shares an exercise you can do to drop into relaxation mode, and it doesn’t require a trip to the spa—you can do it anywhere! Using small, pleasant feelings...

Did you know that you have a superpower you might not know about? 🦸🏽‍♀🦸‍♂️ In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha talks about how to tap into the creative impulses at the center of your psyche—a superpower we all have but may not realize it! Remember the things you did when you were a child or a teenager for no other reason than the pure joy of it? Maybe you still do these things now, bu...