Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

What happens when we meet the parts of ourselves we've kept out of view, and let them dance with the parts that we're more comfortable showing other people? What happens when we're willing to welcome the parts in others we usually try to push away? And what creativity and possibility open when we give up trying to control one another so that instead we can meet one another fully? A conversation ab...

When we're in the midst of giant changes - the birth of a new child, the death of someone we love, or any other changes that life brings us - it's tempting to try and get life back to 'the way it has been'. Indeed, we often actively encourage the people around us to do exactly that. 'You'll soon be back to your old self', we say. But what if we could see that life's changes will change us however...

It may be hard to see, but how we listen greatly shapes what it is possible for other people to say to us. Can we catch on to all the ways we’re trying to control what we experience as we listen, and as we do so drop our need to control so that we can be a profound welcome to others? A conversation about the ways in which we share ourselves with one another, and about how we can receive with openn...

What if we could learn to behold one another's wholeness, rather than focussing so narrowly on the aspects of others that we fear or desire? To trust in one another's vastness and depth instead of relating to one another from defensiveness or a desire to control? It would, for sure, give us a way to know one another with a greater kindness and a greater truthfulness than we do now. Can you imagine...

What if we knew ourselves as made up of many parts, as opposed to being a single ‘I’? Could we find a new way to relate to the parts that are afraid, hurt, resentful or ashamed? A way that at once treated them with great respect while remembering that there are always other parts which might yet have a voice?. A conversation about the ways we exile aspects of ourselves, and the possibility of taki...

What does it take to really understand one another, especially when what separates us can seem so great? What if it takes a bold act of unselfishness - setting aside our ordinary, rigid ways of listening and being prepared to encounter the unknown while simultaneously doing all we can to make it safe for the person speaking to speak? A conversation about a wild, courageous way to listen to friends...

When we learn to relax our defensiveness, when we become less anxious to protect our borders – when we find ourselves surrendering to life – we become more loving, we regain our integrity and our dignity, and we have a much better chance of both receiving our lives and contributing to them. A conversation about the ways we separate ourselves from life and how we might return, with Lizzie Winn and...

Receiving our lives – actually allowing ourselves to inhabit, touch and be affected by the one life we’re in the middle of living – can be difficult for many of us. We have so many ways of spinning off into fear, or numbness, or distraction. But there are ways we can bring ourselves back into the fierce loving presence of life. A conversation about opening to what’s here, allowing ourselves to be...

When life is dark or frightening, or when we feel stretched beyond our ordinary abilities, it's often our willingness to learn from others that can restore our capacity to respond. Other people, if we'll let them, can often give us the gift of another way of coming at life and, in particular, the gift of practices that can invite in us an entirely new orientation to the circumstances we find ourse...

'Light' and 'Dark' are both names, ways in which we can observe and respond to what's happening within us and around us. Our refusal to name can feel protective but in the end it isolates ourselves from one another and from life. Learning to name well can be a living bridge between us - a way of entering into conversations, understanding and action that would be unavailable to us if we turned away...

Nachman of Bratslav, the precariousness of all of our lives, and the possibility that we might learn to give up amplifying our fear - indeed that we might find a way to walk through an inevitably risky life with joy. A conversation about faithfulness to our lives, practice, why joy isn't the same as happiness, and what becomes possible when we live as if we're all in this together, with Lizzie Win...

The culture we live in encourages us to live at a distance from ourselves. Many of us consequently live a life of frantic doing, as if the next project or achievement will be what saves us. Our living far from ourselves is often fuelled by intense self-criticism. But it's never too late to find out that underneath all our activity, life itself is always waiting to welcome us and that, in allowing...

Our lives can easily become an anxiety-fuelled rush of activity. But when we live this way - even when our packing every moment seems filled with excitement and promise - we easily smother our own creativity, learning, and the chance to be in meaningful contact with others. So how can we learn to live our lives in a way that gives more space for life itself to come through? A conversation about fe...

How might we approach life's inevitable interruptions and openings - the often unexpected events that change things, perhaps without our say-so? Can we find a way that opens us and changes us, rather than coming at life's inevitability with fear and resentment? A conversation about finding a way to keep faith with our changing lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning...

How might we learn to relax our annoyance, to treat what irritates us as if it were the weather rather than something personal, and in so doing take our defensive reactivity down a step? A conversation about blame, kindness, and finding a way to be contactful with our experience, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. So much of our annoyance and irritation comes from our certainty that w...

We need to draw the people we love nearer, smell their hair, enjoy them, drink them in. We need to let our hearts burst open with all the love. And experience the simplicity and sacredness of things. Even if we can only do it for one moment a day. It's the hard way but it's the only way. A conversation about vulnerability, and how love, fear and grief are inevitable partners, with Lizzie Winn and...

Sometimes we try to be too big, imagining we should have super-human powers of control over the inevitable difficulties that face us. Other times we make ourselves too small, as if we have no choice at all. How might we turn back towards our lives by right-sizing ourselves? A conversation about breath, feeling life course through us, and facing the world with grace, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wis...

What would it take for us to allow ourselves the freedom to move in new ways, speak in new ways, love in new ways? And can we spot the subtle and not-so-subtle ways we and others are engaged in keeping one another moving along narrow grooves founded on the expectations that come with having a particular kind of body, a particular kind of history, and a particular kind of cultural background? A con...

We human beings change all the time - it's inevitable. But somehow we've got into demanding that our friends, family and partners are fixed - that they 'complete us'. What would happen if we started to live with the truth of our ever-changing natures? At the start of the 3rd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about walking a path together and being in nourishing relationship, with Lizzie...

The more we try to control, the less we can receive from life. But there is a path by which we might, gradually, remember ourselves more fully and find ourselves reached by life, with all its gifts and all its challenges. At the end of the 2nd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about being porous to life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 104 of Turning Towar...

Can we catch on to the ways we contract from life so as not to feel its consequences? And can we learn to open, instead, so that the possibilities of our loving – other people, a calling, life itself – can come through, with all their pain and all their joy? A conversation about the radical opening that love can be, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 103 of Turning Towa...

What's beyond our endless efforting, striving and comparing, and the often-merciless inner voice that keeps all of that going? And what might happen if we begin to relax our certainty that it's the way we have to be? A conversation about opening to our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 102 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by T...

What happens when we slow down enough to make contact with the wisdom, care and depth that arises from the silent background of our lives? And how do we stop running from life so that we can do this? A conversation about patience, creativity, and the gifts of relationship, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 101 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversati...

When anger is used as a way to be right, to exert power over others, or as violence, it can be an enormously destructive force. But how might we find the gifts of wisdom in anger, and its extraordinary capacity to change things for the better? A conversation about contactfulness, care, emotional vulnerability and learning to be true with one another, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace....

Our capacity to say a real, genuine, heartfelt ‘yes’ depends upon our ability to also say ‘no’ when it’s called for. But so often we act out of integrity with ourselves to try to save ourselves from feeling the guilt that so often comes with ‘no’. But what if we saw guilt as something to welcome rather than avoid? A conversation about finding a way to be true in our relationships with others, with...