Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

Love, and grief, and defendedness, and the huge life-giving letting go (and welcome) that's required for us to love and be loved in return. Along the way we talk about doing the dishes, having grand plans, and the place in the middle that can hold them both. Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big que...

How can we respond to fear without being 'had' by it? A conversation about courage and the act of remembering ourselves, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week our conversation covers the unavoidability of fear, how contagious it is, and the choices we must each make about whether to be uncritically 'had' by it, or whether to reach past it to bring forward other qualities that c...

The possibility of happiness - living with our wonderful, messy humanity. A conversation about acceptance, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week we talk about how the suffering that comes from comparison (with others, with imagined future selves), and we examine together ways in which it might be possible to live with an alternative orientation of acceptance of our wonderful, m...

This week: how vulnerable and lost we human beings can feel, and how our attempts to distract ourselves from this and to appear 'ok' only tend to make things worse for us and those around us. We consider the life-giving possibilities of sharing our fears and confusions with others, what it is to trust that we're always part of something way bigger than ourselves, and the freedom that comes from kn...

Standing up, speaking out, and putting ourselves on the line. A conversation about hope with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week we ask what it takes to take action in the world – to actually stand up, speak out, and put ourselves at risk. We explore together how shaky it can feel to do this, and how necessary in a world that deeply needs each of our gifts to be brought and contri...

A conversation about mid-life transitions and transformation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week we explore together those giant transitions in life where we get remade from the outside in and from the inside out, if we’ll only let ourselves. We talk about some of the ways we resist being changed – out of fear and shame – and how life conspires in myriad ways to keep teaching...

Listening as if we're wrong, even when we think we're right. A conversation about speaking and hearing truth, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week we take up truth telling, which turns out to be a deep and rich subject. In our conversation we explore what it is to work against our own habits and preferences – always the move that makes development possible – and what it is to...

Parenting ourselves, one another, and our children. A conversation about guiding one another into the world, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week we take up parenting as a question, inspired by a poem from William Martin. Our definition of parenting is broad here as we ask each other what it takes to guide anyone into the world – our children, other people’s children, our fami...

Climate-change, despair, and the hopeful move of owning up to the limits of our power. A conversation about life's impermanence with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This week, in a week of further news about the mess we’re in with climate change and the urgency and despair all of that can generate, we begin with the poem ‘The Dakini Speaks’ by Joyce Wellwood. We talk together about the...

Finding a way fo drop our defences in the face of feedback from others. A conversation and dignity in relationships with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. In this episode we take up the enormous possibilities that come when we can find a way to drop our defences in the face of feedback from other people, and whatever gift may be hidden within while maintaining our own dignity and the dign...

Openness, shame and the nothingness with often find when we make contact with ourselves. A conversation about openness, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our conversation opens with a piece written by Lizzie which launches us into a conversation about openness, shame, and the nothingness we often find when we make contact with ourselves. We consider that such ‘nothingness’ is another...

Truthfulness with ourselves. A conversation about honesty and welcome, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. In this episode we take up the topic of truthfulness with ourselves. We talk about how our efforts to turn away from what’s true about our experience can be a kind of violence to ourselves. And how easily that becomes a way we suppress the truth of others’ experience. Along the wa...

Tantrums - and what we do when life falls short of our expectations. A conversation about intimacy with the truth of our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our source for this week is from Alan Lew’s ‘This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared‘. In our conversation we talk about tantrums, what we do when life falls short of our expectations, the simplicity and difficulty of...

The beauty and possibility of our incompleteness. A conversation about the mistake we make when we try to be perfect. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our conversation opens with an exploration of the blue of the sky and of the sea, from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Field Guide to Getting Lost’. We consider together how it’s the very incompleteness of a human being that gives us our particular...

Loving what we're in the midst of. A conversation about bringing lightness to our endeavours, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise from Thirdspace. In this conversation we consider together how the act of loving what we’re in the midst of, and who is around us, can be the first step to a more expansive and inclusive orientation to life. And that this itself has the possibility of relieving difficulty...

Reclaiming our aliveness and the grip of our addictions. A conversation about paying attention to our lives and the felt-sensation of our bodies. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our conversation opens with an excerpt from Christine Caldwell’s book ‘Getting Our Bodies Back‘. We consider together how the culture most of us live in actually encourages us to take up addictive behaviour...

Developing a faith in life that can sustain us through the inevitable difficulties we face. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This conversation begins with Norman Fischer’s Zen-inspired translation of an ancient Hebrew poem, most commonly known in our culture as ‘Psalm 16’. Norman has done amazing work on bringing out the simplicity and beauty of words, revealing the d...

The perils of seeing ourselves as separate. A conversation inspired by a Rumi poem, with Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. In this conversation we consider together the perils of seeing ourselves as separate – from one another and from life – and how our mistaken sense of separateness leads so easily to fear and isolation from the deep sources of relationship, love and courage that are av...