A guided meditation in response to episode 7, 'Eat the World'

to regenerate twisted plots

and reset your nourishment.

This conversation is about food.

Delicious, mouth-watering, energizing, imaginative food.

But it’s about much more than that.

It’s about connection.

It’s about our exchange of energy with the world, which is just another way of saying, food.

Input. Output. Fuel, Creation.

Food is the way we eat the world.

It’s this incessant reminder that we are part of a network of ongoing exchange. That we’re dependent beings, dependent on air, water, energy, and fuel for both body and spirit.

This is the second episode unpacking the surprises of an adventure I took to Bali for two weeks that unexpectedly turned into 2 months.

I knew Simon and I would have a lot to talk about when he answered my questions about how he’s reimagining a vegan gathering place with a wink and a shrug and ‘it all started with pork ribs.’

Both/and, people.

Flesh and spirit.

Radical hospitality.

Food philosophy that encompasses our connection to everything.

I’ve been shaping an experience around food, nutrition, body love, and community called WEIGHTY. If your relationship to food is something you struggle with or have questions around, I cannot wait to journey through it with you. It’s launching soon, and you can find out more at nicolemeline.com/mentorship.

Welcome to the conversation with Simon Jongenotter (@newearthcooking), executive chef of Zest and founder of the New Earth Cooking School.

A guided meditation to cultivate your body as an incubator of the future.

Join me for Cocoon: 9 day audio meditation journey for transformation: https://www.nicolemelinecourses.com/offers/S26eL6N5

Join me for Catalyst: 7 day audio meditation journey to spark your creativity: https://www.nicolemelinecourses.com/offers/cWvSkj6z

Learn more about the ALTER Together studio and membership at https://www.nicolemeline.com/alter

A gift of 4 introductory ALTER practices for you: https://www.nicolemeline.com/gift

Explore the ALTER Digital Studio, with a free 5-day trial: https://alter.nicolemeline.com/catalog

Learn more about ALTER Together: https://www.nicolemeline.com/alter

Connect on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/nicolemeline

https://www.instagram.com/altertogether

The ALTER Together Digital Studio is a sanctuary of movement, meditation, mentorship, leadership training, and heartward community with Nicole Meline. Spirited movement practices including music-driven indoor cycling, yoga inspired mat practice, strength and endurance training celebrating all body types & abilities.

ALTER Indoor cycling is a rhythm-driven journey to build grit and soul.

The ALTER Practice is a blend of yoga, cardio HIIT and strength training, pilates and barre sculpting, ecstatic dance, and meditation.

Let's gather to deepen your practice, fill your mindfulness toolbox, sweat, breathe, and explore delicious mind-body connections.

All ALTER practices draw from Nicole's decades of teaching experience and 20+ years of practice and training as a yogi, founding Peloton master instructor, Ironman triathlete, poet, and speaker.

Welcome to the vortex.

Every place is sacred. All of it is sacred. Anywhere can be a vehicle of revelation.

But there are places that buzz with a certain frequency that gets all of us talking like hippies, reaching for those insufficient words like ‘cosmic’, ‘astral,’ ‘mystic’

And the only reason we roll our eyes is when those words or the kind of people who use them seem like they’re so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good – spiritually superior or unacknowledging of the grit and pain and irreducible complexity of life on earth and the real challenges we face as a species and a planet. What I kept discovering over and over in Bali is a community of futurists, deeply smart, reflective, talented, intentional drop-outs of failing systems, drawn to Bali for its ancient tradition of healing. But they’re not just here for personal restoration, and certainly not for retirement. They’re here to heal the world. Big vision. No small states. And surprisingly, for a community of visionaries, radical humility. 

I started to realize that Bali was a meeting ground for innovators re-imagining human relationships—to each other, to Spirit, to the planet, and how we can build and create structures and institutions and businesses in honor of that. It’s a hub of people from around the world who are waking up—who want to wake up—to a post-Industrial, post-Individualistic future. They’re the kind of people David Brooks describes in his new book ‘The Second Mountain,’ which envisions two types of characters—First Mountain and Second Mountain people. We climb the first mountain in that first half of life. Then if we’re lucky, we hit a valley—we lose a job, a beloved, our health, our identity. If we’re lucky, the valley is the re-making of us. Suffering expands, rather than shrivels us. We’re broken open. We stage a rebellion—we lose interest in that ego-driven, first mountain ascent toward the prestigious school, the flashy title, job, home, stuff. We start climbing a Second Mountain. It’s no longer about self. It’s about summons. We don’t want to be enriched consumers. We want to be consumed. We want our lives to feed the world, starting with our neighbors. We want to elevate consciousness. We want intimacy. We want the joy of moving together, in a rhythm beyond ourselves.

This episode is about introducing you to some of these radical Second Mountaineers I now call friends and conspirators in reimagining human connection and creativity. I have a word for the teachers that resonate with my soul and purpose—the irreverent reverents that teach me how to be sensually and attentively immersed in the everyday world, for all its pleasure and pain and contradiction, and connected, devoted to Spirit. They’re my joy gurus. And these four innovators I’m about to introduce you to have joined the ranks. These are projects worth knowing about, and stories of that dance between hustle and flow every creator, every innovator begins. Here are field notes from the future.

They say Mama Bali won’t let you go until she has taught you what your next chapter demands. So two weeks became eight. I’m just home, back in Brooklyn, still spinning. Not quite out of the vortex. Altered, rewilded, homed, in a fresh, unexpected way. I didn’t know this journey would be as upending—as unending—as it was, but I’m grateful, and I want to share with you the wisdom, energy, and the tough love I’m still absorbing from this sacred place, this meeting ground, and what I started to recognize over and over as an incubator of the future.

This is why I’m leading a retreat there next November 3-11, called Savage Devotion. I can’t wait to see what Bali has in store. The plan she might have for you.

I’d love to hear what this episodes conversations stir in you, so let’s talk on social media, or leave a comment or question on the episode show notes pages on altertogether.com. And, as usual, look out for the guided meditation episode that accompanies this conversation to drop you into your heart this week, and sit with some of the questions we raised.

A guided meditation toward wonder and radical attention.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

- Mary Oliver

This episode is a conversation with a Mary Oliver’s work, an expedition into the wonder her poetry, prose, and way of being stirs. A lens highlighting her practices of the disciplines of creativity, the hustle and flow of working with the muse. The first in an ongoing series of spotlights on sages speaking into and beyond the challenges of our time.

Learn more about the ALTER Together studio and membership at https://www.nicolemeline.com/alter

A gift of 4 introductory ALTER practices for you: https://www.nicolemeline.com/gift

Explore the ALTER Digital Studio, with a free 5-day trial: https://alter.nicolemeline.com/catalog

Learn more about ALTER Together: https://www.nicolemeline.com/alter

Connect on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/nicolemeline

https://www.instagram.com/altertogether

A guided meditation to celebrate and make peace with your body.

This episode explores our embodiment. What it means to live in a body. The mind-body connection. How the body carries, and can clear trauma. Discovering and cultivating athleticism, and movement as medicine and empowerment. The body as a locus of vulnerability, courage, and spiritual life.

Learn more about and join the Alter Together Membership: https://www.nicolemeline.com/alter

Connect on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolemeline

A guided meditation to define your invaluable work.

You’ve probably heard the question, ‘what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’

But I think a juicier one is:

‘What would you do even if you knew you WOULD fail?’

Because the process itself feels exhilarating?

What flight would be worth a fall?  

This conversation with Carolyn Williams, the creator of Zephyr cycling studio in Bozeman, Montana is about creating what your heart demands, creating the thing you wish existed, and the courage it takes to do so, the wrestling match with fear and disqualification and risk, the hustle, and the graces, the flow that carries us as the universe conspires to support the work of our highest intentions. 

I’m especially excited for you to meet Carolyn, as I’m leading another Alter Journeys retreat to Montana this June 12-16, and there are still a few spots open. I’ll be teaching indoor cycling journeys at Zephyr and Alter at Foster Creek Farm, our retreat basecamp, in the rolling hills and ranchland just outside Bozeman. I cannot tell you how magical this place is. They call it big sky country for a reason. It expands you. And Bozeman is my new crush. Rustic, smart, secretly sophisticated, mountaineering, foodie town. This will be the third retreat I’m leading there because it’s that magical. In addition to transcendent sweat parties, workshops, and gorgeous meals, we’ll spend a day in the wilderness of Yellowstone. You can find details at https://www.nicolemeline.com/retreats – or on the shownotes to this episode at altertogether.com, and you can get a glimpse of past retreat magic on instagram @alterjourneys. I’d love for you to join the tribe in Montana, or on another retreat this year. Bali, Tuscany, Mexico, and Patagonia are on the horizon.

Frederick Buechner writes that vocation is ‘where the fountain of your joy meets the well of the world’s need’. So the sweet spot, the most satisfying work in our own personal zone of genius, vibration of calling, is this cocktail of bliss and service. Not that bliss is without hustle. This conversation is focused on the oscillation between hustle and flow, that moment when they combine, cross-fertilize into a mode that feels like operating in full power. Optimal being. It’s where fire meets zen, for you.

We happen to be talking about Carolyn’s journey to create Zephyr, but there’s big, broad questions at play, that apply to creation and business, enterprises, and leadership of any kind. Carolyn and I talk about building invaluable businesses that are extensions of our heartspace.

Balancing hustle and flow as an entrepreneur

Defining success, Redefining the bottom line, and measuring our lives by the metric of joy

Cultivating collaboration over competition with people working in the same space

Creating a body-soul playground

And songs that have been lanterns on Carolyn’s (and my) journey

So, join the conversation with Carolyn Williams…

I’d love to hear what this conversation stirred in you, so let’s talk on social media, or leave a comment or question on the episode show notes pages on altertogether.com. And, as usual, look out for the guided meditation episode that accompanies this conversation to drop you into your heart this week, and sit with some of the questions we raised.

I hope you’re inspired to begin the flights that are worth a fall.