ALTER

A guided meditation to accompany episode 9: The Mislead, to drop into the gifts of the swerves of our lives.

Show notes website:

https://www.altertogether.com/shownotes/2019/8/23/meditation-the-whole-catastrophe

Can't. Yet. Tell.

The story's not over.

The arc's still unfolding.

This week I turned 40. Holy smokes.

When I started to imagine this podcast a couple years ago, I imagined this as the first episode: The Mislead. It's close to my heart. Maybe a little too close. Feels dangerously close.

Field notes from the moments, the seasons in our lives when the road swerves, the train comes off the tracks, the rugs are pulled, the wheels fall off and the road dead-ends. the unexpected crashes in. The mile-marker moments when we decide on the metrics we use to measure our lives.

My heart's been whispering this mutinous, terrifying challenge:

'The story you're desperate to hear

is the one you're meant to live into, and tell."

This world needs stories of the exhilarating mislead. I haven't heard enough of them. The ways the path swerved, and what we did with it. The ways our hopes and expectations were subverted—the ways things didn't turn out—they ways things got funky. And so we did. We chose to get weird. The late bloom. The street-wise, long-simmered art. The re-imagined, revolutionary family. The woman, the man who laughs her way, his way into a new way. Who proceeds as though all the juice is in the Mislead. I'm becoming a scavenger of stories of getting lost in the wilderness long enough to become wild.

This is one.

A guided meditation by Dana Trixie Flynn, to accompany episode 8, '0 to God.'

A few years ago, after a bunch of rugs had been pulled, I walked into Dana Trixie Flynn's yoga class in the Flatiron district of New York City.

Off the street, through a weirdly corporate lobby, up an elevator, I opened a door with a neon pink Laughing Lotus sign to another world. Bright, playful, almost cartooney murals of gods and goddesses cover the walls of a long hallway into this kind of yoga Disneyland meets church. A huge yoga center by New York City standards that's been going strong for 20 years, with 3 different studios, a huge teaching staff, a big free candy bowl of stick on bindees and rub-on gold tattoos. somehow, there's always glitter stuck to your feet when you put your shoes on to leave.

You know when Dana's in the building because of her laugh, which of course she dropped as a sound check—a loud, over the top, invitation and welcome mat to let it all hang loose. There's a lot of New Orleans in that laugh. More on that later. Her get up's are as vivid and crazy as her tattoos, full sleeves and then some, there will always be extra leopard print, and probably a Laughing Lotus tee shirt tie dyed with the Dalai Lama or Janis Joplin in silhouette. Her hair a shock of whichever shade of the rainbow feels right, a lotus probably shaved into one side.

The first words out of her mouth: Welcome, family.

Dana's one of the humans who makes New York, New York.

So full of possibility, pride, play,

She's one of my joy gurus

One of my goals in this podcast is to introduce you to them, teachers and leaders who are catalysts of transformation—humans who are creating communities and spaces of communal growth, whether brick and mortar, or digital, and daring to create funky family over a sterile business exchange, and stir soulful connections instead of envy or aspiration. Leaders whose mission is to inspire—which is another way of saying, to breathe together.

Dana and I talk about her story and her work, which is basically just been various forms leading dance marathons. We talk a little bit about the history of yoga and its modern lineage, and I want right now to invite to stick around, especially if yoga's not your thing, because it's not really about yoga. Yoga's not about yoga. It's about everything. For me, yoga is any moment movement becomes a doorway to the heart. And that can mean the smallest movement—a shift of attention to a breath. One rep or step beyond what you thought possible. Ecstatic dance that spins you out of the old thought patterns. A moment of intentional stillness. Any moment we alter.

Dana and I talk about yoga and jazz and sex and God and New York and spontaneity and discipline and creativity and community and New Orleans and resistance and rot and grace. We talk and weave in music, cause it's our favorite short-cut to God. We talk about scavaging for joy.

We talk about altering together.

Welcome to the conversation with @DanaTrixieFlynn.

Find episode resources, playlist, and show notes at: altertogether.com

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