If you went to dinner with 20 strangers and couldn’t talk about work, what would you talk about? What would you reach for first to describe who you are, to create conversation, to connect? This is the concept behind Dinner With Strangers - the dinner series created by Jess Janz, that brings together a group of strangers for one night to be guided in thoughtful conversation. To do away with the small talk and dive deep with others.

Her last dinner…sold out in under 5 minutes! (umm hello #TaylorSwift)

In this episode, we dive, tangent and fall into:

- Her TikTok video that hit half a million views and launched her business

- Lighting her life on fire to get back to a creative life

- Being changed by the stories of others

- Surprising answers she’s heard

- Declarations for living a slow life

- Her advice on living 10% more connected

Plus, she reads us one of my favorite poems of hers: You Don’t Have to Know What You’re Doing With Your Life (love this permission!)

Also friends, I wanted to kick off the new year with this episode to remind you, and me, that focusing on living a slow and intentional life is a rebellious act of self love. An act you are so worthy of.

About Jess:

Jess Janz is a creative with a brave and wild heart. She’s a poet, a writer and a community facilitator. Her work examines identity, softness, and the communal ache that binds us all together. Jess is the founder of Dinner With Strangers, hosts a monthly Poetry Club for tender hearts, teaches online creative writing workshops, and as she says, she lives with her own company and her worry, for whom she is learning to make a soft bed. 

To find out more about Jess and Dinner With Strangers, you can check out her website at https://www.jessjanz.com/

TIKTOK: @jessjanz

INSTAGRAM: @jessjanz

There is a serious health crisis happening globally and it’s not one we could expect - it’s loneliness. We all crave meaningful relationships but these days many of us are struggling to create and keep them during one of the most disconnected times we’ve been in. 

A solution that many people are turning to to find support with this are psychedelics. 

That’s why I asked psychedelic-assisted therapist Sabina Pillai onto the show. She’s facilitated over a 1000 ketamine-assisted therapy sessions, and has seen the incredible potential of psychedelic medicine to transform people’s lives and help move them towards greater wisdom, wholeness and…connection.

In this episode, we talk about:

- Our deep desire to know our true selves

- Difference between ketamine vs psilocybin

- Why vulnerability is a superpower

- Our universal desire for connection and what holds us back from it

- Why bad trips aren’t actually all bad

Plus, she shares what feelings we struggle most to feel, and how psychedelics might offer a solution to help with that.

About Sabina Pillai:

Sabina is a Psychedelic-Assisted Therapist, Consultant and Trainer, , currently focused on psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to help her clients rediscover and reconnect with their whole being. Blending her background in Buddhist psychology as well as a variety of holistic modalities, she works from a client-centered lens primarily with those struggling with severe and complex trauma, addictions, depression, borderline personality disorder, & end-of-life. She also works with Veterans and First Responders, BIPOC, LGBTQ* people, Couples, and Groups. 

Sabina works in private practice and offering integrative, trauma-focused therapy and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for individuals, couples, and groups. She also helps build out psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy programs for clinics and organizations and offers training workshops. 

To find out more about Sabina or to connect with her direct, you can check out her website at www.sabinapillai.com

IG: @sabina.holdingspace

If getting up before sunrise in -20 degrees celsius to put on a bathing suit, hack a hole in the ice and then jump into freezing water makes your teeth chatter - then this episode might make you a little intrigued!

Today on the pod we’re talking with Lisa Kricfalusi, Founder and CEO of Unbounded, an experience lifestyle brand that offers primal therapy through hot and cold exposure, breathwork, re-wilding, adventure and human connection.  

In this episode, we talk about:

- Magic combo of breathwork + the cold

- How facing your fears can help you heal

- Power of building resilience aka sisu

- What 900 days of deliberate cold plunging has taught her

Plus, Lisa shares how returning to her Finnish roots led her back to the cold to process and move through grief and depression, and ultimately, change her life.

About Lisa:

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Unbounded an Experience Lifestyle Brand focused on offering primal therapy wellness classes in the form of classes, workshops, retreats, large-scale festivals, education, certifications and courses. Lisa's background is in kinesiology, sport venue management, global games operations, hospitality, global brand on-premise strategy, wellness business coaching, executive speaking engagements, executive one on one coaching and education on longevity and primal therapy. Lisa is obsessed with making people smile, coaching primal therapy wellness interventions and helping people function at their best. Her mission in making the world a better place starts with her own story and journey to finding wellness. A fun fact about Lisa is she represented her country in the sport of synchronized swimming, she has practiced deliberate cold exposure for over 900 days and is currently writing a book.

IG: @lisakricfalusi

About Unbounded:

Canadian based and founded by four friends on a mission to Experience Living. Unbounded specializes in primal therapy experiences and education featuring deliberate cold exposure therapy, heat exposure therapy, breathwork, human connection and re-wilding in nature while embracing the great outdoors. We offer classes, workshops, retreats and community experience events rooted in primal therapy and Experience Living.

IG: @stayunbounded

Find us on Instagram @didntseethatcoming__ or at www.seekerloverdreamer.com/podcast.

Why is conflict so scary? Why don’t we know how to argue, and does it ever get easier? Amy Rumbolt is back again for Part 2 of our kitchen table talks.

In this episode, we talk about:

- If conflict always look like fighting

- How to take care of ourselves before and during “those discussions”

- Nervous system regulation

- Tension vs conflict

- How conflict can deepen and strengthen relationships

- Amy’s desire to get as close to conflict as possible

With her extensive background in Conflict Resolution, Amy’s perspective on this topic is not about how to win, but being in true dialogue with others while staying curious - and how to do that! 

If talking about sex and pleasure feels awkward and uncomfortable, it’s because it often is. They’re topics we learn little about and are expected to know how to navigate with ease. To make it even more challenging, to do that we need to know one crucial thing: ourselves. 

Today’s guest, Amy Rumbolt is one of the most liberated, free-spirited, revolutionary humans Zoë knows. Amy is unapologetic in their belief that we all deserve and have capacity for a life and love bigger than we’ve dreamed of with the access to it through our own pleasure.  

In this episode, we talk about 

- Embodiment 

- Love

- Polyamory 

- Shame, and 

- Flirting (and about that time Zoë hired them as their flirt coach!)

Plus, Zoë shares a secret she regretted in the moment but has come to terms with it as a part of herself to love and not be ashamed of.

About Amy:

Amy Rumbolt works in Community Engagement at the intersections of food security, harm reduction and human relationship, with extensive training in Conflict Resolution. They are also in deep practice with what it means to be human - the complexity and beauty of it all.

Hi friends, welcome back to Didn’t See That Coming! It’s been a hot minute since we hung out and I’ve missed you. Life got really wild there for a while and I needed to take a giant pause because recording a podcast in a house with 2 kidlet nephews under the age of 10, a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard all stuck at home meant recording just wasn’t possible but I did keep having conversations with a tonne of fascinating humans. I dove deep with cold therapy practitioners to psychedelic therapists, abundance coaches to growth marketers, and of course, my wise and thought-provoking friends. I learned alot from these deep thinkers, these curious souls, in ways that stretched me and got me thinking even more outside of the box…and I wanted to share them with all of you. 

What if we talked openly about money? What if we shared how the hell we got through failure,  even when we’re still working through it? The ugh and awe of loneliness, dating, and pleasure? The truiest truth that if we can get comfortable with the uncomfortable, we can see the magic in it all.

Two things came up again and again in those conversations: creativity and risk-taking.

In the name of both of those, season 2 is going to be a little different and I hope you’ll come along for the ride. I’ll be talking with experts about money, sex, psychedelics and more, I’ll share about ways I’m working on myself and, when I’m sure it’ll rock your world, I’ve asked my brilliant friends to come on the podcast, too.

Next Friday October the 13th, on my birthday - the day I was endlessly teased about for all the spookiness of it - I’ll drop the first of my 2-part conversation with Amy where she shares how, and why it’s so important, to get to know ourselves more deeply.

See you for Season 2, friends.

From a young age KJ knew she was different. She saw and felt things others didn’t and it wasn’t until she listened to a voice in her head that told her to get off a bus in the middle of a snowstorm in Whistler, and walk into a random shop, that it all began to make sense. From that chance meeting, KJ found out she had a super power: she was deeply intuitive.

KJ now uses her super power to work with CEOs, entrepreneurs, Olympians and disruptive business owners on clearing the subconscious blocks that hold them back from living a life on purpose. She uses laser fast intuition, science-based mindset work, trauma resolution and a little practical ‘magic’ to find the source of what’s holding people back in life and work, and clear it.

In this episode, we get equal parts deep and nerdy, talking about the bridge between spirituality and science. We discuss mediumship & psychic abilities, the biggest blocks to hearing our intuition, and how to blast through our subconscious blocks & limiting beliefs. We also talk about my fav topic, the actual REAL-LIFE magic of community and connection. 

Find out more about KJ by following her on Instagram at @kristajanesmith

To find out more about working with KJ, upcoming webinars and course, you can visit her at www.kristajane.com

Find us on Instagram @didntseethatcoming__ or at www.seekerloverdreamer.com/podcast.

Life is simple, said no one ever. It’s more a series of pivots that propel us towards our greatest and most fulfilling lives. It’s easy to say that when we’re on the other side of it and celebrating the wins and result of it, but much harder when we’re in the middle of those twists and turns. 

2020 has been alot of that, but on crack. 

Right now those pivots might look like starting your own business or heading down the road of a new career path. Isn’t it so helpful to then hear about how others built their business? Where they started? The pitfalls and challenges they faced?

Zoë speaks to David about interviewing risk-takers, innovators and extraordinary people who listened to their gut to follow a path less ordinary.

What drove them to make the changes?

What did it look like to leap into the unknown? 

How can we learn and be inspired by these business owners?

In this episode, Zoë Weldon speaks with David Hochman, celebrity journalist, about why she started the podcast and shares more about her life story and the pivots she’s faced.

David Hochman is a master question asker (my words, not his). He’s a travel writer and journalist for Forbes, The NY Times, GQ, O Magazine & Playboy; TEDx speaker and founder of the UPOD Academy for freelance journalists.

Find out more about David Hochman and his work HERE, follow him on Instagram, and find out more about the UPOD Academy HERE. Listen to David’s episode on the podcast HERE.

Find us on Instagram HERE at @didntseethatcoming__ or at www.seekerloverdreamer.com/podcast.

Ryan Barraclough I Coach for men, Tantric Yoga Teacher and founder of the Self Initiation Academy for Men.

In this episode I get waaaay out of my comfort zone to speak with Ryan Barraclough about sex, intimacy and the rise of men reaching out for support.

This is IMPORTANT to talk about because men often don’t. But that’s only because so many don’t know how or are ashamed to…and that’s where my dear friend Ryan steps in.

Ryan was an elite athlete for 10+ years in a macho, goal oriented world. After a series of impactful experiences, that took him from struggling to manage the deep feelings of grief after losing his best friend, to a sexual experience that opened his mind to a life he had no idea was available to him, Ryan understood the life he was living and who he was needed to change.

He made a gut-instinct decision one day and left the world of rowing to pursue a deeper purpose - to help remodel masculinity. He is now a leading mind in modern masculinity, a Tantrik yoga teacher, and the founder of the Self-Initiation Academy for men.

In this episode, we discuss sex, intimacy and emotions, and you’ll hear that he has a love for discussing taboo topics, challenging social norms and candidly sharing what makes a man a real man - I guarantee you, it’s not what you're expecting.

Find out more about Ryan Barraclough and his programs by following him on Instagram.

Find us on Instagram @didntseethatcoming__ or at www.seekerloverdreamer.com/podcast.

Brian Buirge and Jason Bacher, while teaching design at Kent State University, hatched a random plan to build a website that would inspire their students which ended up going viral. In less than 3 days it had 70,000 views and catapulted them into launching GFDA, Good F*^ing Design Advice. 

This US-based agency has been featured by The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and Fast Company, and their products adorn the homes and offices of folks like Jony Ive, Cheryl Strayed and Ashton Kutcher.

In this episode, Brian shares the wild ride of his entrepreneurial journey championing courage, risk-taking and grit. He also shares how GFDA’s curveballs all became the building blocks for their workshop, The Art of Risk-taking, and their book, Do the F’ing Work: Lowbrow Advice for High-level Creativity.

Find out more about GFDA at www.gfda.co/pages/about follow them on Instagram at @gfda.co and get a copy of the book at www.bit.ly/GFDAbook.

Find us on Instagram @didntseethatcoming__ or at www.seekerloverdreamer/podcast.