Dr. Natalaya Androsova, a writing and dissertation coach, studied linguistics & the communication and cultural aspects of language for her PhD. When I recorded this episode with Dr. Androsova, I felt so seen, safe, and held by her energy and trust with the universe. What I left knowing was that my inner writing critic isn't about my prose: It’s about my inability to prioritize time. Each of us might be “cobblers without shoes” as we pour our heart and soul onto the page, but are not yet published or not published in the way we hope. We talk about our own personal practices, remind you that you are never alone, and encourage you to remember that someone else might benefit from your words. Keep writing, keep sharing, build your trust in yourself, and as Natalya shares, you can borrow her trust in the meantime.

Other key takeaways:

• Meditation can change relationship to writing and to Self

More at:

https://www.writingdissertationcoach.com/

https://www.instagram.com/natalya_androsova_/

When I wanted to speak with someone about how to weave more faith and spirituality into my work as an academic Tamra Andress launched into my mind. Tamra is a best-selling author, spiritual entrepreneur, coach, podcaster, and ordained minister. She also happens to be someone I’ve known since 9th grade. When I stepped away from social media, she was stepping in and up with a colorful platform that “sells words” related to “obliterate(ing) shame and activat(ing) purpose” and putting faith at the forefront of entrepreneurial endeavors. We keep it pretty faith agnostic— so that you can see how spirituality can be an element within any given moment.

Her book, Always Becoming, is on bookshelves everywhere.

And her website: https://tamraandress.com/

Highlights include:

• I can be all of myself, in all places. Here you are the body as an athlete; here as the mind because you are an academic …musician, actor, mom, wife… faith is an element that shows up in every single one. Show up as who you are in every given moment.

• 7 year itch, biochemically, you have changed. Continue dating while married. Don’t ever stop getting to know someone as they grow.

Check out:

Book: Artisan Soul

Mode: Ikigai Finding Meaning in Work and Life

Is a rigid mindset holding you back? Do you have unrealistic expectations of yourself? Can we build flexibility of the mind to assist ourselves-- even our yesterday selves or our younger selves?

We've all had them: An awkward moment. We ruminate and think that we don't belong. Let's use yoga practices to ground, generate internal safety, and look at the situation with new found ease.

- Let's find our emotions.

- Identify the facts

- Visual and make peace with the moment-- that version of you doesn't even exist anymore. Find your feet.

- Visualize a red orb at the base of your spine. Expanding and contracting with your breath to invite stability and safety.

- Wrap by processing what you learned from the moment

We all have those moments that challenge us: Do we belong here? We can use our senses to revisit the moment without being overwhelmed by it.

In this brief guided visualization, we embrace a moment where we felt that we didn't belong, process it, and balance the sacral chakra of connection and creativity.

On this episode, I interview Drs. Dave Pena and Elizabeth Berry. Elizabeth posted on Instagram about pursuing a PhD being anxiety provoking. She wondered: Where are the expectations coming from and why do we (as people) perpetuate it? It’s seen as a rite of passage. Is that reason enough? She thinks, wait my boss and committee members went through this too, and her “brain goes to would I ask these in a different way? Treat myself like they’re treating me?” What happens from the time you’re a PhD student to an assistant professor. We jump right in to dialogue and Dave shares some of his experiences and the conflict between what you want (to gain skills and get out) and what your mentor wants.  

We wrap with the challenges of deciding to stay or leave a lab. You have to choose your right kind of hard: What suits your personality, resources, abilities. Other take aways include:

• If you are a mentor or mentee: Check on prior and current performance, attitude, past data … are they changing? What’s going on? Can something change for the better?

Handles:

Elizabeth: @nature.neuroscience.phd

Dave: @doctor_pena and his start up: stremecoder.com and pluri.design

We make decisions each day. We ruminate on whether it was the "right one." We lose perspective of our safety- our present. And our future. We often go to our "worst case scenario" instead of our "best case scenario." Tune in to this Samma Says for a guided meditation to engage your scenes and identify the best case scenario.

We are not doing this academic work for anything except to be of service. Of service to the greater good, to our communities that we hope to empower, to provide answers to really tough questions. We are doing this to be vessels of service. We need to remember why we are doing what we’re doing. It’s hard to do that when something is absconded with or taken out of context, like service.

On this episode, I talk a little bit of trash about service within academia.

We’re expected to be of service to keep the system running and rolling.

Asked to serve dept, college, university, our topic-area societies/organizations and greater scientific community with the gift of our time.

Time is our most precious commodity.  But then we’re asked to review peer review journal articles, conference abstracts, presentations, webinars, guest lectures, ccommittee service...To do this and to do that—all for free. And at the end of the week, we sit back and think, "I didn’t actually even move the needle on the things that I’m paid to do.”

Why do we continue to agree to this and work 60, 80 hour weeks because we’re spending so much time serving the greater good that we’re not serving our labs, students, selves, and families, because we’re doing all this service to be an "internationally recognized whatever."

It’s because I was tricked by the word “service.” I want to be of service.I believe in putting in my time, energy and efforts—and it’s not altruistically necessary: It’s all to feed and fuel that we matter, that our opinion mattered along the way

I used to get a little excited when people would invite me because it meant that my opinion matters. We have to know that our opinion and our work matters and how to appropriately compensate.

Need to make this idea make it to the ears and hearts of administrators, of people who can rethink the infrastructure and think hey, maybe we should be compensated and level of peer review can be graded or valued, instead of getting shitty feedback that took 20 min or less and doesn’t advance the science

Money is energy. Money is an energetic exchange of your efforts.

Yoga principles for flourishing in academia and beyond, I’m recognizing that part of my lethargy, overwhelm, burn out is root chakra imbalance is based on how much time I spend in service to the “suits”—the people making money off of the business of education.  

I invite us to advocate for any opportunities to be compensated for your previous time. Your time, efforts, expertise are so appreciated, thank you for being part of this system and cycle of positivity and overwork or overwhelm.

You're feeling overwhelmed? Who wouldn't be with what you have going on. Take a few moments to pause with me and greet and explore the sensation of overwhelm.

• Own, invest, take authority of your sensation

Trigger warning: In this episode, Terri and I complete our conversation from the previous episode (How to take up space) and the dance that people have to engage in: Between dressing, presenting, and acting how we want and the repercussions of it. We talk about what people might think or say...and don't directly address what people might do, but we address that living out loud or the nuance of "living in the skin you're in" is challenging. We talk about how being sensual and dressing up does not equate to sexual, and there's a right use of energy for each of us to explore in our own ethics and parameters. But: When we try to hide ourselves, we're not helping to take up space. Other comments include:

-Practice- exposure therapy- of just doing it—showing up as yourself.

- When you live out loud there’s a possibility that people will say or do something...You can't tell people that they can’t say something.

-If you are living out loud, you have to figure out how you’re going to navigate it.

- Baffling that we can’t see ourselves how others have seen us

- There's a spectrum of low self esteem to egoic—where on the spectrum am I? I acknowledge the ways in which I was pretending in past.

- Based on our experiences (pain, shame, trauma), some of us have expanded and contracted

- Most people living life in a more feminine way have had those experiences where it’s not safe to live out loud

- What I put out and how it’s received are two different things

- I don’t want to be chosen anymore—as women we dress up to get attention—we are doing it for us.

- How do I do this, lipstick, be confident, be cute, and there’s a possibility that someone is going to say something. I can’t control it.

- We chameleon to fit, mold.. belong but I don’t even know how I like my own eggs (Julia Robert’s character on Runaway Bride-- not knowing yourself)

- Being chosen v doing the choosing

- Personal transformation of a divorce- taking all the layers of taking it off, chosen different, I don’t want to be chosen anymore, when I wear the lipstick or the outfit, I’m choosing

-Practice loving yourself, choosing yourself, being your best friend. Giving yourself grace when you don’t have enough water, food, or a best friend to hype you up.

- Trying to keep up, trying to be cute. To be chosen. To keep up. It’s never enough.

- Continuously treading water. Even when nobody says you’re not enough…

-More grounded and confident and sexier and whatever today than when we’re jumping around trying to get chosen

- I’m not here for your eyes, approval, permission—being sensual isn’t being sexual. Explore your own ethics, morals, practices. It’s complicated.

- They might think that I was looking for attention. Maybe they did maybe they didn’t

- When you're on autopilot, sometimes you forget to look at yourself in the mirror and say something nice. Give it a try!

- My new wish is to help someone get there before 37. Wisdom, confidence, age.. throwing stone to someone behind us.. love yourself, be your own best friend

- Accountability partners are important-- for when you can't see you the way someone who loves you does. If you've lost touch with a friend, you can always reach back out

Terri Miller brings her expertise in education to create plain language to disseminate science and policy to a very broad audience via the Federal Trade Commission. She provides us with strategies to cultivate grace for ourselves, and to give us time and space for learning, growing, and sharing. Terri and I talk about science, and life, and distraction and presence all at once and how we find friends to be mirrors on our work-life journeys (hint: it's just life). Terri shares that she is not a yoga practitioner or scientist by trade but that this podcast and the samma says reminders help her get energy out and remember to breathe-- helping to show that this podcast is for all: In and out of the academy- those who love or are less familiar with yoga principles. Other mental chatter-stopping takeaways are:

• Is it ever enough? It’s not, so on this moment I will take a breath and just be to try to find the balance of being a professional, a high performer and being able to stop in the middle of that and just breathe

Find Terri on Linked In at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-miller1/