Mind Less

“Veganism is a way of living that seeks to exclude as far as possible and practicable all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.”

The number of people who have gone vegan in the US and UK has continued a steady climb in recent years, yet there’s still something about this topic that causes people to shrink back in their seats and quickly become defensive. This week, join Lorena and Kelly for part 1 of a very important and special conversation all about veganism, where the pair try to tackle exactly where this knee-jerk reaction to the cruely-free lifestyle comes from, and why it’s so important to be doing the best that we can.

The episode starts off with Lorena sharing her personal story on how she went from someone who couldn’t care less about the death of animals, to someone who believes being vegan is the only compassionate response to a culture and society that revolves around the exploitation of other living beings. For her, this decision was made easily, but she understandably opines on how the context and circumstances involved in turning animals into something someone eats enables our culture of ignorance; “They love animals, but don’t make the connection between the cute pig they just liked on their instagram and the bacon on their plate.”

As a non-vegan, Kelly discuss how their journey to food freedom and recovery from disordered eating is the driving factor in their inability to go vegan, and the conversation weaves in and out of other instances where being vegan for some folks just isn’t accessible, sustainable, or healthy. For Lorena, health itself isn’t a good enough reason to go vegan as the purpose of the lifestyle is about ethics and compassion, not about what animal products can or cannot do for her body.

The episode wraps with the two chatting about how exploitative (and racist) the dairy industry is, hashing out some vegan grey-areas like palm oil and oysters. But the two agree that no matter the context or circumstance of how these big issues affect our small world, at the end of the day “you do have the power to make changes.”

Go vegan for the month of January with Veganuary: www.veganuary.com

“We don’t come into this world owing anybody attractiveness. You’re valuable because you’re here. That’s the only precedent.”

In a world that's obsessed with emboldening negative body image through diet culture and false media narratives, it’s an uphill battle to figure out how to have a healthy relationship with our bodies that don’t rely on those heavy burdens of guilt and shame. This week Lorena and Kelly discuss what their journeys to body love were like, touching on difficult and oftentimes triggering concepts around the topics of food restriction, disordered eating, body dysmorphia and eating disorders.

The dynamic duo kick off the episode by discussing the first time they remember feeling hatred for their own bodies and how this shaped their relationships to food. Kelly digs into how restrictive eating creates a self-perpetuating, psychological minefield that always kept them thinking about what they were eating and how they looked (with some extra patriarchal nonsense sprinkled on top, because of course). For Lorena this crept up in a framing of food scarcity, and how the idea of never being able to eat something again triggered in her a sense of not being good enough when compared to her “thinner” peers. Both contend with the insidious concept that food has a morality to it, and how that is reflected back to us from our immediate environments as children by the adults who care for us, all the way to mainstream movies and tv shows.

The conversation then moves on to a discussion of undoing these toxic mindsets and how the two reclaimed their bodies for themselves. For Lorena, who has a history of bulimia, her efforts were targeted at getting to know her body’s cues better and reframing exercise as empowering and joyful rather than something that had to be scheduled into her busy life. Kelly then speaks about their journey to food freedom (not being afraid of certain foods anymore and destroying the restrict-binge cycle) and how learning to love their body came with saturating themselves in a world full of fat folks who are happy and unafraid. The episode wraps with both agreeing that whatever practices you use to fill yourself up with, whether it’s perceiving your body with intention, spending time naked, or, as Lorena discloses, dancing her tits off in her living room, we all deserve to be seen and loved, no matter our size or shape.

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @pathostarot on Instagram & Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pathostarot // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com

Sometimes the decisions our brains make are to feel safe, but that’s not always what we need. 

What does your life look like when you make decisions based on how your heart feels versus how your brain feels? This week Lorena and Kelly dig into their personal experiences and perceptions of what it’s like to try and live without the chatter and distraction our minds often rely on to cloud our true desires. What does this white noise look like and how can we tell the difference between our conscious brain trying to make sense of our heart’s wants and needs and the expectations and rationalisations that our experiences tell us we should be living for? 

The episode starts off with their perspectives on what living from the heart truly means. For Lorena living from the heart is her chance to explore the miracle of consciousness - what would we be doing if we really sat with the thought that all of this is temporary? Not working at a job solely for the money and stability, that’s what! Meanwhile Kelly recalls that their first experience of living from the heart came when confronted with the possibility of a soulmate … who lived 3500 miles away. The two agree on two things: living from the heart is terrifying, but worth it, and that fear is the brain’s greatest weapon against our heart’s wishes. 

The conversation then moves to an exploration of this fear and where it comes from, and how the myth of time can make it all too easy to feel like what our heart really wants is somehow out of reach. True to their style, the two meet in the middle to agree that the heart-centred path is always the best one. For Kelly it’s about the confidence in the decision, the commitment and the knowing that everything, whether good or bad, has a lesson to teach us. For Lorena it’s the only option, for “even if you don’t do the thing, your heart will win by you having regret later.”

The episode wraps up with the two discussing how, exactly, to live from the heart once we’ve decided we will. Lorena and Kelly share thoughts on the importance of trust, vulnerability, and most importantly knowing yourself. Both agree that asking for help is not only self care, but necessary in order to live from the heart - especially if we feel like we don’t know or like ourselves. But the beautiful part about all of that is that there’s nobody left to become, only somebody to get to know better, and that person (it’s you) already has everything they need.

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @pathostarot on Instagram & Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pathostarot // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com

“You’re not a feminist if you deny someone the ability to have agency over their own life.”

Last time we left y’all with a dense topic like this we got down and dirty into sexuality, sexual orientations and gender identities - so we figured it was time for a little bit of context! This week Kelly takes us into a brief overview of some history on the sex and gender binary (with loads of help from Alok V Menon's book reports on instagram). 

The episode starts with some deep-diving into some terminology to help us get our bearings; Kelly goes over what social constructs are, why they are important and why their influence is valid before giving us a lil mini education on the differences between the terms race and ethnicity. 

After we’ve grounded ourselves in a bit of formal understanding on the topic, Kelly expands on these ideas and how they’re culturally relevant to our lives today, particularly in reference to the rise in TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminism) ideology, incel (involuntary celibate) culture, and what biological determinism and essentialism has to do with any of it. 

Finally, the episode wraps up with Lorena getting into how she believes these binaries and their historical construction have affected the spiritual community, both online and offline. Meanwhile, Kelly waxes poetic about their utopian ideal of a world without binaries and how to them it offers us a world without limitations.

TW/CW Femmicide and mentions of such, misogynist violence, discussion of racism and racial violence, transphobia and terf ideologies // Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @pathostarot on Instagram & Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pathostarot // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com // Check out Alok on insta: @alokvmenon 

“You can’t get rid of something that’s buried if you don’t dig it up first”

It’s almost been a year since Lorena went to the jungle of Costa Rica to seek guidance from Mama Ayahuasca - now it’s time for a check-in!

In this week’s episode we catch up on Lorena’s experience with this this medicine and hear about her experience with another teaching plant; how things have changed, how Ayahuasca different to other medicines, and what advice she has for others who “hear the call” to include this plant on their journey of self-discovery.

The episode starts off with a brief overview of everything that we talked about in Episodes 1 and 2 - what is Ayahuasca, what are the benefits and why has it become such a cornerstone for those who are seeking to know themselves better? After comparing them to other experiences involving the active ingredient, DMT, Kelly and Lorena talk about the integration of the messages and lessons Lorena learned from this sacred plant. What’s it like learning about yourself from grandmother medicine as compared to the grandfather counterpart San Pedro - and how long did it take for these lessons to sink in?

Over the episode Kelly is in awe of how much Lorena’s experience matches theirs even though the tools they both use are vastly different. Lorena talks to Kelly about how difficult integration was for her and Kelly relates completely in regards to their own time in talk therapy. At the end of the conversation both reflect on how much they’ve grown and how important it was for the two of them to come to terms with their shadow selves. They also discuss how they handle and manage things like alcohol cravings, codependency, patience and the ultimate reward of learning to love the parts of yourself that the world tells you we should hate.

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @pathostarot on Instagram & Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pathostarot // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com 

“All of the hot ladies message me.”

Did you shop in the “wrong” section for clothes when you were a kid? How about make your Barbies all date each other? Or maybe every now and then you see a very particular person of the same gender and go “…nice” ?

EXCELLENT. This week we’re talking about all things gender identity and sexuality, so get ready for a journey that’s almost always confusing, a little bit sad, but perfectly genuine.

This week’s episode starts off with our mindful babes setting the stage by going over the relevant terminology and discussing how important it is to have the language to describe ourselves. Kelly takes their time to explain what we’re talking about when we use the words and phrases “gender,” “sexuality” and “sexual orientation,” along with a super-quick 101 on why the topic of gender identity is suddenly so hot right now (albeit nowhere near “new”!)

Then Lorena shares her personal perspective on identity, particularly relating to bisexuality and how our perceptions of labels can actually cause us to invalidate ourselves and others. Kelly chimes in with their experience as a non-binary person and the hilarity involved in coming to terms later in life, including the subtle mindfuck of misgendering themselves. Both agree that either way, the best-case scenario is to let go of the ego and not centre ourselves in other people’s struggle to live authentically.

The podcast wraps up with our friends discussing the insidiousness of bisexual erasure, the unnecessary bisexual/pansexual community in-fighting, and how the hell anyone manages to legitimately flirt with womxn.

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @andimafuckinglibra on Instagram // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com // Resources: LGBTQIA+ Terminology: https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2013/01/a-comprehensive-list-of-lgbtq-term-definitions/ // Intersex 101: https://isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex/ // Non-Binary 101: https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-non-binary-people-how-to-be-respectful-and-supportive // Transgender 101: https://www.glaad.org/transgender/transfaq //

‘Grandma, what’s God? Grandma, what comes after death?’

Raise your hand if you were ALWAYS interested in this spiritual stuff like Lorena was as a small adult (not a child, a small adult). Keep your hand up if your interest stemmed from a disillusionment of organised religion . . . perfect! Because this week we’re diving into how our religious upbringings (or lack thereof) sent us both on very different spiritual (and not-so-spiritual) paths, and yet somehow brought us to very similar outlooks in the end.

The episode begins with Kelly talking a bit about what it was like to grow up in a Lutheran household, going to bible study on Sundays, Jesus camp in the summers, and how their commitment to love eventually outweighed their commitment to any one particular religion or ideology. Lorena totally relates as she shares her experience of “going through the rites” as Kelly did, if to a lesser degree, and how it was her curiosity about the unknown and a search for connection that drew her down a different road. The two chat about how weird, yet normalised, organised religion is and exchange stories that are enlightening, humorous, and oftentimes confusing - especially when the actions of those they looked up to directly oppose what they thought we knew about God. Queue the dorky, teenage-rebellion phases!

Further on in the episode the pair get into how the west’s idea of religion seems to simultaneously imply that ethics are inherently oppositional AND synonymous to religion itself. Lorena connects her current reading of A Course on Miracles with her understanding of love and forgiveness from a Christian perspective and how often the two go hand in hand, and they both realise how their experiences with other religions such as Wicca, Buddhism, Shinto, and Islam shaped the perspectives they have on spirituality and interconnectedness today.

The episode wraps up with Lorena and Kelly reflecting back on how their current spiritualities developed in concurrence with mental health problems, and offer anecdotal testaments on the life changing benefits of meditation, tarot, plant medicine, connection and the thing that drives it all: love. After all, it’s your divine right whether you’re a witch, a Jesus freak, or God herself.

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @andimafuckinglibra on Instagram // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com

As human beings, a huge part of our experience in this life (or realm, plane, version of the matrix - pick your fave!) is the data we gather from our senses that help us better make sense of the world around us. However, a huge part of Neville Goddard’s teachings on manifestation asks us to “live in the wish fulfilled.” So how, exactly, can we ignore or bypass what we believe we are experiencing in order to manifest our true desires? As requested by our lovely listeners, this is the topic we sink our teeth into this week. ⠀

First is a quick reminder that this topic is for the more advanced manifestation geeks out there. If you’re not entirely sure what we’re on about, but we’ve piqued your interest we welcome you to go check out our introductory episode on the topic - Manifestation, Law of Attraction & Law of Assumption by Neville Goddard. 👁️  ⠀

The episode starts off with Lorena grounding Neville’s teachings in the idea that consciousness is the only reality, while Kelly theorises that our perceptions of what is true (i.e. the law of assumption/attraction) heavily parallels confirmation bias in the scientific field. The two then continue on to discuss various ways and techniques we can persist in our assumptions and strengthen our imagination; including denial, revision, detachment and getting into a “state akin to sleep.” We hear anecdotal evidence from the both that draw on different experiences with mental illness, gender, and faith. At the end we come to understand that “we are the operant power,” before finally the episode wraps discussing the differences in modalities of operant power and what it means to "buy the pearl".⠀

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @andimafuckinglibra on Instagram // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” - Rumi 

Opening up is terrifying. Why is it that showing folks your insides and asking them to accept them - let alone love all of it the way you do - such a difficult process for us to work through? As humans we all crave connection and yet that connection seems to always come with potential risk. This is what Lorena and Kelly dive into in this weeks episode; what it means to be truly, honestly, 100% vulnerable. The discussion starts with the pair defining what vulnerability is and what it means to them before discussing their personal journeys. Is vulnerability the same as empathy? And why does being vulnerable sometimes feel easier or harder when we’re also struggling with our mental health? For Kelly this looks a lot like overcoming the fear of rejection and judgement from others, while Lorena’s experience contends with exactly how vulnerability intersects with honesty. Both agree, however, that in the end to be vulnerable means to be authentic, and that the best way to be authentic is to say what is really in your heart, full stop. Lastly, the duo wrap things up by talking about their favourite methods for processing emotions so that we can be our best, vulnerable selves without causing harm, including breath work, inner child work, therapy, and writing those feelings out.

// Disclaimer: Unfortunately we had some sound issues with this episode at the end - it's a one off and we hope you still enjoy it. :) 

// TW/CW suicidal ideation, discussion of mental health // People & Media mentioned: Jia Jiang: What I learned from 100 days of rejection https://www.ted.com/talks/jia_jiang_what_i_learned_from_100_days_of_rejection / @izzy.marianne on Instagram

// Contact us for questions on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindlesspodcast // Contact us for questions on Instagram: @mindlesspodcast // Music: Bad Snacks - Summer in the Neighbourhood; Andrew Langdon - Keys // Tarot readings with Kelly: @andimafuckinglibra on Instagram // Coaching & Breathwork with Lorena: https://www.lorenaschuth.com