The Mind Bod Adventure Pod

This week’s guest is Casper ter Kuile, author of the excellent The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Rituals into Soulful Practices. Casper is passionate about spreading the goodness of ritual. Ritual? Isn’t that a religious thing?! HELL NO! For Casper (“Gay atheist goes to divinity school!”) a ritual is anything we do with “intention, attention and repetition.” Our rituals are a basic human need, found in a great many surprising places, from CrossFit classes to Harry Potter books.

If you like these adventures in consciousness, consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!

In this practice (or ritual), we read a line from the first Harry Potter book, and then respond from four different layers: the literal, the allegorical, the personal, and finally the active, where we ask “what action wants to emerge?” This is the practice of using text as a mirror, a way to explore who and how we are. From here we move into a conversation on practice, the sacred, and community.

Let us know in the comments how this week’s practice was for you! (And tell us which is your favorite Harry Potter book too ;)

The Afterparty

Don’t miss the Afterparty, where we talk candidly about whatever didn't get said in this week's episode!

The Afterparty video will eventually move behind ye olde paywall, but for now, it’s free :)

Find Casper online:

* Website: caspertk.com

* The Nearness: 10-week program designed to foster deep connection and reflection through curated conversations and practices.

* Harry Potter and the Sacred Text

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Tracee is the rock solid – and radiant! – author of Radiant Rest and The Luminous Self, both syncretic works that combine yoga nidra, self-inquiry, ancestor and nature practices, and much more. Tracee is truly a gem!

We jump right into a practice that starts with a fresh take on alternate nostril breathing and then flows into a beautifully supportive practice that connects to gratitude, community, and the larger community of nature.

If you like these adventures in consciousness, consider supporting our work with a paid subscription at www.mindbodpod.com

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Some very inventive practice exploration today, friends! We’re joined by dharma teacher and Buddhist Geeks founder Vince Fakhoury Horn, who leads us in a smorgasbord of short “social” practices, all designed to tap into the goodness of meditation in a bouncy, fun and interactive way. We explore Kenneth Folk’s social noting, try out a microdose-sized practice of loving kindness, and finally, an imagination-rich social “MindCraft,” where we build a world together.

If you like these adventures in consciousness, consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!

Our wide-ranging conversation includes Vince’s experience of meditators “drafting” off each other, how social practice can create a center of community gravity, the nature of wisdom and transmission, meditating with AI, and finally Vince’s helpful taxonomy of different meditation styles and their results.

We’re so interested to hear how this practice was for you - Let us know in the comments! And then join us for The Afterparty…

The Afterparty

In this one, we… talk smack.

The Afterparty will eventually move behind ye olde paywall, but for now, it’s free for all :)

If this episode tickled your adventure-loving fancy, consider sharing it with a friend.

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Do you love yourself and the world enough to risk making moves for other people’s freedom? For guest adrienne maree brown, any such movement has to be rooted in love. And that’s her practice: finding what and where we love, placing it deliberately in the centre of our lives, and then asking: what action wants to arise naturally from that? Not based on other people’s ideas of what’s right, but from our own natural capacities and passions and connections. “What would love have me do today? What would love have me risk today?” “What would love have me be today?”

DISCLAIMER: we talk about smoking weed while meditating in this episode, and then we actually do it (its legal here in Canada) to see what it’s like. Our guide thinks there’s value in this practice, and so do we - FOR SOME PEOPLE. For others, particularly younger folks whose brains are not fully developed, cannabis can negatively affect mental health. It can also be addictive. As always, we are not endorsing; we’re exploring. You do not need to ingest marijuana in order to benefit from Will’s beautiful embodied meditation.

If you like these adventures in consciousness, consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!

So who is this deviant hippy meditation guide, you ask? His name is Will Johnson, and he really is an old hippy, a beloved teacher who has been doing it his way since the 60s. In our very fun conversation, we cover the changing nature of Buddhism and its current adaption to the West, the essence of breath meditation as an invitation to breathe through the whole body, the felt “shimmer” of increased body sensitivity, and how this can train us to open at ever-deeper layers – including the layers that have us convinced we’re separate from the rest of life. So: in Will’s view, there’s definitely a path of awakening with cannabis as a support.

Are we all just … high? Decide for yourself friends! Let us know in the comments!

Check out Will’s website, along with info about his “Shimmering Seahorse Sangha”:

https://www.embodiment.net/

And now: Join us for The Afterparty… 👇

The Afterparty

In this here Afterparty, we consider the potentially deluding nature of cannabis and whether there is something a bit suspect about needing a drug to get you to someplace more “real.” On the other hand, we are always looking at reality through our own filtered experience, so maybe deliberately choosing a fun filter is Ok!

The Afterparty will eventually move behind ye olde paywall, but for now, it’s free for all :)

If this episode tickled your adventure-loving fancy, consider sharing it with a friend

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Although we recorded this interview back in September 2023, it could not be more timely. It is, in fact, about the times, about the news of the world as it comes in via our screen and newspapers, and whether there are practices that can support a more healthy relationship to that news. Our guest is Jay Michealson, writer of , who is both an excellent journalist (he appears regularly on CNN and other media outlets) and a fine meditation teacher and director of programming at New York Insight Meditation Centre.

Jay guides a practice to first notice how we’re being impacted by the news – not trying to change how we feel – and then backing up into a place of compassionate not-knowing, a place of humility about what might happen in the future, about what’s going on inside other people’s minds, even about our own certainties.

Such a good conversation! We talk about the balance of internal care and external service, environmental activism and inaction, about realism grounded in science, and much more. Thank you Rabbi Jay!

Let us know in the comments how Jay’s practice connects with you.

And now: Join us on Substack for The Afterparty…

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

In this episode of the Mind Bod Adventure Pod, we take a deep dive into the dynamics of giving, receiving, taking, and allowing with guest Betty Martin.

Why does Jeff gush that Betty is the next Buddha? Because Jeff is overly-excitable! And because Betty’s Wheel of Consent is about much more than just sex and touch. It’s about how we’re human with each other. Her model of consent is now taught in dozens of communities around the world. Among other things, the practice teaches communication and boundaries, integrity and self-awareness, generosity and gratitude, vulnerability and connection.

You don’t need a partner – or even to be into sex – in order to benefit from the understandings here. We practice with an inanimate object – a pen, a jar, a piece of wood – “waking up” our hands to receive pleasure from the world. Easy to talk about, but for many, surprisingly hard to do. That’s why this is a practice with implications for understanding ourselves and how we relate to everyone in our lives.

Let us know in the comments how this episode lands for you:

And now: Join us for The Afterparty… 👇

The Afterparty

Wherein we talk candidly about knowing what you want, patriarchy, vulnerability, play, control, mystery, and a few other things we didn’t get to say during the episode. [WATCH]

The Afterparty will eventually move behind ye olde paywall, but for now, it’s free for all :)

If this episode tickled your adventure-loving fancy, consider sharing it with a friend

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

What do struggle and resistance look like as spiritual practices? What does it take to push for change in a violent and antagonistic world?

Our guest in this week’s episode (which was recorded last summer) is Lama Rod Owens, in his words, “a fugitive” – disobedient and on the run in a culture where it’s not safe to be Black, not safe to be Queer, not safe to be an activist speaking truth to power. Sometimes, not even meditation spaces feel safe, especially where meditation is touted as a way to get comfortable and tune out the world.

But Lama Rod is not interested in comfort. He’s interested in disruption. This is the real Dharma, the real “Work” – awakening from the status quo in order to become a brave force for collective freedom.

If you like these adventures in consciousness, consider supporting our work with a paid subscription!

Lama Rod offers a beautiful meditation on connecting to our sources of support and love and, from that place, exploring a personal memory of discomfort. How exactly were we uncomfortable? Were we really unsafe, or was that our trauma speaking, or our confusion, or our conformity – our desire not to rock the boat?

There’s an important link here: the clearer we can be about our own discomfort, the less it will influence us, and the better able we’ll be to stand up to injustice.

Lama Rod is a brilliant writer and thinker, part of the next generation of Buddhist teachers and leaders. His most recent book is The New Saints. Good to be connected.

Even though we recorded this episode in the summer of 2023, it continues to be powerful medicine now. Share in the comments how Lama Rod’s practice connects with you!

And now: Join us for The Afterparty… 👇

The Afterparty

In this one, we have a lively chat about escapism vs practice, art as protest, figuring out your ecological service niche, and how Tasha alchemizes her fear and discomfort before performing in front of 10,000 screaming fans.

The Afterparty will eventually move behind ye olde paywall, but for now, it’s free for all :)

If this episode tickled your adventure-loving fancy, consider sharing it with a friend

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

This episode is a rocket launcher for enabling all the weird ways you already half-know stuff, ie … intuition! The way we get into the subject is curious and open and “non-expert-y” – we hope it will create an opening for you to consider the possibilities of intuition in your own life. Via the gut, via empathy, via dreams – and via a bunch of other deliciously unsanctioned ways of knowing that certain guardians of scientific respectability can’t see, can’t handle, and also have no sense of humor about. KA-POW!

Our guide in this rollicking convo is the delightful Sebene Selassie, meditation teacher, author of You Belong, and creator of the terrific Substack, Ancestors to Elements.

As artists and soulful humans, both Tasha and Sebene are already quite comfortable with their turbo-charged intuitive capacities. Jeff is a little slower on the uptake – you can literally see his (er, my) perspective expand in real-time. So thank you, Sebene, for your beautiful practice and also for your friendship!

Sebene, Jeff, and Dan Harris (and maybe Tasha too - stay tuned…) also teach a fun Omega retreat called “Meditation Party,” for those who want some in-person good vibes.

Let us know in the comments how Sebene’s guided practice lands for you!

And then join us over at MindBodPod.com for The Afterparty, where we talk about skepticism, science, art, spirituality, and everything else that didn't get said in this week's episode!

Thanks for tuning in!

~ Tasha & Jeff

In this episode, we chat with Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor and public theologian celebrated (justly - excellent Christian word) for her edgy, honest, and sometimes hilarious approach to spirituality. The titles of her three bestselling memoirs say it well: Pastrix, Accidental Saints, and Shameless. Nadia also writes the popular Substack, The Corners – in fact, as you’ll learn at the end of the episode, Nadia is the one who convinced us to move our pod to Substack in the first place – thank you, Nadia!

Nadia shares about her falling out with Christianity, and how she came back to it on her own terms. And then, for 10 minutes … we practice!

What practice, ye unbelievers? Nothing less than the “Lectio Divina,” a traditional Christian monastic practice of slowly reading a passage of scripture, and then rereading it, and then … rereading it one more time! KAPOW! Prepare to be humanistically enriched, for such is the nature of poetry. With each pass, we invite new themes and provocations to rise in awareness.

By the end of this episode, there’s lots of big belly laughter as we explore the nature of insight and healing, what it means to lead “from your scars, not your wounds,” who the heck GOD is, and more.

Let us know in the comments how this practice lands for you!

Thanks, Nadia, and thank you, friends, for adventuring with us. Now join us over at www.mindbodpod.com to check out our bouncy Afterparty!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️