Virtual Pause

By Angie Winn

Virtual Pause Podcast - A brief guided meditation intended to integrate your body, mind, heart, and spirit so that you can live with resilience and stability in everyday chaos. Different topic each we... more

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How many episodes does Virtual Pause have?

The podcast currently has 130 episodes available.

Virtual Pause episodes:

September 30, 2024 Episode 128: Not “so that”, but “because”
September 30th, 2024
Off I go tomorrow to start my pilgrimage on the Camino de
Santiago. I reflected this week how much I am leaning on “so that” in order to
trust that I am supposed to take this journey. “I am going, so that I can get a
glimpse of what is next in my life, so that I can be prepared for a season of
empty nesting, so that I can get clarity on my work, so that…..”
What if we switched it from “so that”, to “because”. “I am
going because there is a gift just for me. I am going because I want to commune
with God. I am going because….”
In this episode we will address our “so that’s” and let them
go, and trust that being and communing is enough. Because…”
Our listening portion today:
I deserve to be sustained, not because of what I’ve done
But because God is who God is
I deserve to sink into your love
I deserve to commune with you
Because you are…
Creator, friend, teacher, Yahweh, alpha, omega, everything
Because you are…
Wind, rain fire, passion, movement, stillness, healer, north
star, guide, comforter, almighty, hope
Because you are…
Love,
I am….
Rooted, passionate, free, vast, shining, peaceful, joyful,
gentle, patient…
Because You Are, I am.

Photo credit: Les routes sans fin(s) on Unsplash
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29min
September 24, 2024 Episode 127: Carrying on the Camino
September 23rd, 2024
In a week, I am embarking on a pilgrimage called the Camino
de Santiago in Spain. I am learning that the journey doesn’t start when I get
there - I am being prepared for it now. In a desire to be open to what the
pilgrimage has in store for me, I am finding that I am holding things in which
I need to let go.
In today’s episode we will talk about those things we hold
onto, and using David Whyte’s poem, give them their fair honor in our lives,
seeing how they have shaped us in our pasts. As we look towards the journey
ahead, we will see how our way is the authentic way we want to live.
The road seen, then not seen, the hillside
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,
and the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed, the way that carried you
into your future, that brought you to this place,
no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you,
no matter that it had to break your heart along the way:
the sense of having walked from far inside yourself
out into the revelation, to have risked yourself
for something that seemed to stand both inside you
and far beyond you, that called you back
to the only road in the end you could follow, walking
as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice
that by night became a prayer for safe arrival,
so that one day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place
you had lived in before you began,
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on and that you were
more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had thought the end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought was the end
of the road, you found just a simple reflection,
and a clear revelation beneath the face looking back
and beneath it another invitation, all in one glimpse:
like a person and a place you had sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still stretching on.
from David Whyte’s collection, Pilgrim
©2012 Many Rivers Press
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21min
September 09, 2024 Episode 126: Awake My Soul
September 9, 2024
When our minds are in the forefront, which is how all usually
live our lives, our bodies are running around fulfilling the mind’s agenda, our
hearts are in self-protective mode, and our minds tell our soul that it doesn’t
even exist. We may take a break from all of that periodically, like in a Pause,
but it’s just a break – it doesn’t awaken our souls enough to transcend to the
rest of our lives.
Instead of focusing on what we are doing in the world (mind in
charge), let’s look at the space surrounding our doing. In this episode,
we will put our minds in the back seat, and awaken our souls, so that our heart
can open, our minds can be the support for our soul and heart, and our body can
be the presence needed in the world.
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
And where you invest your love, you invest your life
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
Awake my soul
For you were made to meet your maker
Awake My Soul, Mumford and Sons
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28min
July 29, 2024 Episode 125: Being a Pause for Someone Else
July 29, 2024
In this episode I reflect upon how I can see pausing, or
being still, has had a long-term shift in me. I am in a place right now where I
am trying to support someone in crisis. I am seeing how just being there for
them, just showing up, is actually all they need from me.
For our pause practice today, we will identify someone in our
life who needs a pause, a breath, healing, some hope. And then we will go
through our pause connecting ourselves to the earth, to God, and to them,
through surrender, love, and trust. By being present.
I mention these words from Ullie Kay Poetry today
“The best medicine you can bring for sadness is not joy. It is
not telling them that they need to move on or get over it or realize how much
worse things could be. No. The medicine for a spirit in mourning is tenderness,
and warmth, and compassion, and connection, and presence. Sit with someone in
their grief and let them cry their ugly tears. Do not shine and scurry grief
away. They must walk through it. This is love. To abandon all that we think we
know and be so full of grace that we are invited in to partake in someone else’s
darkest moments. What an honor it is to simply be a light. The antidote for
sadness is love. It is always love.”
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26min
July 01, 2024 Episode 124: Observe the Chaos, Choose Silence
July 1, 2024
Even when we find ourselves grounded and feeling stable, it
doesn’t take long for our thoughts to be distracted and we are back into the chaos.
Richard Rohr says that “silence
precedes, undergirds, and grounds everything. We cannot just think of it as an
accident, or as something unnecessary. Unless we learn how to live there, go
there, abide in this different phenomenon, the rest of things—words, events,
relationships, identities—become rather superficial, without depth or context.
They lose meaning, so we end up searching for more events and situations which
must increasingly contain ever-higher stimulation, more excitement, and more
color to add vital signs to our inherently bored and boring existence.”
In this episode, we will experience some silence and try to
observe the chaos in our lives from a still, silent center. Then we will see
where it is that we want to jump back into the chaos and try and let go and
stay in our stability, choosing silence.
Listening portion is from 1 Kings 11, The Message Version.
Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mountain at attention
before God. God will pass by.” A hurricane wind ripped through
the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn’t
to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn’t
in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn’t in
the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-gift-of-silence/
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26min
June 17, 2024 Episode 123: Grasping at Inner Tubes
June 10, 2024
“All men seek peace first of all with themselves. That is necessary
because we do not naturally find rest even in our being. We have to learn to commune
with ourselves before we can communicate with other men and with God. A man who
is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the
society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around
him. Even when he tries to do good to others his efforts are hopeless, since he
does not know how to do good to himself. In moments of wildest idealism he may
take int into his head to make other people happy: and in doing so he will overwhelm
them with his own unhappiness. He seeks to find himself somehow in the work of
making others happy. Therefore, he throws himself into the work As a result he
gets out of the work all that he puts into it: his own confusion, his own disintegration,
his own unhappiness.” Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island
Sometimes we feel like we are floating comfortably on a raft
down a calm river, at peace and at home with ourselves. Other times we feel
like we are in class IV rapids, grasping at little inner tubes as they float
by, trying to survive, pulling in lifelines where we can.
Today we will get ourselves back on the raft through our
pause, and then discern the stake of the tent that we need to strengthen to be
able to come back to peace and rest.
Photo by Vicko Mozara on Unsplash
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28min
June 10, 2024 Episode 122: The Light Right Where You Are
June 10, 2024
There are times in our lives where we feel that we may not
where we are going. We may be in a space of waiting, or not fully immersed into
one thing. We may feel lost or purposelessness in the ordinary. Letting go of
needing to know where we are going, being seen a certain way, and feeling a
sense of security, allows us to be content in the place where God has us.
When I am among the trees,
Especially the willows and the honey locust,
Equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
They give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
In which I have goodness, and discernment,
And never hurry through the world
But walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
And call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy,
to be filled
With light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees
Photo credit: Alex Winn, Australian hike
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28min
June 07, 2024 Episode 121: Expanded Pause
June 3, 2024
Today we are going to do a longer pause – taking more time to
settle our bodies, quiet our minds, open our hearts, and connect to our source.
So if you can spread out we will be on our feet doing some movements.
“Awaken us to the Oneness of all things, to the beauty and
truth of Unity. May we become aware of the interdependence of all living
things, and come to know You in everything, and all things in You. For as we attune
to your Presence within us, we know not separation, and joy becomes our dwelling
place.” Excerpted from Psalm 106, Nan Merrill, Psalms for Praying
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26min
May 20, 2024 Episode 120: The Flux Factor
May 20, 2024
Sometimes when we are in flux – uncertainty – in one or more aspects
of our lives, we begin to try and control something to alleviate the discomfort
that flux brings. And that control brings chaos in our lives and the lives of
others. That is the flux factor – the unintended consequences of our behaviors
when we are feeling out of control. In today’s episode, we will identify where
we are “fluxing” and how we are responding to it, and then, through a Pause,
try to settle ourselves and let go of the need to feel “ok”.
In our spirit section I read from Rainer Maria Rilke,
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try
to love the questions themselves…Live the questions ow. Perhaps you will then
gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
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26min
April 29, 2024 Episode 119: Shaking off the Suffocating Moss
April 28, 2024
Looking at an oak covered with moss this weekend, I realized that
my current situation is like the clump of moss in the tree. And I am trying to
solve the problem by staying inside the moss. As Albert Einstein said, “We
cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”
Today we are going to shake off the moss and let ourselves be free from it,
reaching up to the sun-lit, silent sky for insight and solutions.
Here I am, trapped again
fixing the quandary by piling on more dirt in the trenches I’ve
carved out for myself.
Suffocating under the dirt I cling to, I fling
blinding myself with my own chaos.
It’s not in there,
the answer, the validation, the path you look for
It’s not in there,
the healing and insight you seek.
Shake it off,
Shake off the dirt
the moss that clints to you
and reach for the silent sun-lit sky
Be
then Free
then See
For my designs for your life are immeasurable, unspeakable.
Be
Free
See.
-Angie Winn

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25min

FAQs about Virtual Pause:

How many episodes does Virtual Pause have?

The podcast currently has 130 episodes available.