​The Shadow Playground podcast is focused on the enablers for living a life full of playful vitality, as well as the blockages -- conflict, fear, shame, shadow, judgement, being serious, norms, etc. -- that hold us back from unleashing our unfiltered playful selves. We explore how playfulness & shadow can actually co-exist beautifully together.
​
The shadow playground podcast is available to download on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

​
PODCASTS : 
-GUEST BIOGRAPHIES-
​Jess Malz, Founder and CEO of Inbo, is driven by a passion for reshaping the future of work through dynamic, participatory, and collaborative processes. With over fifteen years of experience in learning experience design, facilitation, and leadership coaching, they’re dedicated to pushing boundaries and fostering growth. Their true joy lies in empowering leaders to embrace creativity, agility, and whole-heartedness. 

Juniper Belshaw, executive coach, facilitator, and managing partner at Inbo, has 15+ years experience guiding senior leaders and their teams towards increased performance, strengthened leadership, and better work relationships in organisations like Cirque du Soleil, Mila-Quebec AI Institute, David Suzuki Foundation, and federal and provincial governments. She’s passionate about building cultures of belonging where all people, including those from equity-deserving groups, can bring their full gifts to the table without barriers.

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PRACTICES: 
  • Practice the erotic mundane: laughing, taking care of animals, cooking, dancing, lighting candles, hiking, cleaning, folding laundry, puttering. 
  • Give your partner reassurance that you aren't going anywhere.
  • Create a couple’s voice. 
  • Do group therapy together - it can be fun! 
  • Make it a priority for both people to be their authentic selves. 
  • Commit to whatever is arising in the moment. Actually drop in and go through it together, e.g. ‘this is what is happening for me’, ‘this is what I'm scared of’. 
  • When a conflict pattern emerges (ex. A figure eight), disarm it by: taking off your clothes, lying on the floor, taking a breath and pausing, having empathy, exaggerate what the other person is saying. 
  • Know when a conflict won’t lead to more insight in the moment. 
  • Facilitate your own retreat for you and your partner. 
  • Take a weekend away in a hotel with your partner. 
  • Make intentional time to connect together. 
  • Debrief every week together. 
IDEAS: 
  • A relationship can be seen as a commitment to growth and learning and evolution. 
  • People get cranky before relationship and after they are in relationships. 
  • The couple can be a healing ground. 
  • It’s best to look at the baggage each person brings. Then you can notice the impact it is having today. 
  • Sometimes relationships just work out. 
  • There is infinite insight and depth in each person. 
  • Remove the expectation there will be a moment when there aren’t conflicts or fights in the relationship. 
  • Vitality can come from fully exploring and living what is right in front of you.
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Makaylah is a passionate mental health advocate and speaker who creates spaces that bring down walls, deepen connection and foster empathy. Makaylah is a neurodivergent, queer, non-binary, trauma survivor with a raw, yet relatable approach. They share stories that humanize hard truths, make us laugh and bring us together.

Their advocacy work spans vital topics such as anxiety & depression, mental illness, neurodiversity, LGBTQ+ education, suicide prevention, sexual violence and more. By breaking stigma and fostering open conversations, Makaylah envisions a world where everyone feels a sense of belonging and safety. As a social impact entrepreneur, Makaylah co-owns two businesses with their wife, Fia- Lynn Crandall (she/her).

Through their first, Scale Naturally, they work with socially conscious organisations to maximize impact by nurturing the unique potential of leaders and teams. Through their innovative approach to Inclusive Leadership and Diversity initiatives, they help cultivate a Culture of Care where everyone can contribute authentically, leading to enhanced productivity and wellbeing.
 Additionally, their business Frankie D's Donuts is on a mission to reduce loneliness… one Donut at a time. Their made-from-scratch Donuts serve as a conduit for connection among people, emphasizing the importance of community and fostering meaningful connections. They run workshops with their Donuts acting as an important ingredient for real change.

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Throw out the rule book of what joy or play should look like. 
  • Allow yourself to start with small actions. 
  • Think about something that meets you where you are at. 
  • Reflect on who you are, what you like, what you don’t like and what joy actually looks like to you. This will take some experimentation. 
  • Each day do one thing that brings you joy. 
  • At the beginning of the day think about how you will have joy that day (ex. what you will do for yourself or how you will take care of yourself) 
  • At the end of the day reflect on something that felt good and one thing that didn’t feel good. 
  • Set up preventative measures with friends ahead of time. 
  • Find solutions with friends where everyone’s needs are met. 
IDEAS: 
  • Joy and play can also be masks or coping mechanisms. 
  • You can’t see mental illness. 
  • Part of healing is knowing what you like, your feelings, and your needs, and how to communicate those things to other people. 
  • The goal of therapy is not to get fixed, but rather to find, love and care for yourself. 
  • Everyone has physical and mental health. Mental health is like chronic physical disease. 
  • We need to take time to recharge our battery. 
  • All emotions are normal and valid. 
  • A lot of self-care practices come from a privileged lense. 
  • Allow yourself to add nuance in your understanding of joy. 
  • Images of joy that we are shown are often unattainable. 
  • We can have gratitude for our coping mechanisms. 
  • Have self-compassion and acceptance for our coping mechanisms. 
  • Feeling less alone is the first step.
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​Dan Rudolph is an educator, facilitator, systems thinker, and seeker of truth. For 2.5 years, Dan lived in a monastic setting, professionally practicing mindfulness. During his spare time at the monastery, he studied clowning and offered play-based workshops in the community. In this period the connections between 'play', meditation and culture-change became increasingly clear.

The positive feedback and impact that people shared from the workshops inspired Dan to keep going and nurture the seeds of what is now called Unified Playfulness, which is a unique play-based approach geared towards the cultivation of mindful awareness and behavior change. 

Dan offers customizable and general Unified Playfulness workshops for individuals, teams, and public groups, both online and in-person. He is currently based in Tio:tia’ke/Montreal, on the shores of the Iroquois River. You can contact him at [email protected].

Website: https://stitch-bottle-42c.notion.site/Unified-Playfulness-8cc8859d87724fbdb3bed91b20310a19

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Chant with the different parts of the ohm sound (a-o-mm). 
  • Inspiration from Butoh clown: moving slowly and laughing. 
  • Role-play situations in life where you could integrate mindfulness. 
  • Speak in a different voice. 
  • Try doing not practical things. 
  • Start gatherings with a grounding practice like meditation, touch, massage, dancing or shaking. 
  • Try to communicate with other people without words. 
  • You can integrate mindfulness and play into your day in many different ways. 
  • Sing with your toothbrush. 
  • Laugh while doing dishes. 
  • Making a cover fort & tell a story. 
  • Take 10 minutes each day to play - no regular words or technology, everything else is ok 
  • Give yourself a little quest when you go outside
  • Starting a creative hobby like learning how to juggle. 
  • Make yourself as ugly as possible with makeup. 
  • Talk to the plants like they were alive - ‘Hey, how are you doing today?’
  • Send a message to yourself a week later and send it by e-mail. 
  • Cook and do something different.
  • Intuitive writing involves simply writing without thinking and permitting yourself to be open. 


IDEAS: 
  • Taking things not so seriously can improve our ability to handle serious and complex topics. 
  • We can shift unhealthy patterns that have developed by changing our behaviour. 
  • Balance is needed between the rational and the intuitive, the competitive and the cooperative. 
  • Play and mindfulness share many characteristics. They are both regenerative practices. 
  • Develop a state of mind where play and mindfulness are integrated into everything you do. 
  • Our shadow parts can be our deepest learnings. 
  • You can ensure people will be safe all of the time because people have different needs. 
-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
Korra AnarchKey (she/they) is here to share the spirit of alternative culture and youthful rebellion! Whether its being a rock'n'roll princess or an abstract entity, she is here to show you a different side to human reality. Are you ready for the rise of AnarchKey?

Socials: @korraanarchkey 

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Imagine you have an on/off switch that allows you to empathize with anyone. 
  • Find a way to artistically express a part of yourself that feels dark or taboo. Visualize a shadow aspect of yourself and converse with it.
  • To catapult from a negative state of mind to a positive one, first fully feel your feelings in the moment. Then, express what you are feeling in a creative and cathartic burst, bringing yourself to neutral. Then keep an open mindset and continue along the seem trajectory. 
  • Practice self-care by cleaning your space, washing yourself, and picking out nice clothes then showing the world what you want to wear. 
  • ​When you express dark aspects of yourself, you can do so in ways that are loving, out of love, to protect someone you love, or because it might help them learn something. 
​​
IDEAS: 
  • Drag is a ceremonial and performative shamanic practice that allows for a deep exploration of autonomy. 
  • ​You can use drag to share dark or taboo aspects of oneself, such as mental health struggles or feelings of oppression. This bloodleeting is a means of achieving catharsis.
  • Others can also experience catharsis through witnessing your art.
  • When something is in the shadows it holds great potential as it isn’t yet defined. 
  • When we share our shadow, we integrate these aspects into ourselves and they can become positive.
  • All energy and emotions are useful, you just need to learn to channel them.
  • ​Even if you are experiencing a lot of bad energy, it can still help you understand what you like, what you don’t like, and how you can navigate that energy in the future. 
  • Whatever negative emotions you are feeling, you can feel the inverse to the same degree. 
  • Ground yourself into your physical reality when you are feeling negative thought patterns. Then analyze what is going on in your head. 
  • Everything occurs in cycles & waves. 
  • Everyone contains aspects of masculine and feminine energy. Masculine energy can be understood as an outward, initiating energy, and feminine energy as inward, holding, cycling and renewing. 
  • By changing how others see you, you can change the way you see yourself.  Creating a stronger community by embracing differences and commonalities.
  • Spirituality should be enjoyable. 
  • There is no one true spirituality or religion, and individuals should find what resonates with them.
  • Don’t let others define who you are. 
-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
Adam Kol is The Couples Financial Coach. He helps couples go from financial overwhelm or fighting to clarity, teamwork, and peace of mind.Adam is a Certified Financial Therapist - Level I™, Certified Mediator, and Tax Attorney with a Duke Law degree and a Master's in Tax Law from NYU. He is a husband, dog dad, musician, and social justice advocate, as well. Adam has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, CNBC, and more

Website: https://www.couplesfinancialcoach.com/ 

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Imagine you have $10 000 and you have to spend it on yourself. What would you spend it on? 
  • Look at your credit card bill and notice what comes up for you as you look at your expenses. 
  • Seek out financial resources that will prompt your thinking. 

IDEAS: 
  • Money has a tactical aspect as well as a human/emotional/spiritual side. It is complex and for many people a taboo subject. 
  • Reflect on your relationship to money. Where does that relationship come from? Are there aspects of that relationship that aren’t aligned? 
  • Money connects to history, context, narratives, gender and race. The mindsets that were developed in these contexts were passed on. 
  • Money can meet deeper needs. For instance, buying your time and energy back, giving security and peace of mind & knowing you’re on track towards your goals.  
  • The four money scripts (avoidance, worship, status, vigilance) is a popular way of understanding different relationships to money. 
  • Finding financial balance requires aligning with your values, needs and wants.
  • Balance comes from both self-awareness and trial and error. 
  • When there are fears around money, show up with compassion and acceptance. 
  • There are a few core concepts in finance that are easy to understand: income, expenses, assets, debts, and interest rates. You can learn how they are related and how they connect to your goals. 
  • No matter how much money you have, there will always be stressors. 
  • Confronting money issues can give you a sense of empowerment.

RESOURCES: 
​-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

Hayley Simons is a Child Development and Behaviour Specialist, Certified Child Sleep Consultant, and owner of Hayley the Parent Coach. In her Canada-based practice, Hayley supports millennial parents who want to parent in a way that honours and respects their child, and breaks the cycle of punitive parenting patterns. Learn more at www.hayleytheparentcoach.ca.

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • To enjoy playing with a child, pay close attention to their interests and find activities that both of you enjoy. 
  • Gather hints about their interests by paying attention to their environment, and find gateways to connection.
  • To help the child create a secure attachment, try to understand and respond appropriately to their specific needs. You are trying to build a safe world with a level of predictability. 
  • In difficult moments, the trick is to maintain the connection. Children often feel adults don’t understand what they are going through. Instead of trying to change or stop the behaviour or create a power struggle, connect with the child, get down to their level and look at the world from their perspective. 
  • Use simple direct questions to help the child connect with how they were feeling. Did that make you feel bad? What about this didn’t feel good? Focus on simple, accessible language. 
  • When giving agency and autonomy, make sure they are age appropriate. For instance, you can offer two options instead of a broad question asking what they would like to eat. The result is that the child can feel more control over their environment. 
  • You can apologize to your kids when you make a mistake. 
  • If you receive criticism of yourself as a parent from your children, receive the comments with grace without taking things personally. Perception is reality. No matter how hard you try, they won’t like something you did.  
IDEAS: 
  • Kids naturally don’t care about you doing the right thing, or filling the space with conversation. They just want to play with them on their level. 
  • Kids like concrete, specific words and questions, not vague questions about the past or the future (ex. What are you doing today?)
  • Play schemas are the ways kids make sense of the world through repeated behaviours. Help them find a healthy expression of the schema. 
  • We need to model how to sit with emotions without viewing them as good or bad. 
  • Often when they are being punitive, parents are feeling a loss of control and are focusing on the surface level difficult behaviour. 
  • Children don’t know how to emotionally regulate, that is our job. It’s not helpful for the adult to freak out. They are still learning what is socially acceptable and how to express themselves.
  • You can’t force a child to do something don’t want to do or aren’t ready for. Kids are people and we cannot control them. 
  • When we set boundaries with children, we are doing it to teach what is ok and what isn’t ok, without shaming and while keeping their dignity intact. 
  • Filling your own cup as a parent is important. As a consequence, you can show up for your kids more consistently, with calm, patience and the level of responsiveness that is needed. 
  • Parents need a support system. They need to understand that they can do it all, what their own needs are, what makes them feel good, how to set boundaries, and how to sit with uncomfortable feelings.  
  • It’s ok for things to be hard.
  • There is no need to try for perfect parenting, that doesn’t exist. 
-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
​
Karla Kerr is a holistic funeral director and death doula whose mission is to reclaim death care and bring it back into the community. She focuses on creating safe spaces for open and honest conversations about end of life options with less euphemism and more clarity.  Karla is passionate about sharing the knowledge and experience she has gained from working in traditional funeral homes and does so with a healthy dose of levity and humour.
Website: https://karlakerr.ca/

-EPISODE SUMMARY-
PRACTICES: 
  • Find creative ways to talk about death: Death over dinner conversation, Death café, Death over drafts. Use entry way conversation starters to ease into the topic.
  • ​Talk about your end of life with your family so they know how to act in your interest. Let them know what would be worse than dying and let that inform the decisions you make. 
  • When dying, return to the senses and find moments of pleasure and joy. These will be unique to each person. Prepare beforehand by telling the people around you about the things that bring you pleasure, so they can make sure you have access to them.
  • Find ways of connecting to activities that you used to enjoy together. 
  • Show love to yourself by tuning into what you really want, free from expectations of how you should be. Connect to your true needs.
  • Help protect the time of someone who is dying. 
  • You can deeply honor the dying person by honoring their values and requests at the end of life. You are celebrating them exactly as they are. 
  • If you have remorse or regret regarding someone who has passed, give space for it not to be ok, the pain and the heartache. 
  • Draw comfort from people who have already died. You can continue to be in connection with them in a way that makes sense to you. 
  • Alternatives to cremation: Alkaline hydrolysis (water cremation), Terramation (human composting). 
  • Imagine leaving this life feeling a lightness in your soul. 

​IDEAS: 
  • Death is an opportunity to be grateful for what we have (ex. walking and breathing), and to take vulnerable risks by speaking what we truly feel and following the dreams we have been putting off. 
  • It is easy to hide from our true desires by telling ourselves we will follow them in the future. Sometimes the future comes and we are no longer able to. 
  • We have a finite amount of time and we don't know how much time that is. 
  • Acceptance doesn't mean being ok with what is happening, but acknowledging it is happening and determining how to best move forward.  
  • There are two kinds of death: sudden and prolonged. Today, most people live a prolonged death. 
  • Dying people want authentic and deep connection & relationships .
  • You don’t need to see everyone that wants to see you when you’re dying. 
  • Focus on the needs of the dying person. Their needs become small and pure.  Common regrets include working too much, putting family aside, not pursuing a dream, holding a grudge.
  • There are concentric circles around the person who is dying. We lean in when we can offer support, we lean out when we need support. 
  • We don’t reach the end of life with perfection, and everything doesn’t close perfectly. 
  • You can’t take away the sadness of someone leaving forever. 
  • The death positivity movement allows us to reduce anxiety around death.
Facilitation in organizations is a field full of opportunities for play as well as obstacles to connection. To navigate an organizational field, a deep curiosity and nuanced approach are needed. In this episode Rehana Tejpar, founder of Bloom Consulting, lifts the curtain on the practices and philosophies underlying her work helping organizations become more human and free. 
​
-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
Rehana Tejpar is a facilitator, mediator and coach working with leaders and organizational ecosystems to support culture change towards equity, collaboration, organizational health and creativity. Since 2005, she has been playing with play-based learning and transformation through Theatre of the Oppressed, InterPlay, and more recently sacred clowning. She is deeply serious and deeply playful at once, believing in the need for strategies that include creativity & play as ways to open up the fields of possible transformations, and reconnecting our mind, body, heart and spirit. She is based in Tio:tia’ke/Montreal, on the shores of the Iroquois River and works with Bloom Consulting
-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Host a retreat to create a theory of change
  • Build an internal team to steward and champion a change initiative. 
  • Be a wise fool and practice not knowing.
  • Share stories to naturally overcome any illusionary divide.
  • Create a circle where everyone has an opportunity to speak from the heart and hear from one another is a safe structure. It is not a space for interruption or rebuttal. Often there is a question at the center. 
  • In a moment of feeling stuck, ask, ‘What is the next most graceful step?’

IDEAS: 
  • We can't lead people somewhere where we haven't gone.
  • Nothing is supposed to be perfect - this is a legacy of white supremecist culture. 
  • Your way of being can also help an organization grow. 
  • It’s possible to have a shared purpose and to play at work. 
  • People trust solutions they are part of building. 
  • We can create participation for different parts of ourselves. 
  • A small group is a fractal of change and a place to practice our wisdom about change. 
  • Sacred clowning helps people not fall into dogma or a singular truth that would confine the unknown mysteries of the world. These clowns also spoke truth to power.  
  • The clown lets go of perfectionism, accepts offers, is deeply alive and in awe of the miracle of life.
  • Connecting with one’s inner clown can be liberating because we are letting out our unknown desires. 
  • Playing games with groups helps the magic of life pour out of ourselves. 
  • There is a strong bridge between mindfulness and playfulness. Play stills our mind, pushes away distractions, and brings us to the present. 
  • When we see each other in our vulnerability and our imperfection there is an outpouring of love. There are obstacles and barriers to giving and receiving that love. 
  • Playing and risk taking can help shed some of the barriers to connection. 
  • We can work in partnership towards a dream of us being human and free.
Instead of getting stuck in existing relational molds, we can become the architects of our relationships. The potential rewards are exciting, but there are many traps and unhealthy dynamics to overcome to get there. In this episode, Jessica Fern offers invaluable wisdom and guidelines to help us shine bright in our relationships, no matter how we choose to design them. 
​
-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
Jessica Fern is a Psychotherapist, Coach, and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. Jessica is the author of Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Nonmonogamy and The Polysecure Workbook: Healing Your Attachment and Creating Security in Loving Relationships. In her international private practice, Jessica works with individuals, couples, and people in multiple-partner relationships who no longer want to be limited by their reactive patterns, cultural conditioning, insecure attachment styles, and past traumas, helping them to embody new possibilities in life and love. Learn more at JessicaFern.com. 
-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 

  • Allow yourself to be the designer of the relationships of your life. Use trial and error and conversations to get there. 
  • Be creative when choosing empowering language to describe a relationship or celebrating a commitment. 
  • Identify your shared interests and pleasures in a relationship. 
  • Close your eyes and bring all the channels of purpose that go outside of yourself back in. Then, sit, feel and breathe. 
IDEAS:

  • A safe haven is when a caretaker responds to our physical and emotional needs. 
  • A secure base is what allows us to venture into the world and take risks. 
  • Free yourself from a rigid definition of what play and fun are. 
  • Another way of exploring play is looking at what makes you feel alive. 
  • Sexploration: feeling safe to explore new areas in sex (ex. wrestling, pillow fighting, playing tricks).
  • Ethical non-monogamy is an umbrella term that describes having multiple partners while everyone knows. 
  • Instead of calling someone an ex, use the term that best describes your current relationship. 
  • If a relationship ends, instead of thinking it should have been longer, celebrate and accept what it was. 
  • An attachment relationship is one where people mutually rely on each other (ex. partner, friend, family). 
  • A rigid binary doesn’t encapsulate the experience of being human. 
  • ​It takes a village to raise a child and people are getting creative about what that village might look like. 
  • Expressed delight: delight for the beingness of someone. 
  • Compersion: the happiness we feel when our partners are with other people. 
  • It’s easy to push our emotions onto others like a hot potato instead of sitting with them.
  • Polyamory requires respect, agreements, consent and consideration. 
  • Prepare a care strategy before having a primal attachment panic (before, during, after, and healing modalities).
  • Codependent = I’m not ok without you.
  • Interdependent = I'm ok when I'm not with you, and I love it when I'm with you.
  • You are the source of your happiness and purpose. 
​It can be easy to get stuck in a narrative loop about how we never have enough time to do everything and that our value stems from our productivity. Becca Rich is a holistic time coach that helps people step off of this endless hamster wheel and create an abundant and expansive relationship to time. 

-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

Becca Rich (she/her) is an engineer turned certified holistic time coach and educator. Her work is to coach and teach people how to approach time management as a whole, human being so that they can make the most of their time. She believes that collaborating with time is essential for self-care, experiencing presence and joy, and living an impactful and fulfilling life.


More about Becca: 
https://www.theholistictimecoach.com/ 

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Connect to the present moment in a way that makes sense to you. For instance, guided meditation, visualization, dancing, stretching, shaking, oracle or tarot cards. 
  • Meander through a city instead of planning out a trip.
  • Connect to the voice that is telling you that there isn’t enough time with curiosity and compassion. What is it telling you ? Why is it here ? What part of you is it ? What is it trying to do for you ? Then hold that part of you, although it may be uncomfortable. It will get easier. 
  • Practice sitting or lying while not doing anything. This is not meditation, but rather allowing your body to do whatever it wants with self-acceptance and self-compassion. Allow time to be expansive in this moment. 
  • Lean into the addictive behaviour. What is this really about ? What feelings are present ? What are you running from or not wanting to be with ? 
  • Try not making to-do lists and simply let things naturally flow. 
  • Take a minute, put your hand on your chest and breathe for a minute. 

IDEAS: 
  • Time impacts our physical, emotional and spiritual lives. 
  • We are inherently worthy without doing anything, yet we often develop an addiction to doing. 
  • Sometimes this addiction can take on other forms: to self-harm, to self-hate, to not being still, to being on, to working, to productivity, to an inability to be with self. 
  • An addiction is something you are repeatedly doing that you don’t want to be doing. 
  • Often, an internal critic is trying to protect us in some way, for instance from failure, or from a message that you are receiving from the world. 
  • We’ve been taught to sell our time and turn our life into a resource. 
  • We are taught that time hacks will make us more productive but deeper work is required to have a healthy relationship to time. 
  • We can move from a sense of time scarcity to time abundance. 
  • When we heal our relationship to time, we free up our energy to do the things that are the most important to us.
  • People with a healthy relationship to time don’t say scarcity scripts or phrases, and are present and intentional. They collaborate with time in an expansive relationship and don’t try to control it. 
​-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

Kai Cheng Thom is a cultural worker, mediator, facilitator, pleasure activist & writer. She has incorporated skills grown from crisis intervention, trauma-informed activism, community mental health practice, and somatics in order to develop a facilitation style that is gentle, boundaried, accessible, and fiercely compassionate. She is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir, the essay collection I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes at the End of the World, and the poetry collection a place called No Homeland. 

More about Kai Cheng:
-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Repeat what someone has said without any additions or reservations. Disconnect the 'I'm listening' & 'here's why you're wrong' parts of your speech. 
  • Ask someone, 'is there anything else that you want me to know ?' Or, 'is there anything else that you'd like me to understand?'
  • When listening, notice how your perspective might actually change from the beginning of the conversation. 
  • After you’ve listened, ask, 'are you feeling able to hear my perspective?’

IDEAS: 

Conflict
  • Each human being is sovereign (right to body, thoughts, feelings, fantasies, my sexuality, i.e. 'my domain'). Often our sovereign spaces have overlap and conflict is born. 
  • When someone reaches past the threshold of the overlap and tries to force or coerce, that goes into the realm of harm.
  • When working with conflict with a group, we try to lift people’s resistance into the conscious space and look at it with love. 
  • Every relationship is unique and there is no one size fits all conflict process.
  • Conflict resolution needs to be a consent based process for it to work. 
  • Running away is a great survival mechanism. People don’t need to remain in a relationship.
  • Jungian shadow is an unintegrated or unwanted part of the self. We often project our shadow onto other people. 
  • Having a value compass helps us to guide our behaviour in conflict. 
  • Accountability can be divided into account (telling the story) and ability (the capacity to do so). We should focus on building capacity instead of punishing. 

Victimhood
  • We often want to keep conversation focused on our own injury, which is a convenient excuse to not reflect on our own errors. 
  • It can be easy to conflate harm and abuse and interpersonal conflict. 
  • Narratives of victimhood often co-exist in overlapping layers. 
  • By remaining connected to our own sacredness, we are better able to listen and hear others’ perceptions of us.

Humour
  • Humor can be an ally in challenging situations. This said, we need to focus on rehumanizing the other person, not dehumanizing them. 
  • There is room for play in the ritual around conflict. E.g. the prompt ‘share something you would rather be doing today’.

Book recommendations 
  • The hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell
  • Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair, by Sarah Schulman
​Jovana Milović aka Soror Mystica soared high in the academy before crashing beautifully and painfully into the fullness of existence. She has since traveled the world, studying modalities of life and helping people reconnect to their full existence. Her words ring with wisdom and intellect, and she offers invitations for a bold and enlivened future for all of us. 

-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
I am a mystic, mentor & ritualist. My practice weaves together Sexual Shamanism, Neo-Tantra, Animism, Shadow Alchemy, Somatics, Womb Wisdom, and Temple Arts. My work is my prayer and my prayer is this: Let us reclaim the wisdom of our bodies, harness the raw life-force of our sexuality and show up with true agency in the world. Let us decolonize our minds, bodies and spirits and activate the wild genius of our primordial nature. And let us find the way forward oriented by love, not fear.

More about Jovana: 
-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES: 
  • Get really curious about the body and the sensations that arise from the body. This taps us into a full spectrum existence. 
  • While connecting to sensation, also surrender to movement and flow. Liberate your body, use sound and let your body take the lead. We need to get out of grooves of habit. 
  • Use this same curiosity about sexuality and stop being finish line oriented. How does this energy want to move through you? One thing you might discover is that you are alive!  
  • Instead of forcing an activity, invite an energy and a state of being and allow participants to find their own path. 
  • Use dance as a way to make major life decisions. 

IDEAS: 
  • Connecting to death and sickness brings us deeper into life. 
  • The idea of sin is woven into our society. Implicit in this idea is the notion of lifting out of this existence to achieve something in another realm. This ascension path is insidious: it vilified the body, our experiences, our sexuality and our pleasure. 
  • As part of this notion of ascension, we seek states of happiness and fulfillment that don’t take into account the natural cycles of our bodies and the world we are a part of. 
  • We reject going down into the darkness and the void, and instead impossibly try to focus on the eternal bloom.
  • There is a portal available if we truly open to the full spectrum of life, including the wretchedness, the pain, the wisdom and the joy of it.
  • Emotional polarities are on a continuum. 
  • We are part of a much larger organism that includes the land, the insects and the animals, and perhaps much more. We are a part of it all.
  • Sexual energy is a pathway to the divine and to your power. 
  • A life of love is a practice, not an idea. 
  • Play is about going to the edges, the perimeters of the playground. 
  • Connecting to the truth and the depth of our experience is a very natural process: this is already a part of ourselves. 
  • Tantra is a non-dual path. There is a charge in a duality like doing & being. When you hold both those polarities, there is a spark that allows a holy third that emerges. We realize those polarities don’t exist. 
  • Shadow is our blind spot - it is an unconscious expression of something related to a wounding. It is subverted energy that manifests itself in ways we might not be conscious of. 
  • Our work is to shine a gentle light on our shadows. Ask them, what do you need ? How can I advocate for you ? Speak for you ? Hold you ? Integrate you ? 
​Do we dare take up space in public, creating beautiful moments of social connection even at the risk of annoying people or being rejected by doing so ? Jacques W. Martiquet does exactly this, doing the social reps to bring joy to the planet while navigating the complexity of disruption, party science, consent, and the latent potential in every group. 

-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
Jacques W. Martiquet is on a mission to end the rise of loneliness and depression. Known as the International Party Scientist, he has been interviewed by VICE, CTV, Global News and Elle. After completing his degree in Pharmacology, he traveled to 13 countries igniting hundreds of sober parties in public spaces. He's on Earth to equip innovative leaders with science-based human connection tools for their company events, so that their wellness & culture budget translates into lasting results.

More about Jacques: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepartyscientist/
https://thepartyscientist.com/

-EPISODE SUMMARY-
PRACTICES: 
  • Take social risks to enable other people to feel safe to take them as well.
  • Do social reps to detach from other peoples’ reactions & judgement (ex. laugh like a maniac, wave at people, etc.) 
  • To develop a stronger capacity to take risks, start journaling and practice introspection; the barriers are personal.
  • With a group, start with mindfulness, gratitude, and stretching to bring people into the moment. Then, raise the threshold of acceptable expression. 
  • If you are in public and facilitating without a container, create a new context to support the interactions. 
  • Look at the thought patterns and people in your social circle that aren't supporting you and replace them. 
  • To prepare yourself for joy facilitation, put your feet up against the wall, take deep breaths, put music on, and do visualizations that connect you to moments of joy. Then dance, and bring yourself energy by connecting to the people in your session. 

IDEAS: 
  • We can all be facilitators of shared experiences in our gathering spaces.
  • Social risk taking has more rewards than potential harm. 
  • When you take a risk as a facilitator and are rejected, remind yourself that you are developing your capacity to serve groups. When you fail, it means you are becoming better. 
  • Many facilitators don't want to make people uncomfortable. What if we viewed safety through the lens of expanding our boundaries? 
  • So much of our ability to have fun is a reflection of our physiology.
  • In conflict, embrace a fail forward mentality. 
  • It is a red flag if there is no conflict in a relationship - the no is what allows you to trust someone’s yes. 
  • In every group, the pro-social energy is latent. When we synchronize the group, we unlock energy that wasn't possible if everyone was doing their own thing.
​Nadia Chaney is a master arts facilitator, a talented artist, and a beautiful friend. In this conversation, she offers pathways to break free from a search for constant productivity and to gently orient ourselves in the direction of play and uselessness. 


-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-
Nadia is a multi-disciplinary artist, community arts facilitator and facilitation trainer. She is known for her ability to clarify and simplify complex concepts, to work joyfully with participant resistance and challenging dynamics, to engage powerful diversity and inclusion practices, and for her creative and bold arts-based group process design. She is the founder of The Time Zone Research Lab (community arts-based research into the nature of Time) and Toolsi (on demand facilitation training).


More about Nadia Chaney:
www.nadiachaney.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadia-chaney-59637021/
https://www.instagram.com/eternalflux_/
 Link to Toolsi: https://facilitate.toolsi.ca/


-EPISODE SUMMARY-
PRACTICES: 
  • Oracular Poetry - a process to answer unanswerable questions.
  • Play with acausal stories, maps & drawings with children. 
  • To tune into the group, expand to the underlying mind in the room. Where does it want to go ? 
  • Use psychodrama to explore other forms and ways of knowing that are transpersonal.
  • Use the metaphor of moving from the small room to the big room to get a wider perspective through regulation of the nervous system.
  • Visualization practices where you travel to a safe space as well as anchoring gestures can help us regulate our nervous systems by slightly adjusting the dial. 
  • Shaking is a baby step towards dance and the disinhibition of dance.
  • Build up embodied experience with the tools before you need them. 
  • Go for a walk without a destination. 


IDEAS: 
Play
  • If they can fail at it, it's not play, even if it's a game. You can lose but you can't fail. 
  • In play, we open our senses to the swirl of possibility and where the playful can take fire. 
  • Place requires preparation (what made the container possible) and has repercussions after having been disinhibited.
  • An ensemble mentality requires having your senses open so wide that you move, see and breathe together.
  • Play has no usefulness in that way. It is useful but it doesn't have a use function. There is an emancipatory side to it: can I take time to do what I want, without getting better ? Can I simply be in pleasure ? 

A culture of extraction 
  • In a capitalist structure, so many things are considered useless until they are sucked up. Yet, those things that are useless and abject are also beautiful and valuable. This also goes for relationships. We can strive to this inner state of non-succumbing to effectiveness and usefulness. 
  • Study can also be play when you take away the burden of being efficient. 
  • What is on the other side of the current of productivity is where innovation lives. 
​What does it take to be true, to be anchored in our hearts and to let our light shine out, even as the going gets tough ? Juanita Giraldo Bueno does all these things with strength and vulnerability as part of her life centering practices, both as an individual and in intentional community. 

-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

It is with her radiant joy and contagious enthusiasm that Juanita accompanies beings to connect with their own powerful inner confidence, to realize their true nature and manifest their dearest aspirations. With her unconditional love for life, passages and transformation, she guides those that seek through the process of liberation.

Her work is supported by deep workshops and rituals based on the traditional and timeless teachings she received from Tibetan Buddhism, Yogic traditions and Indigenous and Shamanic lineages. Her unique, effective and authentic approach offers everyone a unique chance to transcend the futile towards a life of expansion and sublime ecstasy.

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES 
  • Create an event using principles of theater, ceremony and storytelling. 
  • Connect to a part of yourself or an emotion and express it through your body. Allow the energy to just pass through and stay in movement. 
  • Surround yourself with people and allies to hold the space for your changing, growing and expanding love. 
  • Explore tools to be in dialogue together: non-violent communication, social permaculture, conscious communication, forum Zegg.

IDEAS

Aligning with the voice of the heart 
  • When we are born, we are all glowing and that glow and vital energy continues to always be there.
  • There are many ways to find the voice of the heart. It's about shedding layers until we find what is true for us. This process is fun, and can also involve going through a lot of darkness.
  • This voice refers to whatever is actually there. For instance, if you have to make a choice but you are unsure, you can simply own that you are unsure.  
  • In your transformation process, allow yourself to remain curious as the alignment becomes more and more subtle. Furthermore, it's not an end point - you can simply embrace the journey, keeping a commitment to keep moving towards the emergent truth. 
  • Focusing on walking our path and being in our alignment creates a natural joy that ripples out. The more love you have for yourself and your community, the easier it is to spread the love. 
  • All places are divine, and we connect with magic when we are all in our own divine place. Ordinary moments just glow. 
  • We also need to be able to allow for the death of beliefs & constructs. By shedding, we die and are reborn each day. Each day there is more space and we are more luminous. 

Conflict  
  • Conflict is a mirror for ourselves, and it always allows us to grow. 
  • We need to learn to take responsibility (what can you own), name how we are feeling, forgive, see ourselves, and listen with our hearts. If you have owned everything and something else isn't owning their side, you can respectfully just move away. Connect to your 'no' - it is power. 
  • Try to see the person as they are versus how you think they should be. 
  • Balance your love with boundaries, and remember that to give love we need to love ourselves.  
  • We can keep walking with love, truth, discovery and curiosity, accepting the rough conflict mirrors that help us polish and grow. This is the divine and sacred play.
Navigating a world that shuts down our authentic selves means that navigating spaces of play and creativity can be terrifying. In this enlightening conversation, Parneet breaks down why shame is so toxic, and pathways to bring our shadows to the light.

-GUEST BIOGRAPHY-

Parneet is a human being inspired by the resilience and healing abilities of the human heart, mind and body. Her life is oriented towards the liberation and wholeness of all beings including herself. Parneet works as a counsellor and somatic experiencing practitioner in private practice, as well as a mindfulness and authentic relating facilitator. 

PRACTICES
  • Dancing to house music - a channel for love, freedom, connection & community. 
  • Question why a creative practice keeps being postponed - what is getting in the way of spontaneously erupting into play ? 
  • Use a sock puppet to externalize shame, or allow the shame itself to be the artistic director of a project. 
  • To work with shadow, bring it to the light and see what it has to say. We just need to be big enough, brave enough, and compassionate enough.
  • We need to biologically prepare for conflict - sleep, eating, the day of the week, etc. 

IDEAS 

Shadow
  • Shadow is the unconscious hidden, repressed and denied parts of ourselves that the ego has rejected. Those shadow parts are secretly behind the wheel. 
  • People are terrified of being themselves for a reason. It often connects to childhood moments when someone’s authentic version was judged or shamed. 
  • When shadow is just reacting to being repressed, we are actually just seeing the reaction of shadow, not the shadow itself. 
  • So much healing can happen when we observe, notice, welcome, love and embrace shadow. It dissolves naturally as it doesn’t want to be there. 
  • We are always in relationship with shadow. Often, its impulse is to protect. 

Shame 
  • It is so vulnerable to be seen when there is the possibility of being evaluated for something that is heart centered. 
  • Sometimes being seen can take you out of your creative vibe. 
  • Shame has a biological function as an inhibitor in service of social belonging and good social connections. It becomes generalized however; instead of being connected to something we are doing, it becomes attached to an essence. This is why identity related traumas are so confusing - the shame is about 'me'. This needs to end. 
  • To let shame go, we need to trust we will remain connected to our essence. For some of us, our entire lives have been shaped by shame. 

Intersectionality & play 
  • The discernment - am I safe or am I in danger - is a constant assessment as a queer racialized person. 
  • Intersectionality affects everything when it comes to playfulness.
  • People who are silly & playful have the privilege of feeling safe to do so. We can have compassion for the microaggressions that have gotten in the way of other people not being able to show up playfully. 
  • Safety is a prerequisite to play & creativity. 

Conflict 
  • Conflict requires a strong container, otherwise the nervous system will seek to protect you. 
  • I've seen conflict resolve beautifully, with deeper and more loving & trusting relationships when there is intentionality, consent and a container. 

Group Facilitation 
  • Move away from predict and control to sense and respond when working with groups. 
Monica Paraghamian (she/her/elle) is an educator, artist and entrepreneur. When she isn’t singing gospel or working on the second edition of her children’s book on mindfulness, she’s designing and facilitating learning experiences for youth and adults. Monica believes that every person is chalk-full of talents, and that much of life is about the unfolding and exploration of these. 

-EPISODE SUMMARY-

PRACTICES
  • Sing an operatic version of la vie en rose. 
  • Enact characters through musical improvisation. 
  • Put on an accent and do a prank call.
  • Junk playgrounds. Children go in, and figure it out ! 
  • Spoil yourself for the day. 
  • Explore abandoned buildings.
  • Simply hold the space when someone shares a long winded story. The goal isn’t to fix problems - people figure it out & everything will be ok. 
  • Experiment with different plot structures for experience design. Ex. the conclusion at the beginning. 

IDEAS

Play 
  • Play is having fun and not worrying about outcomes while not harming anyone. 

Creative sharing
  • Putting someone on the spot is not conducive to some sharing.  
  • The key to expressing yourself is your relation to the craft. Ex. instead of thinking about insecurities, if I share other people will also want to share ! 
  • Consider the blockages - why aren't I able to share on the spot ? 

Boundaries 
  • Pema Chodron - idiot compassion. Allowing boundaries to co-exist with our compassion.
  • By having boundaries, you are showing someone that they can also have boundaries. 
  • By having strong boundaries you elevate the relationship with yourself & the other person. 

Experience Design 
  • The container & space needs to feel safe. You have to properly nurture it. 
  • You're hosting people before the event.
  • Provide structure but also allow space to open the gates to chaos.  
Cleo da Fonseca is a theater artist, educator and puppeteer who lives in Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montreal. She co-runs a theater company for young audiences called “Théâtre de la flamme” with Carolina Chmielewski; the focus of their productions are the “protagonism” of youth in each story. Cleo also works as a nature school educator with kids and teens where she finds deep connection with the natural world.
​
-EPISODE SUMMARY-
PRACTICES 
  • Sing & act out the scenes from a musical or a song. Create a show out of it !  
  • Forum theater, developed by Augosto Boal. People from the audience are invited to come on stage and take a role in the conflict. You then explore the best strategy for the people involved. Theatre gives the possibility of experiencing life in many different ways, both by being a witness & by being an active participant. 
  • In conflict, experiment with breaking the rhythm - ex. switch from an intellectual focus, or integrate physicality to gain extra information that will influence how you arrive at a conclusion, through a better understanding of the emotion. 
  • Enjoy the process of designing a game and its rules. Sometimes this process can be longer than the actual game !
  • If someone doesn't want to connect with a high energy state, consider what your underlying need is and how you can meet that need. 

IDEAS
Emotions
  • We often feel multiple things simultaneously. 
  • There is great value experiencing the complexity of the emotions. 
  • Emotions can be better understood through connecting them to metaphor & other concepts, regardless if they 'make sense'.
  • Move beyond the so-called universal emotions. 
  • Emotions are the motions of life. Emotions help the unknown be known. 
  • The body transforms the feeling, and the feeling transforms the body. 
  • Create a web of understanding instead of a categorized box. Just experience as it actually is. 
  • Use emotion as a way to communicate and connect to other beings & invite other beings to experience that fullness. 
  • When you are scared to experience your emotions: breathe, feel the air coming in. Be kind to yourself. 
  • Keeping respect at the forefront. 
  • Collective experiencing of a moment is very empowering. 
  • There is a cultural component to being free to express intense emotions.  
  • Learn how to simmer down, and actually meet people where they're at.
    ​
  • When we tune into someone else, they will want to tune into us. There is a tendency towards balance and harmony. 
Relationships 
  • Respecting someone's desire to not engage is a form of connection.
  • Relationships remain even if you aren't in contact with them anymore, and the relationship continues to transform. 
  • Developing an inner confidence that things transform, and that you don't need to control them. 
  • Play to move through conflict while acknowledging that what is under the surface is deep. 
Experience design
  • Inspiring locations create inspiring experiences.