Hank Fortener –TedX, Adopttogether.org, World Adoption Day-Nov 9, Christian Pastor, joins Katrina for an open, organic chat. But Hank is not your average Pastor. He captures even the non-religious when he shares from his inspiring & up-to-date lens, as you may simultaneously find yourself wanting to share a beer with the guy. Katrina and Hank share in their desire to create talking & living experiences on topics of spirituality, religion, ancient wisdom and texts, not clouded by dogma or pushing it away – instead rooted in the art of discovery and sharing, as they are always learning and practicing, too.
In Part-One, Hank shares some stories which inspired the creation of Adopttogether.org ~ the first crowdfunding site for adoption. Katrina and Hank discuss relationships/marriage, religion and spirit, the importance of personal values (inspiration), and how doing good doesn’t always feel good during. These episodes spark many topics, which at the core, can inspire to widen the lens of practice by also looking underneath what we think we know.
Join Katrina and her guest Bryan Clark (MA, Mindset Coach and Client Experience Expert for Conscious Entrepreneurs) for PART 2 of their candid talk on the struggles of life as we adjust our spacesuits which culture, family, friends, peers, and beliefs systems rely on. Our mind says we are different but our souls have no differences. The mind reports how alone we are, how separate, yet the soul is never alone or lonely, even in a crowded room. Bryan shares his experiences growing up in religion, coming out as a gay teenager, family reactions, his reactions, and how they fed into adulthood personally and professionally. For Part 2, Bryan shares how this actually lead him to the deep inspiration and his life’s work as a practitioner of inquiry, spirituality and his success helping others. Listen to the end where he recommends further material and how to personally work with him one-on-one or within a group online (next one April 2016). It’s a lot easier than you think, no matter where in the world you are. We are honored to share space with Bryan! Hearing other people’s stories is a deep practice allowing us all to see ourselves, even when their story may seem so far from ours. Thank you for listening while we practice and share with you. Please share this link Zooming in the Lens Podcast (Bit.1y/ZITLPodcast) with friends that may dig it! ram ram
Note: This podcast was recorded in Dec. 2015 and released in March 2016. Notes changes in the intro dialog, please. Ending lecture is public license youtube audio from an Oprah Winfrey TV episode
For more information on Bryan: “Get FREE Resources to Awaken and Inspire Your Unique Brilliance!”: www.ClientClarity.com/GetClarity
Spacesuit= Our roles and models in life, our external bodies, our personalities, who we think we are. “When I, like you, was born I donned a space suit for living on this planet, it was this body, this is my space suit, and it had a steering mechanism which is my pre-frontal lobe and all the brain that helps with coordinating and stuff…and we learn how to grab things and lift things…you get rewarded when you learn how to use your spacesuit. And you get really good at it. You get so good at it that you can’t differentiate yourself from your spacesuit anymore… and you’re constantly looking into other people’s eyes to find out if you’re really wearing a nice spacesuit…” Ram Dass (https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-spacesuit/)
Join Katrina and guest Bryan Clark(MA, Mindset Coach and Client Experience Expert for Conscious Entrepreneurs) in a candid talk about the struggles in life as we adjust our spacesuits that culture, family, friends, peers, and beliefs systems rely on. Our mind says we are different but our souls have no differences. It reports how alone we are, yet the soul is never lonely, even in a crowded room. Bryan shares his experiences growing up in religion, coming out as a gay teenager, family reactions and his own, and how reactions fed into adulthood personally and professionally. He shares this and more in a two-part episode leading to his deep inspiration and life’s work as a practitioner of inquiry, spirituality and his success helping others. In Bryan’s words “IGNITE Your Passion – SHINE your Unique Brilliance – LEAD with Love!” We are honored to share space with Bryan!
Note: This podcast was recorded in Dec. 2015 and released in March 2016. Notes changes in the intro dialog, please. Ending lecture is public license youtube audio from an Oprah Winfrey TV episode
“You never know the right way…life just goes on, click, click, click…you need a backup system, otherwise your just like a jellyfish floating around…” – Jan Chester. I have never responded to anyone more with the word “right” than in this podcast, ha! Why? The guest is my mother. What topic did she pick? “Parenting then and now.”She doesn’t know I would have agreed to the topic of “Tupperware” to receive this experience with her. She is not a spiritual person, not physically well nor accepting aging, and is dealing with severe memory loss. A perfect self-practice. Some of what she says I’ve never even heard before! I love her dearly, and am really honored she was up for doing this. Shifting perceptions within family, witnessing their and your own roles and models, is wild practice! So, what would YOU experience if you shifted perception with someone in your family and engaged in a very different kind of ‘get to know’ during these holidays? Doing this podcast with my mother shows me how self-awareness must grow individually, with understanding and compassion for our parents/family. If we want to see clearly into our personal responsibility and freedom from our roles and models. I am thankful and grateful to my mother for allowing me to show up in and out of the role of “daughter”, to experience her as “soul” and not just “mom”. Scary shit, lol.
“Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.” – Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina “The aging of our parents provides a perfect opportunity to seek wisdom and maturity in our own approach to life. The effort we put into our learning about our relationship with our parents will give us strength and insight for the years to come.” -Jerry Waxler, M.S. ⁃ Cool Article – http://tinybuddha.com/blog/secret-to-getting-along-with-your-parents/ ⁃ Book recommendation: One Soul, One Love, One Heart: The Sacred Path to Healing All Relationships – By John E. Welshons, Ram Dass ⁃ Look for audio by Ram Dass (sorry, don’t have a link or title) regarding “Parenting”. Check out the Blog section of FunctionalYogaOnline.com for the references used within this podcast!
Ep. 21 “Thanksgiving with no agenda” special episode for the holidays
Cara Evans and Katrina Chester have a free form talk with no agenda. What came out are survival skills & tools for the holidays when being with family and friends trigger us. Two friends using a podcast as their spiritual practice, shifting perceptions, using awareness, sharing their suffering and grace. Happy holidays everyone…THE best & hardest material in practice 😯 Listen to the end so you can hear Reggie Ray (Buddhist teacher) giving you a tool for the holidays too!
ZITL Podcast is grateful for • Ram Dass and Maharaji – Neem Karoli Baba • All of you spiritual seekersarriving so open and curious, who understand ZITL has no agenda or financial gain within all it takes to put this podcast together. The gain is in being vulnerable to take on a practice of putting yourself out there on a podcast, going into the scary parts the mind is taught to avoid. May that inspire others to let go of waiting to be perfect. There is a hole in western spiritual practice – everyone seems to appear “knowing” and through that lens we dig ourselves deeper into procrastination. “If dialog existed in my early practice days, like this, I would have had more awareness of what I put into my head and that it only has to come out. Yoga is a shedding, not a taking on of more and more. We entertain the mind with the hopes of softening the defenses we have built up against being in the now, being love. I am thankful for those receiving ZITL as just that because its a good start in all of us receiving ourselves and others that way too. ” Katrina Chester • Ian Hatton ( www.ianhatton.com) who provides all the music and editing for ZITL For more information… ZITL Course: Skype online course with 5-10 hand-picked people from all over the world. See FunctionalYogaOnline.com and RamDass.org/zooming. *For show ideas, topics or questions write to ZITL@gmail.com
Katrina talks with Jim McCown in MO, who took part in the Zooming in the Lens course presented by Ram Dass and Functional Yoga online (which Katrina guides).
How much of a role does our linear thinking play in the interpretation of ourselves, others, and of our lives? Using myth, ritual and community, the practice of shifting self/other perceptions helps unfold bigger pictures, making sense of ourselves in the world. Join us for dialogue into Burning Man and Spiritual Practice –
Jim attended the festival “Burning Man” this year for the very first time…and with his daughter. How many dads can say that 😉 Katrina and Jim discuss, the perhaps not-so-different worlds of BM and spiritual seeking, yet both can really be overlooked and over judged, without personal experience. Both share the road toward expanded awareness and challenging our judgments of who we think we are – community practices that can free us from the “me, mine and I” worlds we all live in – and, personal responsibility. Importantly, they both create opportunities for EXPERIENCES and our direct participation in life. With personal experience, learned knowledge grows roots. Without, may even be stopping us from trying. Join us in demystifying words like Ritual and Myth! Thank you to Jim for sharing his mirror with us!
Want ideas for life experiences before or after college? How about no matter HOW old you are?Katrina Chester and Cara Evans join in for teaching moments with a beautiful 26-year-old sharing her own experience to free the limited thinking of career options! ~ Lexi Pellegrino is someone who went to college for 4 years, but once she landed in the workforce she did everything she could to not fall asleep at her desk in NYC. After she felt like “this can’t be it” she spiraled into confusion and guilt with a choice to make and seemingly limited options…or not. Two African safari’s later, working with Americorp with FEMA in the US on relief and aid, to cumulatively practicing and surviving for over a year living deep in the mountains participating, then leading youth in cultivating relationships to nature through conservation work when only 3-years-ago she was falling asleep at her desk. Did she wait for chaos and confusion to go away? Tune in to find out! Thank you for sharing your story Lexi! This is a great teaching for us all at any age.
a look into the experience of education and life exploration
Welcome to Part 1 with Cara Evans and Lexi Pellegrino for an interesting conversation on the limited awareness our culture brings to the choice of “Gap years” – (taking a year or semester off before college). In reality, we have a choice to apply that term individually too, creating a “gap life”. Not as in being lazy, pursuing nothing, but to allow cultivation for natural motivation to arrive as well from our individual personal experience, prior to school loan debts, and locking down on a career for security. A gap-life could simply be the art of pausing and cultivating AWARENESS to any differences we may feel inside when making a choice from love rather than fear alone, as our futures are never guaranteed. We can fear pausing, or stopping our career sprint as adults, just as youth and early 20’s do. Yet without conscious awareness we spread to our youth, that pausing at all, is wasting time and is a luxury. Yet statistics show that simply is not true…This is a friendly conversation between 3 people with different experiences – one who is celebrating her choice for now, of her experience within a Gap-Life, post-college degree. Hear her stories on Part 1 of “Gap year-Gap life”.
…with Katrina Chester, guests Cara Evans and Lexi Pellegrino for part-two…are we playing the game of our lives, or is it playing us? The scientists of spirituality discussion continues from last week with Cara and Katrina as they notice the recipe used by science for investigation, to adjusting the lens of ourselves in our own life discoveries; for allowing daily life as a spiritual practice. Cara shares a story showing, no matter where you are in practice, it’s not about everything becoming perfect. Lexi, just returned from another adventure in nature, shares with us her experience living in the mountains of Idaho, sometimes 83 miles into back country inspiring youth for a 7 week adventure living with the land. Next episode we will get to hear more from her, like her remarkable tales of the African bush rebuilding water wells for tribes from the elephants who had destroyed them. In turn, repairing the relationship between human and animal when restoring the tribes only water source. This is how she practices. That and much more, coming soon! Enjoy the triad of laughter and in-depth 1.5 hours as they follow each other into the land of our individual games of incarnation!
ONE DAY LEFT to hand in questionnaires for the online experience ZOOMING IN THE LENS – Group 3 – suggested DONATION. You may also register at any timefor the next group formations at RamDass.org/zooming or by sending an email to ZITLcourse@gmail.com to request the questionnaire.
About: Zooming in the Lens online course group 3 starts Oct 29th on Skype. An online, guided practice with 5-10 hand-picked people from all over the world. An intense, yet down-to-earth; meeting of spirit and mind, supporting and grounding for you to take off from any level, at any degree. This will be a course in honor of Katrina’s teacher, Ram Dass and Maharaji (Neem Karoli Baba), with suggested donations. Facebook.com/Functionalyoga Videos on course: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-A0_gpubDXxgWtsGk6nstQ
Thank you to Ian Hatton from Mixforpix.com for editing and music – we are truly blessed for his time on our little practice endeavor. And most grateful for you. Namaste everybody!
Joining Katrina today is Cara Evans discussing a deep desire for us as humans to separate. Seperate people, knowledge, ourselves into “this is ME at work, this is ME at home” etc., Right before our eyes the big topics teach us how separation leads us further into sleep leaving ONE option being right and making another wrong. That isn’t practicing – that is a belief, a role and pretty much all we know out of the box. How could we bridge a gap for a wider vision of who WE are with myopic glasses covering the many perceptions? One common barrier for a lot of us is when we label ourselves as “a more scientific minded person” verse ” a spiritually minded person”. Science for example and their primary practice for studying anything is the investigation. Their pattern in which to do this and the pattern for self-study are very much connected in that they are both gathering information about the object. For people, if we are busy being “us”, the object (and if a practice is done from that part of us) we leave no space in which to take in all angles and perceptions. That would literally be like a scientist cutting slivers of their own skin, muscles, ligaments, tendons and bone off, putting it under the microscope, and looking through. Eventually, you’ll bleed out. Not very functional. Self-awareness develops the view of ourselves as both subject and object, as does science with ‘specimen and scientist’, and for self-study it’s like being in two places at the same time. We are discussing the similarities of scientific approaches of investigation and our self as both subject and object for our own investigation. So what are the rules of the game of incarnation? I think it’s one way of describing what a spiritual practice IS – noticing what our individual and collective rules are; what are the properties of the specimen?
GREAT NEWS —Ram Dass and Katrina from FYO are busy creating group #3 of Zooming in the Lens online course which will start Oct 29th on Skype, for an online, guided practice with 5-10 hand-picked people from all over the world. An intense, yet down-to-earth; meeting of spirit and mind, supporting and grounding for you to take off from any level, at any degree. For more info log onto FunctionalYogaOnline.com. Registration opens Oct 5th, 2015 on RamDass.org/zooming.
Thank you to Ian Hatton from Mixforpix.com for editing and music of this podcast. For show ideas, topics or questions write to ZITL@gmail.com
