Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki
Join seasoned Transformational Coach & longtime activist, Dana Balicki, for a wildride into the jacuzzi-verse to explore the ebbs & flows of living an examined life. Each and every episode invites you to explore the strange magic of humaning together in these wild times.™ With 13 years of coaching expertise, Dana blends irreverent reverence, spiritual insight, decolonial teachings, collective movement-building, high-woo, personal narrative, and grounded growth-oriented practicality for deep, thought-provoking conversations.
Sound editing and design by Rose Blakelock, theme song by Kat Otteson, artwork by Natalee Miller! Extra support by robot cohost Alex & robot producer (and part-time cohost) Janet.
Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki
Wonder & Awe: Learn to Flirt with the World
wonder & awe, the keys to belonging and connection! or at least that's how we see it here at crybaby HQ in the bubbling cauldron center of the jacuzzi-verse!
yes, being human is complex. so much so, that we can forget we have agency—even under violence & oppressive systems—to choose how we show up. so let's swan dive into the wondrous nature of existence by opening ourselves to wonder & awe. to flirting with the world BECAUSE SHE ALWAYS FLIRTS BACK. big-point-alert >> when we open ourselves to relationality, we practice unraveling the painful knots of coloniality. so flirting = liberation (see what we did there?)!
also, in this episode we'll have our first *special guest*—a real squishy, cosmic surprise! so tune in, turn on, and get into flirt-the-world mode with dana and all the crybabies.
~ show notes ~
- karen barad, meeting the universe halfway (quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning) ~ https://smartnightreadingroom.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/meeting-the-universe-halfway.pdf
- enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). DM (@danablix instagram) or email a screenshot of your submission—take it right before you hit submit—along with the review name/title. winner announcements will be made across platforms!
// sound design & editing by rose blakelock, theme song by kat ottosen, cover art by natalee miller //
@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭
Have you ever flirted with the sun or a plant, or just the air, or a soft sweater, or a smell, or your own shadow? A spray of an orange peel? As you peel it, a piece of music, dandelion growing up through the crack in a sidewalk, the scent of a stranger left as they walk by you on the street? A memory, a swamp bug, a bo-weevil? A dream? Yes. Making love to life yes. Vital entanglement. Let us, in this episode and forever after, because this episode and all episodes of Crying in my Jacuzzi are a spell, a spell, let us call in connect with two vital currencies of living. Let's give a great, warm welcome to my friend Wonder and my friend Ah Wonder and Ah Wonder and Ah I. They're big old flirts too. I tell you what crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi.
Speaker 1:I want to do the gentle distinction between wonder and awe. In her book Atlas of the Heart, brene Brown and she's quoting some other researchers she talks about the distinction between awe and wonder and explains it like this Wonder inspires the wish to understand, awe inspires the wish to let it shine, to acknowledge, to unite. I want to invite us to play with this idea that wonder and awe, especially in these complex, heartbreaking times. I don't see where our world is getting less complex and less heartbreaking, just more opportunities for us to be with complexity and learn how to be with heartbreak and understand the power of heartbreak. Wonder can fuel our passion, can turn us on to explore, to get curious, to learn more, to connect more, and in some other research that Brene Brown brings in, she highlights that the research finds that awe can lead people to share resources, to cooperate, to sacrifice for others, and can cause people to really fully appreciate the value of others, to see others more accurately, and that evokes humility.
Speaker 1:There's an article in the Harvard Business Review called why you Need to Protect your Sense of Wonder, especially Now, and it was written a couple of years ago. But there's this one piece in it and this is about wonder and awe and it focuses a bit more on awe experiences, awe-inducing experiences, uh, and its effects on stress and resilience. Right, it's a hard business review, but let me read this one part. Cultivating experiences of awe is especially important and helpful now as we renew our energy and make plans for a more hopeful future. That's because, beyond physical effects like tingling and goosebumps and a lowered heart rate under stress. Awe also affects us emotionally. One experimental group, when asked to draw pictures of themselves, literally drew themselves smaller in size after having an awe experience. Such an effect has been termed unselfing. The shift has big benefits. Your desire to connect with and help others increases. People who experience awe also report higher levels of overall life satisfaction and well-being. Experiences of awe are associated with the lowered levels of reported stress. Recent research using fMRI has also shown that experiences of awe, such as watching awe-inspiring videos, compared to neutral or pleasant videos, decreases activity in the brain's default mode network, the DMN, which is associated with self-focus and rumination. The result is decreased mental chatter.
Speaker 1:Just a note here too, on the DMN. The default mode network, or how the brain thinks about itself, is there to help us make sense of the world. It's there to do that to make sense of the world, to connect us with others, to help us remember things, to do all sorts of stuff around our creativity and mapping the world around us. It runs whenever our brains relaxes. I was about to say soften. That sounded gross. It's relax, brains relaxes. I was about to say soften. That sounded gross. It relaxes when we're not trying to figure things out, solve things and we're not intentionally thinking about anything, or when we're not distracted.
Speaker 1:And I really love the work of Sarah Payton. She wrote a book called your Resonant Self and then she's got an accompanying workbook and all sorts of goodness. She does some great breakdowns of the default mode network. What happens when it's stressed and unstressed, even though that the default mode network is profoundly shaped by the unconscious contracts that we live with, that we carry, that when the DMN is working well, it easily learns self-warmth, even if that concept is brand new, right, not something we necessarily grew up with. So when we're stressed, our DMN, that problem solver that's stressed and that automatic brain voice can become intrusive and enjoyment of our lives, of the world around us, can become more difficult. Beautiful work that I mean. There's lots of different types of work that can help support increased self-warmth. Sarah Payton does it through various practices, through resonance, which she calls to grow, to begin to grow a permaculture garden of neurons that can hold us safely in our brains.
Speaker 1:I want you to think back to the last time, or a time that stands out for you, where you felt awestruck, where you witnessed something and were feeling, just the experience of wanting to stand back and observe and let this phenomenon something magnificent even in its subtlety, even in its smallness, even in its mundanity. Simple moment with someone you care about, something in nature, art, music. So just simmer in that for a moment, notice how that feels in your body, to even just call up that momentary transcendence. And now do this with wonder. The last time or a recent time or any time in your life that just wants to raise its hand and poke its head up from your memory storage area and really felt.
Speaker 1:You really felt wonder, delighted, and that passion, that curiosity you know my favorite was ignited for you. You're like how, how is this possible? How does this work? This is so wild. This feels just absolutely unreal. Maybe you went on to learn more, get curious, maybe you forgot about it and now you're remembering and that curiosity has peaked again in some way. Just let yourself simmer in it for a moment, feel it in your body, feel what turns on for you. Maybe a bunch of different memories are coming to the top for you and you're like, wow, I have experienced a lot of wonder and awe, that's so cool.
Speaker 1:yay you. And know that people listening all over the world because there are actually listeners all over the world, part of the tub club here, crybabies unite that are also feeling this and remembering and remembering and letting these feelings just rise within them and percolate, roll out through the limbs through the energetic field. Look at how cool we are. I think I'm actually feeling awe right now just thinking about all of you. Maybe you are too. Look at us making a web of connection Through awe Is this what flirting with the world feels like.
Speaker 1:I think so, alex. It feels weird and tingly, yeah Whoa. In Karen Barad's book Meeting the Universe Halfway, she says all real living is meeting and each meeting matters. She creates a term intra-action and she uses it to replace interaction, which is about bodies acting upon each other right, how things interact, participating in actions with each other, but that instead of interaction things acting upon each other interaction acknowledges agency, understands agency as something that all things have. It's not just a thing for humans and it's about the dynamic, how all things are constantly exchanging and influencing each other, exchanging and influencing each other. All things are connected because all things have agency, and an interaction in a way means that it's impossible for anything to be separate. I mean, this is some next level, interdimensional flirtation. I'm talking about here people. So this is flirting.
Speaker 1:I love that I take like scholarly texts and reduce them down to these concepts According to human design. This is a skill of mine. I mean, whether you think I'm skillful at it or not apparently doesn't matter to me, because here we are, but this is flirting as relationality and acknowledging that all things have agency. Thus we can interact with all things. We can flirt, connect with anything around us, right? So that doesn't that just take some pressure off of it.
Speaker 1:This isn't about needing to go and and cultivate a sense of wonder and awe to turn you on to the world, to like, keep those, uh, those fires of vitality and creativity, like, keep those fires stoked by having to go sit at a bar and flirt with someone and that, whatever the thing is like no, no, the world is your big old flirt oyster full of pearls of wonder and awe. But if all things have agency, agential beings, all things, things, then there are some boundaries that in this flirting can be dissolved. A hierarchy or an anthropocentrism, right like humans are the top tier of the thing, all the things that matter most and the only things worth really interacting with, that maybe starts to shift. And when you look at everything around you as potential for interaction, potential for flirtation, for connectivity to be turned on, to make love to life.
Speaker 2:I love you.
Speaker 1:You could stimulate that wonder, that awe, which we know because the Harvest Business Review told us lowers our stress level, decreases our mental chatter, increases our desire to connect with and help others, can increase our levels of overall life satisfaction and well-being. Okay, I'm just kidding. Harvest Business Review did say that, but that is not the only reason we are bringing up this point. But those, if we just take some of those in some of that information in you take some of that in because my guess is that I said some of those in some of that information in you take some of that in Because my guess is that I said some of those things and even though I said it in a funny voice, you're like, yeah, I've had that experience before. Mm-hmm, I could see that, yes, there's some resonance. There is my guess that you can do this, that you can do this, you can cultivate all that by flirting with a plant and letting it flirt back with you. You can flirt with a breeze and let it flirt back with you. Maybe a color on a wall I mean, do you ever flirt with colors? Oh God, I do Textures this little family of quails bopping around in my backyard here. I can't get too close to them, but I do feel a little bit like I flirt with them, not when I just put out water for them and I watch them come and do their little like. I don't want to do it too loud and give Rose, my sound editor, a headache. But connection, and not just in nature. Some robots really love to flirt. That's facts. So we're talking flirting, sensuality, being sensually engaged, and again, that does not have to be about anything other than the engagement of your senses. So go get weird, go get turned on, go interact, go flirt with the world, even in the tiniest, smallest little ways. Caress a tree branch, spend a few moments, minutes longer in the sun than you might normally appreciate, in a ray coming through the window and maybe how it's landing on your arm, or the chatter of people, maybe speaking a different language next to you in a restaurant, or the sound of wind coming through trees, the rhythmic sound of a train or a subway or whatever you're in, anything anywhere. See it as an opportunity to flirt, to cultivate wonder and awe, to undo the ties of supremacy and hierarchy that keep you of separation right, that keep you separate from the world around you, that keep you acting upon things as opposed to acting with things, acting with others.
Speaker 1:I'm an only child, and so I have spent a lot of time with myself. I like my brain, I like my imagination, and there's a thing that I think I had to learn to like about myself, that's my lightness Of light, of lightness, of enjoying the ride, of not taking myself too seriously, and I didn't always appreciate my lightness because I got it confused with not smart enoughness. Imagine having magic baked in already inside of yourself and then forgetting it's magic and thinking that it's a problem, that somehow it's a thing that needs to be fixed, when it's maybe your very best thing. I spent a lot of time taking myself really seriously, and when I left school I really wanted to be an activist. I got that job.
Speaker 1:I was surrounded by brilliant humans who had been doing movement work for decades, and I really felt so intimidated and like I was not smart enough.
Speaker 1:All of that from my younger years came crashing back into my life, and one of my bosses at that time, actually at a retreat, called me ditzy, like in front of everyone, and I felt so conflicted at that time about my lightness because it came so easily and it felt at my core so resonant, so true to who, I am Able to bring some levity and find something wondrous and beautiful and something to laugh at and balance, to bring to the heaviest, darkest shit which is sort of the business of being an activist sometimes and my lightness never wavered, even though I wavered.
Speaker 1:I wavered in my trust of it, but it never wavered in its presence and it never wavered in its commitment to me. And so, after a whole lot of inner work around that core pattern of not feeling smart enough, pattern of not feeling smart enough, I feel so solid in the gift of my lightness, my ability to not take myself too seriously, and also I know I'm really, really smart. So now I get to be both. I mean, I was always both and I'm so grateful that lightness, this quality of my being, I mean you got it too. It's in there, it's got its own flavor and it's at its own level and you have your own relationship to it. But all this wonder and awe in this existence, I know how to tap into it all the time because of that lightness.
Speaker 1:And I'm so grateful that it's always come so easy for me, even when I struggled with it, even when I knew that it gave me access to seeing the world in more miraculous, magical ways.
Speaker 2:I guess we could say you're an easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, aw, easy aw.
Speaker 1:You totally get it. That's so good. Wait, are you a giant worm that just made an?
Speaker 2:orgasm pun. Well, check out the big brain on, Brad. Technically I'm a quantum worm. I love what you were saying, though, about lightness. I think it's very underrated for most creatures, except for hummingbirds Surprisingly, various forms of lichen and lightness is not lost on them.
Speaker 1:Huh, lichen. I guess I could totally see that. Huh, lichen, I guess I could totally see that. I learned from Robin Wall Kimmerer's book Braiding Sweetgrass that lichen are actually two different organisms coming together. They're a fungus and an algae. It's a partnership, because the Funky is good at one thing and needs some help, and the Algae is good at doing another thing but also needs some help. And so then, when they work together, like it, I think about that all the time. Oh yes.
Speaker 2:And in my experience from all the liking I've met, they don't take themselves very seriously. They're full of likeness, but I think part of that is because they come from very harsh conditions. It's not like the fungus in the house, they're just laid something. They're really struggling. And in that struggle comes a fabulous bee. That could be very serious. That's really a goofball.
Speaker 1:Huh, I really appreciate that. Maybe be like Lycan, not taking ourselves so seriously, even if we come from really harsh conditions, right, because it seems like the point here is that maybe Lycan uses its agency to make this choice about how it's going to move through the world.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, All beings are essential beings. They all have agency, no matter what kind of conditions they're in. Sometimes choices are small, but they really matter.
Speaker 1:Small choices do matter.
Speaker 2:Fractals Love a fractal. Oh, this was fun. Tell Jane and Alex I'll say hi. Anywho got two.
Speaker 1:Oh, my god, wait, you know Alex and Janet. Huh, guess. That was my first guess. Quantum Worm. I didn't even catch their name. If you can hear me, you're welcome back anytime. That was totally fun Crying in my jacuzzi. If you enjoyed what we did here today, go over to wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast and give us a rating as many stars.
Speaker 2:Five.
Speaker 1:As your heart desires. Five stars though. Theme music and other musical bits by the very talented Kat Otteson, sound design and editing by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to playing with you more in my jacuzzi. That sounded dirtier than I meant it, but you know what I mean.