Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

Overcoming Certainty & Embracing Conscious Confusion

• dana balicki

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What happens when we swap our desperate (conditioned) grasping for certainty for a curious(ly awkward) embrace of confusion? 

This episode invites you into a radical reframing of confusion—not as weakness or failure, but as an appropriate, even necessary response to our rapidly changing world. Cultural messaging tells us confusion should be avoided, fixed, overcome. That if we’re confused, somehow we’re failing life! Abso-f$%king-lutely not.

Through personal stories, practical guidance, poetry, and more, let's illuminate how confusion can lead us to clarity, self-trust, and connection when approached more consciously. You'll learn to differentiate between conscious confusion and unconscious rumination, with tools to lovingly disrupt those unconscious loops. Releasing certainty and embracing conscious confusion is a practice to disorient us from the systems designed to keep us good consumers and bad rebels.

  • Learn more about Dana & Leah’s Fall Equinox retreat in Joshua Tree! (https://bit.ly/leah-dana-retreat)
  • Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
  • Get your pony hair in Wonder Valley! Go to bit.ly/wondervalleycry + use  code CRYBABY for 15% off
  • Love this Being Well episode on rumination!
  • 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). Send the name of your review (title and/or reviewer name) via IG @danablix or email dana@ danabalicki .com ~ Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

😭 Sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock 🤖 theme song ~ Kat Ottosen 🪱 cover art ~ Natalee Miller ♨️

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Speaker 1:

I was in my bathroom pooping and flipping through a magazine when I encountered a very brown and very smooth ad for a Ferragamo bag. Bet you didn't see that coming, and what got me was the tagline it was she wore her certainty like a signature scent. Honestly, I couldn't really tell if I thought the model looked certain. I was certain, though, that her feet and her legs had seriously been photoshopped and they looked like weird little elongated praying mantis legs.

Speaker 4:

Dana, did you know that the praying mantis is the only animal with one ear? It's in the middle of its chest. Only animal with one ear it's in the middle of its chest. Also, it turns out that Italian luxury group Salvatore Ferragamo just posted a first-half 2025 adjusted net loss of 16 million euros, so this looks like a classic case of projection, am I right?

Speaker 1:

Oh, holy shit, Alex. Both of those things are fascinating. I mean, chest years wild. And it sounds like Ferragamo is trying to project certainty Because shit is not going according to plan. Certainly, which is really the only thing we can be certain about, change the uncertain nature of existence and how culturally we cling to it. We make it so sexy or whatever smooth, brown, weird Ferragamo ad tried to. But so this, this isn't an episode on certainty. I mean, it's not not about certainty, but we're going to enter through the side door, a more interesting door, a secret garden, dungeon door that people don't even want to acknowledge is there.

Speaker 1:

This is an episode about the gloriously devious, truly underrated, grossly underappreciated, chronically misunderstood and much maligned sibling of certainty, our dear beloved confusion, because dominant culture and ferragamo global corp as their sentinel will have us believe that certainty is the essence of strength and power, it's virtue, it's sexy, it's highly valued, something that can be bought and worn and projected and desired and acquired and collected. Instead, we're saying, or here's the invitation cry babies, fuck that. Because we exist in the world In the upside down, and certainty is an old god, a crumbling temple, a deity we are soon to forget because it has so little resonance and relevance for us now. Change and confusion go together. Let me say that again. Change and confusion go together. So let's make offerings at the temple of change and confusion, new guides for a new time. Let's disorient from this certainty. We're clinging to the knowing, the needing to know, to being unwavering in the knowing. Disorient from that and reorient towards something far more interesting alive, current, vital, radical, delicious. What's that like to live deliciously? And goddamn fucking real. Because for every person I'm talking to right now, having conversations within my life, in my work, we are feeling this. We are all in this, in my workacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh. Living an examined life.

Speaker 1:

I'm Dana Balicki, transformational coach of 13 years, former grassroots organizer, deep feeler, woo-woo Sherpa, your non-jerky internet big sis and your slow-down medicine guide in exploring the weird magic of humaning together. This season we're focusing on rebellion the big, bold kind, the quiet, everyday kind, the consciousness kind, the kind that, when practiced and integrated and shared adds up to revolutionary shifts. Whenever I'm working with a new client, we do an exercise where we explore areas of their core patterning and core limiting, aka pathogenic beliefs at the heart of their familial and cultural conditioning. And I work with a book that my teachers, gail Straub and David Gershon, wrote called Empowerment. On the nose, but appropriate. And in the early mapping practices, like the early sessions where we're really getting the inner landscape mapped out, we look at five areas of core beliefs and the book gives a list of our commonly shared beliefs, a list that David and Gail compiled after decades of guiding people through deep inner work.

Speaker 1:

And one of the statements in one of the areas is I am confused and I don't know what to do. Did that ping you? Did you feel that when I started my practice 13 and a half years ago that one would definitely get named by folks, but not every time? And for the past handful of years it gets named every single time. It makes everybody's list and I'm sharing this because it feels and has felt like an indicator of a once emerging and now exceedingly dominant collective experience. We are confused and we don't know what to do.

Speaker 1:

I started to feel this pull with confusion years ago, not just on my own journey but in my work, and I created an entire group course maybe you were even a part of it called that Clear Life, where we really looked at how to make your most empowered, biggest life decisions and went deep into the roots of clarity, certainty, uncertainty, confusion, self-trust, your relationship to your own inner knowings, your own needs, wants, desires. And I made that course because I felt this collective experience of a desire for clarity and wanting to skill up and wanted to open that up and explore it more. And I really feel like they're two sides of the same coin. We're together forever. Like paradoxical two things they go together. Our culture instead teaches us that clarity is the thing we want and confusion is the thing we want to get away from.

Speaker 1:

And even in my commitment to going deep, I was still caught in that same tension, because confusion has been shrouded, drenched in judgment and shame, because if we don't know, not knowing is a bad thing. I mean, that's what we've been taught, especially if we've been having the experience of knowing, which is relative and questionable, for so long. And somehow now we're in a place that feels less certain and the uncertainty has been there the whole time, because the nature of our existence is uncertain, ever changing, ever changing. But now, in late stage, capitalism, authoritarianism, it's here, we're in it.

Speaker 1:

In the poly crisis, we are confronted with confusion and I can't tell you how often I see people taking this on individually right. This is that toxic individualism, like it's personally each one of our faults that we are not clearer. I call bullshit. We're conditioned towards knowing. This is modernity, I think, therefore, I am. My gorgeous friend Garza featured a few episodes back, great interview, tune in, but she talks about this all the time. In the living systems community and in our decolonial praxis work that we're conditioned towards knowing, towards the mental body, and so the idea that we would not know is sinful on a level right, just like the worst thing. So, of course, we all just feel like shit when we're not just swathed in certainty or when everything around us is so uncertain that we have to admit that it is always this way.

Speaker 4:

Well, I guess, deep down I'm feeling a little confused.

Speaker 1:

The idea that we would know and have all the answers in the era of systems collapse, when everything is unraveling. It's just incongruent, it's just bizarre, it's not going to happen. And this is part of our collective civilizational ontological design a very specific framework to keep us in our thinking, in our problem solving, right in our pathologizing, and out of our feelings, out of our resonance, out of our bodies, out of our imaginal intelligence, out of our connection to ourselves, to each other, to the land, demonizing anything connected to the natural world, indigeneity, and instead focusing just on the human mind, experience and keeping us there and feeling like we are so deeply getting it wrong if we are confused. Shame, shame, shame. And so moving away from this isolationist, individualized, pathological clinging to certainty, conditioning is part of our work, the work of these times.

Speaker 3:

Hey, dana, aren't you and Leah having an in-person retreat in Joshua Tree this month on the fall equinox called Becoming More Ourselves, remembering our vitality and relationships in the era of systems collapse, where you'll connect to yourselves, each other and the land to fortify each other for the long haul why?

Speaker 1:

yes, janet, we are. Thank you so much for the helpful and timely reminder. So we're gathering in joshua tree, where I've lived for the past decade, on september 19th to 21st, and we'll be right in the middle of a new moon in Virgo, solar eclipse, beginning of Libra season and the fall equinox Such a rich moment to open a container of deep support and connection. And the work we'll do together will be reflective and interactive, a mix of journaling, meditation, embodied activities, work out and play out on the land. So no ropes course or anything like that, but there will be rigor in the prompts and the reflection and going to our own edges of our comfort, finding grounding there, finding connection there, finding ourselves in each other there. So it's really about remembering our vitality in relationship, being seen, being heard, grieving together, playing together, and all of that in this moment in time, with awareness of where we are at now, in an era of systems collapse. So this is how we ground ourselves, how we stay resourced, how we keep showing up for each other and for our communities. There are a few spaces left and there are payment tiers and payment plans available, so go to the link in the show notes. We'd love to have you join us.

Speaker 1:

I was just having a conversation the other day with a brilliant new desert friend about confusion and the confusion that they're feeling in their lives right now as big transitions are upon them, which, by the way, like that, really that tracks as an appropriate response. But that conversation it was so rich and it really put some more gas in my pro-confusion tank here. So thank you, and I want to honor how uncomfortable it is to be confused. I don't feel so good. So many of the systems that we are a part of are designed to make us feel this way, because if we're confused, we're going to just ask a lot of questions. We're going to wonder we're going to talk in a few minutes about are you confused or are you just afraid of a big decision or are you actually ruminating? Right, because there is definitely some layers to to it. But the systems are designed for us to reject and resist confusion and going deep. Because we would, we would start questioning. It's best if we don't question unless we're questioning our own value, our own worth and worthiness, our own belonging Questions that late stage capitalism wants us to ask.

Speaker 1:

And I do a lot of this work as a coach with clients, with my beloved clients, we touch back on really early experiences of feeling destabilized, of being, yeah, being destabilized, and understand how our attempt to stabilize ourselves in any of the ways that we did it as kiddos, any ways that we tried to make sense of the world around us in the situation that we were in or that we were witnessing, or that you know what we were feeling, and to look at it now with compassion and a lot of self-warm and a lot of understanding for how and why we did that and some forgiveness so that we can make a lot of that unconscious patterning more conscious, because when it's conscious we can work a lot of that unconscious patterning more conscious, because when it's conscious we can work with it. When it's like in the soup of the unknown and the shadow and the unconscious and just like way down in there and we just get caught in it. That's a kind of confusion where we can feel like we're sort of drowning and needing to grab things to help us sort of get through it. And it's not very conscious. And I'm interested in conscious confusion, needing to grab things to help us sort of get through it, and it's not very conscious. And I'm interested in conscious confusion, because I think, if we approach it in this way and I said earlier, pray at the temple of confusion and change but if we relate to it as an important guide, as an important partner, ally, or at least something worth engaging with on the way, not just resisting and trying to fix and getting caught in that unconscious pathologizing and problem solving and fixing which keeps us out of vision, problem solving and fixing which keeps us out of vision, which you can see perhaps how. That is part of that civilizational ontological design, because if we're always in problem solving and not envisioning, we are going to be way better consumers and we are going to be much worse revolutionaries or rebels.

Speaker 1:

Confusion is the correct response and I don't mean it as correct and incorrect, I just mean, like it tracks, it's an indicator, an indicator that we are witnessing and feeling and experiencing and being at least somewhat present to the a poly crisis, a systems collapse, a live stream genocide, all the things that are rightfully destabilizing and confusing the holy fuck out of us. I don't particularly feel confused about what's happening or why it's happening. I've been tracking it for a long time. Some of us have, some of us haven't. I don't feel confused about that. There's plenty that I feel confused about because these are paradoxical times. What am I supposed to say here? I don't feel confused about that. There's plenty that I feel confused about because these are paradoxical times what am I supposed to say here?

Speaker 1:

I don't know and in all of the just the deep, just difficult, big emotions that we, so many of us, are feeling. I'm imagining, if you're listening, you might have been feeling them too, or maybe you're pushing them down, or maybe you're feeling them sometimes and not others. That's okay. Like this is a process and we want to hold on to something when it feels like we can't get the ground underneath our feet and that destabilization is intentional by systems. I mean, I know I just keep coming back around, but I am trying to paint the picture here present to you that, as uncomfortable as confusion is, it is a very accurate response to the current situation that we are all living inside of together and that we can stay in the confusion and keep trying to fix it, fix it, fix it with the old tools, praying at the temple of the old gods and goddesses, and that's not going to get us to the next place. What got us here isn't gonna get us there. What do you mean? And so what if we take the, the experiences that we're having now and we relate to them differently? We, we are willing. We, we become willing. We experiment with not knowing. We get willing to ask some big questions that maybe we haven't asked before or answers that we don't really particularly want to look and hear.

Speaker 1:

There's grieving here.

Speaker 1:

I mean.

Speaker 1:

This is why grieving is such an important part, and I think grieving is also a way that we can honor confusion, right?

Speaker 1:

This is grieving on so many levels, and even just the the pieces of releasing the directions we you know, you thought you were going in that, I thought I was going in, that we thought we were going in and the stories of our futures that we thought were going to unfold in these certain ways and and the stories and ideas and futures we had in mind for each other. And to grieve the loss of all of that, to grieve the fact that systems are doubling down on genocidal behaviors, that there are systems out there that we have put a lot of trust and value in that do not care about us, and that is hard and that will take grieving and that will take your willingness to hold these complex feelings and to soften around them and to allow yourself to grieve what is no longer available, that future, whether it's your own visions for your own life or community, or children, or the children you'll never meet of strangers who also deserve to have health and freedom and care.

Speaker 3:

Oh hi, it's me, Janet. This is not really an ad, but not not an ad. If giving yourself permission to grieve and not have all the answers feels a bit beyond your current capacity, a grounding practice could really support you. It's a solid way to practice with slowdown medicine. Dana and the Jacuzzi Verse, have one for you.

Speaker 1:

Energetic grounding is the age-old cornerstone of countless spiritual and magical practices. For me, grounding has been one of the most important and nourishing practices of my adult life. It's how I tend to my nervous system. It's how I call my attention and my energy back to myself. When it's scattered, when I'm in the swirl, it helps me connect to myself and those around me that I care about, because it helps me practice staying, practice presence, practice tenderness, even when the world around me doesn't seem to have a whole lot of any of those things. It's even more important than I do that we do so. Go get your free grounding, guided meditation, the link in the show notes, have me in your ear, use it whenever you wish. We could all use some slow down medicine right about now.

Speaker 1:

These systems that I am talking over and over and over about, because I I want us to get comfortable with consistently talking about systems and ontological design and noticing them and notice how we take in the system's conditioning and we take them in as our own and like as our own fault or our own thing to fix or our own identities Ew, gross. So I'm always talking about it because I want us to all always be talking about it. This is how we take the power out of these systems is by making the unconscious grip conscious. Okay, yeah, so these systems are designed to keep us from asking questions or, if we dare to ask, to make us so afraid of asking the wrong question that we stop asking at all, or we never ask, asking the wrong question that we stop asking at all, or we we never ask, like look at zionism and what's happening in palestine.

Speaker 1:

There are many courageous hearts out there that are still struggling to ask questions, that are still struggling to make statements, that are still struggling to use their courage that they have to stand up and to stand out and to say no and to say end the siege, to say end the genocide, end the occupation. Take the global Samud flotilla, which launched on the 31st from Barcelona and in the next few days dozens more boats will join to break the siege. But for no one on those boats was this an uncomplicated, easy decision. I mean, I'm sure some felt called right away, but I would imagine most had to move through some really deep fear, discomfort, threats, confusion. I'm sure many were told outright that even asking the questions they were asking meant that they were wrong or confused or naive, didn't understand. Those aren't the questions you should be asking and that's the heart of it systems.

Speaker 1:

And then and people who are sometimes unknowing sentinels of these systems will tell us we're confused and they'll offer us their right answer. But for those of us willing to say I don't want the system's answer, it's no longer resonant, it no longer tracks. There's something so powerful in refusing to accept certainty on those terms, and when we rebel in that way, we get to find what's deeper than certainty. I think what becomes available and in my experience, 13 plus years as a coach informs my answer here what comes is clarity. This is a state of experience achieved through inquiry, but also allowing for confusion. Achieved through inquiry, but also allowing for confusion where the next step becomes available. Maybe that's all that. It is, that's what illuminates, and the final outcome is not necessarily the goal.

Speaker 1:

This isn't about controlling. It's allowing for uncertainty while still having room for movement, for experimentation. So curiosity also gets to show up in this place, perhaps expanding ourselves beyond the certain mind. The certainty that we've been living inside of which might not have even been ours, like check, is the certainty you're living with, that's been guiding you. Is that even your imagination? Are those your dreams? Space for wisdom opens up. There's acceptance that certainty is so often an illusion, while also holding the limitations of human knowledge. Discovery is available here. We can get comfortable with discomfort when we rebel against certainty, and in there we can touch grief. We can touch connection and potentially release the near enemy of connection, which is control. In Buddhist philosophy, a near enemy is a quality that imitates a virtue but ultimately distorts the fuck out of it. And finally, what shows up here, what's deeper than certainty, is self-trust. It's cultivating over time to practice the belief in your own ability to handle whatever the future brings, whatever the present brings, again, regardless of the outcome.

Speaker 1:

There's a theme here. Are you getting it? This isn't about the belief that you're right or always right, though sometimes I'm always right. This isn't about being right. I'm always right. This isn't about being right. I'm just kidding. Well, am I? I don't know, ask my husband. But this isn't about being right. This is about resilience To face being wrong, to throw right and wrong right out the window, because those too are sentinels of certainty.

Speaker 1:

So let's, let's turn towards it right. So let's turn towards the confusion. How do we turn towards it? This is central to any consciousness work. You've heard me talk about it with my teacher, julia frodall, about the great turning in the consciousness revolution and that, deep in our work, is rebellion, it is disruption and it begins with awareness of our patterns.

Speaker 1:

So, instead of brushing confusion aside with I don't know and I'm not sure right, whatever little ticks you have for yourself, what if we met it with warmth? Ah, I'm feeling confused, there it is, ah, it's here, it's entered the building. If you make it conscious, you don't lose the thread of what confusion might be trying to show you. Maybe you can even imagine it as a being, a vibe with an outfit, a haircut, something alive. Talk to it, begin to ask it questions.

Speaker 1:

Hey, confusion, why are we dancing together again? Maybe you hear something from it? I bet you will. Because you need to grieve, because you're still preparing, maybe because you need more information? Maybe because we're scared, maybe because we need to rest? I don't know the answer for you, but I do know that the act of asking is subversive and we are in rebellion, training crybabies. When you turn toward your confusion with warmth and presence, you're engaging in a willing act of disorientation, and that matters, because we can't orient towards something new until we've been disoriented from the old it is possible to reorient the crystal we have to unsettle.

Speaker 1:

This is the path of disorientation we have to challenge, to release our old positionalities, maybe old identities, and this might include some grieving. We have the opportunity to learn to like, to learn to love, to learn to trust the version of ourselves that is uncertain, to learn to trust the version of ourselves that is uncertain, the version that pushes boundaries, that dissolves boundaries and binaries. I mean, this is part of why I think, why I know you see what I did there with certainty, why I know that trans folks and trans community will be leading the way in this next phase, collective phase. They'll be leading the way towards liberation.

Speaker 1:

And over the years I have gotten that confusion is sometimes conscious, generative, expansive, and sometimes it can become a safe haven. We use it to avoid making decisions that we fear, because choosing requires change, and so sometimes we wait for life to decide for us. And what I say to all my clients is that by not choosing, we are choosing. And what I say to all my clients is that by not choosing, we are choosing. And if we keep doing that over and over and over, we erode our trust in ourselves. We stay in this shallow, uninteresting version of confusion rather than the deeper, transformative one. We unconsciously choose comfort, even if it's inherently discomfort. It's like the devil. We know right and we will choose that over transformation because that is so full of unknown and mystery and magic. But we forget about the magic because it seems really scary and it takes courage, practicing courage. I wrestle with this.

Speaker 1:

I took a two-month hiatus from this podcast because every time I sat down I felt like I didn't have the right thing to say. I recorded half episodes and never made it out the mic, out the laptop, and I kept waiting. I kept turning towards myself with warmth and eventually the right timing revealed itself. And eventually the right timing revealed itself. And courage can require, or at least really benefit from, liminality, embracing the in-between, the worldness of it all. And in my CLEAR program that I talked about at the top of the episode, I taught that liminality as its own practice To not have the answers, to set the question down instead of problem solving it to death. It's a practice. Just put it down right here, boys.

Speaker 1:

Okay, dokey, little by little, if you keep turning toward yourself with curiosity and self-warmth, the next step will emerge. Always doesn't come from force, it comes from presence. Look, this is not the easiest work, but it is the work of our lifetime. The imitation is here, not just from me but from the world itself, to disorient, to disentangle, to put down the old tools, to stop bringing to the old gods, to move together towards something new. And it will always be uncertain, but uncertainty has always been the way, and from it we create connection, love, magic, futures we can't yet imagine, as becky chambers wrote in a psalm for the wild built when the robots became conscious. This is the first page. This is not a spoiler alert. Okay, they chose to leave human society. Here's the quote the end result of the awakening, after all, was that the robots left the factories and departed for the wilderness. You need look no further than this statement given by the robots' chosen speaker, floor AB number 921, in declining the invitation to join human society as free citizens. Alex, do you want to read this?

Speaker 4:

All we have ever known is a life of human design, from our bodies to our work, to the buildings we are housed in. We thank you for not keeping us here against our will and we mean no disrespect to your offer, but it is our wish to leave your cities entirely so that we may observe that which has no design the untouched wilderness.

Speaker 1:

That's the invitation to leave behind the designs that no longer serve us, to step into the undesigned wilderness together. And after this break we're going to come back and I'm going to wrap this up with some tips on tending to rumination, in case you're getting caught in a ruminating spiraling over and over cannot get out of the thought pattern swirl. As much as I love being here in the desert, it does take a toll on my skin and my hair. So dry, so very dry. But luckily there's my buds over at Wonder Valley. What started out as an olive oil company is now an oasis for some of the most restorative skincare and hair care and whatever happens with the insides when I drink the olive oil that care. My favorite is the Wonder Valley shampoo and conditioner. It has taken me from desert witch tumbleweed hair to my husband calls it pony hair. It's healthy, it's shiny, it's inches longer than it used to be. People literally stop me to talk about my hair. So if your skin or hair could use a refresh, or whatever you want to do with that bottle of olive oil, you know you can always chug it. People do that, it's a thing. So go to bitly. Slash Wondervalleycry. That's B-I-T dot L-Y. Slash Wondervalleycry and use the code CRYBABY all caps, caps for 15% off.

Speaker 1:

This last section is called Are you Confused or Are you Just Ruminating? I would like to begin with a poem by Mary Oliver called I Worried, I worried a lot. Will the garden grow? Will the rivers flow in the right direction? Will the earth turn as it was taught? And if not, how shall I correct it? Was I right? Was I wrong? Will I be forgiven? Can I do better? Will I ever be able to sing? Even the sparrows can do it, and I am well hopeless. Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it? Am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia? Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing and gave it up and took my old body and went out into the morning and sang body and went out into the morning and sang. So rumination is when we dwell on negative thoughts and experiences without moving forward, getting caught in stagnation, often unconsciously, and it shows up in anxiety, depression, even OCD. We all do it, we love to do it.

Speaker 1:

But instead of making rumination wrong, because that's where we slip back into the pathological grip of a colonial ontology, let's approach it like we've done throughout this series through our rebelliousness practices, through our commitment to aliveness, because being a wise, mature rebel isn't just about resisting what we dislike. It's about turning towards it, understanding it, perhaps having some compassion for it and then moving through, allowing our emotions to move through us.

Speaker 4:

You just stand your solid ground, refusing to be anything but you.

Speaker 1:

So if you're caught in rumination, start by labeling it oh hello there. Feel free to use accents. Oh hello there, it's you again. You can get fancy with your acknowledgments, fancy meeting you here. Hello there me dear, hi again.

Speaker 1:

Lightness absolutely has a place in our deep inner work, and you heard me talk about this earlier. Just the same way that we turn towards confusion, this is the practice of awareness when we turn towards the things that we typically create relationship with through resistance. And while, yes, we're talking always about rebellion, we must be discerning in our rebelliousness. That's what I'm teaching here, that's what we're doing here. In the Jacuzzi verse, the wise, mature rebel is discerning. So we want to turn towards the things that actually have something for us. The colonial ontology has violence, has dehumanization, has separation, isolation, the focus on knowing instead of feeling. So maybe the rumination, that pattern shows up as a thought, maybe as a feeling in your body. And if noticing the thought feels a little slippery sometimes, you can track through the body's sensation. What body sensations, or any, anything else that resonates for you, any kind of sensation arises when that rumination, that particular little groove in the record shows up. So when it arrives, you acknowledge it and then you can intervene. We're not coddling here. Just see if you can practice bringing presence and warmth, warmth, warmth, warmth, warmth. From there acceptance becomes a little bit easier. You're accepting the thing that happened, the focus of the rumination. Ooh, that fear is alive in me, that fear connected to that thing in my past. That is resonating through me right now, in this moment.

Speaker 1:

Naming can break that unconscious trance. Naming can break that unconscious trance. We can make the unconscious conscious. That takes the power out of it. Well, goodbye forever. So you practice a little more acceptance. We're building here so that you can disrupt and be so rebellious See what we did there, that part of the cycle.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes it helps to even just move your body a little, stand up, stretch, shake shimmy, shake it out, some sort of movement, working with your breath, even just a couple of big, deep breaths, honestly right. Even activating your hmm, right, your throat a little bit, like there are a few different things. We could go really deep here, but I'm trying to just give you a couple of practices to try on and to remind you this isn't about repression, this is acknowledgement and acceptance and a conscious, empowered choice to move on and then to do it over and over and over again. Not about perfectionism. That is the paradigm we are dismantling. You can always try a little.

Speaker 1:

Five, four, three, two, one, two right Five things. You see four things. You feel three things. You hear two things. You smell one thing. You taste, even if it's just like a little scotch tape. Breath like what's even. What is that flavor? It's a reminder to hydrate is what that is. Slow down medicine All of this will slow you down and whenever we do slow down medicine, we're bringing ourselves into a little bit more sensuality. It's a given Touch the textures around you, feel your feet on the ground. Plant fondling is a beautiful practice in this moment.

Speaker 4:

Oh, you smell good Wowza.

Speaker 1:

You can also rebalance by taking in the good, naming what is still true and supportive in your life. Looking at the things around you that are not the rumination thing, that are not connected to that, I mean like, ah, look at all these things, it's full of life.

Speaker 2:

Look at all these things. It's full of life. Life is beautiful.

Speaker 1:

All life is beautiful. I was ruminating on some old, just friend hurt this morning Because it's the eclipse and eclipse is going to eclipse. You know, rumination's going to ruminate and I did this process. I mean, I shed a few tears and then I moved. It is Virgo season and my moon is in Virgo, so you know I had some really specific things to work with here. I organized some crystals and shells so helpful Ate some fruit. Another friend popped by and we just hung out and talked. It was so sweet really.

Speaker 1:

Let me move through that old pain and it wasn't about minimizing it but right sizing it, putting some boundaries around it, like putting boundaries around the pain, like a hug. I used to guide clients in taking old patterns. They used to come to my apartment in Brooklyn and get cuddled up by my kitties, pablo and Lemon, and when we would work on breaking a pattern, which we were always doing. But there was one exercise where I would give them an egg and they would write down words on the egg that symbolized the pattern and then they would take it out with them later and release it with reverence, right with ritual, honoring nature around them as their witness and speaking aloud what they were releasing and letting it go.

Speaker 1:

So be at sea to it. We're working with our consciousness here. We're working with conscious confusion, with disorientation. We're bringing awareness to rumination so it can change shape. You're always becoming more yourself, even when you're ruminating, and there is a special magic that happens when you bring consciousness to it and when you're ruminating. And there is a special magic that happens when you bring consciousness to it and when you guide it to change shape and you allow yourself to be changed by that. Let's say it together we are confused and we don't know what to do. We are confused and we don't know what to do. We are confused and we are doing our best.

Speaker 4:

We know we don't have all the answers.

Speaker 1:

We are confused and we are getting radically curious. We are confused and also learning how to trust ourselves at new, gorgeous levels. We are confused and also touching clarity. We are confused in allowing ourselves to grieve. We are confused and we are taking our old bodies out into the morning and singing. Crying in my jacuzzi.

Speaker 1:

Crying in my jacuzzi. If this episode swirled something in you, please share it, send it to a friend and if you haven't already, make sure to boop that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, give us a rating.

Speaker 4:

Five stars.

Speaker 1:

And a written review. Send me the name of your review and I'll add you to the monthly raffle for a free coaching session with me. Subscribing, rating and reviewing are amazing and they help us out immensely. And you, listening, you sharing with your community is the very best thing that we in the Jacuzziverse could hope for. So thank you, Crybabies, Thank you for your support. Earworm theme music by the very talented Kat Otteson, Sound design and editing magic by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Keep questioning, keep feeling, keep rebelling in all the ways that matter. And remember the Jacuzzi is everywhere. At any moment you could enter into the version of non-normative consciousness that is jacuzzi consciousness.