Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki

Gag Me with a Healthy NO: Empathy, Resonance, and Disgust with Neuroscience Educator Sarah Peyton

• dana balicki • Season 3 • Episode 11

Share episode

What if we’re all just empathy dehydrated (an over-culture design!)—and the rehydration begins in our nervous systems and our emotional bodies. In this episode, we travel through a wild field of brain 🧠 neurons 💥 to connect with author, neuroscience educator, and my teacher @sarahpeytonauthor to explore accompaniment, the practice of bringing your full self into relationship and being willing to be changed by another. 

From the rise of fascism to climate grief and information overload, we trace how overwhelm disconnects us from a healthy, sacred NO—and how tending to our disgust circuit becomes an inoculation to the manipulation, scapegoating, and burnout. 

We talk about unconscious contracts and how to spot, revoke, and replace them with life‑honoring vows. Along the way, we surface the baked-in conditioning culture has trained us to direct disgust at people instead of the harms done to them, and we share practical steps to reorient toward collective care and courage, empathy and agency.

♨ show notes from the jacuzzi-verse ♨

  • Go to sarahpeyton.com — a true treasure chest of transformative information, classes, trainings, and more! Each year she hosts the Resonance Summit + courses you want to take, so get on her list and join the global community!
  • Get Sarah’s books Your Resonant Self & Your Resonant Self Workbook — 100/10 (yes, that’s right) recommend.
  • Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
  • 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 ♨️

Qs, comments, or requests for the jacuzzi-verse? Text us 😭🌀♨️

Support the show

@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 😭

SPEAKER_05:

Dearest cry babies, welcome back to Crying and My Jackie, the ebbs and flows of living an examined life where we live laugh love in the anthropocine. I'm Dana Balicki, transformational coach of 13 years, former grassroots organizer, reverently irreverent deep feeler, woo-woo shirp by your internet big sis that you always wanted. And slow down medicine guide in exploring the weird magic of humaning together. The jacuzzi verses where we dive into the messy, beautiful, ridiculous, and profound journey of self-exploration and collective evolution. Because life is a lot. And sometimes the only thing left to do is to sink into the warm, bubbly depths of it all.

SPEAKER_04:

And let it flow.

SPEAKER_05:

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. That's a quote from political philosopher, activist, writer Hannah Arendt. And I suppose I like to think of it not as a death of human empathy, but maybe our human empathy is in a coma or real, real ill, real dehydrated, undernourished, malnourished, like many of our souls are inside of a dominant white supremacist colonial culture. I mean modernity, this is this is this dehumanization that we are all experiencing and watching the rise of fascism. It touches all of us individually. And you know how I am, you know that I believe that individual work has a place in the collective that we we must do our inner work as we are out in the world, especially as more and more people are waking up to fascism and the effects of fascism. And now it's real, real bad for a whole lot of people. And like climate collapse, we can't even see the all the effects from here. And while this is happening civilizationally, we have agency. You know, that's my favorite, but it's because it's it's what we have. It's like the only thing we have is how we use our energy and attention. And so our intention and attention towards connection, towards human empathy, which also means towards our warmth towards ourselves. This is the work, this is the way. This love, this focus on love and loving connection, relationshipping with each other, with the world's inside of us and the world's outside of us. This is always the topic. To hold tenderness for ourselves and for those around us when the world absolutely tells us there is no room for tenderness, and all tenderness will be punished. Or at least resisted, then we get to be subversive. And you know, one of my newest and most delightful teachers would be such a perfect person to talk to about this. I think we should go visit Sarah Payton. She's an author, a constellations facilitator, certified trainer of nonviolent communication, a neuroscience educator who integrates constellations, brain science, and the use of resonant language to tend to inhale trauma. I was attracted to her because of her effort to create a compassionate understanding of the effects of relational trauma on the brain and how she teaches people the potency of words, language, relationshipping to change and heal us. Plus, she goes deep in the personal and systemic forces that lead to traumatization, including racism, patriarchy, gender oppression, capitalism, colonialism. So up our alley, crybabies. Am I right? She also wrote Your Resonant Self, Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain's Capacity for Healing. Ugh, highly recommend. And her second book, Your Resonant Self-Workbook from Self-Sabotage to Self-Care, you have heard me talk about it before. So let's go visit Sarah. To get to her, we are gonna go on a little magical trip into a forest of brain neurons. Let's go, crybabies. Ooh, it's tingly through here. Okay. I've never gone through a forest of brain neurons before. Also, if you hear any crackly poppy buzzy throughout the interview, just know it's an interview being conducted in a forest of brain neurons, so what happens? Ah, here we are. The effervescent Sarah Payton. I just spent all last weekend with you in the in the in the constellation intensive. And so uh it feels very normal for me to sit here watching you, but now we're talking.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's a delight to be here. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, thank you for for your willingness and interest. You know, the things that you're talking about and right now at this time and in our collective experience, yeah. I think there's something about the ways that we're showing up now and being called to show up that requires us moving together and requires our tending to ourselves and our attunement with each other and connection with each other, and you know, all you so much of your work around like accompaniment has been speaking to me on so many levels.

SPEAKER_02:

It's like the most radical thing we could do in some ways is to begin. I mean, uh the in terms of inner work is to is to and and then it gets reflected in what happens and what we do in the outer world, is to begin to actually acknowledge our bodies and and to be with them, but not just to acknowledge and be with our bodies, but to be with ourselves with warmth is absolutely goes counter to every precept uh of every major religion and every activist.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I mean social justice movement, like for a long time in like a very specific way, and there wasn't a lot of warmth, which is why I sort of found my way towards like interpersonal work in on various modalities and frameworks and teachers because there was no it was like there was no room for that. There was no room for that kind of work, and if you needed that, there was something like wrong. Like there was something like you weren't doing, you weren't showing up for the cause correctly, right? You weren't stepping correctly to like the bigger, the people who really needed help if you were turning inward. And I just knew that that wasn't that that didn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02:

No, it doesn't make sense, does it? As we start to work with the neuroscience and and the the the the the the invitation into deeper and more authentic relationship, what we start to discover is that everybody's really wrapped up in these kind of spider webs of unconscious contracts that keep people from being able to. I I kind of uh there's this scene in The Hobbit that I love where all the dwarves are star are wound up in the spider web and suspended from the trees and they can't touch the ground. And I'm like, this is us, this is our world. Nobody's got their nobody's got their feet on the actual ground, or we would not be behaving the way we're behaving, you know. There would be like this love and sacred relationship with the earth itself, with the planet, that yeah, that we fall away from as soon as we start to fall away from our bodies.

SPEAKER_05:

And yeah, last weekend being in that intensive I was pleasantly surprised, or whatever the word is for the feeling I was having of how much was about tuning into the sensation. How much was tuning into the body and all these little strands of trust that we were weaving over and over in the practices and the demos, and you know, there's something about like, okay, it's a training and roll up my sleeves and get ready with my little notes. And you're like, oh, notes. And I was like, great. So much was that tuning in, and and that's such a critical part of what we're doing of like becoming more relational, right? The accompaniment, because it's like, oh yeah, I'm here to do something with you. But wait, I have to do this with me first. Like that's built into what you are teaching. And I'm wondering if you could just talk a bit about the idea of accompaniment, especially since this is what we're gonna be doing together, like on the planet now, is really learning this and that personal piece too.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I've started to think a lot about the difference between being with humans and being with AI. And the um and a lot of people right now are talking about like the quality of of uh of empathy that they get from the AI. That how the how how amazing it is what AI can do with them. And um, and it makes it it makes me laugh a little bit. It's because it is quite beautiful. But what this is what we could all do if we didn't have nervous systems that were reacting to each other.

SPEAKER_05:

Right, right. We would all be so great at so many things. Really tender, tender, tender bit.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and so uh what I'm very interested in is like what makes it different from AI to be with humans and how how what happens when we really get interested in what's happening over there? Because we can be as interested as we want to be about what's happening for the AI, but there's just not gonna be a lot of body-based experience over there. No. So the discovery of um somebody else's soul and our own soul, as you said, you know, turning towards ourselves and then another. So so uh this is where I've been thinking a lot about this c concept of accompaniment and about how to make uh uh humans more aware of each other's juiciness is is one of my my constant wanderings. And um and so accompaniment is what happens when you get uh you when you bring your whole body and your body sensations into a relationship with somebody else, and you get really interested in how you are changed and how they are changed in this relationship where we're paying attention to ourselves and each other. And then once somebody begins to say, once we start to ask, do you do I understand you? Did I catch you correctly? And do am I does it seem to you like I'm getting you at all? And the other person says, yes, it does. Then we're moving out, uh we've got resonance established, and once we've got resonance established, two systems vibrating with each other, then we're moving into a place where we can take movement together, where we can where we can take steps together, where we can move from one place to another. And that is accompaniment. It is it is a series of yeses over time that get to be in some way sustained or continued, at least for a few moments, perhaps for hours or weeks or months or years.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, when we were practicing attunement in the work together, right? And that question of um like how does it feel to be changed by another? I had a practice buddy, and without divulging anything personal, just m when my little part in it was like I was asked the question and I told a story, and then she's like, so how does it feel to be and she had to repeat it a couple times because I was really trying to take that in of like, oh wait, how does it feel to be changed by another? Not because they told me some great story of their life, but because I just sat with them and breathed and felt their little buzzy coil of a nervous system and my little buzzy coil, and somehow we found each other.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I'm just in this moment feeling so much delight that you were in the class because so often I get to be on podcast interviews, and the folks are just they just have never had the experience at all in any way. And so I'm just um excited and delighted that we get to be talking about it. And on a podcast, I feel like, oh my goodness, what a thing I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_01:

So Dana doesn't know we're here, but it's important.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we slipped in through our robots only wormhole, to ask you to leave a review for the one and only podcast broadcasting from the jacuzzi verse.

SPEAKER_04:

Did I hear somebody say wormhole?

SPEAKER_01:

You sure did, Connie.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh okay, I just didn't want to be left out with the party.

SPEAKER_00:

We portaled in here to remind listeners how much it means to all of us that they rate and leave a review, even just a short one.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh yes, absolutely. Go punch some buttons, y'all. Um takes a second. Time's a construct, anyways, but you got all the time in the world.

SPEAKER_01:

So take a precious second of your time. That is not even real, to leave a five-star review.

SPEAKER_00:

And a written review, too. When you do, you'll be entered into a monthly raffle for a free coaching session with Dana.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my god, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00:

Details are in the show notes. Thank you, Crybabies. Your support means everything to us.

SPEAKER_01:

Sharing is caring.

SPEAKER_05:

I was getting all sweaty beforehand because I was like, okay, Janet, write your notes so that you stick to your notes because you have eight million things that you would like to talk about. So far, we've probably done one, but it's fine. It's perfect, it's just absolutely perfect. But that experience is really alive in me, and I feel like even has changed me over the week. And I see myself as someone who's like, I do this kind of work in the world, you know. I'm I listen to people, I do things, you know. And it's God, it's just different. And I think some of it also feels like the time, yeah, like this moment that we're in where we're all being changed. Like my mom, I just talked to her, and she was talking about how she's crying every day because of everything that she's you know, watching and the onslaught and the overwhelm. And it made me think of something you had I'd heard you say probably in different places, but talking about how like when we're in overwhelm, we sort of lose access to our healthy know. Oh, yeah, that's true. Right. And that sort of like, I'm sure there's there's many things that we maybe lose access to and overwhelm, but but as you know, thinking about this rebellion or like how we're being asked to show up and maybe become more relational humans, and that's really the rebellion. I wonder if you could talk a bit about like how we tend to that overwhelm, how we can tend to the overwhelm, you know, the effects that it has on us, so that when we see it and feel it, we can just like point at it a little bit, be like, oh, that's there it is, right? Just a little more consciousness, right? This is the invitation, it seems like.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um well uh one of the things that we're uh routinely asked to do as children, in at least North America, um, and also in Western Europe often, uh is we're routinely as children asked to give up our sense of disgust. Oh my god, ew, David!

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. Sorry. That was the big one with all the arrows on it that I was really hoping we'd yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

We're we're we're we're supposed to kiss the relatives that we don't want to kiss, we're supposed to eat the food that uh tastes bitter, we're supposed to um be uh polite and not say how we really feel. And you know, I mean there's something to be said for learning certain, you know, ways not to be alarmingly rude to people.

SPEAKER_03:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

But but all of the kind of um all of the little no's that a child has, the little and big no's, are mostly overridden. And our no is a really kind of a sacred act that that that is in big and small ways saying what we don't want to take inside of our bodies. And that is really important because when we have to s give up our all of our little no's about what we're taking into our bodies or letting happen to our bodies, or having people touch us on our bodies, or kiss our cheeks, or pat our heads, or uh ask us to sit certain places and not move, or all of the other things that our that our bodies would naturally say no to. Um when when this happens, we start to lose access to one of our one of our systems of emotion and motivation, which is a disgust circuit. We all have healthy disgust that helps us to know how much is too much. And basically, when we're experiencing overwhelm, it means that we have not known how much is too much, and we may have stopped knowing long ago how much is too much. And so our capacity to say no um is i is then compromised. It's not only compromised, it becomes a handle that's sticking out of us that the media can use to direct us. It's it's like a whole it's it's the founding principle of genocide and racism. It is is the disgust that is manipulated by the systems that we live in in order to mm have us have um repulsed reactive responses to things like, for example, immigration all over the world, to the experience of of having folks who don't look like us come into our lives, our homes, our countries, our workplaces, our churches, um and and the the response of of of our untended bodies is to try to repel the to to vomit out the the the sense of what we're being told is the invader. When the invaders are really uh all of the ways that people are told that they that they don't get to say no. And all of the things that we end up taking into us that we'd have not consented to. So uh it's such a it is such an interesting time because we are being s so taken by the handles uh on the bat on the backs of our bodies and steered around um by in particular nationalism. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, and I mean I think that like white supremacist Christian nationalism is also going to sort of lube us toward the techno, necrostate, like a whole other thing, right? Like this is feels almost like this weird little like middle ground, and I don't mean to um undermine or demean any of it or minimize that's what I'm looking for. Like, I'm not trying to do that, but it feels like the early stages of whatever this steering is, but that it is stirring up these deep but sort of top-level disgusts, right? Of just like, oh, that's different. Oh, I don't like that. I don't, you know, it's like that's all being stimulated really rapidly, you know, so we are in that overwhelm. We don't have any sense. And and most of us don't have, as you said, like a sense of our healthy disgust.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. How much news is too much, how much alcohol is too much, how much sugar is too much, how much um what portion of food is too much? What how much Netflix is too much?

SPEAKER_05:

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02:

How much doom scrolling is too much?

SPEAKER_05:

Right, and then we only know it once we've like maybe hit it, and then we have to like do all sorts of work to sort of like find, but I don't think there's a very common conversation of like, oh wait, I've gotta go and find my like healthy connection to my healthy discovery. But I think this is such a ripe time for this. I heard something this morning on NPR where they were saying it was like some poll about um folks who are supportive of the new administration's immigration deportation policies and how like the numbers were really high. But in this poll that they did, once you started drilling down into like what would actually have to happen, then the sort of bottom fell out, right? So it's like that top layer of disgust and separation is really activated. But once you start to be like, well, but this is what would happen to people, this is what would happen to children. People find it, then it's like, oh, that's too far. Yeah, that's too far. How how I would love to hear you, and it's funny because for a second I forgot that we were doing an interview and I wasn't just listening to you because I love no, I love hearing your voice.

SPEAKER_02:

It's a delight for me.

SPEAKER_05:

I'm enjoying that, God is but also I really enjoy listening to you. And I I took your disgust class and this like how we find that, how we come, how we start to practice into, tend into. And I know warmth is surely part of it, but oh, it's such a good point. But I'd love to hear for everyone who's like, I don't know what's too much, but it all seems like too much, and I do have a handle sticking out on me, pulling me around. How do I come back? How do we find it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, the very sweetest starting point is really to see if we have a contract not to have disgust. I I will not, it's I will not express my disgust, I will not know I'm disgusted, I will not say no. These are some of the big contracts that we can begin to work with, and then we get to kind of sink into them. So we go, okay, of those three, which one really resonated for me? I will not say no. And then you go, I will not say no. I promise myself that I will not say no in order to, you know, what is it? What's here in order to? Be a good girl, gain my daddy and mommy's approval, um, belong to my family, be polite so that I don't hurt anyone. Um I will uh Yeah, I will not say no in order to prioritize others' needs over my own. I will not say no in order not to be selfish. I will not say no, and I mean this it's such an interesting question to begin to look at.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Because then once we've figured out, you know, who it is that we're pleasing or belonging to by not saying no, mom, dad, family, family line. You tell me who is your daddy and what does he do? Country, religious group, whatever it is, as soon as we figure it out, we can go, oh, and then the last part of this, of course, is no matter the cost to myself. I will not say no in order to please my mommy and daddy, no matter the cost to myself. And then we can go, gosh, um, doesn't sound like a very good plan. This is not a good plan. I release myself from this contract. I see people don't realize that they get to release themselves once they figure their contract out. I revoke this vow, and instead I give myself the blessing to uh gently start to discover what I want to say no to and to start saying no. And it's so multifaceted, you know. I've been working on my own healthy disgust for some years now, and working on my contracts not to say no, and I just discovered a whole nother layer. Just in the last two days, I discovered a whole nother layer.

SPEAKER_05:

I love that. I love hearing that, right? This is just like the forever feeling back.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it and it came with such interesting realizations. I I I uh the the the layer that I discovered was a layer where um my dad my dad um married my mom. My mom had a mental illness, and my my grandma, my dad's mom had the same mental illness. And my dad was very comfortable with my mom and loved her very much and loved his mom very much. Much and simply put up with her inability to be relational. He just absorbed all the cost of that. And so I discovered that I had a contract to be loyal to my dad and to trudge along with him and just be loyal to people and to just put up with the relational non the costs of relational impact that were not being acknowledged. So it's a whole it was a whole new layer that I'd not worked with before in terms of saying no, it was about disclosing relational impact. And so I I released that and and all of a sudden I was like calling up people that uh had that I'd been, you know, just speaking out about things that are happening to me and calling up people that had taken actions that had had a negative impact on me and saying, I want to have a conversation with you about this, and and uh and yeah, I had this sense of it as being quite an extraordinary step to take. Uh yeah. And and and then simultaneously I was watching an old movie, uh Graham Greene's book, uh The Third Man was made into a movie that old black and white movie with Joseph Cotton and Orson Wells. And I realized that one of the figures in the movie was an anti-Semitic portrayal of a Jewish person. And I was like, oh my god, I just never I was up and we I was re-watching them, I've never noticed that before. And then sitting there thinking about that, and I realized that um in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the children's movie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, there's a there's a portrayal of the childcatcher. And I realized, oh my god, the child catcher is a completely anti-Semitic precursor to introducing children to a world in which Jews are scapegoated for scapegoating being, I think, uh the way that disgust is used against people in order to make systems work. Right. Uh to make family systems work, to make societal systems work, to be a like a steam valve for the pressure that everything's under. And and I was like, oh my god, I just never, it was like, wow, I just never saw that before. And so yeah, it's a there's this funny experience of working with contracts where the spider web starts to un unbind itself and you go, oh shit, this is not good.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. Here are all the ways in which I that that contract was reinforced, the ways in which we're scanning, we take that like interpersonal or generational experience and then scanning the world around us and not even necessarily noticing that programming and conditioning to repel, to reject, to separate, to judge. Right, right. Right. And and to allow that to get packed into the the system, right? We're all just carrying these around.

SPEAKER_02:

The ways in which children, you know, children see the world and they're like, oh, this is not good. This person is hungry, that's not good. But they they are invited to turn that that disgust about somebody not being hungry into a disgust for the person who's hungry.

SPEAKER_05:

So that feels so of this moment as well, obviously, because we're not talking, everything's new as old, you know, new as old. Yeah, yeah. Nothing happening right now isn't necessarily things that we haven't seen before. Maybe the volumes turned up a little louder and we've got like an tech boost, but for the most part, like we've been also conditioned into so much of this for so long. Yes, right, and like generationally, there's different impacts of it and different waves of it. And what you're saying about how when we lose that connection to the healthy, disgust circuit, and that because of all of the ways that we weren't able to say no or have those small nos or big nose like honored or reflected or just met in any way, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, our parents weren't doing it, you know, they had contacts themselves, and so it wasn't modeled in any way. Sometimes it's even that, yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Truly, right? It's like in the world around us. Yes, we don't have models for it, right? How how wild when we have to like do something that we've never even really seen modeled, like talk about rebellion, right? That's really something. But what you're saying too about how we turn that pain or concern or whatever that emotional connection is to someone who's like, Oh, wait, I'm hungry or I need help. And then we because of that break, it turns into like that disgust at the person.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

And that, even in just that little poll that I was mentioning where it's like, oh, the disgust at the people, right? But then once you just peel back like wait, but this is how they would be impacted, people are like, oh, wait, that's a that that actually doesn't sound so good at all. It just feels like proof that like that that healthy connection is is available.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's such a lovely point.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. That care is is and and that's why I think it's like care is teachable in a way, right? Like it's not just innate, like either you have it or you don't, or we can look at people and be like, oh, you obviously don't have it, because I don't feel that way. Like, yeah, I believe everyone's got this. Everyone, you know, and we all, but as you said, it's like you even you teach this work, and here you are finding new contracts and finding new points of of tenderness with yourself, right? Because this is about little elusion.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the points of tenderness and revelation and action, you know, that were not available to me three days ago, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

I mean, that just gives me so much hope, Sarah, in the like, you know, it's like, ah, something's available to you now that wasn't three days ago.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05:

Look how new we are. I know. That's such a wonderful thing to say. Look how new we are. I love that. Oh gosh. I mean, thank you for tracking that thought about the like overwhelm all the way back to the disgust and and the work with contracts. And I'm wondering if you could, and and I've talked about this and on the show before, and have surely definitely credited you and shared your info, but your work around self-warm, the warmth in general, because the self-warmth, like how hard it is to be in the overwhelm, right? And to be in that sort of like, you know, broken disgust field, or what you know what I mean, like that like space from the healthy disgust and the warmth needed. I feel like just kind of all around, like to me, warmth feels like be being more relational humans, being more human human beings right now. Yeah. That the warmth feels like a truly radical act. As I think you said that at the top. It's like, yeah, yeah, it is. Can you can you talk a little more about that?

SPEAKER_02:

Just like how you hold it and practice it and find it. Um so one way to begin, one way just to as a foundation, the way that humans uh perceive emotional warmth is through the metaphors of physical warmth. There's all kinds of like marketing studies where if you give somebody a coffee and they're holding a warm cup, they respond more positively to whatever it is you're trying to sell them or market to them. And um and uh and that um you know that uh that our that as humans we have these little receptors in our skin which are specifically made to register whether or not there's another human around with the right body temperature. And you can even think about how alarming it can be to touch somebody who's got a fever and you know it's the wrong body temperature, or somebody who's clammy, and you know it's the wrong body temperature. But who knew that we have little thermal receptors that are not actually looking for uh for warmth coming from a fireplace or warmth coming from a stove or from a furnace? This is warmth that's coming from another human. And when we feel that warmth, especially in combination with feeling safe, then our body starts to relax. So there's a question about, you know, about how do we how do we turn toward ourselves? How do we just actually genuinely really like and enjoy and take delight in our own beings? It's such an inoculation against um the the ills of this world. It is it uh it is such a um a remedy, a preventive remedy against living in a world where things are really difficult and leads all to all kinds of strange and interesting places as we begin to practice it. Like just first of all, for anybody who's listening and interested, you can ask yourself, do I like myself? You know, and then if I don't like myself right now, did I like myself when I was five? Uh if I uh and if I don't don't like myself when I was five, did I like myself when I was two? Do I do I like the thought of my two-year-old self? And oftentimes people will go, no, of course I don't like my five-year-old self. And then I'll say, Did you do you like your two-year-old self? And they'll go, of course I like my two-year-old self. I say, Okay, what happened between the ages of two and five? And they're like, Well, you know, my my mom died, and you know, well, everything went to hell. My brother was, you know, it was all kinds of terrible things have happened. And went between two and five. You're like, okay, well, that's trauma talking to us. That's not, that's, you know, that what once we start to work with the trauma and clear the trauma from our bodies, our bodies start to move toward warmth and affection. So we're looking for the affection f for self. Where where did it get lost? It's a it's a natural human birthright. But also it gets to be augmented as we learn about it and practice it so that we can actually move into delight, which may be something that our parents did not have the emotional energy and clarity to be able to even feel in relationship to us. But that but every being is a delight. Every being is a delight. Every being just an absolute truth. It's a delight.

SPEAKER_05:

You know, I I felt that in the in the in the class the other day, just the the little moment you had us like look at everyone, like, oh, these are potential people you are going to like be in, you know, be in work with. And I was like scanning, being like, I don't know, that person has a really bright light. I do not like that. I do not like that person. Like talking about like our little healthy disgust moment where I was scanning and and then you're like, okay, and now look at you know, everyone sort of as a a possibility for you know connection. And then it was like, oh my God, look at us. Look at that person's, look at that person's horrible lighting, but look how it reflects off their hair in the or their glasses in the best way. It really sometimes takes so little to shift out of that kind of unconscious, like, oh, all right, I'm just looking kind of moving through the world, looking for things that I like and I don't like, right? The binarism of like, let me put things into categories, right, based on something I may not even be paying attention to and or have justified about how I moved through the world. And now here I am in invited into delight, really. You didn't say that, but that's what you invited us into, or that's what I felt, and it was like how easy that shift was, and then how new and cute everyone was. I guess I really did say something like how new we are, because it felt that way. I was like, oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And and so, like, even as you as I were talking, and people are maybe catching little glimpses of it, it'll fall away, and then people will catch a glimpse and it'll fall away. But um, there's a wonderful practice of greeting yourself with delight when you wake up in the morning. Like just put us like here you are, here's Sarah, here's here's Dana waking up in the morning. You wake up, put a Dana sitting clock cross-legged beside you, looking at you as you wake up and say, Oh, welcome to the I'm so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I love that. I don't do that, but I do another little version of cultivating delight in the morning, where it's like I look out the window and I'm out here in the desert in the in Joshua Tree. And even whether I feel like fully saying it or not, it's not ever usually forced, but some days I wake up feeling a little more accessible to this. But it's like I just say, like, it's another beautiful day in the desert. Something miraculous is gonna happen through me today, and it always does.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, maybe before we go, I can invite you to say, ah, another beautiful day in the desert. Something amazing will happen with Dana today.

SPEAKER_05:

Something amazing will happen with Dana today. I mean, Sarah, here we are. Here's my amazing thing for today. So, I mean, done and done. Look how that works. We'll just use it retroactively. Great. Oh, wonderful.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's lovely, lovely to be with you.

SPEAKER_05:

Thank you so much. This was uh such a joy, and I've I've brought you up so many times you know, over the over the episodes, and it just really thank you for your your warmth and and delight and newness and just everything that you that you brought to the jacuzzi verse today.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh glad to be in the jacuzzi verse. What a place to be.

SPEAKER_05:

I wanted to come back and give a little update because we ended the conversation, Sarah and I, talking about delight. And I don't know about you. I mean, I kind of know about you because we're all in the boat here, but I could really use some extra delight these days. I could use some softness in my soul, I could use some lightness in my heart, in my mind. And so for a while I was taking Sarah's suggestion and doing the morning prayer, that little that little delight affirmation, putting myself in the third person. Honestly, I don't know if it was just that or all the fiber I'd been eaten or both, but I was feeling real good. Things were moving real well. I was feeling warmer towards myself, and I even brought back an old practice of self-forgiveness and softness that I hadn't really touched thoroughly in years, and my heart was softening, and anxiety was moving through my body in different ways. And I'm saying this in the past tense because like practices, sometimes we have them, they feel so good, and then they can fall out of rhythm, they can just slip through through the fingers. And with everything going on in the world right now, Gaza's city has gone dark. People, states, corporations are policing all forms of expression, policing expressions of empathy, ignoring most forms of political violence except for the ones that serve them to highlight and then wield power with. Like I could use some more fucking delight. How about you? So I'm gonna bring back the practice tomorrow morning. I'm gonna greet the day and greet the earth with intention, with that intention of curiosity, with that intention of being met with some softness and sweetness and delight. It can be small. We can't lose it all together. We can practice this, we can build this, we can do this together. There is this gorgeous Alexis Pauline Gum's quote that I have pinned on my wall. It says, I believe in a god of miracles. Her name is every day. So come on now, we can't get this wrong. We can only get it right because we're here together, swirling around in the jacuzzi verse, willing to be new and experimental, loving and emotional, connective, and delighted. And I highly suggest that you head on over to Sarah Payton.com because that website is a portal. It is a wealth of information and spaces of practice and workshops and other gorgeous resources for your own learning and growth and resonance. It's rich. Maybe I will bump into you over there, and we'll be delighted together. Love you, cry babies. Hang in there. 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_01:

Five stars.

SPEAKER_05:

In 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 jacuzzi verse could hope for. So thank you, Crybabies. Thank you for your support. Earworm theme music by the very talented Kat Otison. 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.