Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

How might we learn to relax our annoyance, to treat what irritates us as if it were the weather rather than something personal, and in so doing take our defensive reactivity down a step? A conversation about blame, kindness, and finding a way to be contactful with our experience, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. So much of our annoyance and irritation comes from our certainty that what's happening is happening 'to me'. As is if we walk around the world super-sensitive to the way everything is aimed in our direction. But when we look more closely at the anatomy of our annoyance, sometimes we start to see that what's annoying us is often not 'what's happening' but our own relationship to it, and that there's a way we judge ourselves and others that adds to our difficulties. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find the source text for this week on the Turning Towards Life website. Photo by Erik Odiin on Unsplash

We need to draw the people we love nearer, smell their hair, enjoy them, drink them in. We need to let our hearts burst open with all the love. And experience the simplicity and sacredness of things. Even if we can only do it for one moment a day. It's the hard way but it's the only way. A conversation about vulnerability, and how love, fear and grief are inevitable partners, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. The source that starts our conversation off this week is 'What we're really scared of: the love, beauty and sacredness of it all' by Hollie Holden. You can find it, all our other episodes on the Turning Towards Life website.

Sometimes we try to be too big, imagining we should have super-human powers of control over the inevitable difficulties that face us. Other times we make ourselves too small, as if we have no choice at all. How might we turn back towards our lives by right-sizing ourselves? A conversation about breath, feeling life course through us, and facing the world with grace, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 107 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. The source that starts our conversation off this week is 'The Cure For It All' by Julia Fehrenbacher. You can find it, all our other episodes, and more information about Julia's work on the Turning Towards Life website. Photo by Alex Bertha on Unsplash

What would it take for us to allow ourselves the freedom to move in new ways, speak in new ways, love in new ways? And can we spot the subtle and not-so-subtle ways we and others are engaged in keeping one another moving along narrow grooves founded on the expectations that come with having a particular kind of body, a particular kind of history, and a particular kind of cultural background? A conversation about freedom, gender, and the difficult and beautiful work of welcoming our own development, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 106 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. The source that starts our conversation off this week is Claudia Masin's poem 'Tomboy', which you can find on the Turning Towards Life website.

We human beings change all the time - it's inevitable. But somehow we've got into demanding that our friends, family and partners are fixed - that they 'complete us'. What would happen if we started to live with the truth of our ever-changing natures? At the start of the 3rd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about walking a path together and being in nourishing relationship, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 105 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. It's the start of the third year of this project, and in this conversation we return together to the topic of human relationship. Our big mistake, Justin says, is our insistence on treating ourselves as objects. When we do this, we are left with little room but to demand that we be a certain way, and the ones we love be a certain way - a way that we will inevitably fall short of. And, as Lizzie says, that's the source of much unnecessary suffering, because humans change all the time. When we start to see that our demands that those we love 'complete us' are impossible to fulfil, we can start to love as a way of accompanying one another on an unknown path rather than a way to get to a final destination. The source that starts our conversation off this week is written by Neil Gaiman, and you can find it on the Turning Towards Life website. Photo by Rémi Walle on Unsplash

The more we try to control, the less we can receive from life. But there is a path by which we might, gradually, remember ourselves more fully and find ourselves reached by life, with all its gifts and all its challenges. At the end of the 2nd year of Turning Towards Life, a conversation about being porous to life, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 104 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. It's the end the second year of this project, and in this conversation we consider together what it is to remember - not the kind of remembering we do when we recall 'what happened', but the kind of remembering where we 'put ourselves back together', gathering up the parts of ourselves we have ignored or left out, so that we can face life with renewed courage, compassion and openness.  As Lizzie says, "the more we control, the less we receive from life. Our frightened selves keep us separate as a form of protection and yet it is to our detriment, as loneliness and sadness follow."  And so we wonder together about how we can turn towards a reciprocity and openness to life that's different from saying 'I'm beaten' and equally different from our demands that life goes just the way we demand it. You can find our source for this week on the Turning Towards Life website. Photo by Drew Tilk on Unsplash

Can we catch on to the ways we contract from life so as not to feel its consequences? And can we learn to open, instead, so that the possibilities of our loving – other people, a calling, life itself – can come through, with all their pain and all their joy? A conversation about the radical opening that love can be, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 103 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Our source this week is an extraordinary poem by Kahlil Gibran. It's the starting point for a conversation in which we consider the inevitable way that love brings us into contact with our vulnerability and rawness, and also with our capacity to contribute. We consider the many ways in which we try to make ourselves powerful, and invincible, by withdrawing ourselves from the possibility of loving (and hence from life), and the huge cost we and others can pay for such attempts at self-protection. And we wonder together about simple moves we might make to open more fully to the life that is here, and with it the consequence that we find ourselves open to, and changed by, the love that comes through us. You can find our source for this week on the Turning Towards Life website, here.

What's beyond our endless efforting, striving and comparing, and the often-merciless inner voice that keeps all of that going? And what might happen if we begin to relax our certainty that it's the way we have to be? A conversation about opening to our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 102 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Our source this week is from our friend and colleague Neena Sims. You can find it here. Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

What happens when we slow down enough to make contact with the wisdom, care and depth that arises from the silent background of our lives? And how do we stop running from life so that we can do this? A conversation about patience, creativity, and the gifts of relationship, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 101 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Our source this week is by the poet Wendell Berry, and you can find it here. Photo by Clement Souchet on Unsplash

When anger is used as a way to be right, to exert power over others, or as violence, it can be an enormously destructive force. But how might we find the gifts of wisdom in anger, and its extraordinary capacity to change things for the better? A conversation about contactfulness, care, emotional vulnerability and learning to be true with one another, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 100 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Our source this week is from Nikita Gill’s book ‘Fierce Fairytales’. You can find it here. Photo by Mehrdad Haghighi on Unsplash