Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

Men, and women, and the stories about how we're 'meant' to be human that constrain us. A conversation about relationships, power and being on a path with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.   Here’s Episode 89 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 a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, about men, and family, and being on a path, and about the consequences of going to sleep in our lives. The particular form of 'sleep' we talk about is the one that's kept going by our stories about what men must be, and how the choices men make about how to be men ripple out through our families, workplaces and community. We consider the kinds of narratives that both women and men might create that have a chance of freeing us from the particular difficulties many of us face in our relationships with one another. And we wonder together what kinds of conversations become possible as both women and men turn, together, towards the tenderness, vulnerability and strength that are at the heart of being human. You can find our source for this week, and all the previous sources, here.

What is it to learn to look at ourselves the way 'one looks at distant things'? And what happens when we relax our certainty that we have to have it all figured out before we can contribute? A conversation about love, invitation and purpose with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.   Here’s Episode 88 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   One of the biggest causes of our difficulties is the way we take the drama of what we're experiencing to be the central truth of the world - when it seems that life revolves around 'me', when we imagine that we have to be 'sorted out' before life can begin, or when we think we have to know everything about what we're up to in life before we can participate fully. But there are other ways to be in our lives, and one of them is to find out what it is that's calling us, in each moment, deeper into things. In this episode we explore what happens when we attend to this, when we soften our gaze enough to see that we are not the centre of things but 'one thing among many'. You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project. Photo by Nine Köpfer on Unsplash

Can we catch on to the ways in which we defend ourselves from life? And, when we see our part in making life smaller than it might be, can we discover how to stay in contact with what happens in life, to learn from it, and to find a fuller kind of presence in the midst of everything? A conversation about learning to stay open with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.   Here’s Episode 87 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   There’s a way in which we can easily take ourselves as too small to meet the world. Overwhelmed by what we do not understand, and can’t control, we find ourselves living in a way that’s defended, and rigid, and much smaller than the life we long for. We we find ourselves living this way, we don’t often see that we are participants – both in shielding ourselves from life and in the possibility that we could open to life. And when we open, when we make ourselves available to our experiences and to one another, life can come flooding in. You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.

What's the cost of trying to 'get over' grief, sorrow and pain? Is there another way? Can we perhaps find a way to welcome in ourselves what we'd otherwise try to push away, and in doing so learn to welcome other people more fully too? A conversation about encountering and including difference in our lives with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.   Here’s Episode 86 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   In this conversation we explore together what happens when we try to make certain kinds of experience (grief, sorrow, fear, pain) unwelcome in our lives, and in doing so, try to 'get over' them instead of including them. We talk about the limits of our power in controlling the world - both the outer world of events and the inner world of experiences - and about the cost to us of pushing away that which, given time, patience and kindness, could act to open us ever more deeply to the world. And we see how much it's possible for human beings to help one another with this - how when we act as a welcome to what's 'other' in ourselves we can also help be a welcome to other people. In times when there are many forces trying to push us apart from ourselves and one another, we consider this to be a necessary, dignified and healing stand to take in the world. You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.

A bonus episode describing and exploring the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course which next begins in July 2019 in London. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. In this special edition of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course (offered in partnership with New Ventures West), a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us. Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme. You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') at  www.wearethirdspace.org

Underneath everything, beneath our striving and reaching and fear, life is finding a way through us. What happens when we pay attention to it, when we let life take us by the hand? A conversation about letting life matter with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 85 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. In this conversation we explore the simple beauty of life that's present even when we're most afraid. We consider together what it is that most dignifies and deepens human life - the possibility that we might start to pay attention, and that we might let life, and our care, matter. Our inspiration for this conversation comes from a poem by Roger Keyes about the Japanese artist Hokusai. You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project.

We are so often afraid of our own aliveness that we'll cover it up with an image, a role, or an identity that's been handed to us by others. But what possibilities for encounter with life and with one another are born when we cross the thin divide between 'image' and 'realness'? A conversation about not turning away with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 84 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. In this conversation we explore the call of our own wildness, that of ourselves that we so often cover up for the sake of fitting in with an image or identity we've been handed by our culture. We talk about the difference between being honest about our own experience rather than being attached to our own version of 'truth', and how honesty and openness can bring us into compassionate and direct encounter with the aliveness and wonder of other people. And we explore how it's possible to turn just about anything in our lives into a way of keeping far from ourselves, including the very project of being real. It's a conversation about encountering life, and about returning home. You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project. Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

What’s the cost of our constant comparison with others, with a life we think we’re meant to be living, or with our past or future selves? There’s a good reason why comparison has been called ‘the thief of joy’. So what happens when we find a way, instead, of bringing ourselves whole-heartedly as we are, to the life we’re already living? A conversation about not turning away with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here’s Episode 83 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. In this conversation we explore together the pitfalls of comparing ourselves to an image – whether that’s an image of fame and success given to us by our wider culture, or a idea of how we ‘should’ be (kind, smart, witty, selfless) that we distort ourselves in living up to. We consider together how distant from ourselves we can become from living in this way, explore the suffering it can produce, and wonder about the possibilities of turning towards our own particular gifts and qualities and inhabiting them with a whole heart. You can find the source text for this episode here, along with more details about the Turning Towards Life project. Photo by James Padolsey on Unsplash

Even in the darkest of situations can we find a way to be joyful? Is there a kind of gratitude which isn't a turning away from the gravity of things? Might just this joy and gratitude be what's called for if we're to face our situation with sufficient energy, creativity and ethical care? A conversation about not turning away with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's Episode 82 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. In this conversation we talk together about how it might be possible to face the darkness and difficulties of the world without collapsing into a frozen fearfulness, without cutting ourselves off from others through panic and rage, and without denial. We consider the ways in which the culture many of us have grown up in teaches us always to be dissatisfied, to live our lives as if we'll only be able to show up when we have exactly the circumstances we think are due to us, and how this keeps us distant from the possibility of contributing to improving things. We talk together about how joy can connect us and those around us to the qualities and creativity the world needs so much, and how it might be possible to be joyful even in the midst of the deepest darkness. As ever we are grateful for the wisdom and depth of those whose writing is at the heart of this project, and particularly this week for this poem by W S Merwin, who died last month at the age of 91. You can read more about him and his work in this article in The Atlantic. And you can find the source for this week's episode here.

In every moment we have a choice about how to meet the circumstances of our lives, and the cumulative effect of our choices adds up to a path we walk through life. What happens when we pay attention enough that we can know ourselves as choosing? And which path will we choose - fear or faithfulness, scattered or present? A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. In this conversation we explore the ways in which our moment-to-moment interpretation shapes the way we bring ourselves to our lives. We consider together what it is to 'walk a path' in life, rather than responding impulsively, and how some of the implicit assumptions of contemporary culture can easily keep us diminishing ourselves and our own aliveness, and in the process diminishing that in others too. What becomes possible, we wonder, when we see that it's our attempts to control life that get us into so much difficulty? And what happens when we come at life with an intention to participate, fully, with as much kindness and presence as we can find? Turning Towards Life is a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find the source text and more information on this conversation here and find more, including details about how to join us live, on our website http://turningtowards.life