These days life can seem extremely chaotic—have you felt it, too?  Whether it’s the noise of the world or the noise of your own thoughts, there’s so much happening and so many things to think about that it can really get your head spinning with questions like: What am I supposed to be doing?  Where is my attention supposed to be?  How do I rest my heart? The good news is this: You already have a still, magnetic center within you, and on this episode of The Gathering Room podcast, I share how you can access it.  The world can be chaotic, confusing, and sometimes absolutely terrifying—but that’s only when we let ourselves spin. It’s not about escaping the chaos but finding your still center within it. One effective way to connect with the point of stillness within each of us—what I call the “inner compass”—is meditation. I’ll lead you through a version of my Space, Stillness, and Silence meditation to help you let go of tension and allow your nervous system to regulate inward. I’ve only just begun to realize how when you center yourself in that place and allow it to be enough, the answers to your questions about the most trivial things and the most immense things will come without effort into your consciousness.  There is an intelligence and a love so great for you that hears you in your confusion and amidst the terrifying cacophony of this world. Ro and I recently took Lila on a trip to the Central Park Zoo, and it was pure pandemonium in New York City: screaming kids, crowds of parade-goers, Hare Krishna worshipers, blaring bands, and all of it bathed in the city’s current signature scent…weed.  As we were driving home through all this chaos, Lila declared, “There’s a lot of music in this town, girls!” before promptly falling asleep in her car seat. This reminded me that stillness is always available—even in the loudest moments of life.  There’s no need to rush or try to fix everything. Your destination is right here in the present moment. Be here now. Your inner stillness holds the answers to your questions, even those you haven’t asked yet. When we ground ourselves in the space, silence, and stillness and stand in the huge wide plain where there is no one but you and your compass that is pointing straight into your own being, your presence becomes the portal. It opens to the instructions for what you need to do next. If you’d like to hear more about trusting your inner compass, how to stay creative amidst chaos, and how to find the answers you’re seeking, tune in for the full episode. We’ll take a collective deep breath and ground ourselves in “the still point of the turning world” together. Join me! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I’m thrilled to be joined by my guest Chase Jarvis for this special episode of The Gathering Room podcast! Chase is an award-winning artist, serial entrepreneur, and bestselling author, who has a new book out called NEVER PLAY IT SAFE: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO FREEDOM, CREATIVITY, AND A LIFE YOU LOVE. This remarkable book helped me take a few big leaps in my own life, and I hope that listening to my conversation with Chase will inspire you to do the same. Enjoy! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you ever feel like a hamster running on a wheel? Hamsters may love to scurry, but it tends to make us humans anxious and exhausted. Unfortunately, we live in a world that constantly pressures us to keep up with an increasingly frantic pace. And while we run faster and faster, the only place we ever reach is burnout. It’s when we start to get to burnout and the wheel is still going so fast that we start to get frantic to keep up. In this episode of The Gathering Room, I’m talking about how you can get off the hamster wheel by taking tiny, true steps towards whatever brings you a sense of relief. By “tiny, true step” I mean any small movement or action that feels like relief to you, like a relaxing exhale. In fact, a relaxing exhale could be the one tiny action you take. Or standing up to stretch. Or taking a bathroom break. Or doing just five minutes of any creative practice.Whenever you’re feeling frantic or overwhelmed, taking one tiny, true step is enough to move you toward peace. And then if you do it tomorrow and the next day and whenever you feel exhausted and frantic, those tiny movements toward relief will start to change everything. Remember: You are meant to live in peace, and nature never requires you to do more than you can do in peace. Although embracing this mindset can be challenging in a society like ours that values constant busyness, you have to trust that small steps are enough to radically transform your life. Try it and see.To learn more about the profound transformation that can come from taking small steps toward your true destiny, tune in for the full episode. We’ll even take a small step together by doing my guided Space, Silence, and Stillness meditation. Join me! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s no question about it—we are living in chaotic times.We’re all trying to be happy and at peace, and we often think we need to find external circumstances that are conducive to those states. But did you know that there is a bedrock of stillness and kindness that we can drop into, no matter what’s going on around us?  In this episode of The Gathering Room, I’ll guide you to this still, calm place through a very special meditation that you can revisit any time you feel tempest-tossed. As my partner Rowan, recently pointed out to me, self-kindness can always be accessed by recognizing that the universe is essentially kind. We can cultivate stillness in our chaotic world by aligning ourselves with this universal kindness.I had never thought of kindness as being the essential component of the universe. So I started doing meditations and thought experiments where I focused on the kindness that there is in the world and began to anchor myself into that—and that’s what I’ll be teaching you in this episode.I have a new take on our usual Space, Stillness, and Silence meditation, and it involves imagining yourself as a point of consciousness above a stormy ocean and dropping a thread of consciousness into the depths to reach the stillness at the center of the earth.By learning to find and anchor into this stillness—which is the same as universal kindness—you can find peace and stability, no matter what the circumstances. We are all on an odyssey in this life where the journey is the goal. We’re heroes who have taken the call to adventure, and we’re here for the adventure itself. Tune in for the full episode to anchor into universal kindness and learn how it can help you see the good in difficult situations, help you navigate loss, self-doubt, and other turbulent situations, and help you become a safe harbor for others. CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is a weird world out there right now, and if you’re like me, you’re feeling more than a little anxious. Anxiety has been called the mental illness of our time, but in fact, it’s not a mental illness. It’s an understandable reaction to an abnormal world that we never evolved to handle. As I’ve written in my book Beyond Anxiety and talked about at length, creativity is the opposite of that anxiety. However, there’s a crucial step you must take to go from anxiety to creativity, and you cannot skip it. That step is kindness. Kindness is the greatest creative fuel in human existence, and in this episode of The Gathering Room, I’m sharing the 5-step exercise I follow to cultivate kindness toward myself, get out of anxiety, and generate creativity and joy.In fact, for the first time ever on The Gathering Room, I’m recommending that you bring a pencil and paper and work through this exercise with me. It’s fun—and powerfully effective.You start by identifying and acknowledging your negative feelings, whether you’re feeling anxiety, anger, sorrow, or something else. Imagine the part of yourself that is feeling this way as a separate entity, and you are the compassionate observer.Ask this part of yourself how it’s feeling, and then offer this three-word phrase, which is probably the most powerful thing you can do to heal yourself or another human being: “Tell me everything.”The vast majority of people, including our inner parts, just want someone to sit with them and witness what’s going on inside them. And this act of kindness—of listening—gives a place for the pain to flow. Every time you make the choice to be kind to yourself, you are creating a whole new brain that is going to be a lot happier and more creative. This will lead you to the one way that you can create beauty that no one else ever could, your unique contribution to the world.To work through the full five-step kindness exercise with me, be sure to tune in for the full episode. I’ll also guide you through my Space, Silence, and Stillness meditation as that is one kind thing I often give myself when I’m in an anxious place. CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Facebook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of The Gathering Room podcast, I’m talking about the power of inspiration and how we can actively go “hunting” for it amidst the sea of misinformation and disinformation we all have to navigate each day. To learn more about actively hunting for inspiration and how it can help you create positive change in the world, join me for the full episode! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Facebook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know that until you are truly compassionate to yourself, you can’t be compassionate to any other person?In Episode #192 of The Gathering Room, I’m talking about building compassionate communities—and how a safe, loving, mutually supportive community is probably the most important thing we can ever have, especially during chaotic times.I’ve been reading my way through all the skills that make you a good community creator, and one of my favorites is the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, who talks about creating community by first becoming your own good company. We have such an individualistic, fragmenting society where we’re always pitted against each other in competition, but we long to experience moments of beautiful company where everyone feels lifted by everyone else. This kind of community is a basic human need.Marshall Rosenberg says that everything we do is trying to meet our basic needs, and we go off course by trying to meet our needs with things that don’t work. He describes bringing ourselves into that sense of loving community by following a few basic steps: * Identify any “mistakes” or behaviors you’re upset with yourself about.* Notice any shaming language you use around those behaviors (words like “should”). * Understand the need you were trying to meet with those behaviors.* Allow yourself to mourn the fact that what you tried didn’t work.Then, if you can empathize with the part of yourself that was trying to get a need met in an ill-advised way, there’s a kind of embrace that happens automatically—and in that embrace is forgiveness. That’s when, within yourself, you have all of your parts, including what I call the “compassionate witness.” There are all the parts who’ve been trying so hard, and everyone is empathizing with everyone else. There is mutual forgiveness for everything you ever thought you did wrong, and no one is being blamed. That’s the way into being your own best company. And from there on, Marshall Rosenberg tells us, everything is play.To find out more about forgiving yourself, becoming your own best company, and creating supportive, compassionate communities, tune in for the full episode. I’ll also guide you through my Space, Silence, and Stillness meditation with a special focus on bringing your inner collective into loving harmony. Join me! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Facebook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As I’m sure you’re keenly aware, people are extremely divided these days. From our politics, to our attitudes, to our ways of speaking about others, we are growing more and more polarized—and mutually destructive.On this episode of The Gathering Room podcast, I’m talking about how upset many of us feel, why that upset is not always coming from a place we can trust, and what we can do about it.Once upon a time, they invented something called the internet. And on the internet, social media began to play out. And these platforms soon figured out that we pay more attention to things that upset us, so they started feeding us more and more upsetting content.Because we evolved to be social creatures who are super susceptible to group influence, we’re basically hardwired to want to agree with the group, even if it means pretending to see things differently than we actually do.Add all that evolutionary and psychological background to social media, and you soon get social media algorithms that keep us online by stoking constant outrage and fear. We’re terrified of being bullied and looking for people to back us up, so we consume more and more information that’s designed to upset us. Then we lash out in a way that feels like self-defense, but it looks to other people like we’re attacking them. It’s a vicious cycle where everyone feels attacked by everyone else.A lot of us feel vulnerable and outraged and afraid of the future and of other people right now. It’s been so exaggerated by our media and our social media that we’ve lost our sense of truth in all of this. And when you get people off their basic sense of truth, they will do almost anything. They will attack other people and leave their own ethics in the dust. When you lose your sense of truth, suddenly everything bobs and sways and there’s nothing real to stand on.Everything is spinning and slanting and trying to get you to feel a certain way, but the only feeling that you can really build a life on is peace.So, how can you get to peace in an increasingly polarized world? Find out on this episode of The Gathering Room, where I’ll share the one statement I’ve found to be most grounding and true, how to make peace your primary goal in all interactions, and how peace can give you the strength and clarity you need to navigate life’s challenges.We’ll also do our guided Space, Silence, and Stillness meditation to recalibrate ourselves toward clear minds, quiet hearts, and peace. Join me! CONNECT WITH US Follow Martha on Instagram The Gathering Room Show Notes Join Martha for a Live Episode of The Gathering Room via Facebook See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Discover the unique concept of 'sanity quilting' as a way to craft a life you love amidst chaos. Explore practical tips for maintaining mental wellness, from the importance of disconnecting from technology to recognizing the fine line between enthusiasm and mania. Dive into strategies for curating joyful experiences while emphasizing creativity and community support. Learn how stillness and meditation can foster tranquility as you create your own vibrant, personalized quilt of life.

Dive into the transformative concept of wayfinding, inspired by ancient navigators, and how it connects to Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields theory. Explore the intersection of personal growth and collective consciousness, emphasizing the role of community. Discover the intriguing phenomenon of telepathy, particularly among those with communication barriers, and how it ties into our interconnectedness. Enjoy insights on navigating energies from fear to love, and uncover your inner potential through guided practices designed to lead you to joy and purpose.