The Gathering Room Podcast

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.

Dive into an enlightening discussion on overcoming anxiety with kindness and curiosity. Explore how acknowledging your anxious self can lead to creativity, shifting energy away from panic. Discover how everyday acts, from cooking to birdwatching, can be forms of creative expression. The conversation also touches on navigating trauma and grief, emphasizing the importance of self-compassion. Lastly, learn about the transformative journey towards finding personal purpose through authentic connections and community.

Join Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual teacher and author, as she shares insights from her new book on Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy. Discover how IFS makes self-help accessible and learn about the eight key attributes of self-care, including courage and compassion. Gabby explores healing through self-compassion and the transformative power of emotional acceptance. Together, they guide listeners through reflective techniques, emphasizing the importance of community and connection in the journey of self-discovery.

Culturally we tend to think of sensitivity as weakness, but Martha says that in fact, it’s a superpower! In this episode of The Gathering Room, Episode #186: Using Your Powerful Sensitivity, she talks about how to appreciate your sensitivity and use it to create the life you’re meant to live.By definition, sensitivity has to do with reacting strongly to very slight stimuli. As a result, our society has come to believe that it’s not a strong position to be highly sensitive, that such people are fragile. What Martha has come to realize is that sensitivity is powerful, and sometimes it comes on powerfully. People who are highly sensitive may feel its power before other people do. If you’re highly sensitive and you experience something wonderful, you actually have a strong uptick in your mood—and you may feel more wonderful than someone with lower sensitivities. But if an impulse comes in that you don’t understand, your brain might go into anxiety.Martha says that the remedy for this anxiety is to check in with yourself by asking a series of questions: Is this physical? Is this mental? Is this emotional? Once you’ve checked in with body, mind, and heart, then you can realistically ground the sensation. If your sensitivity is telling you that it’s none of those things, then you can safely assume it’s coming from a spiritual place.Martha believes we’re in a really interesting, unprecedented landscape—politically, biologically, and ecologically—and we need to be guided. The way that guidance will come, especially to sensitive people, is through this unfamiliar stimulus that may feel weird and scary at first.But as you start to explore what feels true, then the magic of the brain kicks in—your curiosity will bring you out of anxiety so your sensitivity can guide you exactly where you’re meant to go.  As Martha says, “We are the ones who can start to lead our lives in the direction that our higher selves are signaling to us to go and potentially help a lot of other people whose sensitivities may not be quite as strong—and in this way we serve the world.” To learn how to appreciate, listen to, and trust your powerful sensitivity, join Martha for the full episode, where she’ll also guide you in her grounding and calming Space, Stillness, and Silence meditation. 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.

Martha’s recent encounter with a flock of wild turkeys made her think about her relationship with wild animals and how they always seem to come when she calls them.  In this episode of The Gathering Room, Episode #185: Calling Yourself Home, she shares several stories of her incredible interactions with animals and how her steps for calling to them can also be used on the wild parts of yourself to “call them home.” This can be especially helpful during times when you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or burned out. In Martha’s coaching experience, December is a particularly rough month for many people, and she herself feels scattered during this time. Martha says the same technique she uses to call animals can be used to call in all the many parts of your Self, as if calling a flock of birds home to roost. The first step, she says, is to be in complete integrity. This means telling yourself the truth. You have to track the parts of yourself that are unhappy or angry or fractious in some way and tell yourself the truth about them. The second step is what Martha calls “centering presence” where you focus on a point in the center of your chest and imagine it filling with warm light. When you can feel the warmth, you’ll be able to breathe more deeply and start to relax.  Finally, she says to imagine each part of yourself—the scared parts, the flighty parts, the parts who are tired, the parts who don’t want to do things—and imagine them coming home to that point of warmth and light in your chest. “Maybe they're wild turkeys that can come home to roost in the tree that's inside you,” Martha says. “Or maybe it's a whole murmuration of starlings that can come perch and go to sleep for the night together on an infinitely small branch in the center of your chest.” If you have parts of yourself that need to feel healed and included and loved, be sure to join Martha for the full episode. She’ll lead you in her Space, Stillness, and Silence meditation and help you call all the scattered parts of yourself home to rest. 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.

Our culture generally teaches us that anxiety will keep us safe—but really it’s our intuition that does that. In this episode of The Gathering Room—Episode #184: How to Access Intuition When You Really Need It, Martha talks about how to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition and how to hear what your intuition is trying to tell you. There’s something Martha calls the “sense of truth,” which is a feeling of concord, peace, and calm that comes into us when we believe something that feels true at the deepest levels of the self. It’s trusting that whatever we’re believing at that moment is actually real. “It turns out that a lot of the things we are anxious about are not real—not yet,” Martha says. “They’re potential, but they’re not real in this moment.” Unlike fear, which is a rational response to a clear and present danger, anxiety is a chronic, suffering sense of being afraid of things that may not ever happen. Martha says that one of the lies anxiety will always tell you is that only by staying anxious can you be safe—because when you’re not anxious, you’re not alert. However, exactly the opposite is true: People who are anxious can’t stay alert. Real intuition arrives when our anxiety is quiet. So many of us are walking around constantly anxious, thinking we’re alert, thinking we can trust our intuition, when in fact, we’re blotting out our intuition with anxiety.  To access intuition, we have to go into a state of stillness and peace and then listen for the fun—that’s the state of being where your intuition can talk to you. “Your intuition can come in the goofiest, most wonderful ways,” Martha says, “once you realize it’s meant to be a frequency of joy and never a frequency of anxiety.”  To learn more about listening to your intuition and finding its frequency of joy—and to join Martha in her anxiety-relieving Silence, Space, and Stillness meditation—be sure to tune in 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.

The state of the world right now is unnerving. In this episode of The Gathering Room, she shares how we can start to heal the parts of us that are in pain or despair over the state of things. Martha says that when we experience trauma, shock, fear, or loss, our psyches can split into different parts to help us cope. To heal this loss of integrity or wholeness, we need to unite all the parts of ourselves that are hurting. And we do this by loving them unconditionally. In this episode, Martha walks us through a powerful visualization exercise to help us access our deepest capacity for love, hope, and joy, so we can welcome the suffering parts of ourselves to “be warmed by the fire of love.”  As she describes it, “We have to come together as individuals held by the intelligence of nature, by the consciousness of the universe.” When we can love all the different parts of ourselves, including our sorrow, our fear, our anger, we can love the people around us. And when that happens, vibrant communities begin to form—like Wilder, the “sanctuary for the bewildered” that Martha created with Rowan Mangan. As Martha shares, “Everything I’ve seen online from the people I respect most, whether they’re politically savvy people or psychologists or community organizers, everybody’s saying the same thing: ‘Join something. Connect, connect, connect.’” Shock, overwhelm, fear, and rage are ameliorated as we connect with others who are feeling the same way. And this coming together of the shards of all of us could be what creates the calm beyond the storm. If you’re feeling devastated or uncertain, isolated or afraid, and you want to learn how to let faith, love, and hope guide you to connection and the next right step, don’t miss this reassuring episode of The Gathering Room. 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 how the right hemisphere of your brain, dubbed 'the magician,' can unleash your creative genius! Learn about the decline of creativity from childhood and the societal pressures that contribute to it. Explore how calmness and curiosity can lead to those 'Eureka' moments. Delve into various educational options for nurturing curiosity in children. Finally, uncover the strength found in overcoming adversity and the vital role of supportive communities in fostering personal resilience.