We are sadjoy to announce that this is the final episode of Bliss+Grit. Coincidentally it's publishing almost exactly at the 4-year mark of when we began. This has been such a fulfilling project for both of us. It's created huge shifts in our personal evolution and a chance for us to connect as friends who live long distance to one another. But most importantly it's meant so much to hear from all of you that it's also had a useful and beneficial impact on your lives. It's been so touching to rec...
Aug 26, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 153
In our recent conversation with Matt Kahn we talked about his first golden rule: you've done nothing wrong. It's timely then that we both are up against some old internal narratives about things we have done "wrong" or that are "wrong" about ourselves. As always, we are examining these truisms from the inside out. In this episode we look at what hooks us into narratives about wrong-ness, and ways to work with that when it arises. How do we un-velcro ourselves from seeing ourselves as the thought...
May 05, 2020•51 min•Season 1Ep. 152
Matt Kahn is a spiritual teacher and empathic healer who is the author of the bestselling books Whatever Arises, Love That, and Everything is Here to Help You. His newest book, The Universe Always Has a Plan: The 10 Golden Rules of Letting Go is what we gathered together to discuss today. Currently, we are all living through a global pandemic together. Instead of a typical "book interview" instead we discuss how the new spiritual paradigm is relevant to our current challenging times. As Matt say...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 151
Can we bio-hack ourselves into better states of mind and being with embodied “positive thinking?” Today we are discussing neuro-reprogramming methods and the effects they can have on your body and mind- including ways in which they can create harm. Last year we both engaged with a program called Dynamic Neural Retraining Systems (DNRS) and in some ways this conversation is an update on how that program helped us since so many of you ask. (We have experienced health shifts and reduced anxiety jus...
Mar 03, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 150
We speak a lot about trauma and healing from trauma on the show, but we've never done an episode that truly asks the question, "What is trauma?". Drawing on inspiration like Dr. Edith Eva Eger and Peter Levine we look at if PTSD should drop the "D" for disorder, what it means that trauma is a charge, and if that's true, how do we "discharge" that charge? It's a very humanizing and hopeful take on trauma and we hope it's helpful to all of you.
Feb 04, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 149
Today we are discussing healing that is not a part of our individual histories, but instead is carried in us- in our very dna- from our ancestors. It might seem like a not-so-cheery New Year's Eve episode, but actually we find this point of view to be surprisingly relieving. It opens up so much space to meet our experience and tempers some of the more shame-oriented points of that personal healing can sometimes take on. We discuss what ancestral trauma feels like when it arises, and some of our ...
Dec 31, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 148
Co-dependency has been such a big pattern for both of us that we’re back again deepening our conversation on the differences between co-dependency and interdependency. Meaning, what would an end to co-dependence look like in relationships? The pictures we can receive about what it means to heal co-dependency can be someone who does not empathize and is not moved into service by the suffering of others. This couldn't be farther from the reality of empathic souls. Of course we care when people suf...
Dec 17, 2019•44 min•Season 1Ep. 147
Today we are speaking with our special guest John Prendergast. This is our second time speaking with him to our great delight. John beautifully integrates the awakening path with psychotherapy. He is a licensed Therapist,and a former adjunct professor of psychology at CIIS. He is also the author of two books, today we are talking with him about his most recent book. The Deep Heart. We talk all about what he means by this phrase “the deep heart” and what can happen when we are able to land there ...
Dec 03, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 146
*This episode contains upcoming changes to the format of Bliss + Grit. Please tune in to stay up to date. It’s different to change to get out of pain then it is to change out of an intuition or a new vision. In this weeks episode we’re exploring meeting change and transformation, and most specifically, what happens when something you love changes; when rather than moving away from something painful, you’re getting the internal signal to change something you love or have valued in the past. This ...
Nov 26, 2019•56 min•Season 1Ep. 145
Today we are talking about how ingrained the impulse can be to always automatically look at “What is it about me? What am I doing wrong? What do I need to heal? What’s wrong with me that I am... being judgy, feeling angry, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted?” Are these feelings a signal that there is yet more material we need to heal so that we can always be “better” at tolerating things? Or are there perhaps things that we are accurately perceiving are out of alignment for us, or are taxing or o...
Nov 05, 2019•46 min•Season 1Ep. 144
We have talked about spiritual teacher misconduct before from the point of view of what to be wary of and how to choose an integrity teacher(s). In today's episode, as more allegations come forward about yet more spiritual teachers, we're talking about it from the point of view of how ideas about what awakening is can get things into troublesome territory. In this episode we discuss: - What awakening is not - How people use the word "awakening" in many different ways- sometimes to discuss enligh...
Oct 29, 2019•58 min•Season 1Ep. 143
This week we are answering a patron’s question about something that is up for them in their life. It contains a lot of nuance about how to be with other people’s emotions without feeling overwhelmed, as well as how to receive kindness and love without feeling overwhelmed by that either. The shortened version of the question is: “When I do let myself feel my emotions deeply I frequently get super overwhelmed and times that I am center of attention or receiving heartfelt love and support are still...
Oct 15, 2019•54 min•Season 1Ep. 141
Today on Bliss + Grit we are speaking with our special guest Jane Clapp. Jane is a departure from our typical guest who speaks on spiritual awakening, but we love all that she has to say about trauma informed mindfulness and nervous system regulation interventions to transform overwhelm. She is a mindful strength and movement coach, a trauma informed embodied resilience expert and a Jungian Analyst in training. Brooke took a class with her called Fawn to Fierce that she really appreciated and we...
Oct 08, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 140
In this episode we both speak about limiting identities we are each up against that are related to hiding. How might our genuine values be co-opted by ego identities that keep us small? How do these identities require an unfriendly imaginary audience? And when we engage in this kind of “othering”, via imagining other people as the judge and jury, how do we project an unfriendly universe onto everyone in advance of any actual friction? Once we can see that all operating, how do we untangle these ...
Sep 24, 2019•52 min•Season 1Ep. 139
Today we are discussing what we could call living from truth. I had an experience not long back where a mentor of mine was asking me to say exactly what I wanted, and I noticed a freeze response. This opened up for me a new depth of experience around what it really can feel like to live from truth, as opposed to following the momentum of past conditioning and habits. Many of us say we want to be authentic or know our true nature, or the truth of reality, but what does that really mean? We’re kic...
Sep 17, 2019•59 min•Season 1Ep. 138
Today we are talking with Dr. Gail Brenner, a clinical psychologist whose practice and teachings are unique because of her non-dual perspective grounded in deep and practical truths about peace and happiness. She is the author of two books, The End of Self-Help , and Suffering is Optional . We are primarily discussing her most recent book, Suffering is Optional . You can find more on Gail’s work at www.gailbrenner.com. In this episode we talk about: What Gail means by “optional suffering” since ...
Sep 10, 2019•56 min•Season 1Ep. 137
[Flashback Tuesday] In the second episode Vanessa interviews Brooke so that listeners can get to know her a bit and hear the shape her path has taken and is taking thus far. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com . To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit...
Sep 03, 2019•55 min•Season 1Ep. 136
[Throwback Tuesday] In the first episode Brooke Thomas is interviewing Vanessa Scotto about the shape her path has taken and is taking thus far. For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com . To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit...
Aug 27, 2019•43 min•Season 1Ep. 135
[Flashback Tuesday] In this episode we are speaking with our very special guest and friend Jeannie Zandi. Jeannie has been on our show before and today is offering some profound, must-hear insight on yin and yang that we are so excited to share with you. Our conversation touches upon so much including what true power looks like, the imbalances our culture has perpetuated, what healing would look like through the lens of yin and how we can move forward together in dismantling the conditioning tha...
Aug 20, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 134
[Flashback Tuesday] Our guest today, Neelam, is a direct disciple of Papaji, and she has been holding satsang internationally since 1996. She runs the non profit, Fire of Truth Satsanga. Neelam’s unequivocal commitment to truth helps students turn inward again and again to release underlying patterns of conditioning which block the recognition of their true nature as Presence. The clarity and discriminating wisdom that are intrinsic to this awakened state are given freely by Neelam through Spiri...
Aug 13, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 133
[Flashback Tuesday] In this episode we’re excited to catch up with each other and integrate some of what we have experienced recently in the presence of so many amazing guest conversations, in particular our recent one with David Thomas. We’re exploring conditioning, again, but after being with David we’re posing the question to ourselves “what if it’s all conditioning?” What if, while we are in ego consciousness, all of our thoughts are simply products of our culture and lineage that become hab...
Aug 06, 2019•59 min•Season 1Ep. 132
[Flashback Tuesday] Today we are talking with David Thomas. David is a self-realization teacher, speaker, and writer living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Through the practice of Self-inquiry and meditation, he has acquired a deeper understanding of the inner self and true liberation. David now seeks to support individuals in their pursuit of self-realization through his writing and speaking. The insights he shares within his videos, quotes, and poems are created to help nurture the healing of ind...
Jul 30, 2019•1 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 131
[Flashback Tuesday] John J. Prendergast, PhD, is a psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and founder and editor-in-chief of Undivided: The Online Journal of Nonduality and Psychology. John met his first teacher, Advaita master Jean Klein, in 1983 and began studying with one of our favorite teachers, Adyashanti, in 2001. For 23 years John was also a professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where Vanessa Scotto went to grad school. He is the author of ...
Jul 23, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 130
[Flashback Tuesday] Today we are having a conversation with Loch Kelly. Loch is the author of Shift into Freedom, and the creator of the recent audio course offering through Sounds True, Effortless Mindfulness Now. He is a meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU. He has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians and practicing awareness psychotherapy in New York for...
Jul 16, 2019•2 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 129
For this episode we zoomed out and explored: What is Bliss+Grit about exactly? More specifically, after nearly three years, 127 episodes and lots of personal healing, inquiry, and exposure to different teachers and practices: What is our working model of healing and transformation? How does conditioning store in us and how to we untangle that? And, importantly, if we aren’t our conditioning, what are we? It’s an ongoing lived inquiry more than a nailed down blueprint, and it’s more about buildin...
Jul 09, 2019•1 hr 16 min•Season 1Ep. 128
In this episode we are sharing our conversation with our guest Jill Blakeway. Jill is the founder and director of The YinOva Center in New York City and the author of several books, including her most recent book Energy Medicine. She is the host of CBS Radio’s popular weekly podcast, “Grow, Cook, Heal”, which Vanessa Scotto has been a guest on, a teacher of gynecology and obstetrics at the Doctoral Program at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and a renowned authority on alternative medicine a...
Jul 02, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 127
This is one of our favorite kinds of conversations: where the nervous system, trauma responses, and the spiritual path intersect. We are looking at the four F’s of trauma response: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. We are talking about how these normal, healthy responses can become identities and therefore keep us from fully nourishing lives. And in particular we are honing in on fawn, also called please, appease, or tend and befriend, since we haven’t spoken in as much detail about this particul...
Jun 25, 2019•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 126
This is the second part to last week’s conversation with the author, speaker, and teacher Will Pye on his newest book, The Gratitude Prescription . We first interviewed Will almost a year back on his book Blessed with a Brain Tumor and enjoyed our talk so much that we invited him back to hear more about what he calls ‘radical gratitude.’ As someone who had a spiritual awakening in the aftermath of receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, we find his teachings and recommended practices of gratitude...
Jun 18, 2019•49 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Today we are speaking with Will Pye for a second time! Will is an author, speaker, and teacher, and we had our first conversation with him about his first book, Blessed with a Brain Tumor, and today we are talking about his most recent book, The Gratitude Prescription. The embodied practice of gratitude has become a centrally important part of our own practices this year, and so we wanted to talk with Will about the deeply experiential practice of gratitude and how it is fundamental to the funct...
Jun 11, 2019•48 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Today we are sharing the second part of our conversation with our guest Lisa Wimberger. Lisa is the creator of Neurosculpting, which is a self-directed neuroplasticity protocol. Specifically, it is a mental training process that quiets our fight-or-flight center and activates our prefrontal cortex, which is the mind’s seat of our compassion and empathy. We had so much to discuss that we made this interview a two-parter. In this episode we are talking about: How energy relates to your nervous sys...
Jun 04, 2019•43 min•Season 1Ep. 123
