I’ve always loved learning. In high school, I would even leave my friends while we were partying to do homework as they shouted out “stoner nerd!” In college, I’d bring my books with me to the beach and spend most of the day reading with occasional dips in the ocean. I went on to go to graduate school (not just once!), including getting my doctorate. As a mom, I don’t dig playing with dolls with my kid, but I’ll spend a whole day exploring nature and taking field notes with her - easily. You cou...
Jul 15, 2021•23 min•Ep. 61
I’m all about living life to the fullest. From mountain climbing to hiking to enjoying a week at the yurt to jamming to some seriously amazing music at a local festival… But one thing that I see getting in the way of that is that we, silly humans, turn on ourselves a lot . Like when someone says something shitty to us and when we are reacting in anger or whatever emotion, we’re also ultimately disconnected from our inner life. And when we do that, we aren’t living life to the fullest. We aren’t ...
Jul 08, 2021•21 min•Ep. 60
We got the parent wound from whomever took care of us the most during our formative years. Despite their best intentions, they messed us up. Or at least that's how we often think of it. In reality, it also has a lot to do with how we relate to our experience with them. The mother/father/parent wound comes in all shapes and sizes: They can involve one parent or both. They can also be caused by a parent who was absent . They can occur if a parent is overbearing, neglectful, abusive, hyper-critical...
Jul 01, 2021•43 min•Ep. 59
Anxiety and I go wayyyy back... I can remember these mild OCD tendencies and weird tics I had as a kid, like blinking all the time or not wanting to step on cracks in the sidewalk or needing things to be symmetrical. And I freakin’ loved counting things! Over time, I learned how to manage my anxiety, but I still get waves of it. A lot of us (nearly 1 in 5 adults in the United States) are living with anxiety disorders, and women are more than twice as likely to develop anxiety than men. So, let’s...
Jun 24, 2021•33 min•Ep. 58
I'm a type-O blood type and am usually good with biological challenges - viruses, bacterial infections, street food in foreign countries. I almost never get sick. So when all of a sudden I had laryngitis and no other symptoms...I was confused. And BUMMED. I was about to launch my podcast and had blocked out a complete week to record, my Freedom School launch was going so well, and I was spending some mommy-daughter time with Maia while Thai was in Utah. But after some reflection and some friends...
Jun 17, 2021•22 min•Ep. 57
In college I had a friend who, whenever I was relaying something challenging in my life, she would say, “Don’t worry. It’s all good!” And then she’d glide away on her rollerblades with a big smile on her face. I loved that damned girl, and I know she had good intentions, but when she said that it would totally piss me off and I’d want to shake her and be like, “It is NOT ALL GOOD!” Spiritual bypassing is a tendency to use spiritual ideas, explanations, and practices to sidestep or avoid complex ...
Jun 10, 2021•40 min•Ep. 56
So many of us - myself included - have had the wrong idea of what will truly set us free. On some level we know it’s not things like paying off the debt, finding your soul mate, being location independent, losing the weight, finding the perfect job...(ask me how I know). But we forget this and we think, well sh*t, maybe it IS all that stuff. Or maybe it IS about that once you have kids. Or get older. We think maybe it IS what’s going on “out there” that we need to fix. So we waste tons of time, ...
Jun 03, 2021•19 min•Ep. 55
One time, years ago at a super fancy dinner, I made an entire room of rich people UNBELIEVABLY uncomfortable. The beginning of the dinner was great. Until… I’m entertaining those around me with a story about an avalanche in the Himalayas when I hear someone saying, “What are black people complaining about anyway? Slavery ended over 200 years ago. It’s not our fault anymore. It’s time to get over it.” What the whaaa???? I stop mid-sentence with the person I’m chatting with. I turn around and say,...
May 27, 2021•19 min•Ep. 54
Guilt sucks. I was raised in a devoted Catholic family, and while there were some things I really appreciated about it, it also came with a healthy dose of guilt. I was constantly wondering if I was a bad person because of having to go to confession on a regular basis. I remember making stuff up during confession because we had to go so often, and I didn’t always think there was anything I did “wrong.” Over time, I learned to feel really guilty - not just about the big things, but about every li...
May 20, 2021•44 min•Ep. 53
Today we’re talking about gossip and mindful speech. Gossip may at first seem to be something others do - but not “us.” However, it’s more prevalent than you might think. Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Pabongka Rinpoche, says, “Idle gossip is the best way to waste our human lives.” Kind of a serious stateent, right? So I thought it might be worth spending some time on. First, what is “gossip?” One definition is “casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving d...
May 13, 2021•26 min•Ep. 52
As a first-generation Filipinx-American, I was raised to believe that when things get hard, you push through, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get tough and work harder. So when I first heard of self-compassion, I thought it was just for people that didn't know what “real” suffering was like. I thought self-compassion was for wimps. As I’ve worked with many clients over the years, I’ve found that I’m not the only one who finds self-compassion to be a foreign (no pun intended) concept. Thankf...
May 06, 2021•33 min•Ep. 51
What is true success? What is a truly “rich life”? What is a life of true FREEDOM? We all may have our own preconceived notions of what the answers to these questions look like – notions that are subliminally based on societal norms, familial or cultural expectations and the systems of power that order our world… Today, we’re digging into what “living a life of freedom” means to you – and how to move from just imagining this, to making it happen in the here and now. For me and for many of my cli...
Apr 29, 2021•25 min
I grew up with parents who both had mental health diagnoses: PTSD, depression, schizoaffective disorder… and it was FAR from easy. I remember how scared and embarrassed I'd be when my dad would be found walking around the block of the 'hood naked. Or the time he slipped a knife under my mattress telling me I had to be protected "just in case." I remember how unloved I felt and how scared I was when my mom would hit me. I also remember the inner struggles of wanting to love them so much but findi...
Apr 22, 2021•29 min•Ep. 50
In 2012, my husband and I took a cargo boat, which was way overloaded and inches from taking on water, for 3 days on the Niger river to Timbuktu. It was the most amazing adventure. If you look at the photo for this podcast (taken in the Sahara), we look so in love - but what’s not apparent is that we are fleeing a Touareg takeover in Timbuktu and driving across the Sahara to escape. We stopped once to pee (and took this photo). And we weren’t even supposed to do that ! Ultimately, we live thinki...
Apr 15, 2021•22 min•Ep. 49
You may or may not know that my jam is helping people live a life of no regrets. Literally, it’s the first thing you see on my website. It says, “live a life of no regrets” because I’ve learned that it’s one of the things I do NOT want to feel after I’ve lived my life. And people will often say, “How can you...even say that’s possible ?” Do you really believe we can not have regrets? Hell yes. Let’s look at the definition of regret: Regret from the perspective of psychology is a negative cogniti...
Apr 08, 2021•29 min•Ep. 48
One time I was complaining to one of my teachers that it was so much harder for me to progress spiritually since I became a mama. I wasn’t willing to leave my daughter for months to go on a retreat, and I barely found time to sleep, let alone meditate daily. I asked the teacher, whom I deeply trusted, “What should I do?” My teacher asked me if I had heard of Dipa Ma. Of course, I hadn’t. She explained that Dipa Ma’s specialty was helping householders cultivate their practice and helping them see...
Apr 01, 2021•27 min•Ep. 47
A few weeks ago, I was speaking with a friend who thinks the whole thoughts-feelings-actions thing is too cerebral, and she said, “emotions are intelligent and show us deep truths!” And I thought, totally! They show us our thoughts which show us our most deeply held beliefs -some of which we may not be conscious of. Deep truths. Emotions and thoughts: They aren’t mutually exclusive. But I ALSO added that I believe they tell us truths about how we are living in alignment with our truth or not. Th...
Mar 25, 2021•25 min•Ep. 46
Karma... it's not necessarily a concept that many of us think of every day. More than likely, that word pops into our heads when we've caught ourselves acting like a bitch to someone who definitely didn't observe it. "Just wait till karma catches up with you...!" Others, myself included, have had some serious introspective moments when faced with our own mortality... or the death of someone close to us. I remember taking a long hard look at the afterlife and karma when I was first diagnosed with...
Mar 18, 2021•28 min•Ep. 45
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I was in graduate school, living in a friend’s basement. Suddenly, I was overcome with nausea, and I felt...awful. Instead of being with that, my brain went into planning mode. I started researching the web for answers and networking about creating an action plan. There was no pause, just diving into control mode. Thankfully, my years meditation practice kicked in and reminded me to pause. I noticed a big void. Then big emotion. I started crying. I went to...
Mar 11, 2021•35 min•Ep. 44
Today we talk about those times when it’s hard to feel good about other people’s good luck and abundance, and maybe feeling a little - or a lot - jealous. Sometimes we don’t feel good about when a friend gets a new car, or the book deal we’ve been waiting years for, or the soulmate that we still haven’t met. But today you’ll learn that it’s totally normal, and that feeling “sympathetic joy,” or mudita , is one of the hardest qualities for most people to cultivate. I noticed that I would feel a l...
Mar 04, 2021•20 min•Ep. 43
In this episode we explore one aspect of our Dharma, our purpose in life. People often think this is one thing. Like, when people say “I’ve always known I wanted to be a marine biologist, ever since I was a kid.” Or, “I just knew I was going to be a teacher.” But the truth is, many of us have multiple strengths and passions that we long to share with the world - especially freedom junkies like my clients, and like you rebels out there listening to this podcast - but we never give ourselves permi...
Feb 25, 2021•18 min•Ep. 42
Every now and then I get comments about charging for what I teach. Like how dare I teach certain tools and charge for them. How can I charge to help people to stop overdrinking? Or have less anxiety? Or how to manage their mind? Or how to feel free? They say it is very “unspiritual” of me, very “un-Buddhist” of me, to earn a living helping people this way. So I wanted to discuss the concept of “right-livelihood” more in-depth, because I think there are some big misunderstandings of what right li...
Feb 18, 2021•19 min•Ep. 41
Today we dive deeper into how desire fits into our life when we want to continue to evolve spiritually and act in ways that are compassionate to the earth and to others. A lot of people think of desire as this thing that we develop … but really, we have desire wired into us as humans. The essence of what Buddhism offers and teaches through mindfulness, lovingkindness, and compassion, is freedom of the heart. Not “needing” things, not being attached to things. But rather inner freedom. As a resul...
Feb 11, 2021•31 min•Ep. 40
Last week we talked about how important it was to be able to start to embody the person you need to be in order to create the future you want – you need to already think feel and act like that person who has already achieved the things in life you want to manifest. Whether that is a future of more kindness. More freedom. Most justice for all... no matter what you want to manifest, the principles are the same. And like you may have heard me say before: the things we talk about here don’t pick sid...
Feb 04, 2021•19 min•Ep. 39
Us humans tend to think that it is only when we finally achieve our goals or dreams that we can feel more confident and happier and experience more self-love...and more worthy. And not before. But this is actually backwards...and I explain why in this episode. What a lot of people miss is that in order to manifest that life you just visualized, you need to start BEING - thinking, feeling, ACTING as the person who already has manifested those things And this is probably the most important part to...
Jan 28, 2021•22 min•Ep. 38
The other day someone had posted a comment on a FB post I made and she said, “Please unfriend me. We obviously have different beliefs.” And this really stood out to me because I thought it was so...immature to not want to see differing opinions. But it’s quite pervasive these days, right? So I replied, “Actually, we aren’t friends on Facebook, but if we were you are always welcome to do so. But I want to invite you to consider that unfriending people just because they disagree with you might not...
Jan 21, 2021•34 min•Ep. 37
I have a special treat for you today - after the last few episodes, I have received a LOT of comments and questions about how to not care what other people think about you. Another way I think of this is how to let people be wrong about you. And did you know that my podcast episode on exactly this topic was the MOST popular one of 2020? It’s true! I am one to follow signs that come my way - not signs that tell me about rule - no...as you know by now, I like to break rules that don’t make sense t...
Jan 14, 2021•24 min•Ep. 36
We’ve heard stories of people that have taken prison sentences and transformed them into opportunities of spiritual development, or those who have taken extremely challenging life circumstances like tragic deaths and came out the other end, and people who don’t have the financial freedom to travel or not worry about paying the bills, but who feel joyous and free on the inside. How is that possible? While there are certainly many inalienable human rights that can help to define what freedom is, t...
Jan 07, 2021•12 min•Ep. 35
You know we’re all about Freedom here at the Rebel Buddhist – inside and out. One of the things I’ve found that we can do to give us the most emotional freedom in the next year is to partake in the courageous act letting go of things that no longer serve us, and one of the most radical acts we can do to let go, one of the things we can do for ourselves that can truly help us feel more light and free...is forgiving . So that’s what we’re talking about in this New Year’s Eve podcast episode: how t...
Dec 31, 2020•22 min•Ep. 34
In last week’s episode I mentioned that I call the process of reflecting on the past year and creating intentions for the new one REVIEW, REFLECT + ALIGN. Today we dive into the alignment part, because when we are in alignment, if feels damn good. When we are happy, what’s often going on is that our outside world is in alignment with our inside world There is consistency, integrity, with what we value and how we are living our lives So when we think about what we want to create in the next year,...
Dec 24, 2020•17 min•Ep. 33
