What does it mean to “compose yourself”? The usual definition is to calm down and control yourself, but Martha has a very different meaning in mind, and she’s exploring it in this episode of The Gathering Room: How to Compose Yourself. As Martha defines it, you are literally composing your life—the being that you are—through the act of creating something new. Whether it’s a watercolor you’re painting, a meal you’re preparing, a business you’re building, or a child you’re raising, the act of crea...
Feb 01, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 150
Is there something you really want to do, but the thought of it absolutely terrifies you? 😱 Martha has been there many times, and that’s what she’s talking about on this episode of The Gathering Room: Doing the Thing You Think You Cannot Do. If you’re facing something in your life that you want to do but it makes you anxious, Martha says to remember that 99% of every original thing that has ever been done has been done by someone who didn’t think they could do it. In other words, you’re in good...
Jan 25, 2024•31 min•Season 1Ep. 149
Sometimes we’re hit with a change so big it knocks us for a loop. We look around in a daze thinking, “NOW what?” 🦋 Welcome to what Martha calls “Square One” in The Change Cycle, a unique framework she developed to help people understand and navigate life’s transitions. 🦋 As Martha explains, life's changes aren't things we plan in our calendars. They are fundamental metamorphoses. You will go through the four Squares of the Change Cycle over and over throughout your lifetime. And Square One is ...
Jan 18, 2024•32 min•Season 1Ep. 148
Are you someone who makes New Year’s resolutions? Martha enjoys making one (yes, one) each year—and she always keeps it! In this episode of The Gathering Room: A Year of Peace, she talks about her resolution to increase her brain’s wellbeing by dropping demands that have an overriding feeling of negativity and tend to make her brain shut down. Research that has shown that our brains work best when we can answer YES to two questions: Am I safe? Am I loved unconditionally? After basic survival, Ma...
Jan 11, 2024•33 min•Season 1Ep. 147
Do you ever struggle to do things you know you have to do, even though you don’t really feel like it? We’ve all been there—including Martha—and she’s talking about it in this episode of The Gathering Room: Keep Swimming. Humans are the kind of creatures that can get so focused on a dream that even if that dream seems impossible, or the work it requires feels like a total slog, we can make ourselves keep going. Martha watched a movie about long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, who made several failed...
Dec 14, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 146
Did you know that everything around you is conscious and responding to you in various ways? It may sound woo-woo, but Martha says there's a tremendous amount of legitimate scientific research to support this idea! When we’re willing to acknowledge that we don't know everything about the universe, and we’re willing to play with the idea that the universe is conscious, very interesting things start happening… In this episode of The Gathering Room: How to Play with the Conscious Universe, Martha ta...
Dec 07, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 145
Did you know that the right hemisphere of your brain is doing supercomputer-level processing all the time, whether you’re aware of it or not? Wild, right? Martha calls the right hemisphere “the magician” because it can come up with the most amazing, brilliant solutions to very difficult problems, seemingly out of thin air. In this episode of The Gathering Room: Awakening Your Magician, Martha talks about how we can activate our highly creative right hemispheres, so we can solve the problems in o...
Nov 16, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 144
Some people have a bullseye picture of their purpose in life and are headed straight toward it. However, this is extremely rare. Why? Martha says it’s because we live in a culture dominated by left-hemisphere thinking, which pulls us toward anxiety and socializes us to do as we’re told and acquire material wealth. In this episode of The Gathering Room podcast, Martha talks about following your curiosity to activate the right side of the brain, which is where our passion lives. And our passion is...
Nov 09, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 143
Do you ever feel like your life is a crazy quilt? Martha says that creating your life is the ultimate creative project, and that’s what she’s talking about in this episode of The Gathering Room. Each of us is given all the material to make a life—a human body, a set of circumstances, and a set of abilities—and the life we make from that material is ours to determine in this day and age. Sometimes it feels like we’re just piecing things together helter-skelter without a pattern, crazy-quilt style...
Nov 02, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 142
Martha says one reason we humans are a strange species is because we love to make jigsaw puzzles—beautiful pictures that we cut up into tiny pieces and disassemble, and then put back together. And we don’t like them to be too easy! In this episode of The Gathering Room: Solving the Puzzles of Our Lives, Martha talks about the way problems in our lives are like puzzles, and how it often can be more joyful to have a puzzle than not to have one. These puzzles are the life situations given to us by ...
Oct 26, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 141
You’ve heard of the fight and flight reflexes, but what about flop and fake? Flop and fake (also known as fawn) are two of the other responses in the polyvagal system, a theory about how our nervous systems adapt to stress and the environment. Fake/fawn is a people-pleasing response, and flop means you just lie there unable to drum up motivation. In this episode of The Gathering Pod: The Way Back to Happy, Martha’s talking about polyvagal theory and how to regulate your nervous system when it ge...
Oct 12, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 140
We're not trained to think of a spiritually led life as being hilarious or silly or goofy. But as Martha reminds us, laughter is the beginning of prayer. In this episode of The Gathering Pod: Letting the Force Steer Your Life, she talks about the difference between spiritual faith and religious faith, and how to connect with and trust spiritual energy (aka the Force) to guide you. When you do, you’ll be in for some truly delightful surprises! As Martha puts it, “The universe is not your butler. ...
Oct 05, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 139
“Be prepared to stop.” This is serious life advice, Martha says, because no matter what we’re doing (or how much we want to continue doing it), at some point we’re going to get interrupted by life. Whenever we have to stop something we thought was going to continue indefinitely—like a job, for example, or a marriage—it can really hurt. In this episode of The Gathering Pod: When Stopping Is the Way to Go, Martha talks about how we can make peace with inevitable interruptions by embracing another ...
Sep 28, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 138
Are you familiar with polyvagal theory? It may sound highly scientific, but Martha says polyvagal theory has a profound effect on spiritual practice as well, and she’s talking all about it in this episode of The Gathering Room: Dropping Anchor. The polyvagal nerve is a system of nerves connecting the brain to various parts of the body, and it plays a key role in our response to stress—either revving us up or shutting us down. And according to the work of Deb Dana, it’s also involved with our sen...
Sep 21, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 137
It’s The Best of the Gathering Pod, and this week we’re revisiting another listener favorite from the vault—Episode 110: How to Let the Light In. In this episode, Martha talks about her “rage to master” and the paradox of imperfection: While we can try our hardest to produce perfect results, we must accept that we’ll always make mistakes. It’s this combination of effort and grace that allows us to let the light into our lives. To find out more, be sure to listen to the full episode! See omnystud...
Sep 14, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 136
We’ve got another Best of the Gathering Room episode for you today, a listener favorite called Building on Bright Spots. In this episode, Martha talks about finding and following the almost invisible “bright spots” in your life whenever things feel dark and cloudy. Because clouds are illusions, it's always possible to find little breaks in the clouds and see the clear points of truth that can guide you home. To find out how, tune in for the full episode—which might turn out to be a bright spot f...
Sep 07, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 135
While Martha is out on vacation, we’re bringing you The Best of the Gathering Room—a treasury of Gatherers’ favorite episodes—starting with: How to Heal Your Heart. Many of us believe something outside ourselves can heal us when we're heartsick, but Martha says the opposite is true. The heart can heal itself—if you know how to access the "heart healer" within you. To learn how to come into integrity so that your inner “heart healer” can do its valuable work, don't miss this popular episode! See ...
Aug 31, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 134
Gatherers—I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr. Richard Schwartz, the brilliant creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a wonderful therapeutic model that you may have heard me talk about before because I love using it! IFS provides an optimistic, empowering framework to help us focus on the different “parts” of our personalities so that we can shift into a state characterized by curiosity, calm, confidence, and compassion. I hope you’ll tune in for our conversation about his latest book, YOU ARE T...
Aug 24, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 133
Have you been feeling depleted? So many of us are tired, so much of the time. To find out what we can do about it, join Martha for this episode of The Gathering Pod: Filling the Well. Martha points out that there are many situations in human life that are analogous to drought— times when our energy feels like it’s drying up. The good news is that there are sources of energetic replenishment always available to us. With enough spiritual practice you can actually get to a place where you feel the ...
Aug 17, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 132
Did you know there is a powerful connection between spirituality and mental health? Martha recently read a book about this subject—The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life by Lisa Miller—and she’s talking about it on this episode of The Gathering Room: The Benefits of Awakening. Martha believes in the transformative power of spiritual awakening, which she defines as being what you are in your true essence, once you’ve discarded illusion. While spirit...
Aug 10, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 131
Gatherers—I'm so excited to be joined by Emma Nadler, author of the lyrical, funny, and heart-healing new memoir, THE UNLIKELY VILLAGE OF EDEN. As a psychotherapist and the parent of a child with disabilities, Emma Nadler is a testament to the resiliency of parents, children, friendships, marriage, and every other manifestation of human love. I hope you’ll tune in for our conversation about her deeply moving and inspiring book! THE UNLIKELY VILLAGE OF EDEN: A MEMOIR by Emma Nadler is available a...
Aug 03, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 130
We’ve all had times in our life when we’ve needed help—and we’ve all had times when we’ve received the help we needed. In this episode of The Gathering Room: How to Look for Help, Martha says that appreciating those times when you’ve been helped in the past is the key to getting help in the future. When we focus on need, Martha says, it creates a lifetime that feels like nothing but need. But when you see yourself as someone who’s always ultimately received help, you begin to see the universe as...
Jul 27, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 129
There are more people on earth than ever before… yet so many people are lonely. The thing is, love and friendship aren’t a numbers game. There’s a way to attract the people who are waiting to love you. Come find out how! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jul 20, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 128
Content Warning: This episode includes details of a beloved pet passing. “Keeping your seat” refers to finding the core of peace that is always present at your center. This simple skill changes everything. Listen in to this week’s episode to learn how to do it and the heartbreaking reason Martha had to practice it this week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jul 13, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 127
In this episode of The Gathering Pod: Calm Down, We Can Do Both!, Martha talks about how calming yourself frees the brain to come up with creative ways to get everything your heart desires—even when those desires seem to conflict with each other. Martha recommends that when you reach an impasse in your yearning, push hard against the frustration you feel and let the yearning be bigger—and then let go. That’s when you get calm, which activates your brain’s full creative potential to find solution...
Jun 27, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 126
The secret about how to claim that elusive feeling of safety is hiding in plain sight. But it is disguised! Listen to this week’s Gathering Room to learn all about how to feel truly safe. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jun 22, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 125
There are three zones we can inhabit. Two will shrink our lives and one will grow them. Learn the difference and how to stay in the sweet spot with this week’s Gathering Room! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 25, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 124
This week, we all go tracking! Your spirit is leaving footprints everywhere; join Martha to learn how to follow them! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 18, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 123
We are naturally inclined to focus on things that frighten us. Lies spread six times faster than true facts. In fact, there’s only one thing that spreads as quickly as lies, and that’s Martha’s one-word recipe for us this week. Tune in to find out what it is! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
May 11, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Gatherers—I'm so excited to be joined by New York Times bestselling author Katherine May! If you don't know Katherine's work, do yourself an enormous favor and read everything you can that she's written. I hope you'll join me for our conversation about her new book, ENCHANTMENT: AWAKENING WONDER IN AN ANXIOUS AGE. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Apr 27, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 121
