Cara Lai is awesome. That’s the first thing to say. She is humble and real and willing to explore a heated topic without having any easy prepared answers. Backtrack! Cara is a dharma teacher, artist, Mom and former therapist. These days she mostly teaches meditation retreats and a fun online drop-in class called “Meditate Your Face Off!” (Jeff: Be still my heart.)

Our subject is the shitstorm happening on planet earth – in the Middle East, the Ukraine, the US, and other hot spots – and whether everyone should be speaking out. We recorded the episode back in May 2024; things are no less urgent today, seven months later. People have very strong opinions on these issues, and very strong opinions both about what should be said, and who should be saying it.

We talk about things like:

* How we can approach polarizing conversations

* What role anger and shame play in how we relate to each other

* How mindfulness and compassion might move us in a different direction

Cara’s guided mindfulness practice comes late in the episode, at 34 minutes. It’s a compassionate inquiry into what’s happening for us – in this moment – that we feel we can’t bear. “It’s hard to have a heart,” she says. In learning to stay present with our own experience, we also learn to stay present with others, even those we disagree with. The episode ends with a conversation about belonging, trust, and sharing our unique gifts with the world.

Thank you Cara!

LINKS

* Cara’s website: caralai.org

* Cara’s Podcast: adventuresinmeditating.com

The Afterparty

Where Tasha and Jeff chat about global culture, neurodiversity, and the privilege of living in this time. What new creative responses to the world’s challenges are waiting to emerge? That, friends, is the true promise, which Jeff immediately degrades in the final two minutes, when he curses and asks for money and then gargle-chokes on some grapefruit LaCroix bubbly water. The whole denouement is exceedingly stupid and immature and should have been cut – but! –well, it made Tasha laugh very hard. And that’s what matters.

AND NOW: SOME EXCITING NEWS!

We’re stoked to announce our first Mind Bod Adventure Squad Retreat. It’s an opportunity to get wild and embodied and very present with us.

It’s going down at the Omega Institute, June 8-13, 2025. We love our community and want to practice with you IN PERSON. Come explore!

REGISTER HERE

K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

In this episode we welcome Caverly Morgan, former Zen monk and author of The Heart of Who We Are. Caverly is also the founder of Peace in Schools, a teen-centered mindfulness curriculum for teens.

We jump right into it with a discussion of how teens very naturally want to challenge many of the culture’s bogus assumptions – in her words, teens “are on fire with wanting to dismantle what’s not real.”

We start with a beautiful breath practice that Caverly uses in high school classrooms. “Dental-mental floss”: back and forth through the center, expanding and grounding.

From there, we discuss goodies like:

* the primacy of subjective experience* letting go of the need to find the “right way”* shifting towards what works for your situation and what helps you suffer less* the role of lineages and teachers* the joys of many practices … and how none of them may even be going anywhere!

The Afterparty (Watch at www.mindbodbpod.com)

In this week’s party time, we wax excitedly about concerns that are close to our hearts, which is to say WEIRD SPIRITUAL S**T. We discuss whether there is a universal direction in the contemplative path, one true in all cultures (if so, what might that be?). We talk about how different practices are designed to address different problems or needs, and how these change from culture to culture, person to person, and even - within each person - week to week and moment to moment!

NB: there’s a lot of thumbs up emojis in this… Tasha’s macbook was going berserk and apparently fervently agreeing with everythign we said 👍🎉 Enjoy!

*The Afterparty will move behind the paywall in January! For real this time! Become a paid subscriber to continue being privy to these strange discussions…

Let us know in the comments how these practices landed for you!

K, That’s all for now. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Well, this one is cool. It may change your meditation practice and – if you stay with the inquiry – your life. You’d hardly know how ambitious it is though, from our guest Kevin Schanilec’s humble, deadpan delivery.

Kevin is a long-time Buddhist practitioner from Seattle who has formalized a process for seeing through what Buddhists call “The Ten Fetters.” The fetters are fundamental (mis)beliefs we hold about how the self and world exist. Most of us don’t even realize they are beliefs – we are unconsciously inside them, which causes us to suffer in all the usual human ways.

What’s wild is that we don’t have to live according to these beliefs. With practice and commitment, we can learn to let go of each one and experience a corresponding drop in suffering and an increase in fulfillment. And Kevin shows us how…

For the purposes of this episode, we focus on the 4th and 5th fetters: desire and ill will – aka, our human compulsion to act on our various likes and dislikes. Kevin’s guided practice tries to show us that in our present experience, there is actually no inevitable reason to react to anyone, or anything.

If we are quiet and open and curious, we can follow the chain of reactivity back, and find out, as weird as it may sound, that nothing in our direct experience actually kicked it all off. We don’t have to react to anything. For Kevin, this is a freedom worth cultivating. In his words, “we get off that rollercoaster of extreme highs and extreme lows,” and start to respond to life in a more sane, effective, and compassionate way.

We get into all this and so much more! Kevin has such a refreshing perspective on the normalcy of the whole self-realization process.

Jeff says: “I now do this practice all the time – maybe more than any other Mind Bod Pod practice – and it works for me, every time. I have less reactivity in my life in general, and I consider this practice central to that.”

So give it a shot! You can also find other inquiries on Kevin’s website.

LINKS:

* Kevin’s site: simplytheseen.com* liberationunleashed.com

The Afterparty (go to www.mindbodpod.com to watch!)

In this Afterparty, Tasha and Jeff talk about how Kevin’s logical style of spiritual inquiry can be a great fit for the Western mind. They also talk about how there are many other ways and paths. And then they talk about what it means to be your own teacher: How we need the traditions and experienced guides to go deeper, but ultimately we are the ones taking care of ourselves and directing our path.

Then, to quote the AI they asked to summarize this Afterparty, “Tasha and Jeff conclude with a lighthearted reflection on the elusive and omnipresent nature of enlightenment.” 😅

Let us know in the comments how the fetters practice landed for you!

K, That’s all for now. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️