Alter

A guided meditation to accompany episode 10: Q & A, to drop into our interconnection, and conversation with Wendell Berry's 'The Unsettling of America.'  

A question and response episode—everything from books to music to smoothies. Conversations with Anne Lamott, Annie Proulx, Wendell Berry, Glennon Doyle, The National, The Lumineers, Bon Iver, Wilder Woods, Benny Holloway...and you. Show Notes:  https://www.altertogether.com/shownotes/2019/9/15/episode-10-q-amp-a-whats-fueling-you

A guided meditation to accompany episode 9: The Mislead, to drop into the gifts of the swerves of our lives.   Show notes website:  https://www.altertogether.com/shownotes/2019/8/23/meditation-the-whole-catastrophe

Can’t. Yet. Tell. The story’s not over. The arc’s still unfolding.   This week I turned 40. Holy smokes.   When I started to imagine this podcast a couple years ago, I imagined this as the first episode: The Mislead. It’s close to my heart. Maybe a little too close. Feels dangerously close. Field notes from the moments, the seasons in our lives when the road swerves, the train comes off the tracks, the rugs are pulled, the wheels fall off and the road dead-ends. the unexpected crashes in. The mile-marker moments when we decide on the metrics we use to measure our lives. My heart’s been whispering this mutinous, terrifying challenge:  ‘The story you’re desperate to hear is the one you’re meant to live into, and tell.” This world needs stories of the exhilarating mislead. I haven’t heard enough of them. The ways the path swerved, and what we did with it. The ways our hopes and expectations were subverted—the ways things didn’t turn out—they ways things got funky. And so we did. We chose to get weird. The late b

A guided meditation by Dana Trixie Flynn, to accompany episode 8, '0 to God.'

A few years ago, after a bunch of rugs had been pulled, I walked into Dana Trixie Flynn’s yoga class in the Flatiron district of New York City.  Off the street, through a weirdly corporate lobby, up an elevator, I opened a door with a neon pink Laughing Lotus sign to another world. Bright, playful, almost cartooney murals of gods and goddesses cover the walls of a long hallway into this kind of yoga Disneyland meets church. A huge yoga center by New York City standards that’s been going strong for 20 years, with 3 different studios, a huge teaching staff, a big free candy bowl of stick on bindees and rub-on gold tattoos. somehow, there’s always glitter stuck to your feet when you put your shoes on to leave. You know when Dana’s in the building because of her laugh, which of course she dropped as a sound check—a loud, over the top, invitation and welcome mat to let it all hang loose. There’s a lot of New Orleans in that laugh. More on that later. Her get up’s are as vivid and crazy as her tattoos, full sleeves

A guided meditation in response to episode 7, 'Eat the World' to regenerate twisted plots and reset your nourishment.

This conversation is about food. Delicious, mouth-watering, energizing, imaginative food. But it’s about much more than that. It’s about connection. It’s about our exchange of energy with the world, which is just another way of saying, food. Input. Output. Fuel, Creation. Food is the way we eat the world. It’s this incessant reminder that we are part of a network of ongoing exchange. That we’re dependent beings, dependent on air, water, energy, and fuel for both body and spirit. This is the second episode unpacking the surprises of an adventure I took to Bali for two weeks that unexpectedly turned into 2 months. I knew Simon and I would have a lot to talk about when he answered my questions about how he’s reimagining a vegan gathering place with a wink and a shrug and ‘it all started with pork ribs.’ Both/and, people. Flesh and spirit. Radical hospitality. Food philosophy that encompasses our connection to everything. I’ve been shaping an experience around food, nutrition, body love, and community called WEIG

A guided meditation to cultivate your body as an incubator of the future.

Welcome to the vortex. Every place is sacred. All of it is sacred. Anywhere can be a vehicle of revelation. But there are places that buzz with a certain frequency that gets all of us talking like hippies, reaching for those insufficient words like ‘cosmic’, ‘astral,’ ‘mystic’ And the only reason we roll our eyes is when those words or the kind of people who use them seem like they’re so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good – spiritually superior or unacknowledging of the grit and pain and irreducible complexity of life on earth and the real challenges we face as a species and a planet. What I kept discovering over and over in Bali is a community of futurists, deeply smart, reflective, talented, intentional drop-outs of failing systems, drawn to Bali for its ancient tradition of healing. But they’re not just here for personal restoration, and certainly not for retirement. They’re here to heal the world. Big vision. No small states. And surprisingly, for a community of visionaries, radical humility.  I star

A guided meditation toward wonder and radical attention.

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.   - Mary Oliver   This episode is a conversation with a Mary Oliver’s work, an expedition into the wonder her poetry, prose, and way of being stirs. A lens highlighting her practices of the disciplines of creativity, the hustle and flow of working with the muse. The first in an ongoing series of spotlights on sages speaking into and beyond the challenges of our time.

A guided meditation

This episode explores our embodiment. What it means to live in a body. The mind-body connection. How the body carries, and can clear trauma. Discovering and cultivating athleticism, and movement as medicine and empowerment. The body as a locus of vulnerability, courage, and spiritual life.

A guided meditation to define your invaluable work.

You’ve probably heard the question, ‘what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ But I think a juicier one is: ‘What would you do even if you knew you WOULD fail?’ Because the process itself feels exhilarating? What flight would be worth a fall?     This conversation with Carolyn Williams, the creator of Zephyr cycling studio in Bozeman, Montana is about creating what your heart demands, creating the thing you wish existed, and the courage it takes to do so, the wrestling match with fear and disqualification and risk, the hustle, and the graces, the flow that carries us as the universe conspires to support the work of our highest intentions.    I’m especially excited for you to meet Carolyn, as I’m leading another Alter Journeys retreat to Montana this June 12-16, and there are still a few spots open. I’ll be teaching indoor cycling journeys at Zephyr and Alter at Foster Creek Farm, our retreat basecamp, in the rolling hills and ranchland just outside Bozeman. I cannot tell you how magical this place

A guided meditation to direct you heartward. What is your home frequency?

‘Heartward:   Moving from the still center through the noise through darkness through resistance Making space for the heartbeat the ache, the vision however quiet, however fearful THAT IS YOURS. yours. for all of us.’    This episode explores meditation, restoration, integration, and waste—the ways we re-connect to the heart, and the cultural pressure these practices face.   We (explore) meditation as a spiritual technology of integration, a toolbox for growing through pain, confusion, desire rather than numbing discomfort. We discuss forms, history, rational and traditional theory, yoga as a broader and deeper practice beyond asana, visualization, and meditation’s amplifying effects over time.    Nicole proposes fresh questions and challenges around your practices of rest, restoration, and integration to cultivate your inner state—the wellspring of your physical and mental health, and the main thing you share with others—and disconnect from the ‘insufficiency industrial complex.’   What is your path home to

A guided meditation to drop you into your heart. How are you called to alter? To altar? To become?   https://www.altertogether.com/shownotes/meditation1

Welcome to ALTER, hosted by Nicole Meline. This podcast explores the practice of transformation as a conversation between hustle and flow Altering – changing, growing, becoming And Altaring – offering, surrendering, opening to divine conspiracy   Here are adventures in alignment and conspiracy, awake to all the grit, dirt, and complexity of our world, alert to the graces that come alongside the struggle, the hustle. A cocktail of soul food, new rhythms, and street wisdom. Encouragement – an infusion of courage – for the moments you need it most.   In episode 1, we ask: Where does Hustle meet Flow? Where does performance, with its exhausting hunger, meet hibernation and restoration? Where does work meet grace? Confidence meet vulnerability? Focus meet openness and curiosity? Drive meet play? Alter with an ‘e’ and Altar with an ‘a’? How to become a joyful warrior for justice, peace, and your creative work? How to grow and build at the pace of integrity and joy? How to honor set-backs, revisions?   The next epis