Mysteries of the Feeling Realm Lorella Ricci and Cole Knazovicky

Delving into the enigmatic concept of God stirs profound responses within us, not just in our minds, but deeply within our very core. Does it usher in a profound sense of inner peace, or does it instead tighten your belly, prompt eye-rolls, and a begging for the topic to be avoided?

We've had a lot going on in our lives, so we took a while to get to our fifth podcast ... where we gleefully decided to dive into the concept of God! (Haha!!) Yet, this exploration isn't merely an intellectual exercise; we're delving more into this eternal enigma through the innermost layers: somatic sensations, emotional depths, and visceral experiences.

Instead of adhering to the conventional, man-made depictions of God ingrained in us since childhood, what happens when we transpose the narrative of God, Jesus, and Mary into the multidimensional landscapes of our own bodies? What if they are direct facets of our own being?

In this podcast, predominantly a recounting of my personal odyssey with God (Cole), I find myself deeply moved by the impact it has on Lorella. Her responses serve as illuminating beacons, shedding even more light on my own journey and this fleeting discourse on God.

What happens when you read "Sacred Masculine" and "Sacred Feminine"? Does it turn your stomach, pique your interest, or leave you feeling somewhat disinterested?

Cole and I set off on this journey without much of a clue where the other would go (or where we ourselves would go, for that matter) ... but where we ended up was profoundly delightful. 

Our favourite podcast to date !!

Maybe it's best to not say too much and let you come for the ride. Our perspectives and expressions are so different ... and yet they land in very similar places. What a joy to travel here.

We hope you enjoy it!
Lorella & Cole x

In this episode we look at what it might feel like to open to the wisdom of the other polarity. How do we listen to each other? What does it mean, or look like, to invite reflection?

We are in a predominantly masculine tilted consciousness: we are so profoundly steeped in the energy of mind, thinking, clarity, complexity, uprightness. We have lost connection to our feeling bodies. To the energies that move through and around us, that not only animate us, but nourish us. 

And as a result of this, we live in a disembodied mind, that continues to circle endlessly within it's own fragment, constantly judging itself and its world.

In this episode Cole introduces us to Judgement Release, a mind training where you bring into your awareness the relentless judgments that the mind is constantly bombarding on our systems.

This is a profound practice, which we only just begin to touch upon, but which we will deepen into as we continue with the podcasts.

For now, Lorella and Cole continue this exploration of "what happens if we listen to and open up to each other's wisdom"?

~ • Mysteries of the Feeling Realm - PODCAST 2 • ~ 

Welcoming Feelings

Meeting feelings is a wildly paradoxical journey! We're so used to "processing" feelings in such intense ways, that we believe that the "intensity" is a natural characteristic of the feeling realm. And that the presence of such intensity must therefor indicate that there is something wrong with us. 

Most spiritual traditions see feelings as problematic, and our psychological belief systems (which we've totally swallowed as truth) relate to feelings as indicators of trauma or the result of poor attachment and bad childhoods.

When we treat feelings as if they're problems, they behave in a way that appears to confirm our hypothesis!

So it doesn't occur to us that the way we MEET feelings might actually be creating the intensity, the pain and the solidity of what we think is happening.

When we take just a little step outside of our current paradigm (which is something we want to be doing often!) ... something quite amazing reveals itself.

Just by softening our gaze and our attitude, we can begin to touch what happens when we make space for these awfully timid and distressed feelings.

They (the feelings) instantly notice when we're kind to them. Something immediately shifts in the breath and the intensity of contraction begins to soften.

In the feeling realm, this is something we follow! It's a good indication that feelings are beginning to settle ... and trust us!

The documentary "My Octopus Teacher" is a wonderful metaphor for how to approach the feeling realm. He doesn't pursue the octopus, instead, he begins to swim in her waters and visits her every day for a year. Slowly, over time, he wins her trust and she begins to communicate with him and allow him into her world. A powerful documentary!

We can't fake this kind of intimacy. It's a felt sense in the body. 

So how do we enter these waters? How do we change our attitude, shift our attention.

Join Cole and I as we explore this terrain, from our very different bodies of experience.

Enjoy ✨

To enter the feeling realm we need to slow down, relax and open our bodies and our hearts. As we soften the boundaries of our identities and what we think is going on, we might have more of a chance of meeting these ancient energies that are the very fabric of our existence ... the vibrations of love and divinity.

But this isn't quite how we relate to our feeling bodies. For starters, we don't quite like the feeling realm. Our psychological approach, and even when we're doing somatic work, has a foundational belief that they're something we need to heal. That something must have gone wrong in our childhood. or even more generally, as we see in our spiritual traditions, which believe that feelings are the root cause of our suffering.

What if there ISN'T anything wrong with our feelings, but it's the way that we meet them, the way that we judge them, the way that we move away from them or grasp into them, that creates the problem?

So how do we shift this attitude, this judgement and this fear towards our feelings when they feel so painful? We can't do it with the mind, because the intensity of the feeling realm just keeps us believing that something is wrong.

Cole and I are lovers of the feeling realm. We come from different traditions, have wildly different approaches and feeling bodies ... and yet have discovered very similar terrain.

In this podcast we're sharing not just our journeys, we're sharing the quality of our relationship to this dimension of experience. As we do this, we hope  we open doorways into unseen and unfelt realms. We hope to ignite your curiosity and your heart. This is a paradoxical journey, a 180 degree turn, from moving away from feelings, to welcoming every single drop. But to do this, we need to lower our gaze, let go of our minds, sit quietly, spaciously and openly in the depths of the darkness of the ocean of our being ... and wait for them to settle, to feel the sincerity of our welcoming ... and allow them to come towards us once they can feel our cellular and heart-felt receptivity.

~

A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND
Cole finds himself in a body that is polarised in the mind. So for him, he became aware that he wasn’t able to feel his feelings. Through a journey of deep inquiry, he began to see how much judgement he had towards his feelings. Through this process, he began to notice that not only did he judge his feelings, but he also had judgement towards his judgement! This inquiry began to open a completely different relationship to feelings and life itself.
Lorella, on the other hand, is polarised in the feeling realm. Being swamped by feelings from her early twenties, she had no choice but to immerse herself in the study and practice of Buddhist meditation and somatic psychotherapy. After 18 years, she lost all faith and hope, as neither of them had managed to shift the core intensity of her experience. She went into the wilderness, exploring psychedelics, sexuality and accidentally stumbled into a Vajrayana Tantric lineage. Here the somatic practices gave her the paradoxical and profound guidance of meeting the subtle realms of the feeling body: training the body to become a truly kind, welcoming and receptive field of awareness into which these vibrations could finally breathe.