The Gathering Room Podcast Martha Beck

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 special “Listen Again” episode of The Gathering Room, Martha’s talking about polyvagal theory and how to regulate your nervous system when it gets hijacked by fight, flight, flop, fake, or freeze. One of the things polyvagal theory says is that we can never go into a calm, alert state unless our nervous systems are interacting with one of four things: self, others, nature, and spirit. The good news is that Martha has a process to help you do exactly that! If you’re feeling frazzled, overstimulated, or overwhelmed and you need some relief, tune in and let Martha guide you back to your center of calm. With a few prompts, you can start to regulate your nervous system and become conscious of the beauty, joy, and love all around you.

For this special “Listen Again” episode of The Gathering Room, Martha is sharing her conversation with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the brilliant creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a wonderful therapeutic model that Martha loves using! 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. Tune in for their conversation about Richard’s latest book, YOU ARE THE ONE YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR: APPLYING INTERNAL FAMILY SYSTEMS TO INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS, which is available at all major retailers.  If you’re interested in learning more about IFS, you won’t want to miss this one!

Are you in the mood to make some magic?  Martha is! And in this special “Listen Again” episode of The Gathering Room, she’s sharing inspiration from Suzanne Eder’s book, What You Want Wants You, to help you reconnect with your true desires so you can follow the path to your soul’s fulfillment. While our culture teaches us to associate desire with selfishness and even depravity—a.k.a. “base desire”—Eder’s book says this is a misinterpretation. Instead, real desire is an expression of the one soul that is the basic ground of being for all of us. As Martha elaborates, we’re all pure divine essence, and to be in physical form is to perceive an apparent separation between ourselves and all other things. The truth, however, is that we are all one. Tapping into that truth and being kind to the self are the ways we spark magic. To learn how to drop the illusion of separation, get in touch with your true desires, and start creating a life that works for you like magic, don’t miss the full episode!

Have you ever experienced synchronicity?  As Martha defines it in this episode of The Gathering Room, a synchronicity is any event or experience that seems to confirm or indicate that the universe is not random—that there's something making all this happen. Martha has been re-reading The Awakened Brain by Dr. Lisa Miller, who writes about synchronicities and what she calls a “spiritual docking station” in the human brain. What Dr. Miller found in her research is that when people are open to the idea of spiritual realities like synchronicities, they have access to much more physical and mental health, and they’re more resilient and more resistant to anxiety and depression. Martha says that when she opens the docking station of her own brain, it feels like a loving, beautiful presence is able to move through her. It gives her the experience of seeming to do things herself but also relax into being moved by a loving, creative force. It’s only when we relax our nervous systems, Martha says, that we can feel the consciousness of the universe because the consciousness of the universe does not respond to anxiety and desperation. It responds to joy, love, and trust. To learn how to keep your spiritual docking station open so you can look for synchronicities in your own life, be sure to tune in for the full episode. Martha will also guide you through her Silence, Stillness, and Space meditation to allow those synchronicities to start showing up!

Has anxiety been keeping you from your life’s mission? In this episode of The Gathering Room, Martha shares that the best way out of anxiety is not simply to calm yourself, but to get creative! When you take the creativity route, Martha tells us, you get so deep in the process of creating solutions to the problems that matter to you that it becomes literally impossible for your brain to be anxious. So how do you start living from a creative place? Martha says the key is getting curious, and to access your curiosity, there are three things that the brain always asks, in this order: 1. Am I safe? 2. Am I loved? 3. What can I learn? Once the brain knows you are safe and loved, it can go into curiosity and start learning new things. And when you realize that you have the capacity to create around anything that makes you curious, you begin to drive your life towards your own unique mission. To learn how to feel safe and loved so you can access your zone of genius and create your life’s mission, tune in for the full episode! Martha also guides you through her Silence, Stillness, and Space meditation to calm anxiety and stimulate curiosity.

Is there something you’re having trouble with that you’re trying to do perfectly? If so, you’re not alone… As Martha reminds us in this episode of The Gathering Room, we are all trained by the culture to strive for perfection and to look for it in others. However, you are not going to show up perfectly—because it’s impossible! If you show up not to be perfect but to connect, nobody will care that you haven’t done it perfectly. As Martha says, we are here to be connected with a world in which all of us are imperfect. Martha is currently learning Spanish, and she recently stumbled her way through a conversation with a Spanish-speaking friend. Despite her less-than-perfect Spanish, the joy Martha felt connecting with her friend in that language was a “return to the sacredness of communion.”  If you've been struggling with the desire to be perfect, and you want to learn how to drop into imperfection and connect to yourself and others, be sure to tune in. You’ll also be able to experience connection through Martha’s guided Silence, Stillness, and Space meditation.