Bliss and Grit Vanessa Scotto and Brooke Thomas

We are sadjoy to announce that this is the final episode of Bliss+Grit. Coincidentally it's publishing almost exactly at the 4-year mark of when we began. This has been such a fulfilling project for both of us. It's created huge shifts in our personal evolution and a chance for us to connect as friends who live long distance to one another. But most importantly it's meant so much to hear from all of you that it's also had a useful and beneficial impact on your lives. It's been so touching to receive so much feedback that this little podcast we started created so many shifts for all of you.
You can listen in to hear all the details of why we are moving on and where we are headed next, but a couple of easy links to find us are:
www.vanessascotto.com
www.brookethomas.me
www.liberatedbeing.community
On intagram:
@vanessascotto
@brookethomas108
@liberatedbeing

In our recent conversation with Matt Kahn we talked about his first golden rule: you've done nothing wrong. It's timely then that we both are up against some old internal narratives about things we have done "wrong" or that are "wrong" about ourselves. As always, we are examining these truisms from the inside out. In this episode we look at what hooks us into narratives about wrong-ness, and ways to work with that when it arises. How do we un-velcro ourselves from seeing ourselves as the thoughts or beliefs? How do we invite genuine tenderness in for the one who believes they are wrong? And if and when this pattern shifts- what are we when we're not wrong? What happens when we don't view our lives through the lens of "mistake".

Matt Kahn is a spiritual teacher and empathic healer who is the author of the bestselling books Whatever Arises, Love That, and Everything is Here to Help You. His newest book, The Universe Always Has a Plan: The 10 Golden Rules of Letting Go is what we gathered together to discuss today. Currently, we are all living through a global pandemic together. Instead of a typical "book interview" instead we discuss how the new spiritual paradigm is relevant to our current challenging times. As Matt says, we have all be invited into a collective, global dark night of the soul. So what does dark night ask us to shed? What does it offer us as we are transmuted by it? And how can we use our spiritual paths for our own and the collective's greater good instead of upholding old ideas that turns us against ourselves or creates a bypass. We discuss the role of nervous system regulation, surrender, the potency of stillness, and lots of spiritual myth-busting.
You can find more of Matt's work at www.mattkahn.org
Show notes live at www.blissandgrit.com. We also see clients privately, and you can find more information about our practices at the website as well.

Can we bio-hack ourselves into better states of mind and being with embodied “positive thinking?” Today we are discussing neuro-reprogramming methods and the effects they can have on your body and mind- including ways in which they can create harm. Last year we both engaged with a program called Dynamic Neural Retraining Systems (DNRS) and in some ways this conversation is an update on how that program helped us since so many of you ask. (We have experienced health shifts and reduced anxiety just to name a few.) From a larger perspective though, we are having a broader conversation on how we can all better approach our own thoughts and feelings to get true healing results. We discuss what worked best for us in terms of navigating our mental-emotional loops, as well neuroscience and practical tips for how you can become your own best ally and create transformation in your life.
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We speak a lot about trauma and healing from trauma on the show, but we've never done an episode that truly asks the question, "What is trauma?". Drawing on inspiration like Dr. Edith Eva Eger and Peter Levine we look at if PTSD should drop the "D" for disorder, what it means that trauma is a charge, and if that's true, how do we "discharge" that charge? It's a very humanizing and hopeful take on trauma and we hope it's helpful to all of you.

Today we are discussing healing that is not a part of our individual histories, but instead is carried in us- in our very dna- from our ancestors. It might seem like a not-so-cheery New Year's Eve episode, but actually we find this point of view to be surprisingly relieving. It opens up so much space to meet our experience and tempers some of the more shame-oriented points of that personal healing can sometimes take on. We discuss what ancestral trauma feels like when it arises, and some of our own experiences as we discovered that the pain we were sitting with was truly not personal. As we see this, it can open up a whole world of tenderness for ourselves and all that we are doing to clear pain, as well as so much compassion for all of humanity and the wounds that we all sit with and bring up to the light to be transmuted.