We carry other people inside us, when we're with them and when we are apart from them. After all, where does my experience of you live, apart from inside me? And your experience of me, apart from inside you? In this conversation we explore what it is to hold others in us in this way, and how our imaginative capacities might allow us to receive the sacredness of others while they are alive alongside us - with all the gifts and compassion that can bring - and when they are no longer alive. A conversation about loving fiercely, receiving one another, and grieving well so that we can live well.

We’re so good, we humans, at telling stories about ourselves, other people, our lives. Sometimes our stories bring us close in to the ground of what is - they remind us of our humanity, our dignity, our care, our vulnerability, and the brief span of our existence alongside one another on this planet. Other times our stories serve to take us away, to numb us, or make ourselves feel safe - perhaps at the expense of others, or to judge ourselves and others harshly for our shared human complexity and fallibility. So what would it be to have practices of speaking, looking, naming, writing that bring us back close to the ground of what is most unarguably true, and then pay attention to the stories we build on top of that so we have a greater chance to spread our wings and be the ones we long to be? Stories that recognise the sacredness of being human? Stories recognise how often we’ll fail, and what we can yet create, and call on us to include both?

Earlier this week we ran a workshop for our Thirdspace coaching graduates on ‘supervision’ - the practice of supporting one another in being of service to others. Our source this week comes from one of the participants in that day, and asks what it is to ‘become a place’… in which we stand stable without dissolving, in which we hold a field of possibility and relationship without being claimed by it, in which we can be both ‘flame’ and ‘vessel’. We know what good ‘places’ can be in human life. At their best and most resonant they are affordances for us to find our courage, love, presence, realness, generosity. When a place is made with care and attention it can awaken in us awe, wonder, a sense of home, belonging. They can turn us towards one another in genuine reciprocity. And so, we ask in this conversation, what is it to cultivate our capacity to ‘be a place’? And what might that make possible?

We are glad to bring you a repeat of our most popular ever episode "Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are) from October 2021. We were unexpectedly interrupted for this week's live recording but will be back next week. When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which is, essentially, welcome. And that's something we can also help one another with.

On the astonishing power of metaphors to reframe our sense of who we are, what’s possible, and how we might hear and speak with one another… and on the ocean’s vastness and depth as a invitation for us to contain multitudes, especially when in the midst of our most challenging conversations.

What if we see ‘the self’ not as something fixed, but as an ongoing act of responsibility and ever-unfinished creation… a way we make ourselves by how we live, the choices me make, and the way of relating to others and the world that we follow?

How do we discern what is life-giving in us? And how do we discover and name that which is destructive and nullifying in us? And how do we attend to the never-ending process of discerning with maturity and nuance to which is which, and what is what without falling into simplistic ways of looking, so we can bring ourselves to the complexity of our lives and one another with integrity and care? And what might we trust, lean upon, to help us do this well?

We are so excited to bring you this episode, which draws on some brilliant writing by Jonah Platt about why we should work to keep on bringing out what is 'implicit' inside us into the world of relationship - making it 'explicit'. In this conversation we tackle the world head on, from the most intimate relationships to the largest scale challenges facing us societally and politically, and we wonder together about the maturity, generosity and boldness it takes for us humans to keep talking and listening to one another. And we talk together about pragmatism - doing what it takes to improve things, rather than falling into trying to avoid certain feelings, or keeping ourselves self. It's a bold, warm, playful and important conversation - and we are very glad to share it with you.

The central work of our lives over the last 15 years or so has been as practicing integral development coaches, and as teachers of this way of guiding and supporting others. In this conversation we explore what it is to be a ‘coach’ in this way, to use our humanity, intelligence, hearts and life force to grow wings and then to help other people grow wings of their own. It’s such a rewarding, life-giving endeavour, and it teaches us ever more about being a person and taking care of others. Join us for an exploration of what ‘guiding people up and out’ might be, with inspiration from a lovely and inspiring poem by Ellie Steel.

“The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life,” writes Oliver Burkeman “is something like aliveness.” In this conversation we explore what it is to attend to aliveness, how we might come to notice its presence, and consider steps any of us can take to cultivate it. And we talk about how vital this is in an age where we may find ourselves encouraged in many places to become part of an algorithm - to act in life as if we were machines rather than creative beings who are part of a vast and inherently creative universe.

We make the world, and unmake that which doesn’t serve, by our everyday actions and inactions, our intentional taking care and our turning away. What does it take to have the courage, humility and compassion to attend as fully as we can to the world, to step towards a world we want to live in?

It's never too late to look at our lives, to set out on a new path, to begin the difficult and necessary and life-giving work of changing course, of learning how to bring ourselves in a way that deepens our depth, courage, love, kindness, truthfulness and contribution. It's never too late to learn something, to teach something. It's never too late to live - even in the very last moments of our lives. This conversation, marking the 8th anniversary of Turning Towards Life, takes us into an exploration of who we humans can be to one another, especially when we pay attention, when we remember our capacities to make worlds together, and when we commit to listen to one another with kindness, truthfulness, openness and care.

A conversation about discovering that the entire world around us—the first star breaking through darkness, rain dancing on rooftops, stooping to pick up an acorn—aren't distractions from life's important questions but invitations further into them. That we are never separate from the world, and that there are many ways in which the world is calling to us even when we feel alone. And that rather than retreating from the world to find the answers to our most urgent questions, perhaps we can soften back into contact with what surrounds us as a way into the answers.

'For the sake of what am I doing this?' is the question that animates this week's conversation. For the sake of fitting in? Of having feelings that I want to have? For the sake of serving? Of bringing the unique gifts I have to offer? For the sake of doing the big jobs, the ones that make a difference over the long term - such as pursuing love, justice, peace? Rather than pursuing quick wins that shrink our ambitions, might we find courage to take on impossible jobs and measure our lives not by immediate results but by unwavering dedication to the particular gifts that each of us has to bring?

We are far from powerless… though we often we imagine we are. And neither are we able to control how life goes… though we often long to be able to. Our making ourselves too small or too big rarely serves life. So what would it be to find a way to be in a responsive partnership with life itself - acting into life and then opening ourselves to life’s response, bringing the qualities we have to offer as humans and letting ourselves be changed by what comes?

A conversation about imagination as essential aliveness—and how treating life as purely literal diminishes our humanity. A great human power lies in choosing which story we live from, recognising that even dead ends become part of a larger narrative of redemption. What would change if we approached each day wondering along which secret aqueduct new life might be flowing toward us?

We spend so much energy trying to think our way to insight, yet a fuller understanding of our lives often arrives from somewhere beyond the usual way we know ourselves. When our hands are busy with ordinary tasks something vast can sometimes settle into awareness. What happens when we discover that our bodies know a kinship with the earth our minds may have forgotten? Could belonging be less about finding our place and more about recognising we never left it?

What if we recognised that every single thing we do - and everything we avoid doing - is quietly shaping us into the kind of person we're becoming? A conversation about discovering that we're already practising something all the time, whether we realise it or not, and that our choices about where to place our attention might be more consequential than we imagine. What would it mean to get good at the things that truly matter to us, or to surprise and widen ourselves by practicing new things that are outside of our familiar, comfortable range?

How do we attend to the something in each of us that longs to break free through the cracks of our self-image? A conversation about discovering that sacred uniqueness within ourselves and others in the everyday mundane acts of living, loving, working and being genuinely present with one another.

We mistake ourselves for the stories we've been told and the ones we keep telling. But what if those stories are too small to contain who we really are? A conversation about discovering that the more we open our hearts to the world, the less we actually know about anything—and how this not knowing might be exactly where freedom lives. What happens when we stop trying to figure everything out and instead give ourselves fully to the mystery of being human?