What happens when we swap our desperate (conditioned) grasping for certainty for a curious(ly awkward) embrace of confusion?

This episode invites you into a radical reframing of confusion—not as weakness or failure, but as an appropriate, even necessary response to our rapidly changing world. Cultural messaging tells us confusion should be avoided, fixed, overcome. That if we’re confused, somehow we’re failing life! Abso-f$%king-lutely not.

Through personal stories, practical guidance, poetry, and more, let's illuminate how confusion can lead us to clarity, self-trust, and connection when approached more consciously. You'll learn to differentiate between conscious confusion and unconscious rumination, with tools to lovingly disrupt those unconscious loops. Releasing certainty and embracing conscious confusion is a practice to disorient us from the systems designed to keep us good consumers and bad rebels.

• Learn more about Dana & Leah’s Fall Equinox retreat in Joshua Tree! (https://bit.ly/leah-dana-retreat)
• Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
• Get your pony hair in Wonder Valley! Go to bit.ly/wondervalleycry + use code CRYBABY for 15% off
• Love this Being Well episode on rumination!
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). Send the name of your review (title and/or reviewer name) via IG @danablix or email dana@ danabalicki .com ~ Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

😭 Sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock 🤖 theme song ~ Kat Ottosen 🪱 cover art ~ Natalee Miller ♨️

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

Death anxiety lurks beneath virtually everything we do. Our capitalistic drive for endless growth, our political polarization, even our addictions to consumption – all stem from our desperate attempts to buffer ourselves against the terror of our finite existence! Dr. Sheldon Solomon, pioneering psychologist behind Terror Management Theory, explains how when death is on our minds (ie, during pandemics, live-streamed g3n0c1de, climate collapse, wars, etc), humans cling more fervently to cultural worldviews and become susceptible to authoritarian leaders promising security.

Death denialism explains so much about why/how fascism rises predictably alongside economic inequality and mortality salience. Yet facing our mortality offers profound liberation!

In this episode, which is part 2 of Season 2’s “Death Boop with a Side of Death Cult,” I finally interview Sheldon Solomon. Honestly, we have a great time together discussing death, aliveness, fascism, and the true delight in becoming radically inconsequential.

This practical invitation to turn toward our deepest fears, to embrace both personal transformation and systemic change, to confront the paradox of finding joy amid global upheaval, is perhaps to realize that our shared mortality offers the very foundation for building something more beautiful together.

~ RESOURCES ~

• Sheldon Solomon has no internet presence — AKA RADICAL INSIGNIFICANCE — and is a professor at Skidmore College, a co-author of In the Wake of 9/ 11: The Psychology of Terror and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life.
• Free guided grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
• All Roads Studio
• How Your Story Sets You Free, with the Million Person Project
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller //

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

What if breaking the rules isn't just about random acts of rebellion, but a sacred, messy practice essential for personal and collective liberation? Let’s explore the nuances of disobedience, how it (and obedience) lives in our bodies, and plunge into why we must regularly practice breaking smaller rules to prepare ourselves for breaking bigger rules when it truly matters–AKA right friggin’ now!

From dealing with homophobic lighting™, to reclaiming our attention by fondling plants as our to-do lists (and our collective productivity-shame) try to kill us, small rebellions build our "rule-breaking muscles." As the systems around us create increasingly narrow parameters for living, we must resist being groomed into compliance and reconnect with our deepest inner knowing.

This episode is a love note to all the small and spontaneous rebellions...we also throw open the doors to the Church of Plantfondling, a sacred space of disobedient prayer, cultivating more-than-human relationships, dancing with the layers of reality and our aliveness, and calling in divine guidance along the way. Let’s get in some good trouble together, crybabies!

Subscribe, share with friends, and leave a review. Join Dana every Friday at 10 am PT on IG @danablix for a live guided grounding meditation (and #plantfondling).

~ RESOURCES ~

• Cy blocking the NG convoy on its way to LA!
• New report on undocumented immigrants paying higher tax rate than billionaires and corps (by Americans for Tax Fairness)
• Know Your Rights (re ICE) from National Lawyers Guild LA
• Follow the Global March to Gaza
• Free guided grounding meditation—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
• Beautiful Trouble — your troublemaker toolbox for effervescent rebellion!
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller //

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

What if we approach dating (and LIFE!) with genuine curiosity rather than the calculated performance and feigned ambivalence? With a commitment to compassionate relating rather than just detached, dehumanizing game-playing?

Join Dana and her dear friend Leah Garza—Akashic Records practitioner/teacher, decolonial scholar, and tender menace in the dating world—to unpack how to practice (naive) rebellion in our relationships and create new, much-needed pathways of connection.

Leah shares how she’s indestructible (and you are, too!), follows resonance over rules, strives for satisfaction over happiness, and tends to ghosting, disappointment, unmet needs, and more.

~ RESOURCES FROM THE JACUZZI-VERSE ~

• Apply for Living Systems! New cohort starts July 13 (https://www.wearelivingsystems.com/livingsystems)
• Find Leah on ig @crystalsofaltamira
• Get info for Dana & Leah’s Fall Equinox retreat in Joshua Tree! (https://bit.ly/leah-dana-retreat)
• Free grounding meditation with Dana—a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ (http://bit.ly/grounding-now)
• wondervalley! go to bit.ly/wondervalleycry + use discount code CRYBABY
• one of Dana’s favorite poems on risk
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller///

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

In this *spell* of an episode, magic, penetration, entanglement, and love emerge as steps toward understanding and willingness to be changed by others (sometimes oh-so awkwardly).

We enter with the Buddhist concept of PENETRATION (via some bibliomancy!)—not just observing from a distance, but entering deeply into experiences and relationships to truly understand them—where Dana shares a recent evolutionary discomfort experience with group work that involved Palestine, mentorship, and unexpectedly opened space for profound connection and transformation.

Magic and synchronicity can bring you to the observation deck of reality, but one must risk and leap to get to true understanding. What's on the other side? Let's find out and embrace both the joy and struggle of humaning together!

~ RESOURCES FROM THE JACUZZI-VERSE ~

• Free grounding meditation with Dana (a practice of calling your energy back/nervous system tending/reclaiming your attention) ~ bit.ly/grounding-now
• Rad apothecary alert > milkthistleyuccavalley.com ~ use code jacuzzi15 for a 15% discount
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, to be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name to enter. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller///

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

There's room for personal growth in collective liberation—in fact, it's a critical component! Join Dana and her long-time teacher of nearly 13 years, Julia Frodahl, as they lean in and explore where our inner rebels come from, how we can show up for the consciousness revolution, the role of inner work as part of the Great Turning, self-compassion as a practice not a destination, cultivating vision when systems are unraveling, and how the mature rebel is actually the visionary—anchored in deep wisdom while remaining responsive to external realities.

Julia Frodahl's next live online group course on nature-based parts work starts May 25th, learn more & sign up (https://bit.ly/julia-group).

You can also connect with Julia on IG @juliafrodahl + through her app (https://www.juliafrodahl.com/app)

• Free grounding meditation with Dana ~ bit.ly/grounding-now
• Get your copy of How Your Story Sets You Free
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-minute coaching session with Dana. Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ Rose Blakelock, theme song ~ Kat Ottosen, podcast art ~ Natalee Miller///

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

Our attention is constantly being hijacked by systems training us to see ourselves as problems needing to be fixed. Let’s play with the phenomena of ‘perception drift’ (when you can’t see changes in/on you— grace à Courtney Cox) and ‘change blindness’ (when you can no longer see change around you) to explore how we’re perpetuating coloniality rather than tending to collective issues + why reclaiming our attention and moving beyond pathologizing ourselves is revolutionary.

This ep is full of ways to practice expanding your capacity for empathy & connection, resisting anti-intellectualism, tending to your nervous system resilience and reclaiming your attention as the act of graceful rebellion that it is!

~ resources & more ~

• Free grounding meditation ~ bit.ly/grounding-now
• Attention & Will
• All the book recs from this episode
• COMET ☄️CORN 🍿
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller///

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭

What sparks of guidance illuminate your path through uncertain times? When chaos swirls around us, where do we turn for direction?

This episode takes us on a magical journey down a wishing well (!!) to meet artist and oracle Mary Evans (Spirit Speak), who offers a revelatory tarot reading addressing three vital questions:

• How can we use our creativity to support ourselves and the collective?
• What specifically do we, as individuals, need to focus on in uncertainty?
• And what helps conjure the courage to challenge systems both within and around us?

The cards reveal wisdom about pacing, perseverance, and the power of wishes. Wands appear repeatedly, signaling the centrality of creative fire to our current moment. We're reminded that finding courage begins in small alignments with our deepest truths, and that acknowledging when we're overwhelmed and need help isn't weakness but wisdom. Through it all runs the thread of "slow down medicine" – the subversive act of attending to unseen realms in a materialistic world.

Mary Evans is a tarot reader, artist, and creator of six self-published tarot and oracle decks. With over a decade of experience, she blends tarot, spirituality, hypnosis, and art to explore the subconscious and navigate change. In this episode, she reads tarot for the collective, offering insight and reflection to help process the times at hand with clarity and resilience. Her work has been recognized by Vogue, Oprah Magazine, and the Whitney Museum.

~ resources & more ~

• Photo of card drawing
• Beautiful Trouble — your troublemaker toolbox for effervescent rebellion!
• Connect with Mary + her most treasured things:
  • www.spirit-speak.com for her decks
  • on IG @m.a.r.y.e.v.a.n.s
  • when you can't find a wishing well IRL
• Bespoke Meditation, soul-guidance tailor-made just for you!
• Free grounding meditation ~ bit.ly/grounding-now
• Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.

/// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller///

Support the show

@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭