Like a sack full of gifts proffered by a stranger sitting on a folding chair at a club you don't quite understand, this episode is a grab bag of random things you may or may not need or want offered without rhyme or reason.

There's dreams about death, poop on a bed, mammograms, top-less fort building and, as always, Sascha's and my deep appreciation for our friendship. If you get something you don't like, you can always re-gift it. We won't mind one bit.

In this episode I talk with Chelsea Biagioli, host of Talk To The hand - Exploring Grief with Puppets, about how she incorporates play into her grief practice.

We share stories of childhood play - potions, spells, and waiting for the make-believe world to come into focus - and how our play changed as we grew up. We wonder about the value of spending time in imaginary worlds, what it prepares us for, what we lose when we think of it as frivolous and how colonial capitalism benefits from a world that leaves make believe behind. We decide to stay devoted to play and to invite as many beings as we can into our fort.

Want to join us? Want to come out and play?

In this episode Sascha and I explore what it's like to interact with reality mediated by different kinds of brains.

We realized that one good way to describe our current experience is this: Sascha is a potion mage and I am a potion. This feels just right to me. I revel in her jars and shelves, feel grateful for my tremendous luck this time around and move off in the world more self aware and oriented.

Along the way we discuss lions and panthers, spiders and iguanas, orb creatures, horses and Melon bank.

We hope you find some expansiveness in this romp through a few of the endless ways to be consciously incarnate.

In this episode Laura and I talk about the importance of play and a reminder that everything ends anyway, so perhaps let's open ourselves up to play and creation.

We talk about the beautiful humming that can arise with the serious work that is play. We talk about insights gained from playing with Kate Drummond of The Energetic Heart, The Little Feminist Farm in Georgia, and Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, among others.

We play in real time with ideas about silent long-houses, sandwiches, meet ups for future fictive kin, and hammock groves.

In this episode Sascha and I look at vigils, vigilance and hyper-vigilance. We consider how each state shows up in our lives and how they interact with each other. We offer personal stories and learn a little more about each other.

In this episode Sascha and I throw structure to the wind and invite you into friendship chatting about vigilance and loss.

We discuss: outrage at day spas, prairie dogs, non-aquatic anemones, aikido and how it feels when we open the door to our pain and fear, and try to move and roll with it.

Maybe this structure demonstrates one of the antidotes for hyper-vigilance: what comes when we feel deeply safe and therefore free to follow each other down whichever paths open up as far as they allow, then turn off or circle back and end up somewhere, though nowhere we intended.

In the end we both like what we've found along the path and how our feet and hearts feel from the wandering. We hope you'll come along and maybe see sometime worth picking up along the way.

In this episode Sascha and I discuss forts made from: sheets, refrigerator boxes, Vanderbuilt University, teacher's desks, Jim Smith, jungle gyms and each other.

We wonder about the value of a dedicated practice of fort building. What (we query) are we training for when we build realities from make-believe? What more when we built them alongside other creatures? And when we invite in guests, then what? And when we accept each other's invitations? What does a life set in undocumented realms offer in contrast to one lived inside the reach of official maps?

We answer none of these questions, but feel glad that we live in forts linked to forts linked to forts; glad that for the welcome and the company and for this big Grief House fort we make with all of you.

On this episode of the podcast, Sascha talks with Kate Drummond of The Energetic Heart and About Play in Atlanta to learn more about her journey and discuss reality as it relates to regulation.

They agree that emotional regulation does not equal submission, doesn't mean entering a non feeling place and doesn't require us to forfeit anger but, rather, offers stable access to deep feelings and the ability to respond rather than react to stimuli.

Sascha and Kate talk about how to move toward this aware and sturdy place when you live in a world that is chronically disregulated and reflect on how salient and helpful it feels to do this work in good company, given the degree to which we are bombarded with stimuli today.

You can join both Sascha & Kate at their upcoming offering Finding Ease in Times of Struggle (offering release and regulation support) in Atlanta beginning April 14th.