self-improvement

If You Can't Make Peace With Your Partner, How Can You Expect to Make Peace in the World? AMA with Annie Lalla

AMA with Hannah Aline Taylor. Wednesday 2/4 at 4:00 PM CT

love, boundaries, and mistakes in relating, community, and peopling together (+ thank god love doesn’t look like you expect it to)

AMA with Hannah Aline Taylor. Wednesday 2/4 at 4:00 PM CT

love, boundaries, and mistakes in relating, community, and peopling together (+ thank god love doesn’t look like you expect it to)

AMA with Jeffrey Ladish. Wednesday 2/4 at 2:00 PM CT

Executive director of Palisade Research; studying AI loss of control risks.

AMA with Ali Beiner. Wednesday 2/4 at 11:00 AM CT

Kainos host Alexander Beiner exploring cultural sensemaking around psychedelics, popular culture, philosophy, psychology, alternative economics, and spirituality.

Hello! Always Proud to Be Part of an Inclusive and Emerging Network. As a creative professional with over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry, living in the vibrant city of Los Angeles, I find myself continually reflecting on the pivotal role that mentors, leaders, and educators have played in my personal and professional journey. Their unwavering support and guidance have shaped my path, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Calling All Industry Professionals

Whether you’re already part of the entertainment industry, aspiring to break into it, or simply a passionate fan of film, television, and live entertainment, I invite you to connect. Let’s share insights, dreams, and celebrate our collective passion.

Chase Your Dreams, Stay True

Remember, as we reach for our dreams, let’s do so with respect for one another. Let’s stay connected, lift each other up, and above all, be bravely, unapologetically, and authentically ourselves—always.

AMA with Brian Robertson. Rewatch the live AMA! Brian Robertson is the Holacracy founder now building a psychedelic church based on love, presence, and service

What is the 'Metacrisis' and How Do We Solve It? (AMA). Rewatch the live AMA conversation with Layman Pascal 

is "The Body Keeps the Score" misleading, or even flat out disproven? I think this is an extremely important topic. So many people's ideas about trauma rest on the writings of Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score author)—but what if they just don't hold up to scrutiny, and the "science" they reference doesn't exist or is misinterpretted? This substack article is provacative, but I like it because it's someone who might be coded "left" or "hippie" by a bunch of other beliefs.. Admittedly, I skimmed, and I got recommended it because i have my own views about the trauma mindset's shadows, but would be super curious people's thoughts.

here are some juicy tidbits:

 much of this science is uncertain at best, and in some cases was discredited decades ago. 

polyvagal theory, which van der Kolk heavily references, has been disproven. Paul Grossman, from Universitätsspital Basel in Switzerland, writes in this paper that the basic premises of polyvagal theory “have been shown to be either untenable or highly implausible based on the available scientific literature.”

I wish we talked more about the legions of people walking around who have trauma histories who have managed to lead healthy, happy lives. In my first few years as a therapist, I noticed that contrary to the trauma narratives we see reflected in pop culture, people who have traumatic experiences are often not irrevocably damaged by it, but instead use internal and external resources to overcome it. They form healthy relationships, have meaningful careers, and raise loving families. These trauma survivors are not unicorns.

and

 Part two debunked Peter Levine’s claims that trauma is stored in your body and needs to be released. 

"Levine makes claims that are not supported by research and makes promises he cannot keep. He has contributed to fears that everyone has the residue of trauma lurking in their bodies by broadening the definition of trauma until it applies to any stressful experience. By exaggerating the degree to which traumatic memories are repressed, Levine (along with van der Kolk) has promoted the widespread fear that hidden trauma is causing somatic symptoms, even for those who have no memories of unpleasant experiences.

looks like I've been wrong and spreading misinformation about the disproven "triune brain theory".

The final—and most important—problem with this mistaken view is the implication that anatomical evolution proceeds in the same fashion as geological strata, with new layers added over existing ones. Instead, much evolutionary change consists of transforming existing parts. 

- From https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721420917687#con1

I have definitely made this mistake, many many times.

I'm not sure yet the implications of recognizing instead that "all vertebrates possess the same basic brain regions, here divided into the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain;" in some ways it seems like a nuance, but in other ways I think it'll shift how I see things and talk about things. 

more quotes in case you don't read the article:

neural and anatomical complexity evolved repeatedly within many independent lineages

the correct view of evolution is that animals radiated from common ancestors (Fig. 1c). Within these radiations, complex nervous systems and sophisticated cognitive abilities evolved independently many times. For example, cephalopod mollusks, such as octopus and cuttlefish, possess tremendously complex nervous systems and behavior (Mather & Kuba, 2013), and the same is true of some insects and other arthropods (Barron & Klein, 2016; Strausfeld, Hansen, Li, Gomez, & Ito, 1998). Even among nonmammalian vertebrates, brain complexity has increased independently several times, particularly among some sharks, teleost fishes, and birds (Striedter, 1998).

The idea that larger brains can be equated with increased behavioral complexity is highly debatable (Chittka & Niven, 2009). 

What’s up with the massive rise in popularity of cold plunge and sauna? #quicktakes 

How to make skills of depth/presence/development legible to others? I've had this fantasy for the past year of creating a YT live stream show that features different teachers, facilitators, healers of different modalities and somehow make legible what they're doing to a larger audience.

Often, my experience is people enter the spiritual/healing/relational arts world from a really intellectual place and work down.

For example, 
- Read a book about the topic (NVC, IFS, meditation, etc)
- Practice it mainly from their head (sentence stems)
- Do a milllion reps and somewhere realize, this is also an embodied awareness practice
- Start getting into the weird woo territories of energy, spirits, intuition, etc

But to a beginner, there's a pre-/post- issue where you can't really tell the difference between a really deep facilitator and a really confident charlatan.

Furthermore, you aren't really that interested in the really deep people. A lot of my friends have been practicing for 15+ years and won't seem impressive on a podcast or a stage like the big head intellectuals and academia folk (Brene Brown, Lex Friedman, Huberman, etc) but they are geniuses in their own craft.

So, how to illustrate these skills that don't translate as well into written or spoken existing mediums?

hope that's legible what the q here even is

Enough/not enough are the same. If you’ve lived in the shadow of not-enoughness for most of your life, there often comes a moment where you declare “I am enough!” It feels glorious! Triumphant!

It’s a step forward, I guess. But it keeps the whole busted frame in place. 

“Enough” and “not enough” are built from the same mental overlay, which frankly is bullshit. You are. That’s unquestionable, and there were no requirements for your being. American culture, or your parents, or Instagram may have convinced you that you had to earn your right to exist (or be loved) but they lied.

One reason we make this mistake is because the frame of “enough” legitimately applies to specific goals: if I don’t have enough gas to drive to Louisiana, I won’t make it there. If I don’t have enough followers, I won’t get the brand sponsorship. But these all concern capacity relative to goals, not existence. Enoughness cannot be a statement of being. Being is. It’s tautological. Recognizing this tautology is transformative, because it undermines the whole edifice of enough/not-enough.

#TTT