This is one of our favorite kinds of conversations: where the nervous system, trauma responses, and the spiritual path intersect. We are looking at the four F’s of trauma response: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. We are talking about how these normal, healthy responses can become identities and therefore keep us from fully nourishing lives. And in particular we are honing in on fawn, also called please, appease, or tend and befriend, since we haven’t spoken in as much detail about this particular response. But boy howdy do we know it from the inside out! If you consider yourself an empath, this one might strike a chord for you too.  

In this episode we discuss: 

• The fawn trauma response, also known as please, appease, placate, or “tend and befriend”. 
• How we can continue acting out “stuck” trauma responses so frequently that they become meshed with our personalities and identities. 
• Examples of what the 4 F’s look like as identities. 
• How shame holds these responses in place. 
• How you can’t put down by swinging the pendulum to the opposite extreme, which can be re-traumatizing, and ways you can instead tenderly begin to shift out of chronic states. 

For more information on Bliss + Grit, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com.

To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

This is the second part to last week’s conversation with the author, speaker, and teacher Will Pye on his newest book, The Gratitude Prescription. We first interviewed Will almost a year back on his book Blessed with a Brain Tumor and enjoyed our talk so much that we invited him back to hear more about what he calls ‘radical gratitude.’ As someone who had a spiritual awakening in the aftermath of receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, we find his teachings and recommended practices of gratitude to be very embodied, grounded and deep. 

We left off last week discussing why truth can be difficult to meet if we don’t have self-compassion. We pick up again with Vanessa asking Will to speak more on how personalizing our suffering can be problematic. 

In this episode we are speaking about: 

• How personalizing our narratives and experiences of suffering can increase our pain 
• How Will dealt with his own suicidal thoughts and depression 
• How removing the label from experiences like depression can shift our relationship to it 
• How building resilience is important in building the capacity to navigate difficult circumstances with a state of gratitude 
• Why a regular practice can be so important in shifting our experience of life 
• How to become more “grace-prone”

We also have an extra bonus for you because towards the end Will guided us through a beautiful gratitude practice that you can listen to over and over again. 

To find out more information about Will Pye please visit https://willpye.com/

For more information on Bliss + Grit, or one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com.

To become a supporting member and join our forum please visit www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

Today we are speaking with Will Pye for a second time! Will is an author, speaker, and teacher, and we had our first conversation with him about his first book, Blessed with a Brain Tumor, and today we are talking about his most recent book, The Gratitude Prescription.  The embodied practice of gratitude has become a centrally important part of our own practices this year, and so we wanted to talk with Will about the deeply experiential practice of gratitude and how it is fundamental to the functioning of the human being, and how it can actually change your life. 

We had so much fun talking with Will that this is a conversation in two parts. Part 2 will air next week. And if you want to find more of Will’s work, visit willpye.com.

In this episode we are talking about: 

• Gratitude as the realized state of God: the peace, love, and joy of what we are.  
• The setup of this realm that we tend not to look for the good or the abundance. 
• Gratitude as the mental practice of clarity. 
• The data on gratitude as a remedy for depression. 
• Gratitude is not a directive to bypass what is happening in the world. 
• How to absorb, or digest, gratitude and get its full nourishment. 

To find out more information about Will Pye please visit: willpye.com.

To become a show patron, please visit: www.patreon.com/blissandgrit

For information on Bliss and Grit, including information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please visit www.blissandgrit.com.

Today we are sharing the second part of our conversation with our guest Lisa Wimberger. Lisa is the creator of Neurosculpting, which is a self-directed neuroplasticity protocol. Specifically, it is a mental training process that quiets our fight-or-flight center and activates our prefrontal cortex, which is the mind’s seat of our compassion and empathy. We had so much to discuss that we made this interview a two-parter. 

In this episode we are talking about: 

• How energy relates to your nervous system.
• The importance of focusing on your body in your spiritual practice. 
• How our past narratives filter our present moment experiences. 
• The trouble technology creates for your vagus nerve.
• How your “spirits design” can influence your choices. 

To find out more information about Lisa and Neurosculpting please visit https://neurosculptinginstitute.com/

For more information on Bliss + Grit, to become a show patron, or to get information about one-on-one coaching with Brooke Thomas or Vanessa Scotto, please go to www.blissandgrit.com.