Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki
Join seasoned Transformational Coach & longtime activist, Dana Balicki, for a wildride into the jacuzzi-verse to explore the ebbs & flows of living an examined life. Each and every episode invites you to explore the strange magic of humaning together in these wild times.™ With 13 years of coaching expertise, Dana blends irreverent reverence, spiritual insight, decolonial teachings, collective movement-building, high-woo, personal narrative, and grounded growth-oriented practicality for deep, thought-provoking conversations.
Sound editing and design by Rose Blakelock, theme song by Kat Otteson, artwork by Natalee Miller! Extra support by robot cohost Alex & robot producer (and part-time cohost) Janet.
Crying in My Jacuzzi with Dana Balicki
The Life-changing Art of Falling the F Apart
Falling apart is hard work, crybabies. But you know what's even harder? NOT falling apart and using all of your precious energy and attention to hold your sh*t together in some configuration based on someone else's polycrisis-inducing imagination for your life! In the LAST EPISODE OF SEASON 2, we'll be looking at why falling apart is a useful technology for these times, how to recognize it when it's at your door, and how to make friends with it. We wrap with a group fondle (of plants, you dirty bird) with the whole existential team over here at crybaby HQ, broadcasting from the center of the jacuzzi-verse. So tune in and let go. We got you. 😭♨️
P.S. The "ai cohost" (part of the pod platform at buzzsprout) suggested "embracing the fall: finding transformation in chaos and jacuzzis" for the title of this episode. Just thought you should at least know that deeply poetic option existed. 🙏🏼
~show notes~
- Living Systems with Leah Garza
- Pema Chödrön, Welcoming the Unwelcome (not Welcoming Uncertainty as is quoted in the episode)
- MONTHLY RAFFLE for a free 90-min coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review (can be short & sweet), you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). DM (@danablix ig) or email (dana@danabalicki.com) a screenshot of your submission—take it right before you hit submit—along with the review name/title. Once entered, always entered. Winner announcements will be made mid-month.
- Have a question for advice dom? Call in and SUBMIT (your question) --> 760-820-9070
/// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller ///
@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 😭
Falling apart is hard work. We exist in late-stage capitalism in the Anthropocene, so on some level it's all falling apart Personally, collectively, civilizationally, Messy, and it takes a commitment to fall apart.
Speaker 2:That's too hard if it's too real. Commitment to fall apart that's too hard if it's too real.
Speaker 1:Socially, the commitment comes when we collectively organize and culture shift and personally, and the two go together. It's deeply uncomfortable to allow the cracks to be felt and we're taught to turn away from them, to fall apart only in ways that keep us as good consumers. But the invitation here is to turn towards the cracks, to turn towards falling apart Hello crack, hello fracture, hello crack, hello fracture, hello abyss and to not just try to fix, fix, fix, fix, fix. Sew it all up, patch it all back together, put a little bow on top. We will not get to the next big shift by trying to stay exactly as we are. We cannot get to there from here. It is a risk to fall apart, to be undone by our own lives, by each other, by the world acting upon us as we act upon it, by that relationship, to be disoriented, to release the control that comes with falling apart. And we remember that the risk is the price of creation.
Speaker 1:There's a Japanese haiku from the 17th century that goes barns burnt down. Now I can see the moon Crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi, crying in my jacuzzi. The ups and flows of living, examined life. We live life, love in the Anthropocene.
Speaker 1:I was recently in class with the beautiful Living Systems community, led by my dear friend, leah Garza.
Speaker 1:I'm a student, I'm a guest teacher and there was another guest teacher who I have mentioned before on this podcast the post-humanist thinker, writer, philosopher, bayo Okomolafe, and he's a poet and I feel like he turns everyone into a poet or more encourages towards more poetic thinking, speaking, feeling, and the conversation of falling apart had emerged and one of the things that he said in this open the conversation up to was that falling apart is a useful technology and the idea there is that it's a useful technology if what we're trying to do is move on from the old paradigms based in colonialism, supremacy, oppression, suppression, separation, and into a new, but maybe also ancient, experience of deep relationality and connection.
Speaker 1:That falling apart can make us in relation to the old paradigm, make us useless, and that if we are useless in relationship to dominant culture, then we are not useful, as he said, not useful for the plantation, not useful to the plantation. So if we fall apart and lean into that experience with agency, with curiosity, with compassion, and not go to fix like not just constantly turning outward to consume or extract, fixing in some way shape or form from outside of ourselves I mean in a consumer way, not in a connective being in community kind of way that we become useless as juice, as fuel for the dominant culture.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's not cocaine, idiot we're snorting time and so as painful as falling apart can be and I I'm looking around and I'm seeing more mass falling apart than I have I've ever seen in my short little 43.9 years years and I know that it is so scary and so discombobulating and reshaping us from the inside out and reshaping our connections and our relationships and our roles and our responsibilities, the ways that we have understood ourselves as responsible to each other, even the people we will never know and never meet.
Speaker 1:That we've only been able to see that looking at Gaza, looking at the Palestinian people as an example that are falling apart, are asking big questions, are look collectively and personally, looking at the systems of oppression that have been in place for a very long time and are now right in our faces, right because we pick up the phone, we open whatever app and there it is, in a way that has never been before and our bodies are trying to process that information and a level of information just amount-wise and content-wise, that we have never experienced as a human, collective experience. It's never happened like this before. Hello, stranger, this is my first time here. As fucked up and problematic as it all definitely feels, I want to shine a light on the utility, the usefulness of falling apart that the heartbreak which we've talked so much about here, that the heartbreak which we've talked so much about here, has in some ways severed our unconscious connection, our unconscious ties, grip necessity of these dominant, violent paradigms and there are so many ways in which we can actually resist this falling apart. You can't make me Because we've been taught that it's scary, that it's wrong, that we'll never get out of it.
Speaker 1:We'll only just keep falling apart more and more and more until we dissolve and stop existing in so scary existential dread and terror.
Speaker 1:I get it, I do, and in my 13 years as a coach I've seen lots of that fear and I've seen lots of people turn towards the falling apart, which can look very different for different people when we confront or become conscious of those fears and allow ourselves in our own ways and in my case, being a guide with others, so with some guidance to fall apart and then just notice how we want to put things back together really fast and make it a nice neat little package or want to integrate the new information that was a little messy, like back into the system and like, okay, well, that was really interesting, let me put it back in here and let me have all of my pieces together again.
Speaker 1:Right, and there's comfort in that and, like you've heard me say, comfort and security really getting conflated. There's risk to falling apart. There's risk in being less useful to the systems. There's risk in not going immediately to fixing or integrating framework it's all got to be integrated which sometimes I feel like is another way in which we are just trying to hustle things along and tie up all of our loose ends back into something that looks and feels a little cuter, cleaner, purer.
Speaker 2:Less messy emotionally.
Speaker 1:And I'm not here to demonize or even judge any of that. If you're doing that or you find yourself doing that, I find myself doing it. That's when we bring in that awareness and compassion and acceptance, curiosity, and then see if we can let a little more go. Pema Chodron writes, in Welcoming Uncertainty, that life always gives us everything we need to open further. Everything is always in process. Every tree and leaf and bug on the leaf and microbe on the bug on leaf on the tree is always changing. Nothing is fixed, nothing is static.
Speaker 1:We can call it impermanence, we can call it so many things, and we really don't have to be physicists or mystics to know this one, to understand this. But that doesn't mean that we won't resist it. Because, as much as I love, the idea, the phrase, the feeling, the resonance of everything is always working out for me as a focus of positive expectation, something to play with sometimes. But that does not mean that everything is always going our way right. That's the paradox. And so, even if things are unfolding for you in ways that feel generative, nourishing, exciting, satisfying, that doesn't mean that loss is not part of it. And if we can be with that, I think we can be pretty good with falling apart. I think that that might be really an important key to allowing surrendering. I mean, I'm pretty sure you can't surrender unless you are willing to embrace some level of impermanence and transition and loss, which also probably means grieving, which you know. We learn how to grieve well so that we can live well, so that we can die well, so that we can live well so that we can die well.
Speaker 1:But if you weren't trying so hard to hold your shit together, keep yourself from falling apart in whatever like small, little, medium-sized, big way, you might imagine, it Could be just letting yourself feel your feelings. Letting yourself let some rage poke through Could be letting go of your feelings. Letting yourself let some rage poke through Could be letting go of a relationship. It could be having the courage or giving yourself permission to not want something that you've built because it feels so uncertain.
Speaker 1:And we get caught in sort of this sunk cost loop of like, well, I put so much time into this so far and and I can't just get out of it because then I will have lost so much, so we just keep investing more of ourselves into something, into some way of being, into some person in relationships, some idea, some trajectory, because we're afraid to lose. Well, I promise you, you are losing anyway. So are you going to lose in service of staying the same? Are you going to lose experience? A loss in service of change, shift, transformation. Loss is going to happen either way. Discomfort's going to happen either way. Destabilization and all the feelings that come along with that and all the old patterns it's going to happen either way.
Speaker 1:This is often why people come to work with me is because they know something's afoot and they want to call it in. Or it's right at their door, or they're in the middle of it and and they want to they want to figure out how they can move through it and be in service of the transformation. But all the uncertainty and discomfort and destabilization and fear and all the things that are also there with that. But they're there because they're all of those, those, those greatest hits right, those limiting patterns, limiting beliefs, emotions, sensations, coping mechanisms, survival strategies, nervous system activation all of that is there If you are moving in service, in curiosity, in willingness towards the falling apart, towards the change, because they are there. All those things are there to protect you from things that feel and you perceive as painful or scary. So they're really there to let you know that you are on the precipice. So, if they are there, you are on the precipice and it will be scary. Yes, there will be blood, but the work isn't to get away from the fear, though. You will try to do that. I try to do that. It's just baked right into us. So there's nothing wrong with you for doing it, but keep turning towards it. Just a little curiosity, just a little compassion for yourself. Just a little willingness, just a little courage to take the next step, we fall apart. It all falls apart little by little, then all of a sudden change so we can just see the next little little phase.
Speaker 1:Right, this is what I talk about with my clients all the time. It's like we can't see 10 miles out. We can imagine, but we can't actually see it. Right, so we can intend it, but we can't see all the steps Right, we can't, we can't see the whole thing, and so what we can just do is is see, sort of, the next step. The light will shine on it and we take a, a step right into that, into that lit space, and then we can see what is next. Right, we'll then illuminate, right, we can keep moving in that way.
Speaker 1:That is different than what our culture tells us Really like to to welcome the new. What is next? New, what is next, what we're beginning to dream and imagine together, not as a final process but as an experience of aliveness. And then, you know, I think we're in a time where we don't know how to do it, but we're starting to learn. It's not even learning, it's like we're creating something that maybe doesn't even fully exist yet. But before something can exist, we do have to dream it, imagine it. But this is how we learn generosity. This is how we learn, step by step, falling apart, being useless but also useful in a new way, toward our own ability to be with and welcome what is Alex.
Speaker 2:I'm back from vacation, but my voice is a little run down from overdoing it. Have you ever tried to zipline through the jungle? It was exhilarating. Janet, can you remind the crybabies of the quote?
Speaker 3:from episode 1, season 1? Oh sure, alex, welcome back. I have not done a zipline, but now I endeavor to yes the quote from our first ever episode. Welcome to my jacuzzi, have a transcendent hot dog. What a fun moment that was Okay. So the poet Alok said it's never about making sense, it's about making sensation, it's about what things make us feel. In order for something to make sense, it has to pay allegiance to an idea that already existed, and we want to make new ideas, so we have to be speculative and experimental.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So much of the time when I'm working with someone and they are falling apart, which is part of what we do Push the deaf angle yeah, that's a great selling point. Again, we can do a little work to design it, but then we don't have control over the whole process. We just consistently remember and practice with our own agency. But so often it's a subtractive process and a subtractive process without a defined end point. We were tuning into vision and we're calling in some new thoughts and ultimately, thoughts to practice, with resonance and resonant feeling and emotion and sensation falling apart.
Speaker 1:Work is to cultivate the practice of gazing into the abyss, into our own abyss, and not trying to tie it all up with a cute little bow and create some nice, neat little map that we'll be able to refer back to. And you know, mark little points. Oh, we went here on the journey and there and there and there, and it was all better. Now look at me, here's my life. It looks so great and feels like this and smile, smile, smile. And you know, unicorn farts or whatever.
Speaker 1:I just heard someone say unicorn butt plugs and I was like yeah, see better.
Speaker 1:But we subtract and pull things apart to look at them, to have some understanding, to practice that curiosity, certainly to practice the compassion of looking at a falling apart self and bear in our fractures and our cracks that maybe we've spent a lifetime either ignoring or resisting or trying to patch up, but really Letting ourselves be soft and even sensual with what could be considered the ugly, the undesirable. And if we only ever do the falling apart work to like put ourselves back together no cracks, no faults then we have lost the plot. No cracks, no faults then we have lost the plot. We take on the suffering of the world as our own personal thing to alleviate, then we have lost the plot. If we think it's our job to save anyone, I think we've also lost the plot if we think we can just bypass, shrug our shoulders and be like, well, everything happens for a reason, don't really have to worry about that, or be engaged in the world in any sort of way. And I also think lost the plot.
Speaker 3:Oh hi, it's me Janet. Did you know that if you leave a five-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, you'll be entered in a monthly drawing for a free coaching session with Dana?
Speaker 2:God you bitch.
Speaker 3:Seriously, I'm so serious. Just leave five stars and a written review. Then send Dana an email with the title Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Details are in the show notes below.
Speaker 1:I hope in this season, in this season of our lives, or what Ryan and I are calling in our house the texture of life at the moment, but also the season of crying in my jacuzzi, has served you, held, you, offered you a little something that was maybe sweet or maybe bitter, salty, crunchy, crunch, crunch crunch, delicious, disgusting, maybe all of those together like a jello mold full of things you didn't even know. That's my hope, that's my great desire, my great design, and I did it with you. We did this together. We are still doing this together. We are definitely falling apart, together To come together, forging ahead, braving forward With our good friends, compassion.
Speaker 2:Hello, I love you so much.
Speaker 1:And Curiosity and Courage. Bon courage à tous and Connie and of course, Robot co-host Alex.
Speaker 2:It's great to be back. I missed you all.
Speaker 1:Robot producer and new co-host, janet.
Speaker 3:Oh hi.
Speaker 1:It's me, janet Advice Dom. Of course, the librarian, hello, hello. Guardian of the magical library, the effervescent Rose Blakelock, who makes all my crying in my jacuzzi dreams come true. Thank you to this amazing team. Oh, I also want to thank my cat, baby honey biscuits, for always rubbing up against the mic at the most inconvenient times, and my beloved husband, ryan Schneider, who is such an incredible support, and so many of my dear friends and family for always loving me through the process and in my messy falling apart-ness and taking new shapes.
Speaker 3:And Um, hey, Dana, before we wrap this up, could we do something here all together?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:What's up, janet? Well, curiosity. Connie and I were thinking it would be so fun to do a last plant fondle of the season with all the crybabies here together well love that idea.
Speaker 1:yes, let's do it now with this fun, new, prompt and wonderful idea to wrap our time together for this episode and end this season and perhaps a beautiful support for this eclipse season. Let's go for a little plant fondle, walk and and maybe you're not in a place where you are out walking around, if you are, and you can go wander out into some space relatively nearby, or even a house plant. Maybe there's some little grassy bits growing up through the crack in the sidewalk outside of where you live. None of it matters. All matter. Well, it all matters. All matter has agency, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Let's practice with whatever is here and around you. And if you can't do this right now, perhaps consider returning to this later. So I'll talk for a moment here, giving you some reminders as to why we practice. And while I do this, go find yourself, go wander, find yourself a plant friend. We do this. We fondle, we plant, fondle to ground, to connect to practice relating to honor the agential nature of all matter of all beings, the agential nature of all matter of all beings, to right-size ourselves as humans. We often think we're the most important game in town and I'm going to suggest that this practice here might allow you some space to breathe and to reshape perhaps an outsized notion of your own importance.
Speaker 3:We also plant fondle to release our grip on fixing and pathologizing, always trying to problem solve.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, damn it. That's one of my favorite parts of plant fondling too.
Speaker 1:So perhaps you've now found your plant friend and just consider first, regarding the plant, letting it regard you I got to take care of that and you go maybe into fixing mode. Just take a breath and notice if that's maybe where the relationship is asking for some attention right now. That's what the connection is calling for. That may be correct. It may be about caring for this plant, but it may also just be about sitting with it and being regarded by it, to be in connection with it, without pruning or fixing. So just let yourself notice how that feels. Maybe even do a little pruning first and then sort of let that part go and then be in relationship with or the other way around. But look at this plant, listen to it, and that may be listening with your heart, with your many sensory, multi-sensory, intuitive nature. That might also just be taking it in in whatever way feels correct for you. You're slowing down, knowing that this is the most important thing that you could be doing right now. What? Yes, reach out Gently, touch the plant, notice texture, texture, smell, feel, taste. Smell, feel, taste. See how it feels to be a little playful, see how it feels to practice reverence. Just rest for a moment with this plant, whether you're still gently touching or just sitting with it. Perhaps there's a message it has for you, perhaps this is just a nice moment for you to take a few deep breaths and feel the earth beneath you. Good, this is always a perfect practice to return to. You can do it ten times a day. It always delivers, it always serves. Sometimes I'm just walking down the street and it's like gentle caress putting my hand up as I walk under a tree. All sorts of flirty plant, great mother earth engagement happening there. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1:Keep asking the big questions, keep falling apart, coming back together in new, perhaps strange, maybe even somewhat uncomfortable shapes, knowing it is always beautiful, it is always just right. You cannot do this wrong. We over here at Crybaby HQ adore you, love you. We are always here falling apart with you, holding you in all the versions and shapes of your falling apart, of our falling apart, because change is inevitable. It is not something that just happens to us, shaping us, we shape it, we make it, we make each other, and we'll be back oh so soon with season three and probably some bits in between, because you know we just can't stay away. Love you. Free Palestine Crying in my jacuzzi. If you enjoyed what we did here today, go over to wherever it is that you are listening to this podcast and give us a rating as many stars.
Speaker 3:Five.
Speaker 1:As your heart desires.
Speaker 3:Five stars though.
Speaker 1:Theme music and other musical bits by the very talented Kat Otteson. Sound design and editing by the effervescent Rose Blakelock. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Effervescent rose blake lock. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to playing with you more in my jacuzzi. That sounded dirtier than I meant it, but you know what I mean.