Shows
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: The Baring SeasonNearing the end of January, I’m only beginning to feel the sinew of this new year. Here in the United States, we’re reckoning with what seems like a sudden surge of authoritarianism—though, as Hemingway reminds us in The Sun Also Rises, collapse happens “two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The hubris we’ve unleashed from within now sends shockwaves through the world, unmooring the institutions we’ve depended on and unsettling the nervous system of our species.Staying human amidst the swirl has become a practice unto itself. We must maintain the pleasantries of our daily lives, y...
2026-01-2505 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"The Poet of Dawn is the Poet of Darkness: A Talk with Mary Oliver Biographer Lindsay WhalenSeven years after Mary Oliver’s death, her work feels even more vital, showing us how to love the world with its myriad faces.In this episode, we have the sincere honor of speaking with biographer Lindsay Whalen, whose forthcoming book from Penguin Press explores the life behind the beloved poet. Our conversation ranges from the poet’s focus on real life and her famous anonymity to David’s and Lindsay’s shared experiences with Mary in the years they knew her.Gathering these voices who represent the small group of surviving friends of the poet, th...
2026-01-181h 00
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: The Secret Title of Every Good PoemYou’re invited next September 20-26, 2026, to The Tender Harvest, a week-long retreat amidst the golden hues and organic bounty of the world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Each day will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated excursions—plus ample time for rest, self-nurturance, and imagination.__I awake to the murmur of a boy speaking to his slumbering father. All night long, the darkening stillness of December had settled over the house, and, as usual, our son had scampered down the hall just before dawn, burrowed under a breathing mound of blankets, and reac...
2025-12-1406 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Listening into Wholeness | Parker PalmerIn conversation with poet Parker Palmer, we trace the quiet art of listening for one’s true vocation, the solace of circles where no one is fixed or saved, and the long, harrowed path toward a wholeness that does not deny its own fractures.Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He is founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal, which supports people in every walk of life in nurturing deep integrity and relational trust for the sa...
2025-11-2555 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: These Fleeting Temples We Make TogetherYou’re invited next September 20-26, 2026, to The Tender Harvest, a week-long retreat amidst the golden hues and organic bounty of the world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Each day will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated excursions—plus ample time for rest, self-nurturance, and imagination....Hordur is a descendent of Vikings. To arrive at his farm—4,000 windswept acres in Iceland’s storied BrennuNjáls Saga—is to step into an atmosphere rich with the scent of sulfur and soil, into a dramatic expanse of earth blanketed under heavy, silver-wrapped clouds.The light h...
2025-10-2409 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Awareness That Blesses | Meditation Teacher Nolitha TsengiweIn this conversation with Meditation teacher Nolitha Tsengiwe, we explore how silence, presence, and practice can help us meet the joy and impermanence of life.Nolitha Tsengiwe is a Dharma teacher and board member at Dharmagiri Retreat Center in South Africa, which was founded by Kittisaro and Thanissara Weinberg. She has practiced since 1997 under Kittisaro and Thanissara, who are of Ajahn Chah’s lineage. In her first retreat with these beloved teachers, she discovered silence as a refuge and has never looked back. Nolitha completed the Community Dharma Leadership Program (CDL4) at Spirit Rock in 2014 an...
2025-10-1451 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: When the Forest StirsAdulthood has long been overlooked as a phase in human development. This is, in part, due to its implicit assumption of steadiness. Its shifting hues tend to be less dramatic than those of adolescence and elderhood, its moods less pronounced. Much of the time, we do the work of our lives, showing up for our common refrain while quietly learning to cultivate fulfillment on our own terms; our creative pursuits and revelatory practices often relegated to the margins of our daily lives.We are exceptionally connected, balancing our digital and analog lives. We are so busy. There...
2025-09-2508 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"All We Get To Carry | Poet Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerIn this episode, we talk with poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer about the grief that carries love through unimaginable loss—the death of a child—and of the daily practice of writing and mindful observation that dig the groundwork for self-forgiveness, compassion, and revelation.Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, American Life in Poetry, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her...
2025-09-1656 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Gem Tactics with Shawn Parell & David KeplingerWelcome to The Guest House, a commonweal meditation on the complexities and creative potential of being human in an era of radical change. In Season Two, cohosts Shawn Parell and David Keplinger are exploring what Emily Dickinson called "Gem Tactics," the practices by which we polish our creative engagement with life.These conversations and contemplative writings are offered freely, but subscriptions make our work possible. Bless us algorithmically by rating, reviewing, and sharing these episodes with friends—and please become a paid subscriber if you’re able. Thank you!Poet David Keplinger joins The...
2025-08-1942 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Hold It Up Like a TelescopeLove tenderizes everything. I tell myself this upon waking, when darkness gives way to dew and even the desert becomes supple again. Love tenderizes everything. I repeat it at dusk, as we sit on the portal and the sky swirls above us. I tell myself this when my daughter rests her head on my chest with a sigh, and murmur it like an incantation in moments when my heart feels cracked and crusted over, when the world’s roughness scrapes against my senses.Love tenderizes everything.Take, for example, Andrea Gibson’s “Say Yes.” I have car...
2025-07-1805 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: In the Realm of the RiverThe sound of flowing water soothes most nervous systems, but particularly those acclimatized to the desert, and particularly upon waking. I have struggled with sleep disturbances for most of my adult life, so it’s rare for me to experience the weight and metabolic satisfaction of a good night’s rest. But twice last month, I found myself receiving what we can call river medicine: first while visiting friends at their cabin in the Pecos Wilderness, and again east of Aspen, Colorado, while teaching at Beyul Retreat, a guest ranch along the Frying Pan River, a tributary of the Roar...
2025-06-1809 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Circle of Visions: a Special Conversation with Mark JensenA Special Bonus EpisodeI’m so grateful to share this bonus episode featuring a special conversation I had last year with my dear friend Mark Jensen. It’s a rare and beautiful exchange that touches on healing, grief, and a mystical connection to the Earth—an invitation to listen and remember what truly matters.In today's episode, I’m joined by Mark Jensen, a seasoned practitioner in the healing arts with 40+ years of experience in vitalistic principled chiropractic, cranial work, myofascial release, plant medicines, Qi Gong and Dao Yin classes, somatic/movement teaching...
2025-05-2243 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: When the Maple Turns AgainSpringtime in North Carolina is gorgeous. It can’t help itself. Perhaps it’s oblivious to—or in radical disagreement with—the brokenness of our times. Either way, the azaleas burst into riotous bloom, the crepe myrtles frill themselves in defiant pinks. In the mornings, birds trade secrets across the creek, their calls carried on air perfumed with fresh dew on pine needles to the back porch, where I sit in my mother’s rocking chair.This is the place where one branch of my family has put down roots. An invisible wheel exists here among us, with small...
2025-04-2604 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Knitting UndercoverToday is the Vernal Equinox. We’re promised incremental victories of light. But early spring is no darling — not here in the high desert. Here, she can be chafing and mercurial; she can show up in sputtering, immature fits and freezes; in mean winds that would cut down the most tender and flower-faced among us without reason.Earlier this week, the sky howled and turned the color of mud at mid-day. Cell phones blared out public safety warnings. Dust agitated at every seam.What’s a nervous system to do? Have mercy on the tender-hearted, Lord —...
2025-03-2005 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: EnduranceFound amidst the twisted metal and ash of a family’s home in the Pacific Palisades is a pottery shard with a single word inscribed upon it: love.It’s a clay piece no wider than the palm of your hand, a remnant from a serving dish that a daughter made for her mother, who displayed it in the bungalow where she lived for forty-seven years until one recent day when a black-plumed terror tore through the neighborhood, and it burned to the ground.For Diana, the one who first taught me how to love. Than...
2025-02-1305 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: SteadfastSTEADFAST(Inspired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s “Wordlessly”)The way the pericardium holds the heart,the pond holds the murk, and fish,the bowl holds the porridge my child eatsits steam rising to hold her face —and morning cups the day,the way day cups the nightin a great, persistent mystery, the socket holds the gaze.your palm holds my hand, your silence holds, “I’m here” — our bodies hold...
2025-01-2301 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Anchoring in the DriftDear friend,I’m writing today from a quiet harbor in the West Indies where, for the past few years, my family has come to rest during the liminal week between Christmas (or this year's portmanteau, Christmukkah) and New Year’s.In the final days of 2023, in an essay about thresholds and time, I described an overlook I like to walk to here on the island of Grenada — a cliff at the top of a grassy knoll from which water shimmers into a circular horizon. So much has changed since then, a reminder of how the bu...
2024-12-2905 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Mud, Mess, and Metamorphosis: a Conversation with Poet James PearsonIn this insightful conversation, I’m joined by poet James Pearson to explore personal growth, vulnerability, and the creative process. The discussion centers on themes of transformation, wholeheartedness, and navigating life’s difficult "winter seasons," a metaphor for the times of struggle, uncertainty, and rebirth. Pearson shares personal stories from his journey of self-discovery and healing, including the moments of asking for help that led to unexpected lifelines. Together, we delve into the wisdom found in nature's cycles and the power of messy, in-between times for personal growth.James reflects on his poetic work, particularly his debut coll...
2024-12-1945 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"When Death Happens: a Coversation with Caitlin RhoadesIn this deeply moving episode of The Guest House, I sit down with artist and trained therapist Caitlin Rhoades to explore the intricate landscape of grief and death. Through her own experience of compound loss, Caitlin reveals how grief reshapes our lives, teaching us about love, resilience, and the priorities that truly matter. Together, we navigate the societal discomfort surrounding death, the somatic experience of grief, and the transformative power of facing mortality with openness and inquisitiveness.Whether you’re grieving a loved one, supporting someone through loss, or seeking a deeper comprehension of life’s impermanence, this...
2024-12-0549 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Attention is PrayerMy grandmother's final gift to me was a rosary of fifty-nine blue stone beads around a silver-cast cross. It arrived in the mail one afternoon with a card that read Dear Shawn, Pray. Love, Gram like a wire sent from her hospice bed in Pennsylvania to my kitchen in New Mexico. What was the lesson my grandmother, at age 98, wanted to dispatch as she packed her bags for another world? With a grocery bag tucked under one arm and a baby on my hip, I read and reread the card, trying to decode her tremulous cursive and the white s...
2024-11-2207 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"We Are The Great Turning: a Conversation with Jess SerranteToday, climate leader Jess Serrante joins me in a heartfelt and insightful conversation on activism, emotional resilience, mentorship, and redefining hope in turbulent, uncertain times. Serrante recounts her path from activist burnout to Joanna Macy’s “The Work That Reconnects,” a practice built around gratitude, grief, and transformative action. We delve into “The Great Turning,” a paradigm shift toward sustainable and interconnected living, and examine the role of intergenerational wisdom and community support in overcoming despair. Drawing on her longtime friendship with Joanna and their recent conversation series, “We Are The Great Turning,” Jess shares insights that offer a roadma...
2024-11-1358 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Original Love: a Conversation with Zen Master Henry ShukmanIt was a honor to sit down with Henry Shukman—Zen master, poet, and author—to explore dimensions of meditation, mindfulness practice, and awakening. Our conversation centers around Henry’s profound insights into the nature of "original love," a concept he discusses in his latest book. Together, we reflect on the journey of how spiritual practice connects us to a greater sense of belonging and love.We delve into how spiritual practice, particularly mindfulness and meditation, can lead to transformative insights. We discuss the nature of awakening and the deeper connection we all share with the world around...
2024-11-0157 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Unordinary for AutumnIt’s a bright morning in early autumn, and a few hundred of us are seated on wooden pews in a historic auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art. A murmurous sound fills the hall as friends greet each other beneath a painted mural of St. Francis — patron saint of ecology and animals, those who are invisible to the outer world, and this place, Santa Fe, that we call home.Philosopher and poet David Whyte and teacher and author Henry Shukman take their seats on stage. Renowned in their respective fields and acquainted since their pub days...
2024-10-0911 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Moving the Line: a Conversation with Jonathan FoustIn this rich conversation, I welcome meditation teacher Jonathan Foust to explore his remarkable 50-year journey of practice and teaching. Enjoy this deep dive at the intersection of meditation, mindfulness, and the evolving path of spiritual awakening.Jonathan offers listeners an inside look at a life-long path of self-awareness and transformation. He reflects on childhood experiences of disconnection and belonging and shares how living in an ashram for 24 years profoundly shaped his spiritual path. Jonathan also provides practical advice for those balancing a meditation practice with the demands of everyday life.The episode delves into...
2024-10-0355 min
The Art of Lost and Found with Brooke Estin#40 | Re-Claiming and Embodying Creativity | Shawn ParellIn this episode, we deep dive with Shawn Parell, a therapist, yoga + meditation teacher, and creative practitioner, about the process of reclaiming and embodying one's creativity.
We explore the challenges of separating from one's creative self and the importance of reconnecting with it for a more authentic and fulfilling life. We get into the concept of self-abandonment and the fear of judgment that often holds people back from expressing their creativity as well as the value of practice and the evolution of one's creative journey.
Our conversation touches on topics such as vulnerability, worthiness, and...
2024-10-011h 07
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: The Meeting of the WatersA few days ago, if asked, I would have said I lacked the spaciousness and sanity to write this month. I know it would have been an excuse born of scarcity and fatigue — but summer is flaring into autumn, and time can seem like a horse bolting for the barn in the back half of the year. In a recent advisory on parents’ mental health, the Surgeon General cited an APA finding that 48% of American parents feel completely overwhelmed every day. In the ordinary overwhelm of modern life, friends exchange waves from afar with an undertone of “you ca...
2024-09-2210 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: At the Far Fringe of Summer“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again,” wrote Georgia O’Keeffe to fellow painter Russell Vernon Hunter from her desert hermitage in 1932.I am writing to you today from a cottage along the rugged coast of New England. This is the kind of salt-cured day I often dream about from the desert. The atmosphere is low and thickly layered, daylight fused with a deeper blue now as we arrive at the far fringe of summer. Black-headed gulls and egrets convene as the tide recedes, and a soft fog absorbs every sound...
2024-08-1908 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Breaking Out of the Binary: a Conversation with Hawah KasatJoin me on our upcoming Iceland yoga and meditation retreat!Akureyri, North Iceland | October 4-11, 2025The city of Akureyri was voted the #1 destination in Europe by Lonely Planet. Located on the longest fjord in the country, its mild climate and proximity to the Arctic Circle make it a bucket list, must-see destination. Join us for yoga, meditation, stunning views, breathtaking hikes, frozen waterfalls, Icelandic horseback rides, whale watching, soaking in starlit nature baths, and under the right conditions - chasing the northern lights.Payment plans are available! Learn more about this offering at...
2024-08-081h 00
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: When I Dream of Singing WellsIt’s the middle of the night, and somehow I have returned to the mountains and plains of Northern Kenya. In a language I can understand only while dreaming, I have been invited to skim mud from the surface of a freshly dug singing well with a carved wooden cup. Voices rise above the trumpeting of elephants and the bleating of goats. My body awkwardly recalls the gestures of this ritual. An upward whistle follows every earthly bow according to a rhythm passed from voice to voice through generations.Suddenly, I awaken in my bed — a world away...
2024-07-1809 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Reclaiming the Sensuous: a Conversation with Rachel RossittoIn this episode, I am thrilled to introduce Rachel Rossitto, a dedicated practitioner of Earth-based feminine wisdom, women's holistic health, womb healing, and much more. For more than 15 years, Rachel has immersed herself in diverse spiritual and healing practices. Today, she offers courses, mentorship, and guidance to help women reclaim their divine feminine energy. Our discussion delves into the vital work of redefining and reclaiming the feminine in our lives.In this conversation, we delve into misconceptions about the divine feminine, the importance of balance, and how Rachel's own journey informs her work with others. This episode...
2024-07-1138 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: If The Word Was CelebrateA young monk arrives at an old monastery. Among his daily tasks, he is assigned to replicate sacred church canons by hand. He soon observes that each replica is copied from a preceding replica and asks the abbot: “Father, is this not problematic? One mistake could perpetuate through every subsequent copy.” The abbot shrugs and responds, “We have been copying from copies for centuries.” But, wanting to encourage the young monk’s earnestness, he submits to check the original manuscripts for discrepancies.So, the abbot disappears down a dark staircase to a vault in a cave beneath the monast...
2024-06-1912 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Bridging Neurobiology and Spirituality for Therapeutic Healing: a Conversation with Psychotherapist Kasey CrownMy guest today is Kasey Hendricks Crown. Kasey is a transpersonal psychotherapist. She's a clinical supervisor, a consultant, a wellness educator, and an activist who challenges traditional mental health paradigms and advocates for a balanced integration of scientific and spiritual perspectives, which I so resonate with.Kasey has over a decade of experience in facilitating healing for individuals and groups, and she focuses on unlocking vital wisdom to help people reconnect with their true selves.Along with Jackie Lenardini, Kasey is also the visionary co-founder of WellSoul, a dynamic wellness education company designed to guide...
2024-06-0655 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: UncoiledSpirals began appearing in the Boyne Valley. First, in a dream when I was rounding cobblestoned streets searching for a place I vaguely remembered. Then, indelibly, among the neolithic moons carved into the mother stones at Newgrange in County Meath, where an invisible hand was believed to gesture to the dead on the briefest day of the year.The fiddle ferns seemed eager to converse at Ballymaloe, their shoulders smiling atop their green, springtime spines; and a cream-colored nautilus curled perfectly in my palm on a windswept beach in Ardmore. An acupuncturist friend explained how Chi travels...
2024-05-1611 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"The Luminous Self: a Conversation with Tracee StanleyTracee Stanley is the author of the bestselling books Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity and The Luminous Self: Sacred Yogic Practices & Rituals to Remember Who You Are - by Shambhala Publications. She is the founder of Empowered Life Circle, a sacred community and portal of practices, rituals, and Tantric teachings inspired by more than 28 years of studentship in Sri Vidya Tantra and the teachings of the Himalayan Masters. As a post-lineage teacher, Tracee is devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidra, rest, meditation, self-inquiry, spiritual ecology, and ancestor reverence. Tracee is gifted in...
2024-05-0259 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Hatchling SeasonHatchling season has arrived along the coast of Florida. With climate change, one can never be certain. Rising sea levels make tides ever higher and rising temperatures heat the sand on which this ancient ritual depends. I was disturbed to read recently that overheating can both kill nesting turtles and skew sex ratios to produce mostly female hatchlings.One can never be certain these days. Most years, I am reminded of hatchling season by my stepmother, a devotee of the moonlit kingdom that swells each month near her home. She is among the earliest of r...
2024-04-1007 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"The Hills Are Alive: a Conversation with Josh SchreiJoshua Michael Schrei is the founder of The Emerald, a podcast that combines evocative narrative, soul-stirring music, and interviews with award-winning authors and luminaries to explore the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination.Throughout a lifetime of teaching, study, meditation and yogic practice, wilderness immersion, art, music, and public speaking, Josh has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision. Josh has taught intensive courses in mythology and somatic disciplines for over 20 years.Resource Links:* Join Josh’s m...
2024-04-0446 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Friendship in the Drift of the World: a Conversation with Jessica LazarJess is a polymath who lives and works in Washington, DC. She is one of those rare people who is deeply knowledgeable and articulate and able to synthesize a broad range of subjects. I truly love and admire how conversations can go from politics to literature, to history, psychology, to science, to pop culture.She is a longtime yoga and meditation teacher who leads long-form immersions and international retreats. And she's also been a dedicated student of world-renowned teachers, Shiva Rea for several decades now, as well as Tara Brach, Pema Chodron, and the list goes on.
2024-03-1850 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: One of Those March DaysWind marks the transition between seasons in Northern New Mexico. Dry wind — the kind that agitates the senses — and mud that coats paws and suctions around walking boots. Emblematic of its military-inspired moniker, March can seem like a landscape across which one must trudge from territory to territory. Dickens described the temper of this month in Great Expectations: “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”The sun gradually climbs toward the equator. I unbutton my jacket. A...
2024-03-1109 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: The District Sleeps Alone TonightNever in my life have I met anyone who felt music so intensely as my father. He could not help listening to it; when he heard music that pleased him he became excited and there was a contraction in his throat; he sobbed and shed tears. The feelings aroused in him were unreasoning emotion and excitement. Sometimes it excited him against his will and even tormented him, and he would say: que me veut cette musique? (what does that music want of me?) - Tolstoy, C. S., & Maude, A. (1926). Music in Tolstoy’s Life. The Musical Times, 67(1000), 516–518.A few...
2024-02-1213 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"The Power of Silence in a World of Noise: a Conversation with Author Leigh MarzFoundations of Mindfulness Meditationis now available as a six-week audio course!Build a seated practice. With guided meditations, insightful talks, and a detailed course guidebook, you'll have everything you need to establish the foundations of a mindfulness practice at your own pace.My guest today is Leigh Marz. Leigh is an author, leadership coach, and collaboration consultant. She’s led diverse initiatives, including a training program to promote an experimental mindset among multi-generational teams at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a decade-long cross-sector collaboration to reduce toxic chemicals in pa...
2024-02-0757 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: MidloveBrene Brown wrapped the term “midlove” around herself like a blanket in her forties. The famous shame researcher rebranded this psychological classic in an essay called “The Midlife Unraveling,” in which she described the nearly universal longing for alignment that accompanies waves of realization of our impermanence at a certain stage of life. Here, she characterizes the tension between the responsible bearings of adulthood and the radical impulse toward authenticity that can emerge as we begin to grok our humble status before time.We go to work and unload the dishwasher and love our families and get our hair...
2024-01-2308 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"January is for Creative Recovery: a Conversation with Creative Amplifier Brooke EstinFREE for The Guest House subscribers - Brooke’s digital class, Unlocking Creativity for Wellness.Brooke is a certified brand strategist. She's a TED speaker. She's an artist, a designer, and host of the podcast The Art of Lost and Found. She also founded the internationally sought-after design studio called I Know A Gal.Brooke describes herself as a Creative Amplifier. Her genius zone is in helping people unblock their creative energy and channel it strategically. In addition to working with social entrepreneurs, coaches, freelancers, and artists, Brooke has also worked with all of the gl...
2024-01-1840 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: To Author Our Way HomeOf the many invitations for mindful self-improvement that landed in my inbox at the turn of the year, one piqued my interest — a daily sensory incantation from . The instructions are simple: set a timer for five minutes and record, without interruption and preferably with pen and paper, “close, meticulous, external” notes on your immediate surroundings. No interpretations, no personal commentary, no embellishments allowed.Now here’s the twist —Once the timer goes off, look over your fragments and find the five that are the most interesting, the most unique, the most jagged, the strangest. Imagine the paper...
2024-01-1116 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: So This Is The Sound Of YouTo the New YearWith what stillness at lastyou appear in the valleyyour first sunlight reaching downto touch the tips of a fewhigh leaves that do not stiras though they had not noticedand did not know you at allthen the voice of a dove callsfrom far away in itselfto the hush of the morningso this is the sound of youhere and now whether or...
2023-12-3108 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Whichever Path Love's Caravan TakesDear one —Your message arrived this morning as we were dragging the tree to the curb and packing suitcases in the trunk. Now at 35,000 feet, as is often the case when I am among the clouds, I find myself reflecting on your words. What you meant about feeling heavy-hearted and adrift, I understand. Feelings are rarely single-noted, and our mandate is to bear witness in this paradoxical season. Who has real answers? Reality is as it is and what we can do, palms turned upward, is ask what Love wants of us.I rea...
2023-12-2708 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"From Beneath the Ice: a Conversation with Poet David Keplinger for Winter SolsticeDavid Keplinger is the distinguished author of eight collections of poetry — including his most recent book, Ice. He has received prestigious awards throughout his career and was honored as Scholar-Teacher of the Year in 2022 at American University in Washington, DC, where he has taught since 2007. He's also a dear friend and the only person I imagined featuring on this, our first podcast episode at The Guest House. Sitting together in David's study, we discuss the revelatory nature of memory and how poetry and mindfulness as spiritual practices can help us explore our place in the layered history of this sp...
2023-12-2142 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: In Winter, Warmth Stands For All VirtueI’ve decided in recent years that waking up before dawn is the most practical thing I can do.When the morning is at its deepest, my mind at its most liminal, my children’s soft bodies still tucked warmly beneath their blankets, I can slip into the wilderness of an unobserved inner communion for a while.I’m careful not to overlay this practice with too much prescription, especially as the days spiral inward on themselves with the approach of Winter Solstice. Each morning is its own creative act. What I want, simply, is to lis...
2023-12-0311 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Something That We Are Still BuildingA few references for working with gratitude this week …* Gratitude is a felt practice. It’s not a cognitive list-making process, nor is it the self-satisfied reassurance that could result from surveying the relative comfort and privilege of our lives. To feel gratitude, we have to pause and allow our subject to emerge, and then we have to train our attention on presence so that our hearts can naturally enter a state of generous appreciation. Rick Hanson calls this installing the trait. We have to feel into it, again and again.* What keeps us from grat...
2023-11-2208 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Everything That Is Not ElephantDo not try to savethe whole worldor do anything grandiose.Instead, createa clearingin the dense forestof your lifeand wait therepatiently,until the songthat is your lifefalls into your own cupped handsand you recognize and greet it.Only then will you knowhow to give yourself to this worldso worthy of rescue.- Martha Postlethwaite, “The Clearing”Journalling was my first formal practice. At the age of seven, I opened a spiral notebook with a sunflower painted on the cover (I adored that notebook) and thereafter wrote into the headwinds of my growing years with inex...
2023-11-1609 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Until We Carry Each OtherWashington was the city of my formation. It’s where I arrived as an undergrad with a box of scribbled journals and a smoking habit. Also, where I smoked my last cigarette. It’s where I met my husband and landed my first job, among many other firsts.Now that I’ve resided among the juniper and chamisa of the Southwest as long as I resided among the cherry blossoms, even a quick visit to the District is a swirl of tactile reconnection. I teach a philosophy workshop in the studio where I spent a decade studying the cr...
2023-11-0910 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Where All Of Me Is AncestorDeep autumn. Breath takes shape again on the air. Walking with the ghosts of this warring world as day tips toward evening on the cross-quarter between Equinox and Solstice.Within each of us exists an encoded instinct to burrow. The farmers (who are among the remaining few of us with seasonal sensibility), have gathered their harvest and readied their stores for Winter, and now they’re moving toward home and hearth.A society that has forgotten its own circadian rhythms senses the signs but struggles to recognize the shift. In the Tantric system of swara yo...
2023-10-3107 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Finding In the Darkness GlimmeringOver the past few weeks, I’ve often noticed the part of me that longs for silence, for inner coherence in a fractured world. The part that doesn’t want to say a word that could disturb the air, nor add an ounce of the weight in my heart (the inverse of hope, which Emily Dickinson described as “the thing with feathers”) to the too-delicate balance of so many others’ hearts.It takes time, integrity, and inner resource to orient toward the din of humanity’s anguish and rage. Our prefrontal empathic sensors weren’t built for this scale. In...
2023-10-2808 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: The Hum of a Boy's DreamToday. Scenes from inside Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, where thousands are sheltering and seeking care.Three or four children are curled in each bed.A fatherly-looking doctor pauses. He wraps a child in his arms. He turns her face so she won’t notice how he is cupping silent sobs into her hair.There’s an ache in my arms. In my bones. In the ground beneath my feet. In the leaves.And this reminder from Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye that we are never not in it together…Shoulder...
2023-10-1805 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: In Blackwater Woods AgainSunday morning at home. The hum of my children’s voices. The scent of cinnamon and pumpkin waffles. I roam from room to room, seeking a patch of autumn light on which to lay my mat. I settle on a place in the midst of it all, between the portal and the kitchen — only to discover this morning’s practice is simply to lay my tired heart in sunlight.“In Blackwater Woods” is with me again. Some poems are like this — seasonal visitors. Some poems are very old friends.Look, the trees are turning their own bodies i...
2023-09-2207 min
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"Narrated Essay: Fishing for Fallen LightI have a quiet aversion to conversations about wellbeing. The term conjures images of privilege and appropriation, like the time I was instructed to wave a stick of incense at a merchandised “altar" before disrobing for a spa treatment. Over the years, I’ve heard many conversations in yoga studio lobbies devolve into insensitive recommendations for the latest bestseller on grief or a self-paced online course designed to transform. The word draws my attention to the thin line between holistic health and aspirations of self-optimization, control, and certainty.Quality is fine by me — I delight in an organi...
2023-08-2415 min