What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a creative? Chelene Knight answers without hesitation: “I think the biggest mistake was just not being me.”

This week, we sit down with acclaimed poet, novelist, memoirist, and Tasha’s own writing mentor, Chelene Knight, to talk about what it means to build a creative life. Not the tidy, “professionalized” version, but the messy, alive, human one that actually feels good.

Chelene’s most recent book, Safekeeping: A Writer's Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love, is part guided journal, part treasure map through the writing life. It also, as she puts it, “contains all of my mistakes as a writer and all the things that I’ve learned.” Listening to her is like being handed a permission slip to go slower, trust yourself, reread the same book forever, throw out the pressure to finish, snack on a single poem and call it a meal.

We talk about:

* Why “there is no reading, only rereading”

* The mistake of ignoring your instincts and how to recover.

* Poetry as the foundation for all writing.

* What happens when writers trust the reader enough to leave space.

* How slowing down turns reading into a kind of prayer.

The adventure

Chelene guides us through two delicious reading practices: one with Julia Bouwsma’s Dear Ghosts, I Pick the List, and another from Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler. They’re haunting and beautiful.

The exercise is simple but radical: Hear a poem once, notice the phrase that hooks you, then hear it again. The second time through, the text has changed… and so have you.

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We make this show with love, laughter, and absolutely no corporate overlords. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription!

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What stayed with us most from this practice is how a poem can feel like a hurricane one moment and a whisper the next, depending on how you let it in.

Reading, in Chelene’s hands, is more than consumption. It’s a meditation, a prayer, a slow fire that lights us from within.

Let us know in the comments how this practice goes :)

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Chelene’s Links:

* The Say No with Love Letters

* Safekeeping: A Writer's Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love

* Cheleneknight.com

This is an exciting one, friends!

Stephen Porges is the visionary scientist who gave us polyvagal theory—a framework that’s reshaped how the world understands trauma, safety, and human connection. His work has influenced everyone from therapists to meditation teachers to parents trying to soothe a colicky baby. And now he’s here with us, alongside his brilliant co-author Karen Onderko, to talk about their new book and the Safe and Sound Protocol.

This episode is part science, part storytelling, and part live experiment.

In this conversation, we talk about:

* The origins of polyvagal theory and why it changed the trauma world forever

* How the Safe and Sound Protocol helps bodies shift out of defense and into connection

* Wild stories of teens, adults, and even toddlers in a sound cube discovering safety for the first time

* Why “safety” can sometimes feel scary (and what to do about it)

* The nervous system’s three favorite things: context, choice, and connection

And then, because we’re all about real-time practice over here, Jeff guides Stephen and Karen in a short meditation. Afterwards, Stephen deconstructs it through a polyvagal lens, showing us how context, choice, and connection are the nervous system’s love language.

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We make this show with love, laughter, and absolutely no corporate overlords. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription!

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This is one of those conversations we’ll be talking about for a long time. It’s science, but it’s also about how to be human together. How to tune our bodies toward safety and open the doors to connection.

✨ Know someone who’s been geeking out on the nervous system, or just trying to figure out how to feel safe in their own skin? Share this episode with them!

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Links

* Stephen Porges

* Karen Onderko @ The Polyvagal Institute

* Book: Safe and Sound: A Polyvagal Approach for Connection, Change, and Healing

This week on the Pod, we’re joined by the luminous Sherri Mitchell: Indigenous rights attorney, activist, ceremonial leader, and the author of Sacred Instructions.

We dive into the birth canal of this moment — a world in transition, contracting and expanding as it labors to bring something new into being. Sherri doesn’t shy away from the pain, confusion, or cultural clusterf*ck of our times and she also doesn’t wallow. Instead, she offers radical clarity, vision, and a deeply embodied path forward.

Together, we explore:

* What it means to live through a species-wide rite of passage* The vibrational power of oral traditions and why sound is sacred science* Why “triggered” might just be the most misused word of our generation* How to move beyond naming the water we’re drowning in, and start swimming toward land* The 80/10/10 rule for building the world we actually want

And then Sherri guides us in a practice of remembering, of dreaming the world we want into being, and dreaming ourselves into the kind of people who can live there.

As Jeff put it: “You can dream a better world. But you have to dream yourself into it too.”

This conversation is a balm, a fire, and a wake-up call. If you’ve been overwhelmed, heartbroken, or teetering on the edge of despair, listen in. It’s about metabolizing this moment into wisdom, vision, and action.

We make this show with love, laughter, and absolutely no corporate overlords. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription at mindbodpod.com

Know someone who’s been thinking hard about how to show up in these strange times? Share this with them too!

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️