Episode 50: When Doing Everything Right Feels Wrong: How to Soften, Listen, and Find Your Way Back To Yourself with Heather Gates
Release Date: 05/12/2026
Episode 50: When Doing Everything Right Feels Wrong: How to Soften, Listen, and Find Your Way Back To Yourself with Heather Gates
The Imaginal Change Podcast
Heather Gates—strategist, facilitator, host of the Stand in the & podcast, and devoted lover of humans—joins me for a rich, imaginal conversation about alignment, paradox, and what it really looks like to live in service to human flourishing without burning yourself to the ground in the process. We explore how metaphor, somatics, and parts work can help us befriend the many versions of ourselves over a lifetime — what Heather beautifully calls "the kaleidoscope of butterflies" — and how to keep watering the orchid of our lives when we're deep in the not-yet. In this episode, we...
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Episode 49: When Healing Means Letting Go: Gut Health, Nervous System Safety, and Reclaiming Your Power with Sarah Greenfield
The Imaginal Change Podcast
Sarah Greenfield—functional medicine practitioner, nervous system guide, and creator of the Gut Archetypes framework—joins me for a rich, deeply human conversation about what it really means to heal from the inside out. Sarah shares her evolution from a heavily lab-based, certainty-driven practice to one rooted in nervous system wisdom, emotional honesty, and returning power to the people she works with. We explore what happens when we stop treating the body as broken and start listening to it as the wisest guide we have. In this episode, we explore: Why your gut symptoms aren't a...
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Episode 48: Becoming the Message: How My TEDx Journey Asked Me to Live Into It — Over and Over Again
The Imaginal Change Podcast
I've pressed pause on our guest series this week for a solo episode — a behind-the-scenes look at my recent TEDx journey. The real one. Sweaty palms, nervous system stretches, and all. We're so used to seeing the polished final talk that we forget what it requires of a human being to actually get there. This is my way of pulling back the curtain on the messy, deeply human process of saying yes to a big calling. . . even when (especially when) it requires you to live beyond your comfort zone over and over again. From my first application years ago (when I was unconsciously chasing...
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Episode 47: The Men We Need Now: Grief, Community, and Full-Spectrum Emotion with Jonathan Greenfield
The Imaginal Change Podcast
Jonathan Greenfield (a.k.a. Jonathan Chase in the acting realm)—men's coach, grief guide, longtime actor, and devotee of "sacred play"—joins me for a raw, tender, and grounded conversation about men's work, heartbreak, and becoming more fully human in a culture obsessed with productivity and performance. We explore what it means for men to feel again—fully—and how grief, vulnerability, and community can alchemize old wounds into soft strength, relational integrity, and a more compassionate world. In this episode, we explore: What happens when a father dies, a marriage implodes, and...
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Episode 46: Social Justice, Youth Leadership and the Courage to Have Life-Changing Conversations with Imani Mitchell
The Imaginal Change Podcast
Imani Mitchell—educator, youth advocate, and imaginal change-maker at NCCJ (North Carolina for Community and Justice) of the Piedmont Triad—joins me for a tender, grounded, and quietly revolutionary conversation about what it means to grow humans who can move through the world with courage and compassion. This episode is especially personal for me. I went to Camp AnyTown over 30 years ago, and talking with Imani brought back just how formative that week was—and how much it matters that this work is still happening, still evolving, and still changing lives. We also pull Imani's human...
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Episode 45: Sacred Craft, Wild Nature, and the Body as an Oracle with Nina Everflow
The Imaginal Change Podcast
Nina Everflow—course whisperer, social activist, and self-described wild woman "still decolonizing her inner librarian"—joins me for a tender, honest, and deeply practical conversation about reclaiming our wild nature and learning to trust ourselves in a world shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and extraction. We explore what it really means to listen to the body, source power from within, and orient your life around the frequency you actually want to embody—not the one you were conditioned to perform. In this episode, we explore: Why rest, boundaries, and nervous system regulation are...
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Episode 44: Welcome to "The Imaginal Change Podcast": A podcast makeover!
The Imaginal Change Podcast
Welcome to The Imaginal Change Podcast: A podcast makeover! Welcome to the rebirth of this podcast. What was once Magical Humaning is now The Imaginal Change Podcast—a shift that reflects a deeper clarification of my purpose and service. In this episode, I share the journey that led here: from farm worker activist to therapist to coach to imaginal guide. It's a story of gathering tools and wisdom, and feeling the growing urgency to share them more widely as we reimagine our lives and our world. In this episode, we explore: What "imaginal change" means and why it matters The space between...
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Episode 43: Wintering and the Natural Process of Creative Surrender
The Imaginal Change Podcast
In this episode, I’m inviting you into the quiet, often uncomfortable space of wintering—the season where clarity doesn’t come from pushing forward, but from slowing down enough to listen. We explore why the New Year’s pressure to plan, produce, and “figure it all out” can actually pull us out of alignment, and how our nervous systems cling to certainty—even when what’s familiar is no longer working. I share personal reflections on choosing stillness, releasing over-availability, and allowing old identities and patterns to gently die so something truer can emerge. This...
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Episode 42: Relational Burnout: The Hidden Patterns Beneath Doing Too Much
The Imaginal Change Podcast
In this episode, I’m inviting you beneath the surface of burnout to explore what I call relational burnout—the deeper energetic and emotional patterns that quietly drain us long before we officially “hit the wall.” Together, we’ll trace burnout back to its true roots: the relationships that shape how we give, receive, and restore our energy. You’ll hear how this exploration unfolded for me while writing —and how it revealed not just my habits of overdoing, but the subtle ways I’d disconnected from myself in the name of being good, helpful, or strong. This conversation is an...
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Episode 41: Everyday Activism (Embodied Ripples of Revolution)
The Imaginal Change Podcast
When you think of activism, what comes to mind? Protests? Petitions? Big, bold gestures of resistance? While those forms of activism are vital, there’s another revolution happening in quieter ways — in how we show up in our everyday lives. In this episode, we explore embodied activism — the idea that our healing, our relationships, and the way we move through the world can be one of the most powerful forms of collective change. Together, we’ll dive into: Why personal transformation isn’t selfish, but a ripple of impact that changes the collective. How the energy we carry in our...
info_outlineHeather Gates—strategist, facilitator, host of the Stand in the & podcast, and devoted lover of humans—joins me for a rich, imaginal conversation about alignment, paradox, and what it really looks like to live in service to human flourishing without burning yourself to the ground in the process.
We explore how metaphor, somatics, and parts work can help us befriend the many versions of ourselves over a lifetime — what Heather beautifully calls "the kaleidoscope of butterflies" — and how to keep watering the orchid of our lives when we're deep in the not-yet.
In this episode, we explore:
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Honoring sensitivity, big feelings, and "too muchness" through somatics and parts work (IFS) instead of shaming or suppressing them
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Why we often don't realize we're out of alignment until we finally say yes to what we've been longing to do and feel it “click.”
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Actually flourishing vs. performing flourishing — building a life that feels alive in the body, not just impressive on paper
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Softening as a spiritual and somatic practice: moving from inner ass-kicking to self-regard, gentleness, and open-handedness
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Why we need at least one person who can meet us in the "I can't tell which end is up" moments — and what becomes possible when we find them
This one is for anyone navigating transition, living between stories, or trying to honor their purpose without abandoning their body. If you're longing for a more humane way to work, lead, and live, this conversation is for you.
Connect with Heather:
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Strategy & facilitation work: human-centeredstrategy.com
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Find and follow her podcast, “Stand in the & with Heather Gates” on all major platforms
Connect with Meghan:
Website: meghan-omalley.com
Get the Book: Unstuck Yourself: Thrive Beyond Burnout & Discover Your True Purpose, co-authored with Laura Cardwell, available wherever books are sold