From Pitchforks to Peace: How to Lead in Highly Polarized Times w/ Betsy Stix
Release Date: 03/04/2025
An Aligned Exhale: How to Conclude With Conflict
Be. Play. Love.
Most people wait for burnout, conflict, or disaster before ending something that’s no longer in alignment. We’ve both done that in the past, pushing forward because things were “still going well,” even when a quiet inner voice was saying it was time to move on. But sometimes, the most life-giving move is to complete a chapter while there’s still joy, ease, and connection in it. In this special final episode, we pull back the curtain on our decision to end the podcast, while it’s still thriving. We explore why completion can be the most creative act of all. For us, it’s been about...
info_outline
Complete to Create: How to Stop Having Unfinished Business w/ Gay Hendricks
Be. Play. Love.
Most people are either rehashing the past or obsessing over the future - never living in the present moment. The result? Walking around with major incompletions that keep us from connection, creativity, and wholeness. Carrying unfinished conversations, unspoken words, unresolved feelings, and unfelt experiences. And that robs us of something precious…all the incredible things we could be creating right now! Completion isn’t about perfection or checking every box. It’s the deep, often uncomfortable practice of letting go of past regrets, imagined futures, buried emotions, and the need to...
info_outline
How to Use Your Voice to Heal, Express, and Connect (Even If You Can't Sing) w/ Noga Rappaport-Varadi
Be. Play. Love.
We think our voices are just how we speak, how we communicate, how we’re understood, but they are so much more than that. They are our own unique vocal fingerprint, our own frequency, and a way people identify us, but it goes even deeper. Our voices are instruments that communicate our inner landscape, and they can be vehicles for aliveness, creativity, healing, and wellbeing. What’s funny is that we talk all the time, but many of us have never really heard our own voices. That’s because our true voices often get lost in society’s rules about what sounds wrong or right, or the polite...
info_outline
The Inner Rubber Ducky: How to Interrupt Your Inner Critic with Play
Be. Play. Love.
We live in a world that trains us to focus on negativity. A world that wants us to contract, to judge, and expect the worst from ourselves (and others). That’s why being self-critical is our default. We absorb the script early: that we’re not good enough, not lovable enough, not deserving of ease or joy. Over time, that internal voice becomes automatic, so automatic that we don’t even hear it anymore. Then your inner landscape shifts into wholeness, and you start to notice it more. How do we shift ourselves out of that default state of negativity? Sometimes, it’s as simple as anchoring...
info_outline
How to Shed The Weight (of What Wasn't Said)
Be. Play. Love.
For so many people, excess weight isn’t about laziness or lack of willpower — it’s about carrying unspoken stories. It’s about living in a body that holds the weight of feelings your voice never got to share. Because when you can’t tell the truth — or even acknowledge what’s real — your body will speak for you. But what if the path to healing and releasing the excess weight is actually about allowing yourself to feel what you’ve buried? When you finally let yourself feel the big feelings, you stop accumulating them. You don’t have to numb out. You don’t need to overeat,...
info_outline
FACT: The Framework That Turns Fear Into Freedom
Be. Play. Love.
Fear isn’t just a fleeting feeling that visits quietly. It hijacks your nervous system, clouds your judgment, and makes even the smallest decisions feel paralyzing. It’s a fog that clouds your decisions, disconnects you from your body, and shuts down your creativity and sense of possibility. Triggered by something unexpected, challenging, or painful, fear can make us feel stuck, but there is a way out. There’s a surprisingly simple but profoundly transformational framework we can use to regain clarity, agency, and aliveness, even in moments of deep uncertainty. FACT is a way to access...
info_outline
Your Body Knows the Family Secret, Use These Tools to Uncover It w/ Christina Trifero
Be. Play. Love.
What if the aches in your body aren’t entirely yours? The shoulder pain, the gut tension, or the sense of incompletion might not just be physical. It could be the echo of a secret held for decades, maybe even generations? Because here’s the thing: families hold secrets, but those secrets have a way of leaking out or leaving breadcrumbs. And if you’re connected to your intuition, you can sense that there’s something that’s not being said. Most of us were taught to look forward, to toughen up, to leave the past behind. But what if that very suppression is why we can’t move forward?...
info_outline
The Making of Katie Hendricks: A Life Built on Curiosity and Embodied Wisdom
Be. Play. Love.
We all have secrets, painful experiences, and even childhood challenges that affect us to this day. What if keeping them is what’s keeping us unwell? Our culture teaches us to bottle in our truth, mask our emotions, and manage our image. But the body keeps score, and over time, that suppression turns into stress, disconnection, and even illness. What if healing is about processing these things through our bodies? That’s the lens Katie brings, not just as a psychologist or embodiment teacher, but as someone who’s lived it. Katie grew up in an environment where expression wasn’t welcome....
info_outline
The Performer’s Gift: How to Awaken the Creativity in Others w/ Jennifer Blaine
Be. Play. Love.
Most people don’t think of themselves as creative. We say, “I’m not artistic,” or “I can’t perform,” and leave it at that. But the truth is, creativity isn’t reserved for the select few. It lives in everyone. It’s baked into how we think, feel, dream, and respond to the world. The problem is that most of us were taught to shut it down. We were told to color inside the lines, follow the rules, and keep things appropriate. Over time, we stopped expressing the weird, wonderful parts of ourselves and started believing that creativity belonged only to the professionals. But...
info_outline
Your Creativity Isn't Dead...Here's How to Revive It w/ Laurie Shiers
Be. Play. Love.
In a world that worships productivity, we’ve traded our inner spark for efficiency and completely lost the creativity that’s vital to flow. For many of us, this disconnection with our creativity goes back to childhood. This is where we were taught not to be weird. Where we were trained to do things in one specific way, and forced to correct ourselves when we didn’t. For years, we’ve heard negative things that have shaped how we feel about our creativity, so no wonder we’ve suppressed it. But without play, coloring outside the lines, and trusting the parts of ourselves that don’t...
info_outlineOne of the unfortunate truths about our society is that we’re more divided, vitriolic and operating from fear than ever before.
When we look at how people interact, there’s no civility and mutual respect anymore. There’s this huge collective tantrum and so much anger in people and it’s completely polarized the culture.
This is especially highlighted in the political sphere. From local government to the national stage, there’s more division, more contempt than collaboration, and that was never the original intent.
At its very basic level, government is about creating harmony and equity in society, but that’s not happening anymore. How did we get here? How do we find peace in the midst of such vitriolic polarity?
In episode, former mayor of Ojai, California, Betsy Stix joins us to talk about leading in these contempt-filled times, and how she maintained equanimity in inflamed situations.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-A powerful impetus
How did The Big Leap lead Betsy Stix into local government?
-The source of our separation
The amount of conflict and polarity we’re seeing in our world feels unprecedented. How did we get here?
-React, disengage or rise above
In these times of high conflict, it’s really easy to get hijacked by fear. How do we redirect towards love?
-Back to breath
How do we use our breath to create safety for ourselves when there’s chaos all around us?
Guest Bio
Betsy is a lifelong teacher of human development, yoga, English, and French and former mayor of Ojai, California. After teaching for decades, she decided to run for mayor in 2020 during COVID, after reading Gay Hendricks’ “The Big Leap” and learning that the city council was slow to enact environmental and social justice policy. She canvased the town of 7,500 people in a mask and won 64% of the vote! And she won again in 2022 when she ran against actor Anson Williams. During her tenure, the Ojai City Council passed rent stabilization/tenant protection, a greenhouse gas emission reduction code, approved truly low income housing while developing better solutions for the unhoused, passed animal protection ordinances celebrated by PETA, improved the city’s plastic and tree ordinances, flew the Pride Flag for the first time, and founded the Mayor’s Youth Council. She is proud to have run two 100% positive campaigns and championed emotional and spiritual intelligence while moving the ball forward for progressive issues. She was so grateful to have been able to depend upon her yoga practices and experience teaching children and young people as well as the teachings of Katie Hendricks and Marianne Williamson to support her during her time in office. She looks forward to continuing to serve her community and the planet. Follow Betsy on Instagram.
About Your Hosts
Katie Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT, is a pioneer in body intelligence and conscious loving with over 40 years of experience. Known internationally as a presenter and seminar leader, she focuses on authenticity, responsibility, and appreciation in conscious living. She co-authored 12 books, including best-sellers Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After and she has appeared on over 500 radio and TV programs.
Sophie Chiche is a seasoned coach and consultant who has worked with thousands of individuals and teams globally. With a focus on helping people live fully expressed lives, she guides clients and facilitates group sessions to remove obstacles and design meaningful lives. Sophie has developed unique methods, mindset shifts, and healing modalities to create lasting change.
Check out this episode on our website, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm so the show reaches more people!