Expand and Integrate: How to Successfully Navigate the Unknown
Release Date: 03/11/2025
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_outlineBe. 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...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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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_outlineBe. 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_outlineBe. 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_outlineBe. 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_outlineBe. 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_outlineAnytime we head into the unknown and want to break past a limit, a question arises inside of us, “is it safe for me to be this big out in the world?”
That’s because if we want something bigger, our ceiling has to rise to encompass that thing and that can be scary. Sometimes we’ll expand into that bigger thing but then shrink back into our familiar shells.
If we don’t make our presence bigger than our fear, this process will keep repeating itself.
What if, instead of expanding and contracting - we could expand and integrate at a new level? That’s where flow comes into play - it’s a way for us to expand our capacity for bigger things with curiosity, instead of contracting ourselves back into the known.
Like a dance where we don’t quite know the routine, the key is to move so that the next step emerges from the flow.
How do we integrate to a new level and not sabotage ourselves? How do we reduce our fear when we’re stepping into the unknown? In this episode, we talk about how to accompany yourself to the next level.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Find safety in integration not contraction
When we’re faced with the unknown, we can either contract or expand into it. How do we leap into the latter without fear?
-Turn towards what’s wanting to happen
When we’re in the flow (not the fear) of the unknown, life becomes a free form dance. Why do we have to let go in order to find the next step?
-It’s as easy as saying “tell me more”
When we stay in conversation with others, it opens up the flow. How do we learn to go into unknown situations with curiosity instead of contraction?
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.
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