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The Be Fully Alive Podcast On Patreon
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"We all carry the potential to realize, in real time, that the vibrant energy we experience
when we feel truly loved, seen and met, is who we actually are." Dawn Cartwright
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The Forgotten Arts & Eros
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
December 1999 I traveled to India for the first time to experience the Osho Ashram in Pune.
Every morning, I'd wake up before sunrise and walk to the open air meditation hall where I'd throw myself into Osho's Dynamic Meditation.
I still remember the piles and piles of shoes outside the tent. And the way the marble, cool and soft, felt under my feet as I entered.
The meditation began at 6:00 am, sharp.
Breathing, deep fast and chaotic.
Then, catharsis.
Then, "Hoo!"
Then - FREEZE.
And, then, at last. Celebrate.
One morning, in the "Hoo" phase of the meditation, I met myself.
Though I didn't know it at the time.
I felt a cold sweat break out all over my body and I couldn't discern up from down. I felt sick and nearly fell onto the ground, my body shivering.
My mind had no map for the experience.
All I had was the kind of determination that only appears after our hearts are broken many, many times.
I stayed with everything that was happening. And I met myself.
Not a grand or illuminated version, just the version of me, of us, that never gives up.
And that version brought me to the gap, the still point between the conscious and the unconscious.
The edge.
Of everything.
Some of us find our way home through devotion. Some through data. NeoTantra embraces both. I am now discovering that the experience I had that morning and other mornings and your experiences, too, are measurable. What was once seen as mystical is now being mapped by science.
For most of human history, the somatic landscape of our inner world was our guiding force. Humans flourished in sensual, interwoven, mutualistic collectives. Then, in layers, over centuries, this inner guidance was overwritten, replaced with systems lacking connection.
Devoid of feeling.
And yet, the way of life that had sustained closeness, belonging and thriving for thousands of years did not disappear. In fact, those ways of living are still a part of our lives today.
— practices and awarenesses that have existed since the beginning — because they are innate. Embedded in the hearts and minds of every human being who has ever lived.
Becoming sexually authentic and alive isn’t something we learn. It’s something we remember.
When we orgasm, our brain’s sense of a separate, bounded self goes quiet — this is what the ancient practitioners were pointing to when they shared stories of union with the divine.
Accessed through . . .
Breath — Prana and the vagus nerve are describing the same physiological event. The extended exhale that Tantricas called “moving prana” is what neuroscientist Stephen Porges calls vagal tone — the body’s signal that it’s safe to open.
Energy — The Taoist microcosmic orbit — energy circulating up the spine, down the front of the body — maps onto the exact neurobiological pathway the spinal cord uses to carry arousal upward to the brain, limbic system, and cortex.
The Subtle Body — Fascia has been found to carry piezoelectric electrical charges, conducting signals through the body as a unified field — what researchers like James Oschman call a whole-body antenna, and what ancient practitioners called the subtle body.
Union with the divine, with each other, with ourselves — is a measurable neurological event our bodies already know — and long for.
Dawn
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"Between the conscious and the unconscious,
the mind has put up a swing:
all earth creatures, even the supernovas,
sway between these two trees,
and it never winds down.
Angels, animals, humans,
insects by the million,
also the wheeling sun and moon;
ages go by, and it goes on."
— Kabir (15th century)
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 | Episode 289 . The Gap: Entering the Still Point
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
There is a space between breaths.
Between thoughts.
Between moments.
Between who we believe ourselves to be and who we truly are.
“In such universal pause, one’s small self vanishes.”
— Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, 8th century CE
The mystics of every tradition have been pointing to this gap for thousands of years. In this space, our sense of being a bounded, separate individual dissolves.
In this week's practice episode, we'll find the gap — first for one breath, then two.
Then we'll rest in the stillness that connects us to eros, ourselves, each other — and everything.
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 | Episode 290 . Marcus’s Story
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
A professor. A spreadsheet. The story of Marcus's nervous system activation, the shattering of his concept of who he was - and his integration.
Marcus tracked everything. He was a philosophy professor, methodical by nature, newly divorced, newly practicing. His spreadsheet had three columns: Physiological Response, Subjective Experience, and Theoretical Alignment with Source Material.
He had been practicing the connected circular breath for three weeks when, on an ordinary Tuesday morning in November, his body did something he had absolutely no framework for.
Heat at the base of the spine. Movement upward. His chest opening in a way that felt like the opposite of pain. Tears with no story attached. The timer went off at thirty minutes. He didn’t move for another twenty.
Later, he opened the spreadsheet.
He stared at the columns.
He closed the spreadsheet.
Then, a conversation with a somatic practitioner, the discovery that what happened to him has a name and a neurobiological mechanism, his slow and honest reckoning with the difference between knowing a map and living in the territory — is one of the most precise and moving accounts of what embodied practice actually does to a person who has spent a lifetime in his head.
“Initially, I approached it the way I approach everything, said Marcus. Like a subject to be mastered.”
Episode 290 . Marcus’s Story
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 | NeoTantra: A New Introduction
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast . 8-Week Series
We are living in a remarkable moment of convergence.
For centuries, our world has been divided into two perspectives . . .
The scientific — expressed as formulas, data and peer-reviewed research.
And the intuitive — expressed as oral tradition, poetry and sacred story.
We are now discovering, through neuroscience, somatic research and quantum physics, that the songs and stories of the ancients carried knowledge that no formula or graph could contain.
The practices and the history. The 25,000-year arc that reveals that the sacred erotic was once celebrated, then buried, and is now, in our lifetime, being re-membered.
This is that introduction.
WEEK 1: NEOTANTRA: A NEW INTRODUCTION
The split, the re-membering, and the invitation home.
Episode 285 (Mon): NeoTantra: A New Introduction
The origins of sacred sexuality. Seven thousand years of evidence. Why our relationship with the sacred erotic is an act of cultural reclamation.
Episode 286 (Wed): Sacred Encounter
Arriving in the body temple. Body, breath and energy. A practice in arriving so completely that something long forgotten awakens.
Episode 287 (Fri): Aiden & Zara's Progressive Marriage
They've aced couples therapy. Read every book. Zero sex for three months. What happens when ancient repression unconsciously clouds our own values?
WEEK 2: THE ANCIENT TECHNOLOGIES
The practices ancient cultures lived by — and what neuroscience, somatic research, and physics are finally catching up to.
Episode 288 (Mon): The Forgotten Arts & Eros
Some of us find our way home through devotion. Some through data. NeoTantra embraces both — and in that embrace, something awakens.
Episode 289 (Wed): The Gap: Entering the Still Point
There is a space between thoughts. Between breaths. The mystic's doorway. We'll practice finding the gap - and entering it.
Episode 290 (Fri): Marcus’s Story: The Professor, the Spreadsheet & the Practice That Changed His Mind
A professor. A spreadsheet. The story of Marcus' nervous system activation, the shattering of his concept of who he was - and his integration.
WEEK 3 A LIFE REIMAGINED
What partnership cultures, Maslow, and the neuroscience of flourishing tell us about how we might actually live.
Episode 291 (Mon): Partnership Cultures: The Original Thread
Partnership cultures found power in the body — in pleasure, in desire, in erotic intelligence. Does that thread still exist?
Episode 292 (Wed): The Sacred Life Design Practice
Extraordinary moments hidden in our seemingly ordinary lives. A practical practice for attunement.
Episode 293 (Fri): Kaia's Thread
The sacred thread runs through rushed mornings, full days and moments that feel compressed. This is Kaia's story.
WEEK 4: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF SACRED UNION
The Sacred Marriage, Buber's I-Thou, and what attachment research is finally confirming about erotic connection.
Episode 294 (Mon): The Erotic Intelligence of Two
Not ritual — cosmology. Buber's I-Thou, attachment theory, and the neuroscience of polarity. What the ancients knew about erotic union we're beginning to name.
Episode 295 (Wed): Eye Gazing Practice
Two minutes of eye contact can do what months of conversation cannot. Attachment research confirms ancient wisdom.
Episode 296 (Fri): Chen & Wei's Story: Two Traditions, One Bed
Taoist lineage. Kabbalah. Same longing, different maps. What if their difference is not the obstacle but the practice itself?
WEEK 5: THE BODY RECLAIMED
Wilhelm Reich, body armor, and what somatic research reveals about blocked energy — and how to release it.
Episode 297 (Mon): Why Wilhelm Reich Terrified the Culture (And Why That Matters)
Body armor. Blocked energy. They burned his books. What Reich got right — and why somatic therapy, trauma research, and NeoTantra heal the split.
Episode 298 (Wed): The Reichian Breath Practice
The seven armor rings, where we learned to contract, brace, disappear. Gentle and thorough. Have a blanket nearby. Allow time afterward.
Episode 299 (Fri): Neve & Beckett: When the Practice Moved What the Conversation Couldn’t
Talking had not moved it. Understanding had not. One night they stopped explaining and started breathing. The body did what words had not.
WEEK 6: SOLO AS SACRED
The complete path. The neuroscience of authentic desire — and what the body communicates when we finally listen.
Episode 300 (Mon): Wanting What You Actually Want
Solo practice is not the consolation prize. It is the complete path. Authentic versus conditioned desire. How to find what we actually want.
Episode 301 (Wed): The Desire Map
Not what the body performs. Not what it has been taught. Quiet aliveness that belongs only to you. Desire as information, not obligation.
Episode 302 (Fri): Yuki's Story: Forty Years of Yes
An excellent lover, generous and attuned. The one thing she could not locate: what she herself wanted. Thirty days of no. Then: her own yes.
WEEK 7: THE ESOTERIC DIMENSIONS
Classical Tantra's deepest practices — and what physics and cymatics are beginning to measure.
Episode 303 (Mon): Sacred Geometry, Sacred Sound & The Energetic Body
Sacred geometry. Sacred sound. What the classical traditions practiced — and what modern physics is beginning to confirm.
Episode 304 (Wed): The Inner Temple: A Visualization Practice
Building the inner temple, not metaphor but a real place the practitioner learns to inhabit. A home base for everything that follows.
Episode 305 (Fri): David's Story: Everything Was Performance
He knew every word. Practiced for years. Partners called him conscious, safe. One left and named what was happening. Practice begins there.
WEEK 8: LIFE AS PRACTICE: THE INFINITE PATH
Where technique ends and life begins.
Episode 306 (Mon): Beyond Technique: Life as NeoTantra
Flow states, transcendence, the practitioner who has forgotten they are practicing. And why embodied eros is among the most political acts available.
Episode 307 (Wed): The Returning Practice: Coming Home
Not a finale. A homecoming. Body. Breath. Ground. Return here when we forget. We will forget often. That is not failure. That is the path.
Episode 308 (Fri): Silas’s Story: The Workshop Was Always a Temple
He builds instruments — vessels designed to carry resonance. Silas, 62, never married, has spent forty years in devotion to craft without a name for it. The series doesn’t change his life. It gives him a new lens to see what his life truly means to him.
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
I look forward to welcoming you into the Be Fully Alive Podcast community. We're diving deep into the elegant systems that transform complex lives into embodied aliveness.
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Thank you for being part of this evolution with me. I can't wait to share what's coming next.
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 | Making peak experiences a way of life.
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The Be Fully Alive Podcast
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