"Look down at your body
whisper
there is no home like you"
- thank you

Rupi Kaur
the sun and her flowers

🌴What would it be like to remember and honor your freest, most uninhibited self? Could reconnection with your ancestral guidance (what I call The Ancient Calm) bring you to your most creative, expressive you?

Today's Tiny Astonishment finds KJ musing on two accessible practices that help her remember her creativity, just in time to honor May, the month of Mental Health Awareness and AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Heritage.

🌴Also: Join KJ in remembering, resetting, and recovering creativity in Bali! Grab your spot now, only two rooms remain for September's Session, and December already has a nearly full waitlist!

Episode Mentions:

- The Sun, Mary Oliver, from Devotions
- Evensong excerpt, Kathryn Le Grice from Song Of Ojai
- Original Instructions, Asha Frost from You Are The Medicine

Connect With KJ & Bliss Begins Within

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to nourish and recover your creative voice. Next Retreats: February 12 - 18, 2024 (3 spots left!) and May 7 - 12 2024 (only ONE (1!!) spot left unclaimed and they are filling up quickly)
• IG: @_KJCreates_
• Web: Bliss Begins Within
• Book a FREE Hello Call
• Ep 83 Background Music: Composed & Performed by KJ Nasrul
• SOAL Intro & Outro Music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Please rate and review this podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well >>> https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

Welcome back to the second part of an extremely vulnerable conversation in which Meghan "Meg" Thomas - podcast hostess, and breathwork teacher - talks to KJ about the discovery that she is donor-conceived. She opens up about her journey of reclamation now that she has learned the truth.

Meg shares what happened once she decided to "Click Connect" after submitting her DNA into 23 and Me, which includes meeting half-siblings. She began leaning into curiosities such as Genetic Mirroring and embracing the potency and impact of unearthing her astonishing story.

Compassionate Considerations

🍃 When in a discovery journey feelings of shame, unworthiness, and insecurity may rise. How do you issue tender care in these moments?

🍃 Words have power. Their intentionality informs our ability to remain open, transparent, and present.

🍃 To stay in a relationship with people who have hurt us means finding ways of shifting toward forgiveness.

🍃 Self Compassion is sitting IN the feelings, not avoiding them.

April 27th is International Donor Conception Awareness Day

Connect With Meg

• Web: Meghan Thomas
• Pod: Emotional Expedition
• IG: https://www.instagram.com/emotional_expedition/

Connect With KJ & #BlissBeginsRetreats

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to nourish and recover your creative voice. Next Retreats: February 12 -18, 2024 (3 spots remain!); May 5 - May 12 (1 room left!) & May 28 - June 3, 2024 (only 3 rooms left!) and Sept 5 - 12, 2024 (Rooms are filling up quickly!)
• IG: @_kjCreates_ + @blissbeginsretreats
• Web: Bliss Begins Within
• Book a FREE Hello Call
• Ep 82 Background Music: Composed & Performed by KJ Nasrul
• SOAL Intro & Outro Music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Please rate and review this podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well >>> https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

In this extremely open conversation, Meghan "Meg" Thomas - coach, podcast hostess, and breathwork facilitator - joins KJ on SOAL to share her deeply personal story publicly for the first time.

Meg and KJ touch on themes of identity, reclamation, and the power of storytelling. Their dialogue serves as a catalyst for further discussions about fertility, adoption, and donor-conceived children. Welcome to the transparent, heartbreaking work of unearthing for reclaiming.

Compassionate Considerations:

🌱 How do you check back and ensure your intuition is correct?

🌱 In order to feel emotions, you move through them.

🌱 The body always knows the truth; even if our minds are unwilling to see it yet.

🌱 Permission to feel all the emotions including shame, betrayal, grief, and anger.

🌱 Ingredients for shame: secrecy, silence & judgment. The antidote is transparency and the willingness to dialogue.

🌱 Be brave enough at this moment, to take the next action.

🌱 Self-compassion includes allowing you to uncover your medicine for yourself (which is medicine for The World).

April 27th is International Donor Conception Awareness Day

Connect With Meg

• Web: https://www.meghanthomas.com
• Pod: https://www.meghanthomas.com/podcast
• IG: https://www.instagram.com/emotional_expedition/

Connect With KJ & #BlissBeginsRetreats

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to recover your creative design. Next Retreats: May 30 - June 5, 2023 (only 1 room left!) and Sept 23 - Sept 28, 2023 (Limited spots, filling up quickly!)
• IG: @_kjCreates_ + @blissbeginsretreats
• Web: https://blissbeginswithin.com
• Book a free Hello Call: https://blissbeginswithin.as.me/HelloCall
• Ep 81 Background Music: Composed & Performed by KJ Nasrul
• Intro & Outro Music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Please Rate and Review This Podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well. https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

Today's new SOAL gallery features artist, writer, and best-selling author (and Dream Guest for KJ) Elle Luna and luminous Sound Healer and Shamanic Ritual Guide Andrea Tomasi in conversation exploring the intersection of art, breathwork, and the creative spark.

Compassionate Considerations:

🌱 Conscious breath helps us to REMEMBER our Soul Self, our Quintessential Self, The BELOVED

🌱 Conscious Breath can help us create from a place that is not solely in pain and suffering.

🌱 Creativity is the process of building the reconnective bridge where there was suffering and separateness.

🌱 Creating comes from a place of devotion and service; a desire to create more LOVE

🌱 Self Compassion is in stabilizing ourselves and returning to our innate wisdom.

Connect With Elle and Andrea

Elle Luna

• Web: https://elleluna.art
• Breathwork Site: https://elleluna.art/the-awakening-breath
• IG: https://instagram.com/elleluna
• Book: The Crossroads of Should And Must

Andrea Tomasi

• Website: https://andreatomasimusic.com
• Breathwork Site: https://elleluna.art/the-awakening-breath
• IG: https://www.instagram.com/at.tunes/
• Sound Healing Album: Into The Mystery on Spotify

Connect With KJ & #BlissBeginsRetreats

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to recover your creative design. Next Retreat: May 30 - June 5, 2023
• IG: @_KJCreates_ & @blissbeginsretreats
• Web: https://blissbeginswithin.com
• Book a free Hello Call: https://blissbeginswithin.as.me/HelloCall
• Ep 80 Background Music: Composed & Performed by KJ Nasrul
• Intro & Outro Music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Please Rate and Review This Podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well. https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

Today's episode features a joy-infused, nervous system-soothing conversation between kindred spirits Brenda Winkle and KJ. The ladies contemplate ways to recover and enhance our intrinsic power: our intuition.

As a trauma-informed Reiki Master, Brenda helps highly sensitive people, over-achievers, perfectionists, people pleasers, and empaths set boundaries, protect their energy, and heal their nervous systems. She holds a master's degree in Educational Leadership, and a BS in Music Education, and spent 26 years of her career in elementary and choral music classrooms.

She stepped away from full-time teaching and now runs her business full-time but still volunteers on a regional board as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chair. She has been trained as an Advanced ThetaHealing® Meditation Technique Practitioner, and a trauma-informed Breathwork Facilitator.

Compassionate Considerations:

🍃 Align your inner and physical selves and chase joy endlessly.

🍃 Uncover authentic purpose by observing unguarded, uninhibited moments.

🍃 Have physical reminders for self-care and self-protection out within your eye line for easy accessibility.

🍃 Preparation is a form of self-compassion and activism.

🍃The Heart Hug technique crosses brain meridians and moves us out of the brain stem, our reptilian [survival] response mode.

🍃 When we model stepping into our aligned power, we grant permission for future generations to claim theirs.

Please Rate and Review This Podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well. https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Connect With Brenda

• A Gift: Meditation to Feel Better https://www.brendawinkle.com/feelbetter
• Waves of Joy Podcast
• Linkedin: Brenda Winkle
• IG: @brendawinkle
• Facebook: Brenda Winkle Empowerment, LLC
• Website: https://www.brendawinkle.com/

Connect With KJ & #BlissBeginsRetreats

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to recover your creative design. Next Retreat: May 30 - June 5, 2023
• IG: @MusingsOnOther
• Web: https://blissbeginswithin.com
• Book a free Hello Call with KJ: https://blissbeginswithin.as.me/HelloCall
• Ep 79 Background Music: Composed & Performed by KJ Nasrul
• Intro & Outro Music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

This week's episode is less of an interview and more of an intimate chat between KJ and her friend Lilian Wee.

Moving away from home and relocating to a new place of residence thousands of miles away can be extremely challenging and lonely. Adjusting to a new culture, falling in love, and navigating relationships all in the middle of a world health crisis? This could be the breaking point for some folks, but not for Lilian.

Leaving her home in Singapore to live and work in Houston, Texas (while in the offshore energy & shipping industry!) became the invitation for Lil (as her friends know her) to step into her resiliency and create a community for other immigrants, nomads, and transplants to connect on themes of finding roots and "home" from wherever they are in the world.

Compassionate considerations:

⭐ Choose relationships that help you create a sanctuary or home.

⭐ Asking for support via therapy is a form of self-compassion and advocacy and can be done without shame

⭐ COVID practically force-clarified how people defined home: connectivity, community, safety

⭐ Assess whether you’re embracing or isolating

⭐ Self-care & resiliency practices = committing to time with self in nature, with beloved animals, meditation, breathing and yoga, and a nap!

⭐ Self-care is intentional and attainable

Please Rate and Review This Podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well. https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Connect With Lilian
Linktr.ee: resilient_and_rooted
IG: @heartopenconvers_asians
Pod: Heart Open Convers_asians

Connect With KJ & Bliss Begins Within

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to recover your creative design. Next Retreat: May 30 - June 5, 2023
• IG: @MusingsOnOther
• Web: https://blissbeginswithin.com
• Book A Hello Call with KJ: https://blissbeginswithin.as.me/HelloCall
• Receive alerts for upcoming Creativity & Healing Gatherings - Newsletter
• Episode Background Music: Composed & Performed by KJ Nasrul
• Intro & Outro Music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

In the official Season Four Kickoff, Jo Dodd and KJ share stories of their own experiences about how difficult and overwhelming it can be as a woman, let alone a mother, thriving in a working environment that’s rigid, fast-paced, and insensitive.

A mum of four, an author, speaker, and coach, Jo has published three children's books as well as a one-of-a-kind picture book for mums called 'Dear Mama Bear with the F*cked Up Hair.' This book, which tells an authentic, poignant, dark, sometimes humorous story of motherhood, is based on Jo's journey of silently battling depression for over a decade.

Within the past few months, Jo has pivoted her business to focus on perimenopause and menopause awareness. Jo has launched her own podcast Dear Peri and Meno Pause and is building a community called MenoShine, where she encourages women to learn, laugh and lead their way through midlife while changing the stigma associated with mental health and menopause.

Compassionate Considerations:

• Do you experience physical symptoms indicating emotional distress?
• Two things you can do to manage overwhelm immediately:
  • Physical space disruption
  • Releasing feelings through tears
• Speaking to ourselves in the present tense signifies embodiment (vs. future or past tense which implies detachment or denial from the current situation)
• People pleasing and martyrdom are actually the cause of physical and emotional sickness
• Are you able to communicate and ask for what you need from your support network?

Connect With Jo

• Website: https://livinginjotopia.com/
• IG: @livinginjotopia
• Book: Dear Mama Bear With The F*cked Up Hair
• Podcast: Dear Peri & Meno Pause

Please Rate and Review This Podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well. https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Connect With KJ & Bliss Begins Within

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to recover your creative blueprint. Next Session: May 30 - June 5, 2023
• IG: @MusingsOnOther
• Web: https://blissbeginswithin.com
• Book A Hello Call with KJ: https://blissbeginswithin.as.me/HelloCall
• Receive alerts for upcoming Creativity & Healing Gatherings - Newsletter
• Intro & Outro music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com

In the Season Four Premiere, KJ checks in with you all on the day she leaves to host her second Bali Creativity Recovery Retreat. After a varied, expansive 2022, this new season greets 2023 already brimming with rich conversations between artists, healers, and visionaries... Welcome back to the Stories of Astonishing Light!

Compassionate Considerations:

- How long has it been since you've truly dropped in and listened?

- When have you last intentionally let things be?

Episode Mentions:

Poem by Morgan Harper Nichols from All Along You Were Blooming

Fall in love with the art of living.
Fall in love with letting things be.
Fall in love with listening.
Be still in the sun, where the winds ever-gently blow,
knowing it is here,
in moments like this,
you are living,
and you will grow.

Please Rate and Review This Podcast if the stories shared here have astonished you as well. https://ratethispodcast.com/astonishingstories

Connect With KJ & Bliss Begins Within

• Join KJ & Norman in Bali and Lombok, Indonesia to recover your creativity. Next Session: May 30 - June 5, 2023
• Instagram: @MusingsOnOther
• Website: https://blissbeginswithin.com
• Book A Hello Call with KJ - https://blissbeginswithin.as.me/HelloCall
• Be notified about upcoming Creativity & Healing Gatherings - Newsletter
• Intro & Outro music: Canada Lo Res by Pictures Of The Floating World

Support the show

Follow KJ in her worldly adventures, and receive notifications for when her next events (Creative Recovery Workshops, Bali Wellness Retreats, and Storyteller Evenings) take place.
- Join The Story Squad and receive Love Notes Here
- Visit her website here: Bliss Begins Within.com