Podcast
Virtual Pause
Hosted by Angie Winn · EN
Virtual Pause Podcast - A brief guided meditation intended to integrate your body, mind, heart, and spirit so that you can live with resilience and stability in everyday chaos. Different topic each week - relevant to life. Open to people of all faiths and beliefs, and specifically for those working in high-stress environments with vulnerable populations. Most episodes are pre-recorded with a live audience. Found on most podcast platforms.
20episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Episode 139: Embracing Our Limitations
Feb 3, 202500:26:52Tap to summarizeFebruary 3rd, 2025 When we hide, grasp, push, shove, dominate, escape, or demonstrate other un-grounded behaviors, we are more than likely acting out of a place of self-protection, pushing down a weakness or limitation we have that we can’t bear for the world, or ourselves, to see. This limitation can create a shadow side in us, and the work we do to cover it up and protect an image of ourselves can be exhausting and destructive. In today’s Pause, we will identify a limitation in ourselves, see how we have acted to protect it, embrace it with compassion, and let it get untangled from our grip. From that place we will be able to be vulnerable, open, and at rest, live transformed, and be guided on how to move into the world. “Our creations come not when we’re out in the world, gathering impressions, but when we’re sitting still, turning those impressions into sentences. Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art.” The Art of Stillness, Pico Iyer Photo by Andrey Grinkevich on Unsplash
Transcribe →Episode 138: Stop Feeding the Beast
Jan 27, 202500:24:36Tap to summarizeJanuary 27, 2025 Most of us, if not all of us, are currently experiencing something in our lives that we want to change. Whether in us, our families, our communities, our nation, or our world. We have learned that the way for things to change is to fight – to fortify whatever is weak in our lives; or we hide – shrinking back in fear and feeling overcome by despair. This is our ego at play – and positive change can’t come from ego. We can’t be guided simply by our own needs towards a better outcome. In this episode we will learn what “letting go” and “releasing” means, and spending time in quiet Centering Prayer to release these old habits and ways of ego-doing, so we can just be. From this place of being, we will notice what is stirring in us – our way forward – to bring the hope and healing we desire.
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Episode 137: Light in the Dark Crack
Jan 13, 202500:24:13Tap to summarizeJanuary 13, 2025 I noticed the other day the intense feeling that I suddenly got throughout my body when I was having a conversation with someone. That sense of flight or fight was real. My reaction to it was to protect – and that looked like judgment, anger, hiding, superiority, etc. But the situation didn’t warrant my reaction. What was really going on? When we are confronted with a situation that triggers us, our immediate reaction is often fight or flight or freeze. It can feel like a crack has opened in our lives that is dark. Yet if we stay in that darkness, we are unable to see what is really going on in us. We have to let the dark crack be filled by light as we stabilize our bodies and get our minds quiet, giving some breathing room for what is really going on in us. Then we will be able to see what we are gripping onto, what we are trying to control or hide from, and let properly put those things where they belong – out of our hands. Our listening portion today is from the bible, 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (cowardice, fear), but a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” photo credit: Joe Gardner on unsplash
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Episode 136: 2025 - Moving With One Foot Down
Jan 6, 202500:25:37Tap to summarizeJanuary 6, 2025 As I have reflected on last year, I realized that my intense external chaos bled into my internal state of being. I ended up being in my head, not in my body or heart. Like a whirling dervish, instead of both feet flying around through the chaos of life, we need to keep one foot solidly stable and grounded as we navigate through life. As we embark on the new year, today’s pause will be about reflecting on what has consumed our minds (worry and problem-solving) and be present. We will let go of needing approval from the world and remember how God has shown up in our lives and loved us, even through the most difficult of circumstances. And we will trust the process of our lives and experience peace. Listening portion by Eckhart Tolle: “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash
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Episode 135:When We Can't Calm the Storm
Dec 16, 202400:23:47Tap to summarizeDecember 16, 2024 How often do we find ourselves in a storm of life and we think we can actually calm the chaos of the situation? We want to control the person, circumstances, or outcome, yet instead of having the power to do so, we find ourselves agitated, depleted, and critical because we simply can’t change it. In today’s episode, we will look at those situations in our lives where we are trying to control the storm (or perpetuate it) and imagine going inside of our tents – where our souls can find stillness and peace - and allow that peace to flow out to the world. Our listening portion today: “…Our soul is so centered in God that it is free to leave itself behind and become absorbed in the presence of the promised Prince of Peace. From this inward stillness flows the outward peace for which the world long.” Magnificat Meditation, December 14, 2024
Transcribe →Episode 134: When your “What” is in Your Way
Dec 4, 202400:25:52Tap to summarizeDecember 4, 2024 With so much going on around this season, and my own personal transition period moving quickly into empty nesting, I am finding myself overwhelmed and anxious. I realized it is because I am focusing on my plans and goals and to dos, and those are ever-changing and often out of my control. Yet when I focus on the why – the bigger picture and purpose for my life, and the how – the way I go about living and moving in that why, the less anxious and more free I feel. Today we will bring attention to what we are paying attention to and when our “what” is in our way and blinds us, and move past the “what” of to-dos and expectations and plans, and surrender into the “why” and “how” of our lives. Reading today by Thomas Merton A Prayer My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I can not know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude.
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Episode 133: Where are you to go?
Nov 18, 202400:27:13Tap to summarizeNovember 18, 2024 When we have to make an important decision, it is sometimes difficult to discern the direction to go. It may be a decision to take a job or what college to go to, or it may be how to deal with a challenging person or situation in your life. Often, we have our own agenda and may look for affirmation from God for the decision we want. But that is not seeking God’s path for our lives, it’s only fortifying our own. In today’s pause we will look at a decision you are needing to make in your life and recognize which one God may be pulling you toward. The listening portion today is from Proverbs 3:6 – and different translations of it. “In all of your ways, be mindful of God, and God will make straight your paths.” Magnificat “Submit to God…” New International Version “Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go, God is the one who will keep you on track.” The Message “Seek God’s will in all you do.” New Living Translation “Give God the credit for everything you accomplish, God will smooth and straighten the road that lies ahead.” The Voice “In all of your ways know and acknowledge and recognize God.” Amplified Version “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.” ESV
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Episode 132: Camino Part 3: Lemons
Nov 12, 202400:25:55Tap to summarizeNovember 11, 2024 My Camino de Santiago journey continues with a story about me and a lemon and an old Spanish man….and how, without realizing it, I stole from him. We steal, everyday, without knowing. We steal time, attention, etc. from ourselves and others. What underlies this sometimes subtle behavior of ours? Scarcity? Fear? Need for attention? Today we will dig a bit and try and let go of that inner need so we can stay in our lane and not experience the negative effects that stealing can have on us and others. For our listening portion today, we will here from St. Augustine… “Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: love, and do what you will: Whether you hold your peace, Through love hold your peace Whether you cry out, through love cry out; Whether you correct, through love correct; Whether you spare, through love do you spare: Let the root of love be within, Of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
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Episode 131: Transferring vs. Transcending
Nov 4, 202400:28:10Tap to summarizeNovember 4, 2024 I have realized lately that for good reason I have built a wall of self-protection around my heart in a certain situation in my life. Yet my ah-ha happened last week when I realized that the feelings I have behind those walls and the reason I built them – fear, insecurity, doubt, pain – have transferred into other areas of my life. They have infested and infected relationships, opportunities, and dreams. This doesn’t serve me or anyone around me well. So we are going to pause it out – letting go of the stuff that rises up in our mode of self-protection and allowing the love, peace, joy, creativity, hope, etc. to transcend other areas of our lives, breaking down the self-protective walls. “To love a person is to learn the song of their heart and sing it to them when they’ve forgotten.” Anne Garborg
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Episode 130: The Camino Part 2: Dreaming
Oct 21, 202400:22:04Tap to summarizeOctober 21, 2024 Are you allowing yourself to dream? Or are you, as Paulo Coelho says in the book The Pilgrimage, killing your dreams by not having enough time, by not asking enough of life, by wanting things to be comfortable? Dreaming for me has been a way for me to escape the mundane and ordinariness of life. My dreams have suffered and not been met at times as well. But without dreaming, we lose hope. And we lose our connection to love. Today we will identify what keeps us from dreaming, and pull in the grounding that is required for our dreams to be ones that are coming from our true self, not our ego.
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