MAGENTA FM

Season Two: The Art of Mental Health

In this season the Magenta team come back to discuss mental health and wellness. We will bring some lesser known — and some downright strange — approaches to consider and explore. We’ll draw from our own experiences with healing, and from our work helping others drawn from our research into little known fields of inner development.

We’re going to go between the phenomena we can observe about the inner life and its healing, and specific challenges such as generalized anxiety disorder, depression, trauma and PTSD, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

We’ll be talking about the tools and practices that help us get to know and heal from the closed loops that mental health struggles create in our lives. We’ll bring practical concepts that might sometimes seem outrageously different from the prevailing understanding of mental health, share insights about a different way to work with common issues, and talk about the need for an anatomy of the inner life that can help guide us toward genuine and effective paths of healing — and put the power and agency to heal back in our own hands.

microphone line drawing

This week: Season Two, Episode One

Four places to intervene in mental health that are often ignored

In this first episode of Season Two: The Art of Mental Health, we describe in detail what a holistic human being REALLY is. We discuss why this matters and what society excludes in most, if not all, discussions about mental health.

We get into the 4 main aspects of the holistic human being, and that we are so much more than just a physical body. We also talk about how each domain influences and effects the others, and why in our healing interventions we must include an understanding of each domain, otherwise our interventions will likely be insufficient.

We also talk about where most of the drama of life takes place, the terrain of the “soul”, and how that impacts everything else, including our physical health. We continue to discuss from yet another angle, the reality and necessity of the higher “I” or self as our own best healer in issues of mental health. This episode is a further build on discussions about the anatomy of the human being that we began in season one.

recent episodes

Season One, Episode 10

Four reasons why we stay in dead end relationships

If you are wondering how to know if your relationship is a dead-end, this is the episode for you.

First of all, we answer the question of what makes a relationship suck. Or, to put it more positively, what you can learn to get in touch with so that you can navigate all of your relationships with clarity of mind and heart.

Then we dive into the deep roots of unhealthy relationships and tips and warnings for excavating there.

And lastly, we look at how YOU need to look at your own culpability in the dynamic. Ouch, we know. But ultimately it will set you free.

Episode 9

Understand your Feelings Like You Never Have Before

We are always feeling but seldom do we actually pay attention to what’s happening in our feeling life. This week, we outline a path for developing our feeling life from what is normal to something truly healthy.

Drawing from the work of Georg Kuhlewind, we outline two categories of feelings: cognitive feelings and non-cognitive feelings (also referred to as “feelings” vs “emotions” at Magenta). We describe the kinds of feelings that we all have that have us stuck, disconnected from the world, projecting onto others, and wallowing in our habitual ways of feeling. No shame or judgment, we all do it. It’s all about learning how to not get stuck there and cultivating feelings that are actually generative, serve our intuition, and have us in a connected dialogue with the world around us, including those whom we love and/or are in conflict with.

That takes us to cognitive feelings. We describe the kinds of feeling we can have, though we seldom do. Feelings that connect us to THE truth, not just OUR truth. Feelings like those that nature evokes in us.

We talk about the role that feelings play in making art, and also in the kind of art that Joseph Beuys described as “the social sculpture” where each person is seen as an artist, contributing to the creation of the social organism which we all inhabit together. What role do feelings play in issues of injustice and activism? When do they get in the way of the greater good and what options do we have besides suppression or explosion?

Episode 8

Rebuilding trust, why we need what we need, and what to do if you are in a toxic relationship

Today we revisit the topics of NEEDS but this time we explore what actually drives our needs and what to do if we are facing a “Black Hole” of needs—needs that just never feel fully met!

We share a useful tool for tracing the issues that are triggering you in your life and relationships, down to the feelings, needs, and even below that to beliefs and worldviews driving them. And what does one do if they see that the worldview they are carrying is not what they want? What if your worldview has been colored by trauma or childhood wounds? What if your worldview is one that is distrusting and guarded? How can we intervene?

Episode 7

Own your voice: why we struggle with speaking our truth and what we can do about it

In this episode we get into a bigger definition of voice, where we tell Louisa's story of her struggle to find her voice, all the way down to her physical vocal cords, and what that looked like in daily life and relationship.

We talk about why it's so important to free your voice from shadow, and how it impacts the rest of your life if you don't. We go into the three main areas where we are held back from the full expression of our voice — and the consequences of not being able to speak our truth, or use our voice to its fullest potential.

We also touch on what accessing our voice can do for us, and how it helps us find our way to our life purpose because of the medicine we forge for others via the work we do to emancipate our voice from the shadow's grip.

Episode 6

Stories of Conflict and the Enemy Image

This week Louisa and Rachel explore concepts introduced in previous episodes but through real stories of conflict.

How can one take back their power in conflict, regardless of whatever is happening with the other person.

And what about conflict where one does need the other to participate? Like a marriage on the brink of divorce?

Lastly, what is the Enemy Image? How do we make two-dimensional enemy images of those whom with we disagree. And what does it have to do with world peace?

Episode 5

Why Relationships Fail: It's all about NEEDS

In this episode, we talk about needs versus strategies, and why conflating these two things can destroy relationships. We introduce Non-Violent Communication as a starting point for understanding the definition of needs and strategies as a new language with which we need to become conversant — and how helpful and healing this can be.

Episode 4

Why you can’t fake a true and elevated presence

What are the fruits of us doing our inner work? In this episode, Louisa and Rachel dive into the many benefits of cultivating an elevated and authentic presence. They cover issues such as fragility and how we become addicted to our wounds.

What does true presence look like? And how does it help you become a leader in your life, in your work, in your relationships, or as a parent.

Episode 3

Take Back Your Power! 

This episode Louisa and Rachel discuss: what is a dynamic? How do we take back our power? And why is it so hard to not take things personally? We go into why it's so freeing to understand how we each internalize the relationship dynamic we're struggling with — and why we should leave the other out of this analytic process. We build on the previous episodes in this deeper dive.

Episode 2

Why we need an anatomy lesson... for the soul

An essential part of understanding why we get into relationship dynamics is understanding ourselves and our triggers. But in order to do that, we need some way of seeing into what is essentially an invisible, intangible realm: our inner selves. We go into anatomy of the soul as a practical tool both for us and for better understanding why we get caught in relationship dynamics.

Episode 1

Everything you believed about relationship problems is wrong

In this first episode of Magenta FM Season One, "The Art of Relationships," Louisa and Rachel dive into a difficult but liberating concept that runs counter to what we automatically believe to be true when in a conflict or dynamic with another — BUT if we can wrap our heads around it, it can set us free.

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