Episodes
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I’m in a period of life that has travel at the belly of it.
And in today’s episode I want to speak for a moment about my relationship to travel as something that I'm engaged in, as something that I'm always adapting to. I have some stories to tell you about moments imprinted upon my soul like a wax stamp on an envelope. I hope these memories of mine make you smile.
I always want to walk away from a trip abroad feeling as though I've made new friends, or that I've deepened friendships, that I've also deepened my connection to myself and the land, broadened my scope of humility, and been plain stupefied by the Earth's beauty.
I want to return home feeling cared for, feeling as though I have cared for myself. Travel is not a time or excuse for me to abandon myself. No, and if I'm careful, that's what will happen naturally, so self-care is absolutely critical, but it doesn't necessarily look like what you may think.
I could bang on here about infrared saunas, and essential oils, and dietary choices, and supplementation, and morning routines you can travel with, and all the gadgets you can take with you to represent a semblance of home. I could do that. All of these constituents that bring about a sense of body balance, you know? But maybe that's for another time.
Instead, today, we’ll chat about travel self-care on an energetic, soul level. This is a different conversation. It goes beyond things to apply, things to eat, things to do, necessarily. It's going into the energetics of it, remembering that actually, everything's energy anyway, so if we can come at it from that level, then perhaps we have a chance of creating harmony in our bodies as we tread the earth, rather than tipping ourselves into perpetual imbalance. -
I've got another poem for you today, and it was important to me that I read it out to you.
It's a poem I wrote for my Rebels Of Light -- and can I just say for a moment how truly full I feel to have the creative freedom in my mentorship that I can reach into the hearts of these students through poetry. Such is a testament to their openness. I find poetry (or any type of art) is often the best way that I can communicate the intensity of what I feel for them and also what I want to teach them.
I decided to bring this one out to you, my cherished wider community, not so much to share the poem itself but rather to share what is available to you when you practice what the poem points to.
I want to remind you today that whenever something is unfamiliar to you, or uncomfortable to you, you have an opportunity to sit with that aspect or essence, to invite that into your life, and to ask that to tell you more about itself.
Curious?
Tune into this short 10-minute episode and if you can, close your eyes and sip the words into your being. Tell me over on Instagram what you find and what you feel. -
Missing episodes?
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My heart was thumping, and I was angry, but my breath was calm, and I could taste liberation. So close. So close this time. So close to me, lingering in my nose, still requiring me to chew and spit out the bones and then swallow in good faith.
The creative life takes on a whole different shape when a book is involved in your life, my friends. When a book starts to emerge, everything slows down a little, and it must. Books like businesses of course have their own life force but books draw you in, and I have been in.
Today I’m sharing all but a glimpse - but it’s a glimpse that reveals much of the tone and texture.
I’m unsure what comes next. The crazy thing about engaging with, receiving and bringing a book to life is that you’re walking the unknown every single day.
Each time I close my eyes to spend ‘time’ with my book, I never know what I’ll experience or what it’ll reveal.
Every next word in the next poem that will be woven throughout this book - unknown.
The blinking cursor - reminding me of all that is yet to come with this book.
But gosh - it feels right.
Tune into this episode for a glimpse into this project that has my heart, hook, line and sinker. (Title is remaining a secret for now) -
HARD WORK.
On Instagram recently I asked you how those words ‘hard work’ sit with you.
We as a team, were bombarded. It was incredible.
It’s straight up magic how you engaged with this request for your thoughts on this. Thank you.
We had some push back… Ew, hard work! That’s the old paradigm...
We have some hard work evangelists… Hard work is what makes me proud to be who I am!
We received your desire to lean into this more… I know I avoid effort and it’s to my detriment.
We were also sent some really beautiful musings and reflections that erred on the edge of poetry.
I learned so much about you and about us reading your responses.
And today I’m excited to share what I learnt, and what I personally believe, about hard work. -
I’m coming at you today with a poem I wrote. It’s simply called Happy Enough, and I hope you enjoy being taken along for the ride.
(It’s sweet and tender and makes me smile when I read it) -
Sweet spuds, a fun little podcast for you this week.
I know we all love a little behind-the-scenes action and I’ve received many a Q about how I structure my days as someone with a home-based business.
Happy to chat with you a little about this today, of course leaving plenty of room for you to feel into how this may apply to you, whether you work from home or not I think it’s critical to imbue meaning into our days whenever we can. You may hear an idea or two that inspires you.
Tune into this episode for:
Day Design as the pursuit of creation and evolution rather than perfection
Honouring and sculpting your day based on what feels the most natural to you
How time-blocking and spacious scheduling allows me to feel more free that my ‘spontaneous, free-spirited’ identity ever did
The fun way I align my work schedule with planetary energy (oh yes!)
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Instagram is a wonderful place. (Most of the time ;) We get the opportunity to art direct messages that are coming through with imagery. We get to stroke that aesthetic desire to create something beautiful. We get to market, sell and give away our soul’s work. And…. We get to interact with the QUESTION BOX! So, here we are. Every 10th episode, I’m going to honour you, your journey, where you’re at and what your curiosities are by bringing you a Q&A session! Round #1 is ready for your ears, now. Tune in as I answer the following questions: How do you get in touch with your spirituality and what does that look like? What are your favourite books on the Divine Feminine? How can I step up to be a leader, when all my life I’ve been a follower? How can I get comfortable with receiving more than ‘enough?’ (Truthbombs, here). How can I drown out the noise of my parent’s disapproval? How do you stay positive in spreading the light when people are mean / unsupportive? How did you heal yourself emotionally after your divorce? Can you share your new love story?
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Friends,
A few weeks ago I emailed you sharing that I found a beautiful note to myself that I wrote 12 months ago, buried in my laptop.
On today’s podcast, I’m reading that note aloud to you.
It contained a wisdom that I mistook for hope.
As I read it today, I am still in awe of what’s within us, awaiting us to tap into it.
Do listen in and create some time for yourself to dive into a powerful scripting exercise of your own. -
Women's autonomy -- this is our focal point in this week’s podcast episode. These are two words that come in like a fast moving train. They demand attention, respect, space. These words want to be noticed for all that they stand for. They are certainly that why behind my why behind my why behind my why. I do not stand for women's autonomy because I have completely figured it out. I stand for women's autonomy because I believe that part of my incarnation is to really and truly be an example of what this looks like in its continual becoming. I think that it's part of my purpose here to continue to claim more and more of this for myself, so that I can be an example for whoever else out there needs to lean into that light as well in order to remember their own.
This is a conversation that I’m so passionate about having, but I’m fully aware that it’s not always the easiest. I would be compassionate and sensitive enough to offer a trigger warning on this episode, which of course is delivered with care and love. I just know for sure that in moments of my past in which I was giving my power away, there are some core sections of this conversations that would have made me queasy. And that’s okay.
As always, Sounds Like Bliss is not a place for you to ‘learn.’ It’s a place for you to receive and roll in whatever you choose to.
Tune into this episode for these sounds:
Empowered women are the driving force behind real and true metamorphosis
How an anchored and powerful sense of self can draw the best out from the humans around us, including men
The more women we see claim their autonomy, the less women we’ll see in abusive / non-serving relationships, unfulfilling work and circumstances that don’t inspire them
The importance freeing ourselves from the burdens of our lineage
An autonomous woman is not an ice queen, she in tune with the boundaries that help her to thrive
She knows that no one can make her feel anything and that she’s not responsible for the way people perceive her.
She has the inner and outer resources to design a life that is aligned with the incarnation that her soul chose this lifetime.
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Gosh, it brings me so much joy to offer you this podcast today.
It brings me joy and clarity and just so much eagerness. (I’m frothing on that word lately. Eagerness. It just feels so anticipatory and yummy and momentum-gifting, you know?)
12 months ago, when I was launching the debut round of Rebels of Light, I had the essence of it in my heart and felt the expansion of what was possible.
So I did the best job I could do in communicating that essence; what I felt she could offer the women who chose to join our rebellion. The vocabulary didn’t come naturally but the feeling certainly did, and I’m so honoured and relieved that for 60+ women, it translated.
This year, things are a little different.
That essence is still alive and kicking and more enthusiastic than ever, but now, we have the proof of what this code looks and feels like once lived and breathed. This year, Rebels of Light inhabits my throat chakra (this is the best way I know how to explain it) with laser clarity, lightning speed and absolute knowing.
And so today, not only can I continue to lift the veil on this experience for you, but I can take you on a journey on the content that we’ll trace in 2019. -
In today’s episode, we complete our journey through the world of 12 very powerful words.
Power, Metamorphosis and Beauty -- what do they have to do with each other, how do they relate to one another, and how have we completely misunderstood their essences?
Think about the ways that we as a society value ‘Power’ as a value or quality.
‘Beauty,’ too.
The lenses that we have peered through when it comes to understanding these qualities are grossly patriarchal. It’s time to dissolve our current perception and become reacquainted with these values so that we may thrive, stunningly.
Tune into this episode for:
We live in a world of such falsified power, of such bravado, of such inflated ideas of power, power that is not truly power, but looks like it, power that is a lie on a soul level. Power that thinks its power because of control or greed.
Exploring power instead as shakti, as momentum, as life-force, as a resource you have autonomy over
Love requires us to be in ‘action’ in this world. Creation cannot be what is it without power
A spoken word poem to support your metamorphosis
“Allow me to re-introduce myself” - Beauty
Beauty as a byproduct of resilience
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‘You’re so deep.’
Ha. I hear this all the time. Sometimes I take it as a compliment and other times I feel its intention as a dig at ‘seriousness.’ All I can say is thank Goddess for Instagram stories. I feel it’s a way for me to give people a little sneak peek at the lightness and joy that pervades my days; something I wasn’t all too able to project before, because for me, writing is a place and space in which I drop ‘in’, not ‘up’.
What so many don’t understand is that depth does not necessarily describe the sombre.
Behaviours, thoughts and deeds can indeed be serious and shallow.
I experience depth as a manifestation of reverence. As an experience of sensing the sacred in all. My thoughts often reflect that. So do my journal entries and of course, as I’m sure you’ve sensed, this podcast.
But there’s a rebound-like-result to living this way, and it is glorious. Side effects include effervescent, innocent, giggly, wonderful joy that I don’t believe I would otherwise experience if my roots weren’t planted so deep into that soil of sacredness.
Tune into this episode for:
Reverence as life as a living, breathing, active ritual
Reverence brings meaning, depth and profound love to whatever you offer it to
Devotion, and its trumping of discipline
Cultivating reciprocity with the natural world (most rapid way to hardwire gratitude)
Play -- the ‘light’ to reverence’s ‘depth’
Living a deep life, so that we can paradoxically live lightly
Creating space and room in your life for wonder and spontaneity (play is not convenient)
The audacity of committing to happiness (play as an act of rebellion)
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I’m excited to explore the interplay of these two states of being and soul qualities with you today: sovereignty and sensuality.
I’d hazard a guess that few qualities would be as misunderstood or misinterpreted as these two.
So often we think that sovereignty simply means ‘keeping people out’, but what my mentor, Hiro Boga, has taught me about it, is that it’s about being the Queen of my Kingdown - which is to say, my inner resources - so that I can be in right relationship with the entirety of life. This actually allows me to be, do and offer more to my communities and life itself.
Sensuality - beyond lacy lingerie, seduction and dem hips - can we explore the creative essence innate in sensual energy? Can we explore all of life as a kaleidoscopic cacophony of subatomic particles in a perpetual state of love-making. (Woah. Too much?)
Tune into this episode for:
‘Sovereignty is reflected in empowered behaviour.’
The role that sacred boundaries plays in your sovereignty
The power for asking what you truly need (leveraging the ecology, rather than believe that you should be a self-sufficient silo)
Celebrating the agency of others, rather than taking offence to their boundaries
‘Everything is of the realm of the erotic’ -- Stanley Kunitz
Sensuality - multi-sensory living. Feeling the sex energy that’s present and alive in nature, in art, in the hum of stillness.
How can sensuality and boundaries support your creative process?
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Think about a time in your life when you felt disconnected…
Whether that’s to your relationships, to your creative flow, or even quite simply (and painfully)... life itself.
Marred by confusion and stagnancy, disconnection has its own gnarly brand of momentum… collecting up more of itself second by second, creating density, heaviness, isolation.
There are two words (and worlds) that will help lift you out of such a (grossly self-indulgent) fog, and they are:
Curiosity & Attunement.
We’re going to explore these two today, and how you can work powerfully with them so as to restore lightness, awe and creation in your life.
Tune into this episode for:
Curiosity: ‘It brings an innocent sense of questioning and a healthy regard for scepticism.’
How curiosity is inextricably linked to courage, and offers opportunities for discernment and childlike wonder.
‘Curiosity is ineffective if you are not paying attention to your desires.’
Attunement as a means of gleaning our own answers
Sensitively connecting to the essence of life
Coming back into the respect and the remembrance that absolutely everything is alive
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We’re kicking off a series over the next few episodes in which we’re exploring words as worlds of their own -- (yum) -- and what better place to start than with the three worlds that act as the value systems and DNA of my life and businesses: courage, creation and collaborative leadership.
This conversation is powerful and subtle and you may need to listen in twice, just so you can get a real feel for where we’re going over the next few episodes. If I may ask a favour, it would be to be in a state of receivership as you listen in… these aren’t sounds that will land powerfully on you if you’re overly distracted or on the hustle.
Courage, creation and collaborative leadership are anchors that have given my purpose wings, and I can’t wait to introduce you to them in a deep and lovely way.
Tune into this episode for:
Everything touches everything. What business has to do with living and loving
Embracing courage, rather than bracing for it
How your willingness to be wrong and misunderstood and rejected creates emotional resilience
Courage as an energetic, still, quiet thing
Creation -- transforming neutral data into love
Being a generative force in the world rather than a consumption machine
Committing to expecting transformation as a result of the way you’re participating with life
How systems create divine containers for creation to pour through
The physical and subtle anatomy of collaborative leadership
Collaborating with the essence of your team or community, not just the people contained within it
The power of ‘passing the mic’ rather than remaining in the limelight
Harnessing the power and reciprocity of the community’s brain's trust (rather than being the all-knowing source)
Why our obsession with leadership is diminishing our potency. Enter: receivership.
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We all have our own process when a new year is upon us. Some of us set audacious resolutions that dissolve before the first week wraps.
Some of us go all #nextlevel with our business goals. Others of us wriggle towards more feeling-state intentions.
As 2018 wound up, I entered into a state of deep reflection for the epic year it was; full of just.so.much. Did all of that heartache and beauty really belong to just 12 short months?!
And I metabolised that, 2019 started to settle into the foreground of my awareness, and I began to sense what would require my attention, intention, affection this year.
Today, I’m lifting the lid on what matters to me in 2019… and the processes and conversations I have with myself that have helped to give me this clarity. -
I’m launching my podcast, and this is special to me because it’s the very way I’ve been aching to communicate with you for an age, now.
Get a feel for the places we’ll traverse, the tones we’ll explore, the depths we’ll dive into, and the highs at which we’ll soar.
But wait, before you do that! I have something fun for you.
I went live on https://instagram.com/tara_bliss/ (Instagram) when I recorded this episode in a response to some of your queries about ‘showing up when you’re afraid of being seen.’
The best way to demonstrate what courage looks like, is to demonstrate what courage looks like.
My vision of recording this episode in a dark and quiet room all by myself dissolved when I tapped GO LIVE on my iPhone screen. Suddenly, I was introducing a podcast that didn’t even exist yet, in front of a live audience. I announced her name, her vibe and my voice was shaking the entire time.
If you want to see the conversation (and the drama) that was wrapped around what ended up being a nicely edited podcast, you can watch the video over at tarabliss.com.au/episode0. I hope it inspires you to get started on your heart’s work.
Tune into this introductory episode for:
Voice wobbles and shaking hands as this podcast emerges
A little of my story -- the dots that have connected to bring this podcast to life
The power of blogging, writing, speaking, publishing to just two people
The essence and personality of Sounds Like Bliss
The two creatives that put a rocket up this process and made me move on it
What I’m interested (and not interested) in exploring in this space with you
