Jada is our Queen

In this Christmas day episode, Julia, Bernadette & I discuss keeping our curiosity alive enough to continue having adventures as we go into middle age. Menopause is a wild, no joke, never-in-our-ken adventure where physical sensations are new and alarming, nothing is stable, and sleep escapes us, leaving utter tiredness behind. We talk about how ill prepared we are for this helluva trip because life forced us to live OUTSIDE the natural cycles of our bodies. 2020, the year of that disruptive number, FOUR, has brought a huge pause for large swathes of the population and we ponder if people will enter more fully into the matrix or resist it’s tug to a facsimile of comfort. We’re feeling what it might be like to go with the flow, rather than get buried in the status quo. We also dive into the taboo of older women staying sexual and turned-on. What does that look like? How do we get past the conditioning that would have us be invisible? What does the empowering flow of just being ourselves give us, when being ourselves is inherently undesirable and wrong? We talk about persevering through the darkness. Just a note. We are new podcasters and on a huge technical learning curve, we ask you to bear with the occasional glitch in the recording - each time we do this we get better at making this a great experience for you. Love. Julia, Bernadette, Chas

We descend in this episode - a bit more into the weight and the dark. Recorded around the time of George Floyd's death, we cover topics such as where the hell did this all start to go wrong? The recognition that whiteness can be weaponised. The differences between the US and the UK in terms of racism - and whether there really are any. Julia commits one of the big white faux pas things - which is asking the black woman to tell her what to do about it all. Bernadette adds provocation as always. And Chas graces everyone with the depth of the primal scream she feels around all this. It is a meaty one.

The inaugural episode of Jada. Julia, Bernadette and Chas let you know who they are and cover juicy topics such as ego death, sex witchery and overcoming shiny object syndrome and finding the stillness to face what needs to be faced. Get the shownotes: http://julialally.co.uk/episodewellhello/

Why is the feminine seen as being so dangerous? And what happens when we take a descent into that realm? Julia and Chas talk again around their favourite subject - desire - and hit some emotional depths with what it's meant for them in their lives. Why is feminine desire so feared and shamed? What does it take to suppress desire? Plus we also talk about the size of our collective bosom. Just because.

EVERYTHING CAN BE A MAGIC ADVENTURE – YOU ONLY HAVE TO DECIDE THAT IT IS SO... Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road. Dag Hammarskjold On the first day of Brexit, Julia and I discuss the changing nature of the traditional idea of adventure in our lives. We talk about how the ebb and flow of how our travels and our environment affect how we operate minute to minute. Talking of commodities, we now know that data is the new oil, and that humans, as the source of data, have become the new commodity. Arguably perhaps, data has become the new colonisation and we see if we can turn that to our advantage by going on the adventure of learning this data inspired new language.

How Low Can You Go? This week, we set out to create a podcast based on lighter material, but weightier subjects to hand would not allow it. Chas, still shocked from experiencing extreme and unwarranted verbal abuse at work, brought that experience to the pre-recording table. That microcosmic incident came at a time that Meghan Markle was being strongly censured by the British press for speaking out about her treatment by them and members of the extended British royal family. The first news reports regarding the murder of Sarah Everard was breaking, with women paying their respects to her being strong armed by the police. And the attack and vilification of female leaders around the world was on the agenda of many discussion panels and talk shows. In our podcast, Julia questions the aggressive shouting down of women or poc who dare to put themselves in the public sphere right in the face of the construct that dismisses their worries, fears and concerns. And we dare to come up with a possible solution to uphold these courageous people in solidarity and support. Thanks for listening and for posting your comments and suggestions. Please keep them coming, we’re loving them.

In an attempt to focus on the positive and not get dragged into conversations about the emerging New World Order, Brexit or anything else depressing and potentially even frightening, Chas and Julia speak their use of gratitudes in life and practice. They contemplate how gratitudes can be used as a bypassing tool too, taking us away from the fruits of skilfully navigating the down. And they suggest ways as to how we can skillfully navigate down turns in life and use them for increased personal power. They explore the everyday grit of how gratitudes can work person over time and how it is one of their favourite tools for inspiration. And how it is always the small, baby steps in a good direction that move us forward. Chas gets up close and personal too - gratitudes are not just fluffy new age platitudes. She cites them as one of the main practices that brought her out of a suicidal depression. www.julialally.com

In this episode, we talk about the freedom to enjoy pleasure in one's own way and what that might look like. Chas talks about the devotion that her younger self gifts to her older self given the fact that in any present moment, she is the youngest she is going to be for the rest of her life. Her older self likes that the bed is made in the morning so it’s a pleasure to get into at night and that her socks are folded right side out. Small pleasures compound. Julia reiterates that it is almost impossible to give from empty having extracted energy from ourselves via work, family and childcare. We agree that we can only give from full and discuss our ways of ‘filling up’. These can take the form of writing steps, practices and pleasure. We discuss the advantages of taking small sustainable steps with discipline and patience which in turn brings freedom and, of course, more pleasure!.

Today, whilst Bernadette is away on a pretty epic quest in a jungle somewhere in South America, Julia and I talk about the need to adventure - both the inner and outer kind - and how we can keep having them so that we can feel alive and stay curious. We talk about the spell of disparate realities and how we break out of that so that we can navigate difficult or curtailing circumstances in order to test our perceptions of a reality that is supportive of our vision, dreams and adventurous spirit. How audacious do we have to be to break out of conformity? (Words by Chas Hines)

From Julia judging Bernadette as a cult member, Chas + how she made herself 2D from years of racism, to Bernadette calling Julia English indigenous.