GRACEPILLED with Hanna Williams

Connect with my guest, Fiona:
instagram.com/fionanodar
fionanodar.com

Connect with me, Hanna, your host:
Art store: distantplanetdesign.etsy.com
Instagram: @grace.pilled
hannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)
patreon.com/gracepilled
(join as a free member to get access to a collection of talks!)
What if tension isn’t a problem to solve, but an essential part of what makes us feel alive?
In this conversation, I’m joined by writer, mediator, and growth companion Fiona Nodar to explore tension as a spiritual, creative, and relational force. We talk about what happens when we stop organizing our lives around comfort and certainty and instead become more willing to meet the mystery, friction, and resistance inherent in being alive.
We explore tension as the place where we come into contact with reality: in conflict, creativity, sexuality, relationships, change, and the uncomfortable freedom of having choices. We talk about why avoiding tension doesn’t actually make it disappear, the relationship between tension and transformation, and what it might mean to develop a greater capacity for the unknown rather than constantly trying to resolve it.
Our conversation also wanders into love and projection, the humiliation of genuinely pursuing what we desire, free will versus determinism, duality and nonduality, and my perennial spiritual question: Can I have both? Ultimately, we consider the possibility that God may not only be found in moments of peace, unity, and transcendence—but in the charged space between opposing forces, where something new is always trying to emerge.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host:
Instagram: @grace.pilled
hannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)
patreon.com/gracepilled
(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!)
What does it actually take to stay on the spiritual path for the long haul? In this episode, we explore perseverance as one of the most essential, and perhaps least glamorous, ingredients of genuine spiritual transformation.
The path is not always filled with profound insights, mystical experiences, or obvious signs that something is working. Much of it is ordinary. You practice, you forget, you come back. You lose the thread and pick it up again. Sometimes nothing seems to be happening at all. And yet, this willingness to continue is precisely what allows the path to deepen over time.
Through reflections on devotion, discipline, death, liberation, and the long arc of spiritual practice, this episode explores what it means to keep choosing the path without demanding constant evidence that you are getting somewhere. Perseverance becomes less about forcing yourself forward and more about developing a relationship with practice that can survive boredom, difficulty, disappointment, and the inevitable seasons when your inspiration disappears.
Ultimately, the spiritual path may have much less to do with becoming a perfect practitioner and much more to do with becoming someone who simply keeps returning.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: 

Instagram: @grace.pilled
hannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)
patreon.com/gracepilled

(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!)

What does it mean to take responsibility for your inner state when the world gives you plenty of legitimate reasons to feel terrible? In this episode, I explore the spiritual assumption underneath the question, “How can I be happy when there’s so much suffering in the world?” and why I don’t believe our happiness is meant to be entirely dependent on external circumstances.

We get into the difference between actually processing difficult emotions and becoming committed to misery, why unresolved grief, resentment, and conflict are like a room full of crying babies making presence nearly impossible, and why tending to those feelings is part of learning to consciously shift your state. I also talk about the strange idea that our suffering somehow helps other people who are suffering, and make the case that choosing to enjoy your life, do meaningful work, love God, and become a little harder for the world to knock over might actually be a greater contribution to the collective than remaining perpetually disempowered by everything that’s wrong.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: 

Instagram: @grace.pilled
hannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)
patreon.com/gracepilled

(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!)

In this Q&A episode, I’m answering your questions about fear, shame, rejection, victimhood, chronic illness, creativity, desire, manifestation, and what it actually means to work with the hand life deals you. We talk about becoming the author of your life, how fear can point you toward your highest potential, why you might not know the “lesson” of a difficult experience until years later, and how to let old parts of yourself stay at the table without letting them run the show.

I also get into the yoga of wanting things: pursuing what you desire, working to change your circumstances, and participating fully in your life without making your peace dependent on getting the outcome you wanted. We talk about accepting the reality of illness without giving up on improving it, making art as a devotional practice, the slippery slope of manifestation and reality creation, and remembering the difference between the side quests of this life and the main quest.

Here is the book list I shared:

• My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning

• Tantra Illuminated by Christopher D. Wallis

• The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford

• Ritual: Power, Healing and Community by Malidoma Patrice Somé

• High Magick by Damien Echols

• Six Ways by Aidan Wachter

• Living from the Heart by Puran Bair

• Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation by Bruce Tift

• In Praise of the Goddess: The Devimahatmya and Its Meaning by Devadatta Kali

• Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

• Still Here by Ram Dass

• Crooked Cucumber, the biography of Shunryu Suzuki

Basically, this is an episode about how to want things, fear things, lose things, change things, and still keep your eye on the main quest.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: 

Instagram: @grace.pilled
hannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)
patreon.com/gracepilled

(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!)

Kundalini has become one of the most sensationalized—and misunderstood—concepts in modern spirituality. In this episode, I share an essay exploring the classical tantric understanding of Kundalini as it has been taught in my lineage over the last eleven years. Rather than treating Kundalini as a rare energetic event or dramatic spiritual experience, we explore Her as the very power of Grace: the evolutionary force of consciousness that purifies the mind, awakens the heart, and ultimately reveals God.

Along the way, we discuss why Kundalini is synonymous with Grace and prana, the difference between chit kundalini and prana kundalini, why intense "kundalini experiences" are not necessarily signs of advanced spiritual development, and why surrender—not striving—is the essence of authentic Kundalini Yoga. We also examine the emotional side of spiritual purification, the role of a teacher, and how the deepest work of awakening often unfolds far more subtly than the internet would have you believe.