In this episode of Practicing Love, I talk with tech modern mystic Renée Blodgett, about where science and spirituality meet in love and relationship.
Find out how to have the best love and sex of your life!
Where Science and Spirituality Meet in Love and Relationship: Show Notes
Have you ever wondered where science and spirituality meet in love and relationship?
Especially in those moments when you’re doing everything you know how to do to create connection, but something still feels off? When communication is “good,” but intimacy isn’t quite there? When part of you wants something deeper, but you don’t quite know how to access it?
I just released a new Practicing Love episode that explores this, to support you to have more and deeper love and intimacy.
I’m joined by modern mystic and teacher Renée Blodgett, and while this conversation includes a spiritual perspective, it’s also incredibly grounded and relevant to everyday relationships.
What I love is that we also bring it all the way down to earth — into the actual moments where relationships get hard. Because I often see people (and maybe you’ve felt this too) doing their best to show up, but the connection still falls into ruts where it feels empty, flat, or strained.
One of the things we talk about in this episode is how all of our effort can actually get in the way of intimacy.
It’s because real connection doesn’t come from trying harder. It comes from deeper: from awareness. presence, and being willing to be seen in the places that aren’t polished or “together.”
We talk about how vulnerable that can feel, and why most of us have learned to protect ourselves instead of open.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why we can’t be truly intimate until we’re willing to be vulnerable
- How over-functioning and constant doing create distance in love
- What shifts when we move from reacting to responding in relationship
- How to create intentional time for deeper connection in a full, busy life
- Simple practices to help you feel more in sync with your partner
- What to do with old wounds and shadow patterns that show up in relationships
One of the most powerful points for me was that love deepens when we shift from trying hard to becoming more present and aware.
If you’re not feeling the connection you long for, this conversation could open something important.
Links:
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Connect with Renée
Bio:
Renée Blodgett is the co-founder of Blue Soul Earth, Blue Soul Circles and Blue Soul Travel. She leads Blue Soul Circles with her twin flame Anthony Compagnone, to bring the Spiritual Realm’s wisdom and messages to those on their life path. She is passionate about igniting global consciousness, helping those on their life path and awakening others to their true potential. Most at home in nature, with gemstones and crystals and with her Canon 7D on her arm, she is an avid traveler, writer and photographer.
Renée’s 25 years of marketing and communications as founder of Magic Sauce Media are now directed to helping individuals and consciousness-based businesses who lead with purpose and heart. Renee is also founder of We Blog the World, an online magazine dedicated to Transformative Travel. She has been ranked as a top digital media influencer by both Forbes & the United Nations, has published five photo books and is also co-curator of TEDxBerkeley, one of the largest TEDx events in the country.
Transcript:
Shana James (00:00)
Hello and welcome to this episode of Practicing Love. I’m your host, Shana James, and I’m excited today to have a conversation about love, deepening love, and some of the underlying pieces that the world doesn’t lay out for us or teach us much about.
We’ll dive into the topic of awareness, and we will explore shadow and the experience of “oneness,” and how you can deepen your relationship and have what I call a sacred relationship — one where you feel known and loved and understood and supported, and where it’s ever evolving and growing.
I have an amazing guest here today, Renée Blodgett. Renée, thank you so much for being here.
Renée Blodgett (00:58)
I’m excited to be on your show, Shana. It’ll be interesting to see where today takes us.
Shana James (01:03)
I think so too. Renée is a modern mystic, a spiritual teacher, author of Magdalene’s Journey. She’s also a TED speaker coach. She had a PR firm at one point. And I can feel that the well runs deep.
So give us a little bit of background — how did you start exploring awareness and oneness and the teachings that you work with?
Renée Blodgett (01:28)
That’s a great question, Shana. I think the original journey that I went on many, many years ago started as probably many people’s journeys — moving away from organized religion.
When you’re going on a spiritual quest, it’s kind of a dive into what else is out there beyond what we’ve been conditioned to believe, right?
And so that quest led me to so many different spiritual teachers — ironically starting with mostly male teachers, right? When I’m on this quest of retreating from the patriarch.
So that was like Ken Wilber and Deepak and Tony.
Shana James (01:57)
Yeah.
Renée Blodgett (01:58)
And so all of those lineages were super, super helpful. And then I started exploring more of the feminine — through the work of goddesses, but also through academics like Karen King and Cynthia Bourgeault. I love her work.
Adyashanti, and so many of these more modern mystics and teachers.
And that kind of led me down a path of exploring both the modern mystic and the academia. And it’s really the bridge where science and spirituality meet.
Because remember, I spent 30 years in tech.
And so when you come from a technology world, where you spend most of your time analyzing launch plans and strategies and ROI and comparative analysis, it’s a very different orientation than coming from —
Shana James (03:05)
I love talking to people who have straddled the worlds. It’s just so amazing to have that technical background and the scientific background with the spirituality piece.
Renée Blodgett (03:18)
It becomes something so much more because you’re looking through a broader lens. I think that’s part of it.
But it also was terrifying. Because how could I go out into the world — at least my public persona on Facebook and other platforms — with this idea of love? This idea of the divine feminine, right?
I was absolutely terrified that everyone would think I had become religious —
Shana James (03:38)
Yes.
Or crazy.
Renée Blodgett (03:46)
— or crazy. Or, yes, either one of those two or all of the above. And really detached from reality as I’ve always understood it, right?
And that led me down the path of quantum physics and philosophy and all of these disciplines as well, bringing in the best of all of these teachings — from as far back as Plato to even the Upanishads.
So I went deep in a lot of different directions.
Shana James (04:14)
Can I ask you how this has affected your love life, since we’re talking about the topic of love?
Renée Blodgett (04:24)
I assume you mean romantic love life, as opposed to love for another distinction?
Shana James (04:27)
Yeah. Good distinction.
Renée Blodgett (04:44)
Well, I would say that in working with the Magdalene energy and the teachings — you mentioned this beautifully earlier, you talked about sacred relationship.
In our book — our first book, we’re actually working on the second one, Magdalene’s Journey — there’s a whole section on sacred relationship and sacred sex.
So in her teachings, which Anthony and I follow, it’s very much about the union of the two.
So until you can truly let your hair down and be vulnerable with the other — Magdalene talks about that a lot — this vulnerability allows the other person to have permission to open up and be vulnerable too.
And I think when we’re holding on and we’re not letting that vulnerability happen, there’s no room for surrender, really.
I mean, when we’re vulnerable, we have to surrender into it. And that means showing our perceived flaws and all of these things, and saying, “I need to be held,” or —
Shana James (05:26)
Yeah.
Renée Blodgett (05:38)
“I need this right now.” Not from a clinging or longing, but from a “support me in this moment.”
Shana James (05:46)
Right — like, will you actually help or be here with me?
Was it a big transition for you, coming from the science world, to start to be more vulnerable and open in these ways?
Renée Blodgett (06:01)
Yes and no.
I think I’ve always been that heart-space dreamer, the true romantic. I’ve always really had that, long before my spiritual quest.
So I wouldn’t say it was harder. I would say that turning on more of my feminine was harder.
When you spend a lifetime in the world of tech that’s predominantly men — especially CEOs and entrepreneurs of tech startups — you learn the masculine game.
Shana James (06:22)
Mm.
Renée Blodgett (06:24)
And I think — I don’t want to say I mastered it — but I became what I needed to be to navigate that landscape with ease, to get clients, and to sit in boardrooms where it was all men.
Especially in places like Japan, where I might be the only woman in the room.
And so I think I learned to adapt to that — not as becoming masculine, but exuding those qualities as part of my leadership role and what I thought leadership needed to be.
Shana James (07:14)
Mmm.
Renée Blodgett (07:14)
And so the biggest transition, I would say, in moving more fully into the spiritual consciousness realm is that surrender is what it’s all about — even in your masculine traits.
So if we talk about more traditional teachings, like David Deida or Tony Robbins, they talk about polarity.
And by the way, it is powerful. When polarity is turned on, the energies within us shift. And I’ve seen it on stage in front of thousands of people — it’s mind-blowing.
Shana James (07:50)
Yeah, it’s magnificent.
And I have an interesting relationship with David Deida too, where I’ve seen how much pain can happen when people try to take on this new way of being — even though it’s supposed to be natural — and it becomes a mask or an inauthenticity.
So I’m really curious to hear about it from this deeper perspective.
Renée Blodgett (08:17)
Yeah, and I agree with you about that, by the way.
Initially, when I read that work way back in the day — this was when I was doing a lot of Tony Robbins work, which echoed those teachings — it made sense.
I remember seeing a couple on stage, married for maybe 20 years. Tony was whispering in her ear how to shift her presence, her energy, the way she stood, the way she breathed, the way she spoke to her husband.
Tiny, subtle nuances. It was almost like watching a Reiki session unfold in real time.
And you could see how he shifted to balance her energy. It was so profound — the softening in her, and his capacity to hold space rising.
It was instantaneous.
And my first thought — this is my psychology and anthropology brain — was, wow, people could really manipulate this in self-serving ways too.
And I did see that happen.
And I think that speaks to your point — that when it comes from unhealed parts of us, and we don’t do the deeper work, it becomes a kind of spiritual bypass. It doesn’t become real or authentic.
Shana James (10:04)
Right. It becomes a facade.
I remember in my marriage, after my marriage was over, we had been doing a lot of that David Deida work and other orgasmic teachings and things like that, living in the Bay Area. There was a point afterward where he said something like, “Well, I was doing it because that was what it seemed like you wanted,” or, “I was doing it because that’s what it seemed like a real powerful man would do.” And it was so heartbreaking.
Renée Blodgett (10:38)
Yeah, I wrote a blog post about this on Substack that’s going to go live tomorrow, I guess, on the 28th. And it talks — I mean, I don’t want to get into politics, because that’s a far cry from what we’re talking about — but it was talking in general about leadership, and related to leadership, what makes a society feel safe, right? Feel cared for, feel safe, feel embraced.
Shana James (10:54)
Mm-hmm.
Renée Blodgett (11:12)
And the same parallel can be applied to relationships because when we feel safe, it’s like, “I care for you.” That’s strength. It’s not a masculine weakness.
And I think that goes back to Yeshua’s original teachings, and certainly Mary Magdalene’s as well — this surrendering into, which really echoes Eastern mystical wisdom across time, right? That when we surrender into the heart space, then all things are possible, right? All things —
Shana James (11:44)
Mm.
Renée Blodgett (11:45)
— are possible. The awareness increases, and as our awareness increases, our ability to attune to each other, as Thomas Hübl calls it, we can go more deeply there.
And so this is not a spiritual bypass, right? This is saying, I’m going to do the work even if it feels really painful.
Shana James (12:04)
Yeah.
Okay, and surrender — I want to go back to surrender because you said you can surrender, feminine, masculine, there are ways to surrender. And I think that’s a buzzword where many people are like, “No, thank you. I don’t necessarily want to go there.” So I’m curious about your take on that.
Renée Blodgett (12:22)
Well, it’s funny, I wrote about this recently too, and I brought it up in two different articles mainly because it had such a profound impact on me.
I can’t remember what conference it was, but I was at a conference and the words came up on the screen, not attributed to anybody. Later, when I Googled them, there really was no attribution. And what’s ironic is they think it might have been the words of Yeshua, but who knows, right, 2,000 years ago.
But the words are: The world surrenders to a quiet mind.
And so when I first saw that on the screen, I started bawling.
Shana James (13:01)
Wow.
Renée Blodgett (13:03)
You know, in this auditorium with, whatever, 300 people. I didn’t really know too many people, but still, you don’t really want to be breaking down bawling with people around.
Shana James (13:13)
I’ve cried — I think I’ve cried in every public place you could imagine. I’m definitely a crier myself.
Renée Blodgett (13:20)
Yeah, I was really surprised. Like, why did those words affect me so much?
And I think it’s because — especially in the world of tech and business, but also more broadly, though I’ll steer this more toward Western living — because as someone who has lived in 11 countries and been to over 95, I feel somewhat confident in my analysis through experience that this is more true in the West.
Shana James (13:26)
Yeah, what did you find?
Renée Blodgett (13:47)
What I found is this always-on world that we relish in and embrace and applaud — doing over being.
And I was raised that way, right? I was raised by my grandfather, who was born in 1915, and it was all about doing. The more that you could do, the more productive you were. “What have you done today?”
Shana James (13:47)
Wow. Yeah.
Yes.
Renée Blodgett (14:15)
And so when that is honored and revered — and of course that extended through business — how productive can you be?
I mean, I got results, but it was often the result of 14-hour days.
So I think that unraveling that, and unlearning doing as the go-to — or the necessary thing that’s going to lead to success — I think that unlearning is where we need to start.
Shana James (14:46)
Okay, so many questions I’m thinking of.
All right, for someone who is listening and they’re like, “Right, doing versus being, okay, I’m starting to get a sense of that — what doing is versus being — and I do a lot,” right? How does someone, from your perspective, start to make that shift to really prioritize being?
I know for myself — I mean, I’m a doer and a be-er — but when I’m doing and I’m shifting into being, some of those survival fears come up. One came up today where I was having all of these beautiful openings and then I thought, “My God, am I going to be able to function and make money and create my life from here?”
So there are definitely some survival pieces to it as well.
Renée Blodgett (15:37)
Yeah, and I think that’s the result of deep, deeply seated conditioning as well.
And we need to do, right? We need to be able to function from the place of getting tasks done, paying bills, and all of that. So that is sort of that masculine temple — or the masculine container, if you like — to carry and hold it all.
So we need that in our lives, regardless of what sexual orientation we align with in this lifetime.
And so I think it’s really about taking a pause, taking a break, and going back to your breath. That’s one good way to start. Because when you go back to your breath, all that fear — if you notice, when you’re in a theta brainwave state — the fear dissolves.
There’s not this focus on the future or on the past. When you’re in the present moment, you’re just focusing on the now. And when you’re in the now, your mind isn’t racing about what do I need to do and all of these things.
So I think certainly breathwork and meditation are really wonderful ways to get into that present moment, which will increase your awareness.
And I think, for Anthony, my partner, that’s the biggest thing for him.
For me, as you could say, the divine feminine — although, we won’t, I mean, they’re really just energy, so they can certainly apply to anyone who’s listening — going out in nature is my go-to.
We were talking before we started recording this morning about how this gigantic eagle just kind of landed and stared at me for an hour through my window.
Shana James (17:09)
Yes. Wow.
Renée Blodgett (17:29)
And so for me, that just brings me into a heart-centered place automatically.
It doesn’t make any logical sense, but I believe that nature serves as a reminder — through sacred geometry and other things, those natural laws of the universe — that we’re interconnected, that there’s no separation between us.
Shana James (17:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, and I’m thinking about the difference I notice in my romantic relationship when I’m in a space of doing, doing, versus when I actually open and soften into my being — or just relax into my being, we could say.
I mean, it’s a completely different flavor of connection. There can be intellectual dialogue, and it can be fascinating and interesting, and we can still have a connection. But when I don’t relax out of my doing mode, it doesn’t ever get to — we could call it the sacredness — or even just those deep, heart-open places of feeling connected and understood, and deeply understood, right? In a very intimate way.
Renée Blodgett (18:43)
Yeah, I would definitely agree with that.
And I think that connection time — we need to proactively create time for that sacred connection to happen.
Sometimes when I get in my zone, right, and I can write for 15 hours at a time, I’ll just lose all sense of time. I’m like that when I’m in the darkroom — I’m also a photographer.
This is back in the day when I was doing darkroom work, right? I don’t do that now, so the equivalent today would be fussing around in Photoshop.
But you’re engrossed, right? You’re kind of in this zone. And sometimes Anthony will say, “All right, I’m home and I’m going to be making dinner.”
And we’ve had to really work on, “Do you want me to help you with dinner?”
Right? I mean, he’s almost like a woman in that way in some regards. I have to read his mind, and he’s like, “Well, of course, what do you think?”
And so I really have to pay attention to those moments where he may not proactively come out, because even though we’ve had these conversations several times, he forgets or kind of assumes.
So I have to be the one to say, “You know what? It’s time to shut down. It’s time to turn off. That’s it. It’s time to turn off.”
Shana James (20:02)
Right.
Renée Blodgett (20:06)
Even though it’s so tempting to say, “I have another 40 minutes of productivity time I can get before dinner.” That’s not really helpful in serving a relationship.
Shana James (20:19)
No, but I feel you. I feel you so much.
That productivity time — it’s like, if I’m working on something, I just want to get it done, or I want to get it to that next final stage or conclusion or whatever it is.
And if we don’t prioritize relationship time, intimate time, connection time, it’s the thing that really tends, for most people, to fall by the wayside. And then the resentment grows, and the irritation grows, and the snipping and nagging at each other grows.
Renée Blodgett (20:48)
Yeah. The other thing that comes up — and I find this interesting for those who are spiritually minded out there — is the rise of the divine feminine.
And we talk about it as creatrix energy. You actually see this in Eastern mysticism, in the Kabbalah, and other places as well — the creatrix, which is the feminine force.
So think about the creatrix as the Sophia wisdom, the feminine face of God — that I spell G-O-D-D-E, right? That feminine face to the outside world.
So when we’re in our creatrix mode — and certainly men can be in that place also — it’s like a tidal wave.
And so I think communicating with your partner when you’re going through that process is so helpful.
We never used to do that. Anthony would come home — because I’m also an artist, right? I paint walls and furniture — and he would come home and there are flowers all over the house, fake flowers that I’m going to create something with, and he was like, “This is so tornado-like. I just want to escape and go to the gym, he wants to go into his man cave.
But when we can communicate: “I’m going to go into my Creatrix mode. It’s going to be a tornado. I need four hours and ignore me in this process, please. Or we’re going to get into a fight, or things aren’t going to go well.”
And the same holds true for when he might need his alone time or his cave time to say: I’ve just had a full day in therapy with children, I can’t have this conversation right now. It’s not you. It’s about my need to go inward and contract.”
And so these kinds of conversations, openly, compassionately, without anger or tone in our voice can be very, very healing.
Shana James (22:48)
Yes, it’s so important. That’s a lot of what I write about in Honest Sex — bringing honesty in, and in a mature kind of way, right? Not the kind of honesty that’s like, “Screw you, this is what I need right now, and it doesn’t matter what you need right now.” It’s more like, “Hey, I love you. I care about you. And I have a need here. How can we collaborate or co-create to have a win-win here for both of us?”
And really honor each other, and want to uplift each other, and forward each other’s goals while at the same time being honest about, “Hey, maybe there’s a point at which it’s like, okay, will you come back to me?”
Renée Blodgett (23:30)
Right. That fear, that hidden fear that we all have — men and women both have that fear — that we’re not enough or we’re not performing.
There was another program that I did — this was a zillion years ago now — and the question was presented to the audience, maybe 2,000 people in the audience from all walks of life across cultures. And the question was aimed at men:
What is the number one thing that is important to you in your relationship, and when it’s not going right, you want to flee?
There were translators in the room, so again it was across age, demographics, and language.
And the number one thing — what do you think it was?
Shana James (24:13)
Yeah.
I mean, I was going to say sex, but that feels too cliché. I would say being…
Renée Blodgett (24:22)
It wasn’t even in the top three.
Shana James (24:23)
Really?
Being appreciated, or being —
Renée Blodgett (24:29)
Well, in an indirect way, you’re right. But the more direct response was: I don’t feel as if I’m making her happy, and it’s too hard for me to figure out how to make her happy.
And one very alpha-male-looking man, who was a martial artist, stood up and said, “I just feel like I’m constantly failing. I just want to make her happy, and I can’t figure it out.”
Shana James (24:45)
Yeah. Yeah.
Renée Blodgett (24:59)
I’ve always thought back to that moment because I was so astounded by the raise of hands in the room when that question came up.
Shana James (25:10)
Yeah.
Renée Blodgett (25:12)
It shocked me, because I didn’t think that. I thought maybe it would be lack of communication, sex, or money. Money is also kind of a big source of grief among couples.
So that makes sense to me, right? When I think about my own relationships over the years — my ex-husband, and certainly the relationship I’m in now, which is pretty established and long-term — men want to make their women happy. And if we make it hard, it feels like they’re flailing and failing.
Shana James (25:42)
My ex-husband actually said that to me. And in some ways I felt like it was part of the world we were in, or the consciousness we were in, that we had heard that teaching too — around men really wanting to make women happy.
But I could see it. I could see where he was, in a way, trying to make me happy. We were just going about it in such different ways, and we were not matched in certain ways, so it didn’t work.
But I could see that it was painful for him when he was trying to make me happy and then was met with disappointment or resentment.
And that’s where I do think the communication skills are so important — to be able to come to each other and say, “Hey, I’m trying to make you happy and it doesn’t seem like it’s working. What’s happening on your side? Can you help me understand you a little bit more? What is getting in the way?”
And to be able to have those honest conversations is really the foundation of understanding each other.
Renée Blodgett (26:43)
Yeah. I mean, this is a great segue into the underlying fear that most of us have, most of humanity has, right? Regardless of our sexual orientation — that we’re just not enough.
So when you feel like you can’t fulfill the other, you feel like, I’m not enough.
And you might have been conditioned that way as a child. Maybe you were not as enough as your brother or your sister, and so you always felt like you were striving, striving, striving. Or maybe you were an only child and you still felt from your parents that you were not enough.
And so I think it comes from years of conditioning and drilling that we need to be so much more. And that affects all of our behaviors.
We call it trauma work today, or shadow work. We never had language for it — or at least in my time growing up, we didn’t have that language. We didn’t talk about these things.
And so I think we can name them, but I think we need to be careful when we name them in a way that creates a trigger in our nervous system. Because when our nervous system is on fight or flight, we can’t relax into what needs to be healed.
Shana James (28:00)
Yeah.
Right, and that’s a huge issue when couples are trying to navigate these things and they’re in fight or flight, as opposed to being in a relaxed nervous system.
There’s so much conversation about that recently — attachment styles and all the ways we can regulate our nervous systems versus being in an unregulated nervous system.
Renée Blodgett (28:26)
Yeah, well said.
And luckily, I think now there’s open dialogue about it. So when someone hears that open dialogue, they can feel, I’m not alone. I’m not alone. Somebody else is going through this too.
And in fact, the majority of the world is going through it in different ways. I mean, we may not be a woman under the Taliban, or we may not have been a Holocaust survivor, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t hold collective trauma in our system, right?
Shana James (28:57)
Right.
Renée Blodgett (28:58)
Epigenetics really speaks to this. We’re keeping it in our field and in our energy field. And if we don’t have that awareness, we assume it’s ours to take on, when it’s really not ours at all. It’s just a projection from the past.
Shana James (29:11)
Yeah.
Renée Blodgett (29:16)
Well, I don’t want to go down the quantum rabbit hole where the teaching is that there is no past and there is no future. But for simplicity purposes here, we can say from your past, right?
Thomas Hübl does talk about this, but many collective trauma practitioners and therapists talk about this in similar ways — that trauma is always shared.
It’s never isolated. It’s never individual trauma. It’s always in relation to another.
And so we have whole societies, right? This is where you go to a land where there was war and horrific atrocities —
Shana James (29:48)
Right.
Renée Blodgett (30:01)
— and people, depending on their sensitivities, can feel it in their bodies, that something happened there.
And so the same holds true when we’re in engagement, in relation to another.
And so you’ve probably done these if you lived in the Bay Area, where they were very popular — I guess it started around 20 or so years ago — that gazing technique where you’re gazing into each other’s eyes and trying to be with them, and trying to connect in a oneness kind of way to the other.
Shana James (30:14)
Yes. Yes.
Renée Blodgett (30:26)
And they would do this — it didn’t matter if it was man with woman, woman with man, or woman with woman.
Shana James (30:37)
Human to human, soul to soul, actually, is what some of us called it back then.
Renée Blodgett (30:42)
Soul to soul, heart communication. However, there were specific workshops that focused on couples. And I think in some ways it’s even harder for couples to do the practice.
But that’s very healing because it brings up stuff that we don’t normally see.
And when I first started to do this, I was like, why am I having such a hard time holding their gaze for so long?
Shana James (31:06)
I know. It’s really amazing.
I used to lead authentic relating workshops, and we would have people do this kind of eye gazing. And sometimes I do this with my clients, where as we look at each other, I have people notice: what do you think I’m thinking about you? Or what, if anything, is getting in the way of you just being able to relax into the openness of this moment, right? And be actually curious about each other.
And so much of what you said before around not being enough — I remember when I first started doing it, I was like, what is my face doing? Do they think I’m doing this too much? Or do they think I’m doing that too much?
I actually did a White Tantra day where I sat and gazed for, I think, eight or ten hours. But I just — I actually love it.
And in part I love when I guide couples through it and how uncomfortable they get, because then I know there’s so much room for relaxation and intimacy and actually connecting that’s available to them that they haven’t really accessed yet.
Renée Blodgett (32:10)
Yeah, so true, actually.
As the observer, for you, in guiding these couples through it, you can be aware of what’s been left out of the relationship.
Yeah, that’s really beautiful.
Another — and I’m sure you’ve talked about this on your podcast — but breathwork. And when you’re breathing together, because we want our hearts to sync up.
The whole idea of heart coherence is when there’s no noise in the field. And so when we start breathing together, the same holds true in drum circles. When you start beating together, dancing together, chanting together — ancient Sanskrit chants — you start to become in rhythm with the other.
And it’s so powerful. So powerful.
And from that place, all of your judgment — which is the number one thing I think gets in the way, right, judgment of the other or even judgment of yourself — it starts to dissolve into the background.
Shana James (32:52)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I once heard a teacher say that he would never work with a couple until he did some guided practices to support them to — we could call it relax into their higher state, or be more in their soul than their personality.
I’ve heard Terry Real talk about how it’s less important what’s being said and more important who’s there saying it. Because are we in our child? Are we in our adult self?
So it is really interesting. And I notice when I’m working with couples, the conversations we’re having from that place of intellect or the doer — or before we relax into these in-sync places — there often is more tension and more conflict.
And then, like you said, sometimes as we sink into these places, some parts of it just dissolve.
Renée Blodgett (34:06)
Well, they dissolve because we’ve expanded into, I would say, deeper consciousness and expanded awareness.
And so when we’re in that place of expansion, there’s more space for new ideas to come in, right?
We’re so programmed, in a way, to respond to things. So if a tr —
Shana James (34:20)
Yeah. Or react to things.
Renée Blodgett (34:29)
Yeah, exactly. Right — that’s really what I meant to say: react versus respond.
Shana James (34:34)
Right.
Renée Blodgett (34:35)
Because I think when we’re in reaction, a trigger comes up, and it reminds us subliminally of a conversation we might have had with our mother that was challenging and difficult.
And that’s the story. Bruce Lipton talks about it like you’re on a record that’s just spinning round and round and round. And no matter how much intellectual awareness you have about how much you want to change that broken record, it’s never going to change because it’s buried in your system, right? That needs to be purged, cleansed, or transmuted.
And so having that awareness — and not making yourself wrong or the other person wrong — but realizing that we are all mirrors to each other…
And I think the observer in that quantum world, right? There are now scientists who are able to prove that through science — to say that, yeah, the universe is in us as much as we are in it.
And it sounds so grandiose, doesn’t it? But it’s really not. We’re microcosms of the whole.
Shana James (35:33)
Well, this has been — no, it’s not. I mean, yeah.
I think it’s amazing, and I’ve had some of those experiences too, of feeling the inner and outer.
This has been a delightful conversation, and I’m just very excited to know you and to get to know you more. I love the way your heart, brain, soul combination works.
So thank you so much for having this conversation.
Is there any last thing you want to leave people with before you tell us how to find more of you?
Renée Blodgett (36:09)
Well, I think: turn inward.
That we are the gurus that we seek out there. That would be some parting words that I would leave people with, because I think a lot of times when we’re racing and chasing, we forget to remember our innate wisdom that lies within.
And that does involve slowing down, being aware of our breath, and knowing that when things feel chaotic — especially now — in the outside world, right, we need to turn inward, where that innate truth, the universal truth, will emerge with clarity.
And once that clarity surfaces, all the noise is just noise in the field.
So yes, go inward.
Shana James (36:53)
Thank you.
Thank you so much. And where can people find you?
Renée Blodgett (36:59)
Well, people can go to BlueSoulEarth.com, BlueSoulMedia.com, which is my consulting practice and where I do a lot of work with TED Talk trainings and so forth. And then StudyWithSpirit.com is all of our courses and our membership.
We are also on YouTube at Blue Soul Earth, where we have a podcast that bridges science and spirituality. So we’ve got a lot of really amazing, riveting interviews on there.
And lastly, MagdalenesJourney.com is our book. So you can go there and read about it.
It really is about how love is the glue that binds the universe together.
And my partner Anthony and I are launching a Wisdom School program this spring, where we’ll be bringing people deep inner wisdom across lineages to really expand the heart.
It’s not specifically targeted to couples, but wow — how powerful would it be for a couple to do this together?
And it’s really all of those original Gnostic teachings: that the kingdom lies within, and that love is your source of inspiration and your glue.
Shana James (38:09)
Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here.
Renée Blodgett (38:14)
Thanks for having me, Shana.
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