Rewilding Love – Details, episodes & analysis

After 54 episodes filled with heartfelt and thought-provoking conversations, the Rewilding Love podcast reaches its first season final episode. Rohini and Angus share their lessons learned from the journey and their guests. This is what makes Rewilding Love a genuine and life-changing relationship podcast.

Taking a journey of vulnerability with your partner opens your eyes to them. So you gain a better grasp of how they think and how they process things. This allows you to be more sensitive to their needs and provide support when necessary.

Seeing the value of honest, open, authentic communication helps us let go of the habitual thought patterns of the ego that try to keep us feeling safe, and supports us with awakening more fully to who we are and this impacts how we show up in relationships.

Angus recalled how Mavis Karn’s words (Episode 30) about letting go of anything that doesn’t look like love helped him realize how he can get caught up in his programming and conditioning and use anger as a coping mechanism. Understanding this habit allowed him to gain more compassion for himself and for Rohini.

Angus and Rohini have lived that transformation. They have been through the same ups and downs that the couples they work with have. As Rohini said, they lived in high pain, high conflict relationships that didn’t look like they would ever find peace — but they did. And now, they can pass on what they learned, so others can share openly and vulnerably, and truly experience the love that is their true nature and express that love.

This episode explores:

• Not identifying with our ego
• Vulnerability as a turning point 
• How deeper connections help us find freshness and newness in relationships
• Getting caught up in programming and conditioning and getting free

Show Notes:

Alicia and Mateo: Episodes 1 to 15 of the Rewilding Love podcast followed their journey towards reconciliation.

Kelly McGonigal: A health psychologist from Stanford University and featured TED Speaker in 2013. She talked about the upside of stress and the effect of oxytocin on our brain, heart, and entire body.

Oxytocin: A hormone produced in the brain that is associated with anti-stress-like effects, empathy, hugging, orgasm, and sexual activity.

Spanner in the works: A British idiom that means a disruption, a foil, or cause of problems.

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate private couples' intensive retreat programs that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 54 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Angus and Rohini talk about the healing power of embodying the full human experience, or put another way, the full breadth of human emotions. They each reflect on how they used to turn to coping mechanisms to avoid their more painful emotions, but these strategies just made the experience more difficult and had a negative impact on their relationship. Their coping mechanisms tended to push the other away.

It's in resisting our emotional experience that we suffer. As Sydney Banks, the man whose teachings inspired ours, said: "if the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world." The fear-based thoughts we have about our emotional experience is what paralyzes us.

For example, Angus shares about his fear of heights and how once he saw the role his thinking was playing in magnifying that fear, he was able to just feel the emotion and still approach the activity involving the heights (like riding a roller coaster). Letting himself feel the fear instead of being stuck in the thoughts about the fear, allows him to still take part and ultimately enjoy the activity. 

Embracing our emotional experience, without judgement of ourselves, also allows us to experience deeper connection with others. It is difficult to have an authentic experience with someone else if we are "white-knuckling" our way through our own emotional experience. If we aren't being authentic then we aren't being vulnerable -- and our relationships require vulnerability for there to be true connection. 

This episode explores:

• Resisting our emotions causes suffering
• Being with our emotions is authentic and supports connection
• Letting go of control is actually the most pleasurable choice
• The healing power of experiencing all of our emotions

Show Notes

Knott's Berry Farm: "California's Best Theme Park" and where Angus rode a rollercoaster eyes-wide-open, screaming like a baby

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 44 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

We spoke with Rewilding Guide and Registered Nutritional Therapist, Becs Steele, about her tumultuous experiences with pregnancy, due to a rare genetic disease, and how looking back she can see now that her expectations about what her life was supposed to be like were adding to her anxiety. This exacerbated her health issues. During the years of trying for a second child, Becs suffered from several health conditions including autoimmune thyroid, endometriosis, rosacea, and anxiety. She now pinpoints them as symptoms of the stress she was going through. 

Upon learning about the understanding behind the Rewilding metaphor, Becs saw that expectations about life are really just made up. And yet she recognizes that she and so many others can get so stuck on these expectations and obsess about reaching them. For Becs, reaching her goal meant enduring very traumatic pregnancies, which she does not regret at all as she now has two beautiful children. But reflecting on her experience, she can see now how she was not aware earlier that she was going to be OK regardless of outcomes. 

Becs also reflects with us about how stuck we get when we try to control our experience and our emotions. If we can soften around our feelings, and make space for them, they move through us more gracefully than when we attempt to stuff them down. This goes hand in hand with not beating ourselves up for not being "spiritual enough" or using spirituality as a measuring stick to beat ourselves up with. Instead, we can be with the full breadth of the human experience, and allow our grief to heal naturally.

Show Notes
Translocation: a type of chromosomal abnormality in which a chromosome breaks and a portion of it attaches to a different chromosome. This can result in stillbirths or severe disabilities.
Bird by Bird: a documentary about Anne Lamott where she beautifully describes how being open to grief doesn't mean we won't have a scar, but it will heal cleanly.

Becs Steele helps people who experience anxiety or depression to have more personal freedom in body, mind, and spirit.  As a registered Nutritional Therapist, she is constantly discovering the power of the mind and body connection. She brings clients to their present moment experience to uncover what is keeping them stuck.  Using nutrition in combination with coaching she witnesses clients have big shifts in their bodies and minds.

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 43 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Rohini and Angus talk about the journey they've been on with desire and intimacy in their marriage and their reflections on, and insights around, how they overcame the challenges they experienced in the past.

At the beginning of their relationship, sexual desire was spontaneous and Rohini had no issue matching Angus' libido. But as time went on, and as intimacy and comfort ramped up, she found her sexual desire waning. This made her feel self-conscious and wonder if there was something wrong with her. When she became aware of this understanding, found herself feeling more relaxed and at ease in herself. One of the byproducts of this was she found herself more present and able to enjoy sexual intimacy. She saw she didn't need to fix anything to help her experience more desire, she just needed to relax. She experienced for herself desire can be cultivated. 

Angus' initial response to Rohini's lack of desire was to question his manhood and feel insecure. He realized with time that he was blaming her for the way he felt. Rohini not matching his libido was something he was taking personally. This blame and pressure further perpetuated Rohini's dwindling desire for sex. Once Angus saw this for what it was, that he was reacting to his own insecurity, he was able to take the pressure off and meet Rohini where she was. This in turn made helped Rohini to feel more open.

This episode explores:

• How noticing that we're caught up allows us to naturally relax and open to pleasure
• Turning inward rather than outward when experiencing less desire can help us rekindle desire
• How sexual intimacy can be a doorway to experiencing the divine

Show notes
Michelin Star Ranking System: how the finest dining restaurants are ranked, from 1 lowest to 3 exceptional. Also a way Angus almost stumbled into ranking his and Rohini's sex.

Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm: one of the resources Rohini turned to during the lack of desire insecurity phase

Ted Talk Masturbation is the New Meditation: self-explanatory but made Angus feel a bit prickly when Rohini brought it up.

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 42 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

We spoke with the incredible Jacquie Moses, who supports others with seeing their true potential and innate resilience.

When Jacquie learned about the understanding that the Rewilding metaphor is based on, she completely shifted the way she works with clients. Instead of trying to "fix" them, she saw the importance of seeing that her clients are completely whole and well just as they are. This creates a transformative healing space for the people she works with, and for herself as well, as she found that she didn't need fixing either.

For several years she delivered mental health interventions in several prisons in the UK. Jacquie and her co-facilitators would create a space centered around two fundamental truths: everyone has 100% innate well-being at their core, and as humans, we experience life from the inside out. Jacquie describes how the men she worked with would "light up", exhibiting as they woke up to the long-forgotten, or never-realized, spark inside of themselves. This was her experience with the participants no matter what their history.

By meeting people right where they are, without trying to control or manage them, we give them permission to begin to trust themselves and experience their own wisdom. Recognizing their divinity allows them to see it too. 

This episode explores:

• The healing power of seeing people's innate health
• Treating clients based on wellness instead of illness
• How to show up authentically with another in a situation of conflict
• The value of human to human, heart to heart connection

Jacquie Moses has worked in diverse settings and has experience working with teams, leaders, young people, and communities. For over four years, she was part of a core team delivering cutting-edge, evidence-based, mental health interventions (based on the Three Principles) in prisons in the UK. Alongside this work, Jacquie has experience of sharing the Principles in organizations and charities and is currently mentoring employees and leaders to become wellbeing ambassadors and mentors within their organizations.

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate a private couples' intensives retreat program that rewilds relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 41 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Just back from vacation, we wanted to share how to more easily navigate low moods and how seeing them as transient and impersonal can make relationships so much easier and more graceful.

Angus has a perfect example of this from our vacation in Hawaii when he was feeling very caught up and upset with our daughters, he stepped outside, and by looking up at the night sky and seeing the moon, he was distracted just enough from his low mood that his mind settled naturally. Once his mind settled, he was able to re-approach the situation with more ease and grace.

Rohini shares about how it was through experiencing more of her own safety and well-being within herself that allowed her to get more perspective on her human psychology. Once she was freed up to see her psychology at work, she could lean into her built-in navigation system and ride out low moods instead of giving them more meaning than they warranted. 

When you get caught up, if you can attend to what you need to do to help regulate your own internal state, rather than searching for someone to blame, or a "fall guy" as Angus likes to say, you can then bypass escalation and return to connection more quickly. This doesn't mean you should always be in a good mood and that low moods are shameful, it means accepting where you're at in the moment, instead of blaming someone else for your current state of mind.

This episode explores:

• How to handle a low mood
• Watching the fight or flight experience
• Taking care of ourselves first helps relationships
• The power of seeing the impersonal in a low mood
• The character we play when we're caught up vs. when we're seeing things clearly

Show Notes
Slapping one's thighs and pinching one's leg: when Angus is caught up and frustrated he might do this
Pulling down pants: when Angus approaches the airport security line, he might instinctively start to do this
Alien creature: the sum of our conditioned thinking and habits

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate individualized couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 40 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

We thought we would offer you a  recap of season one of Rewilding Love before taking a summer break and take the opportunity to respond to a reviewer who requested we speak more tangibly about the understanding that informs our work. 

Angus provides a beautiful and comprehensive description of the "Three Principles", one of the names given to the non-dual spiritual teaching revealed to Sydney Banks. 

Our rewilding metaphor is informed by Syd's teachings, and we have been mentored by many of his original students. Rohini speaks to how this understanding helps relationships and why our work always begins with helping individuals experience a deeper connection to their innate well-being. The by-product of this allows couples to experience more love and understanding in their relationships.

We use the rewilding metaphor to describe and inform our work because rewilding captures the aliveness of being connected to our spiritual essence -- it's wild, it's messy, but like nature, it is always looking to optimize our experience here. It's always moving toward health and vitality.

Our next Rewilding Love episode will be available on September 13th. Until then, have a lovely summer, and we hope you enjoy your rewilding!

This episode explores:

• The rewilding metaphor behind our work
• Being with the full human emotional experience
• A description of the Three Principles of mind, consciousness, and thought based on the teachings of Sydney Banks
• The power of seeing the answer lies within

Show Notes
Wheat from the chaff: chiefly a British saying that means to judge which people or things in a group are bad and which ones are good

Understanding behind the rewilding metaphor: the three principles of mind, consciousness, and thought, as described by Sydney Banks

Non-dual spiritual teaching: Nonduality is about oneness. It is expressed in various traditions but has traditionally come from India. However, it is not limited to India, because the core truth of oneness is evident in all traditions even though it may be expressed in different ways.

When you go beyond awareness, there is a state of non-duality, in which there is no cognition, only pure being. In the state of non-duality, all separation ceases. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

Altar boy: One of Angus's childhood roles

Angus Ross & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate individualized couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 39  features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Nessi Gomes and Lino Hermesh, romantic and business partners, created Vocal Odyssey, a workshop designed to help people meet the spirit of their voice. After recently participating in their workshop, Rohini shares with listeners about her experience and invites Nessi and Lino to talk about the healing power of their work.

From a young age, Nessi discovered the ability to heal and navigate her emotions by exploring sound. She now shares the therapeutic value of sonic expression along with her professional performances. Initially, Lino sought to manage Nessi's musical career, but following some skepticism, he joined her efforts in creating these workshops. He pursued his own training and now co-facilitates the workshops. He sees how powerful group settings are for creating new connections, both physically and spiritually. He sees the workshops as a bridge to something far larger than ourselves.

For Rohini, allowing herself to be with the vulnerability of using her voice, in a group setting, was healing and connected her to a deep sense of aliveness and playfulness she hadn't realized was dormant. The voice is a portal to our own individual truth and also to what is universal that lies within us all.

This episode explores:

• The voice as a natural tonic and ancient medicine
• The power of community and group work
• Experiencing natural highs 
• How the voice cannot lie

Show Notes
Vocal Odyssey: Meet the spirit of your voice
Nessi Gomes' music

Nessi Gomes is a musician, group facilitator, and certified Holistic Voice Therapist with The British Academy of Sound Therapy in Group Voice Therapy. In the past four years, Nessi has shared her music and voice retreats in 25 countries. In October 2016 she released her debut album ‘Diamonds & Demons’ and received Best of British Unsigned female artist for that year. Learn more about Nessi.

Lino Hermesh is co-founder, with Nessi, of Vocal Odyssey. He is A Certified Voice Practitioner (The British Academy of Sound Therapy, UK) and holds a Diploma in Relational Mindfulness/Core Process Psychotherapy.   In PachaMacha, Costa Rica he met Nessi. A meeting that changed their lives and took them both on a musical voyage of creativity and self-growth through 30 countries in which they shared their work in the past 6 years. Learn more about Lino.

Angus & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate individualized couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 38  features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

Claire Shutes talks with us about what she has learned living with cerebral palsy (CP).  Claire was born with CP, a muscular disorder that stems from a lack of oxygen to the brain at birth. She considers herself lucky that only her walking is impacted. Others with the disorder can face further complications. Navigating CP has by no means been easy, but early on Claire came to view her physical limitation as a wonderful gift that's here to teach her life lessons.

Claire shares with us some of the struggles she faced while dating in the past. She found herself seemingly locked into a pattern of cultivating codependent relationships. After experiencing a severe bout of depression, Claire reflected on her role in these relationships and realized she no longer needed to play that part. Shortly after her insight, she met her soulmate and husband, Tom.

Claire views her work with her clients as a spiritual practice. She brings this universal truth of our interconnectedness into all of the work she does. She is also the co-founder of The Almond Tree Foundation that supports families living with illness or disability. 

This episode explores:

• Life circumstances as gifts to learn from 
• Seeing potential instead of limitation
• Suffering stemming from resistance 
• Reflecting on our own role in relationships

Show Notes
Almond Tree Foundation: Claire's non-profit providing wellbeing support for families living with disability or illness. Click the link to access the free webinar series Claire mentioned in the episode.

Claire Shutes is a Master Transformative Coach and Three Principles Practitioner.  She founded Potent Coaching in 2006 and has an international client base including businesses, individuals, and the charitable sector. Claire speaks and trains internationally, having served as faculty on Michael Neill’s Supercoach Academy and One Thought’s Foundations for Practitioners Program. She recently founded The Almond Tree Foundation to support the wellbeing of families living with illness and disability. Prior to becoming a coach Claire produced and directed observational documentaries for the BBC and CH4.

Angus & Rohini Ross are “The Rewilders.” They love working with couples and helping them to reduce conflict and discord in their relationships. They co-facilitate individualized couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is the author of the ebook Marriage, and they are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can also follow Angus and Rohini Ross on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about their work visit: therewilders.org. Read Rohini's latest blog.

Episode 37 features the music of RhythmPharm with Los Angeles-based composer Greg Ellis.

See full show notes here.