Hello and welcome back to practicing human the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host Cori Moscara and in today's episode we're going to talk about the healing power of curiosity.

More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells. The Okay, so if you follow my work, if you listen to this podcast, if you've read my work, you listen to this podcast, if you've read my book, you know I'm a big

fan of curiosity.

In fact in the definition I've proposed of mindfulness, which is the practice of being with versus in an experience

in a way that is spacious, curious, and heartfelt.

Now I replaced the common use of the word non-judgment in definitions of mindfulness with

curiosity because I do think curiosity is a really powerful mind state that is inherently non-judgmental and doesn't set us up for

ideas of not having judgments in our minds.

A lot of times when we think of being non-judgmental

and a judgment does arise, we immediately

make the judgment wrong and we start judging ourselves

for judging ourselves.

There's something about curiosity that helps us move closer to whatever experiences here

with interest, gentle wonder, even a mind that is judging, or a thought that is negative, or an experience

that is painful.

And this is why I think curiosity really has the potential and I've seen it

have the potential for deep healing. I think one of the ways we can think

about deep healing, specifically psychological and emotional healing, is an integration of parts of us that have fractured off, parts that have been painful or uncomfortable, or we've cast shame around because they weren't

welcome in a particular family dynamic or relationship dynamic or social context.

We all go through this.

We learn essentially who we have to be in order to feel safe or get love.

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