Is There Free Will?

Is There Free Will?

Does choosing chocolate ice cream after a heartbreak count as a free decision — or is your biology running the show? In this episode, we wrestle with the slippery line between free will and agency, exploring how our bodies, lineages, and the living world around us co-create every move we make. Through a surprising paradox — how total surrender of free will leads to rediscovering it — we arrive at a question even bigger than where we started: not whether we make decisions, but who within us is making them. 📍Chapters 00:00 — Intro  1:15 — Welcome and episode context  5:05 — Metaphor game: what does free will feel like?  10:13 — Metaphor game: what does no free will feel like?  16:05 — What frameworks shape your view of free will?  19:15 — Yulia's framework: free will vs agency  33:53 — Polina's framework: a pointless question?  36:05 — The best decisions aren't decisions  42:17 — Polina's story: being decided on  49:44 — The soul's place in the web of life 52:53 — Irina's frameworks: Human Design meets magic school  1:00:29 — Different levels of free will 1:08:23 — Is free will a modern invention?  1:11:33 — But are we making decisions or not?  1:21:29 — The real question: who is the "I" that decides?  1:25:08 — Are we happy not having free will?  1:32:02 — Where did we each show up today? 1:34:40 — Outro Find us here: * Life in Flow Podcast [https://lifeinflowgroup.substack.com/podcast] * Yulia Bogdanova [https://yuliabogdanova.substack.com/about] * Polina Khodova [http://coachingbypolina.com/] * Irina Mishina [https://www.instagram.com/new.eon.shift.eng/] 💌 Resources used under Creative Commons license: Music “Echolocation” by airtone, source: CcMixter Get full access to Life In Flow at www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe [https://www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What is real?

What if imagination is just as real as the chair you're sitting on? After two weeks dreaming herself awake in the Anza-Borrego desert, Yulya came back with a question — and brought it into this conversation, where the three of us show up in personas we don't usually wear and use them as a doorway into reality itself. We talk about shared illusions, the cost of living on the fringe of consensus, and why some of us simply can't survive in a world without magic. 📍Chapters 00:00 — Yulya Welcomes: Strange Outfits and "What Is Real?" 02:37 — Yulya's Vision Quest: Anza-Borrego and the Underworld Journey 07:03 — The Games: Playing With "Real" and Assembling Personas 19:33 — Wild Woman, Destroyer, Seductress: The Personas Speak 24:06 — Was the Persona Real — Or Just the Costume? 29:05 — Irina's Frame: Becoming the Character from the Outside In 36:33 — Dumbledore's Answer: "Why Should It Mean It's Not Real?" 39:14 — The Black Cube Experiment: How Society Rewrites What You See 48:13 — Polina: Everything Is Real, Nothing Is Real 50:06 — When Polina Shapeshifted Into a Bird 55:51 — Following Aliveness and the Cost of Being Shunned 1:02:00 — The Body Refuses: A World Without Magic 1:15:39 — Irina's Bun Date: "Please Take It Down" 1:20:49 — On the Outskirts: Three Closings on Aliveness and Owning It 1:26:17 — Polina's Twist: The Joy of Range Find us here: * Life in Flow Podcast [https://lifeinflowgroup.substack.com/podcast] * Yulia Bogdanova [https://yuliabogdanova.substack.com/about] * Polina Khodova [http://coachingbypolina.com/] * Irina Mishina [https://www.instagram.com/new.eon.shift.eng/] 💌 Resources used under Creative Commons license: Music “Echolocation” by airtone, source: CcMixter Get full access to Life In Flow at www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe [https://www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

How Do We Converge Generatively?

What happens when "yes, and" meets the necessity of "no"? Picking up from our exploration of utopia and the dance between the individual and the collective, we sit with a structural truth: the realm of infinite possibilities is beautiful, but nothing actually happens there. Through a rapid-fire game of impossible choices, Yulya's story of choosing from the body during her son's illness, and Polina's closing reframe, we explore what convergence feels like somatically, why creative people struggle with it most, and whether we're making decisions at all — or just floating on a raft, thinking we steer. Chapters: 00:00 — Welcome to the Life in Flow Podcast 01:15 — Beyond "Yes, And": Why We Also Need to Converge 04:00 — Irina's Frame: Divergence and Convergence in Every Creative Process 06:46 — The Central Question: How Do We Converge Generatively? 09:41 — The "This or That" Game: Rapid-Fire Forced Choices 24:45 — Behind the Masks: How Does Forced Choice Actually Feel? 26:22 — Yulya's Story: A Sick Son and a Pine Tree's Guidance 33:14 — The FOMO of Convergence: When Every Path Calls You 38:00 — Polina: Every Choice Is an Energetic Gamble 40:26 — The Subway Map of Lost Futures 44:35 — The Energetic Signature: Feeling the Pull Before You Decide 47:53 — Does Making a Choice Mean Giving Up Who You Are? 58:09 — Freeze, Depression, and the Hidden Cost of Not Choosing 01:11:38 — Polina's Twist: What If We Never Actually Choose? 01:14:38 — Yulya's Vision Quest: Being Dreamed by the Desert Find us here: * Life in Flow Podcast [https://lifeinflowgroup.substack.com/podcast] * Yulia Bogdanova [https://yuliabogdanova.substack.com/about] * Polina Khodova [http://coachingbypolina.com/] * Irina Mishina [https://www.instagram.com/new.eon.shift.eng/] 💌 Resources used under Creative Commons license: Music “Echolocation” by airtone, source: CcMixter Get full access to Life In Flow at www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe [https://www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What Does it Mean to Be a Woman?

In this episode, we let the word woman move through us and followed where it led. From power that travels through the body to the leak that happens when our true shape isn't afforded, from inherited trauma to the goddesses’ energy, we explore what feels like us — and what we might not yet remember about ourselves. 00:00 – Entering the Field: What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? 01:15 – A Somatic Experiment: Feeling “Woman” in the Body  06:01 – Portals, Warmth, and Safety: First Embodied Responses 08:43 – Infinite Within Borders: The Feminine as Inner Cosmos 10:16 – Air, Water, and the Wolf: Elemental Feminine Imagery 12:41 – “Woman is Like Water”: Taking Shape in Relationship 15:13 – Creation and Destruction: Dark Feminine Energy 17:33 – Holding It All: Softness, Rage, and Power Together 19:20 – Wings, Claws, and Fangs: Archetypes of Feminine Power 21:06 – What Does Power Feel Like in a Woman’s Body? 26:36 – Goddess States, Nature, and Embodied Power 33:03 – Power Through Connection, Attunement, and Aliveness 37:00 – “Not Afforded My True Shape”: When Power Leaks 43:11 – Losing Power: Approval, Disconnection, and Self-Doubt 56:09 – What Is Truly “Me” vs Learned? Identity, Memory, and Choice Find us here: * Life in Flow Podcast [https://lifeinflowgroup.substack.com/podcast] * Yulia Bogdanova [https://yuliabogdanova.substack.com/about] * Polina Khodova [http://coachingbypolina.com/] * Irina Mishina [https://www.instagram.com/new.eon.shift.eng/] 💌 Resources used under Creative Commons license: Music “Echolocation” by airtone, source: CcMixter Get full access to Life In Flow at www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe [https://www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Individual vs Collective — Who Wins?

What happens when you remove "I" from a conversation about individuality and collectivism? What starts as a philosophical, although somewhat experimental, inquiry into utopia and egoless society gets shapeshifted by the feminine — revealing that the very language we use to frame the question was never designed to hold the answer. What if there is no need to choose “either-or”? What if we are capable of holding space for both polarities at the same time? What utopia can emerge then? 📍Chapters 00:00 Intro  01:16 Welcome & the question: individual vs collective — who wins?  05:52 The rules of the game: no "I," no "you"  09:20 Game Round 1: What is Utopia?  15:35 Game Round 2: The human blockchain and the vibrating web  21:31 Why removing "I" changes what emerges  23:55 Creative limitation: dropping "I," "you," and "we"  25:00 The Dispossessed: can an egoless society function?  31:00 Ego as the "operating self"  34:12 Duality, non-duality, and the porous individual  39:56 Wouldn't utopia welcome the ego?  41:28 The language problem: these words were made by men 43:25 Redefining “duality”  44:30 The feminine as "Yes, And"  48:56 How do we hold both polarities at once?  52:58 “Yes, And” as a principle of utopia  54:02 Spanish Revolution and the limits of hearing all voices  57:20 Tribes, time, and what "collective" really includes  1:00:40 Practicality as a masculine perspective  1:03:25 Wrapping up: lifting the creative limitations  1:04:50 The feminine “hijacked” this conversation  1:05:45 Takeaways: celebrating "Yes, And" — but who builds the roads?  1:09:10 More yang in the yin, more yin in the yang  1:10:31 Sensing into this without making sense  1:13:45 Invitation to listeners & farewell  1:15:05 Outro Find us here: * Life in Flow Podcast [https://lifeinflowgroup.substack.com/podcast] * Yulia Bogdanova [https://yuliabogdanova.substack.com/about] * Polina Khodova [http://coachingbypolina.com/] * Irina Mishina [https://www.instagram.com/new.eon.shift.eng/] 💌 Resources used under Creative Commons license: Music “Echolocation” by airtone, source: CcMixter Get full access to Life In Flow at www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe [https://www.lifeinflowgroup.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]