Waking Up With Ryan

What if your most important spiritual practice happens after you leave the yoga mat or meditation cushion? Ryan explores why meditation, yoga, and prayer are only preparation for the real work of spiritual growth: how we show up in everyday life. It’s easy to feel peaceful during a morning practice, but what happens when someone pushes your buttons, a relationship becomes difficult, or an old habit takes over? Drawing on A Co...

Why does spiritual awakening sometimes feel like such an uphill battle? Drawing on a metaphor from spiritual teacher Adyashanti, Ryan compares the journey of awakening to a rocket fighting against gravity. Just as a rocket needs tremendous force to escape Earth’s gravitational pull, we must work against the deeply ingrained beliefs and habits of the ego that keep pulling us back into old ways of thinking. But Ryan explores wh...

What if the meaning of life isn’t to accomplish anything, but simply to be alive? Drawing on the words of philosopher Alan Watts, Ryan challenges the idea that we’re here to build successful careers, achieve our goals, or make something of ourselves. Instead, he explores the possibility that our deepest purpose is to notice, appreciate, and participate in the extraordinary life already unfolding around us. When we stop ...

What if you've been praying for the wrong thing? Ryan challenges the way we often approach prayer — asking God or the universe to change our circumstances, solve our problems, or give us what we want. Instead, he suggests a more powerful kind of prayer: asking to be changed ourselves. Rather than praying for an easier life, what if we asked to release the fears, limiting beliefs, and sense of separation that keep us from reme...

Not every insight needs to become something you immediately share. Ryan reflects on the early days of his own awakening, when every new realization made him want to tell everyone — and how even that enthusiasm can become another way for the ego to take over. Instead of turning wisdom into a new identity as the “spiritual person,” he invites us to let each insight take root like a seed, giving it time to be tested,...

When life is good, we want it to stay that way. When life is hard, we’re afraid it will. Ryan explores the one thing we can count on in either case: everything changes. Our bodies, circumstances, relationships, thoughts, and seasons of life are always in motion — and attaching our sense of safety to any of them puts us on shaky ground. Instead, Ryan asks us to look beneath everything that comes and goes and notice what ...

Sometimes the deeper you go on your spiritual journey, the worse life seems to feel. Ryan compares awakening to anesthesia wearing off after surgery: the pain isn’t suddenly appearing — you’re becoming more able to feel what was already there. Greater awareness can make old relationships, patterns, and situations harder to tolerate, and even leave you wondering why everything seems to be falling apart. Ryan explor...

What if you could use the very mind that distracts you to become more present? Ryan pulls back the curtain on the practice he uses before recording each episode — quieting the mental noise so something deeper than his own thoughts can come through. He explores how an untrained “monkey mind” can cloud our experience like grime on a window, and how intentional language can turn that same mind into a tool for awakeni...

What if everything you think you know is getting in the way of what’s actually here? Ryan explores a paradox at the heart of awakening: the deeper you go, the less certain you become. Drawing on teachings from Buddhism, Christianity, Socrates, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, he makes the case for a “beginner’s mind” — releasing our need to know, explain, predict, and control so there’s room to actu...

Three weeks into fatherhood, Ryan keeps hearing the same warning: the moments you’re desperate to get through may become the ones you’d give anything to have back. From changing diapers and folding laundry to walking the dog or driving your kids to school, ordinary life can feel like a list of tasks to finish rather than a life to actually experience. Ryan explores what changes when we bring our full attention to these ...

The feelings you’re afraid will overwhelm you aren’t the problem — believing you can’t handle them is. Ryan uses the image of a rock dropped into a small bowl versus a vast lake to explore what happens when fear, worry, and other difficult emotions enter our lives. Rather than resisting those feelings and turning pain into suffering, the practice is to expand our sense of who we are and discover how much we ...

Stop trying to figure it all out. After a chance conversation with someone facing a major career transition, Ryan challenges the impulse to think, strategize, and force our way toward the “right” answer. Instead, he makes the case for asking the universe for guidance — and actually trusting what comes back. Ryan shares how that surrender has shaped some of the biggest decisions in his own life, from love and famil...

What if the first thing you did each morning wasn’t check your phone, run through your to-do list, or brace yourself for the day ahead? Ryan leads a short breath practice designed to ground you before the world starts pulling at your attention. Using a simple four-count inhale, hold, exhale, and hold, you’ll release tension, reconnect with your body, and create more space to meet the day with choice instead of reactivit...

Ryan sits down with actor Taye Diggs for a deeply personal conversation about the drive to keep achieving — and what happens when you finally stop. Taye opens up about growing up around poverty and abuse, being bullied for his dark skin, and discovering a sense of belonging and possibility through theater. He looks back at joining the original cast of Rent, becoming an unexpected sex symbol in How Stella Got Her Groove Back, ...

What if your spiritual practice is actually helping you avoid the very emotions you need to feel? Ryan explores spiritual bypassing — using ideas like “fear isn’t real” or “it’s just the ego” to stay disconnected from pain, anger, sadness, and resentment. He explains why emotions that aren’t fully felt don’t simply disappear; they stay stuck, shaping how we move through the worl...

Modern life makes it easy to avoid stillness — and the uncomfortable emotions that surface when there’s nothing left to distract us. Ryan uses the invention of electric light as a metaphor for how we’ve learned to escape the “dark,” both literally and within ourselves, where fear, pain, insecurity, and old wounds live. But avoiding those places keeps them unhealed. A guided practice invites you to beco...

You didn’t lose your light as you grew up — you learned to protect it. Ryan explores how childhood hurts, rejection, fear, and vulnerability teach us to close off parts of ourselves, building walls that can later block creativity, connection, love, and self-expression. The way back isn’t to become more confident or radiant, but to feel what those defenses were built to avoid. A guided practice follows, inviting yo...

Most of us decide who deserves our love based on how they act, whether we trust them, or whether they love us back. Ryan challenges that habit with a different idea: love doesn't have to be a response to someone else — it can be the way you choose to move through the world. He explores how judging who is "worthy" of love keeps us contracted, while seeing beyond personality, history, and ego helps us remember our shared humani...

Those on a path of growth tend to be great givers — and terrible receivers. Ryan flips the script: refusing to receive isn't humility, it's denying someone else the joy of giving. You're deserving of receiving simply because of who you are, not what you do or give. A guided practice with the mantra "I am willing to receive" helps open you into that flow, plus a nudge to ask for the support you actually need.

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