The Courage Wolf: Recent Episodes
The Courage Wolf
Today I have the honour of talking with three time Canadian kickboxing champion Rick Joslin, who among other honours bestowed upon him, was awarded his 8th degree black belt in 1998. Rick and his son Jeff Joslin, are both champions and distinguished members of the Canadian Black Belt Hall of Fame.
We’re going to talk about a lot of things during our time together. We might even talk about martial arts a time or two.
But what we’re going to talk about mostly is the journey that Rick finds himself on now, which is the journey that all of us will take one day. That journey is towards the end of his life and the start of the next phase of his soul’s existence.
Here is the link to Jeff Joslin's TedX talk about his father called Legacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKE7JWNm4M8&pp=ygUXamVmZiBqb3NsaW4gdGVkeCBsZWdhY3k%3D
Cheryl Ilov is an author, dancer, martial artist, and physical therapist. She's also a former chronic pain patient who began a journey of self-healing after she was told by medical professionals that she would never recover.
Well recover she did. And more! Cheryl began training in the ancient martial art of the Ninja after she was sexually assaulted by her doctor. Cheryl was 47 at the time and became her sensei's only female black belt at the age of 57 when she attained her second degree black belt.
This is an amazing conversation with a fascinating person who does not quit!
I had a chance to visit with two amazing people this past week who just happened to be two of my previous guests on the podcast.
If you want to hear one of the most inspirational stories that I have ever heard, check out this week's replay episode with John Chartier. You'll be glad you did!
Chartier and his wife Rhonda were on vacation in the Bahamas celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary.
John was swimming, when a rolling wave hit him from behind instantly turning him into a quadriplegic.
After two major operations, 7 months in acute care, and 4 hours per day of physiotherapy, John managed to find purpose in his life and is now a mentor, public speaker and the author of his upcoming book: Embracing the Waves!
Stephanie and Paul Miller had just celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary and were preparing for life as empty nesters.
Life was good. They both had good jobs, they had two beautiful children, they loved each other and spent time hiking and being outdoors with each other and as a family.
What could possibly go wrong?
On Friday the 13th of July 2018 the unthinkable happened. Paul went missing while on a hike in Joshua Tree National Park in California.
Join me on this episode of The Courage Wolf podcast as I talk with Leah Gater, who is an extremely knowledgeable physiotherapist who specializes in vestibular rehabilitation and the treatment of vertigo!
In this episode we take a deep dive into dizziness, imbalance, vertigo and specifically how to diagnose and successfully treat and fix BPPV.
You'll be glad you did!
Ashley Orr is a certified instructor in the Wim Hof Method which combines breathwork, cold immersion and mindset training practices to help us with fear, disease, mental challenges and many other obstacles. The Wim Hof Method has been proven in university studies to strengthen our immune systems, lower systemic inflammation and many other benefits.
Join us today for a deep dive into the method and find out how simple, inexpensive and helpful it can be for you.
And, it doesn't take long to do!
Our 100th episode of The Courage Wolf podcast was dedicated to a fallen hero: Police Service Dog Troy!
Join us for this replay of our 100th episode where we spoke with Paul Johnston and honoured the memory of Troy.
On the 25th of February 1992 Constable Paul Johnston was dispatched to a domestic violence call involving a firearm.
Another officer was in an adjoining yard with no cover. Troy saved the officer by engaging the gunman, but Troy paid the ultimate sacrifice that night.
Paul Johnston has worn Troy's police service badge around his neck ever since.
Randy Papple was a paramedic for 42 years, ending his service in 2019 as Deputy Chief of Brant County EMS. Randy has seen Post Traumatic Stress takes its toll on many first responders. He has made it his passion to bring resources together so first responders can deal successfully with the challenges that they face with their own mental health doing the incredibly difficult job they do day after day.
We talk about a number of things, including how an incident from 25 years ago came back to haunt him until he got the counselling he needed to resolve the trauma.
Al Romano was a 26 year veteran police officer who by his own admission did not take care of himself physically or by eating properly. When he and Debbie got married and he retired, their lifestyle packed 50 lbs on Al’s already unhealthy frame.
Al’s wake up call came in the form of a near fatal cardiac event followed by quintuple bypass surgery.
Al said his goodbyes to his family because he truly did not believe that he was going to wake up from that surgery.
But wake up he did, in more ways than one. Actually both he and his wife Debbie woke up to a healthier way to live, proving once again that it’s never too late to start.
Keep listening to find out how you can start living a healthier life no matter where you are in your journey or how old you are!
Have we got a great guest for you today! Dave Muller spent over 33 years in policing with Peel and Guelph Police and he retired almost 5 weeks ago today.
Dave’s story’s is nothing short of a miracle in that he fully recovered from a head on collision in 2007 in which he should have died. The accident forced him away from policing for over 10 years while he explored his own recovery through various treatment modalities.
In Dave's recovery journey he received his Master’s in medical Qi Gong therapy, and if you don’t have any idea what that is make sure you stay tuned because that, in and of itself is a game changer.
A certification in traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture
And a Master’s of Reiki
And he is teaching some of these powerful tools to new and veteran police officers to help them in their policing journeys.
David Richman used to be a sedentary, overweight smoker who transformed himself into an ultra endurance athlete.
David lost his beloved sister to terminal brain cancer in 2007 and he’s hosted a number of fundraisers in her memory to raise funds for various cancer organizations.
Over the past 10 years David’s completed over 50 triathlons and more than 50 ultra distance runs. His most recent adventure was a nearly 5,000 mile solo bike ride across the United States. He did this to meet the people who stories he tells in his award winning book called: Cycle of Lives, 15 people’s stories, 5,000 miles and a journey through the emotional chaos of cancer.
This is a powerful book that touches us all!
I’d like to dedicate this episode of the podcast to all of our listeners who’ve lost someone special and are feeling it more as these holidays draw near.
May this episode help you in some way and make it just a little easier for you, for us, to make it through.
The podcast you’re about to hear is a story about love and about grief and about creating her own way back to happiness and ultimately empowerment.
Since the death of her husband Rob, Marie Alessi has founded a movement with the same title as her book: “Loving life after Loss”. A movement that now ripples with massive impact on a soul level around the world.
A few months ago I was honoured to have been asked to be a guest on a podcast called Live your SPA life with Diane Halfman who is a former police officer and who is now a successful entrepreneur.
Diane and I had a great conversation and we talked about a number of things including mindset, personal safety and protection, life after policing. It was a lot of fun!
Next week’s guest is Marie Alessi from Australia. Marie lost her husband of 13 years suddenly, on the 12th of June 2018. Since that fateful day, Marie has created a world wide soul movement called Loving Life after Loss, which is helping thousands of people world wide reframe and move past their grief while still honouring the loved ones they’ve lost.
This episode of The Courage Wolf podcast is a very short update on the next two episodes, what we're doing over the holiday season, and more.
We’ve been honoured on past episodes of having paramedics, police officers, firefighters, correctional officers, military personnel and civilians on the podcast, as well as a number of people from the healing professions who help us to heal from our traumas.
But we’ve never had an emergency communicator, or dispatcher as they used to be called, as a guest on the podcast.
I’d like you to join me in welcoming Nadine Leduc to the show and to listen to what she, and her research have to say about the problems that face our emergency communicators. Problems that largely arise from the toxic environments that their leaders and consequently their organizations have created.
On today's short solocast I'm going to talk about something that makes us older prematurely, and, what to do about that.
And I'm also going to introduce our guest for next Monday. Nadine Leduc was an emergency service communicator and recently completed her Master's thesis on toxic environments within first responder organizations and how they relate specifically to emergency services communicators.
Even though today's episode is short, it may be one of the most impactful episodes that you might listen to, especially if you think that YOU are old.
This episode’s going to be fun. To be honest, I hate board games. I haven’t always been this way and when today’s special guest approached me about doing a podcast on board games, my first thought was “I don’t think so!”
But, Diana Indries has changed my thinking about board games and I’m glad she did and I’m glad she contacted me. Who knows, I might even become a better person because of her game called Better Topics.
Stay tuned for a great conversation!
In this short solocast I want to tell you about a world renowned Canadian artist who I had the privilege of meeting last month.
And, I want to tell you about a few changes to the podcast over the next three months.
Terry Oliver here with this edition of The Courage Wolf podcast.
We’ve got a knockout of an episode for you today as you’ll probably be able to tell when you start listening to the podcast.
Today I am going to be talking with 4 people who are living their best lives in spite of having Parkinson’s disease, and their coach in a workout that’s helping them far beyond what anyone initially hoped, and that is boxing. Rock Steady Boxing to be exact.
On the 22nd of April 2006 Cpl Matthew Dinning made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.
Matthew was killed along with 3 other Canadian soldiers when a roadside bomb exploded, killing all four instantly.
The Courage Wolf podcast and myself are honoured to bring you our first podcast honouring a fallen Canadian soldier.
Please join us as I speak with Laurie and Lincoln Dinning, Matthew’s mother and father, and a surprise guest, as we remember not only a soldier, but a very special human being.
Today I’ll be talking with Diane Halfman, who among other things is a former Seattle police officer and a current consultant, trainer and podcaster herself.
This is going to be a very interesting conversation in which we’ll unpack some great advice from Diane that she learned in policing and brought over to the private sector.
We going to talk about a number of things that are very important right now in this somewhat post pandemic world. The first being fear and how to deal with it! The second being intuition. How to listen to it and develop it so that we can choose the right path in life.
And to find out the third topic, you're just going to have to keep listening!
Sometimes all the cosmic tumblers in the universe align and something magical happens. And sometimes that something magical is a person’s life being saved, or your own life being saved.
Today you're going to hear how a number of things happened, one right after another to save Charlene Madden's life, and then you’re going to hear how she payed it forward and saved a life herself.
And she continues to work towards saving just one life, and then another and then another.
When you become a first responder you don’t know how you’ll react in a real situation until it happens. And for the most part, first responders do not get very much training to handle what they’ll experience, if any at all.
So that means that the great majority of first responders are not prepared for the things that will inevitably happen to them. Some make it through just fine. Some don’t.
Our guest on the podcast today experienced some traumatic events in her police career but it was an event on the 5th of April 2018 that pushed her out of policing and into her journey of healing.
Hello everyone. Just a short and sweet podcast to thank everyone for listening for the past two years and hopefully for listening to us over the next year and beyond.
Today’s guest is the Director of Sales and Affiliate Marketing for the Inspired Performance Institute. Mark Aylward is part of a team that is dedicated to helping people heal from post traumatic stress and other OSI’s.
We’re going to start with finding out more about Mark and his story and we’re going to end with finding out about this ground breaking program offered by the IPI that supposedly has a 95%+ success rate in healing OSI’s!
The link for listeners of The Courage Wolf podcast is: www.gettipp.com/wolf
About three months ago I had the pleasure of being a guest on The Femininja Project podcast.
The host is Cheryl Ilov who was my guest on episode 145 of our podcast.
Cheryl is a great host and I thought that I would publish this episode for your listening pleasure.
You might find out more about me that you ever cared to know.
We had a great conversation about a lot of things including mindset, awareness, humility and courage.
I hope you enjoy our conversation. Here goes!!!
Derek Davis was a 16 year paramedic who has been affected by post traumatic stress. Join us to hear about Derek's resiliency plan and the innovative program he went through at Project Trauma Support. And, we talk about how his wife of 15 years "pulls the ripcord" to let Derek know that he needs take a step back and care for himself.
Then we'll talk about how Derek will be raising funds for Project Trauma Support by "Everesting" this September!
Dr Wood is the founder of the Inspired Performance Institute and is the author of two books about eliminating your trauma from your life entirely!
I know so many people who’ve been traumatized in their lives and so many of them go from treatment modality to modality searching for a way to make the pain go away.
As Dr Wood says, the trauma that you’ve experienced has created error messages and glitches in your brain, body and nervous systems and by resetting your system they can be gone, forever.
Join us today to find out how the trauma that’s been plaguing you for years may be able to be eliminated entirely!
Rob Leathen is a career firefighter of 28 years. In 2019 Rob was diagnosed with severe Post Traumatic Stress and severe depression and has been off work since April of 2019.
One of the things that Rob told me in one of our conversations is that he was currently in the process of working on his Post Traumatic Growth.
Not only is Rob a firefighter, but he is a vocal advocate on mental health issues for first responders as well as being a mental health educator.
And, as if that is not enough for any one person, Rob Leathen is also a speaker, a writer and an artist.
Fire Chief Michael Seth has been open and honest about his mental health challenges because he sees this as a way to help other first responders come forward to ask for, or to seek help.
We talk about how the traumatic calls that Michael experienced on the job manifested as post traumatic stress.
We also talk about the journey that set Michael on the path to helping other first responders with their own physical and mental health, and how that journey has molded him into a unique leader.
4-1/2 years ago this month Ashley Wurth gave up drugs and alcohol altogether and started a new life. She says: I swear the world just wasn’t this pretty before.
What a great quote!
Ashley told me that her bike saved her. She said that it changed her perspective and gave her the outlook that she needed. And she told me that it’s her “go to” coping skill.
I think these words resonate with a lot of us who ride bikes.
Keeping listening as Ashley shares her story about how she got up one more time than she was knocked down. And she was knocked down a lot.
This episode is all about journeys. The journey of a mother through her 17 year cancer experience. The journey of a daughter who was with her every step of the way, and the 25 year long journey of a very special book. A book that was started by Marilyn Anne Hughes when she was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and the 8 year journey to finish the book by her daughter Emily Hughes Johnson.
Come along with Emily and me in a very special conversation about her mother, her life, and about this amazing book, Bird of Paradise, and how it came to be.
My guest on the podcast today is Ashley Michelle who narrowly escaped being murdered in 2016 in London, Ontario.
Ashley’s story is incredible for any number of reasons.
She managed to keep her wits about her and get away from the person who was going to kill her. She got through the trauma and the trial and the aftermath and is now on a mission to help as many people as she can, get through their own traumas.
Please join me today for a special conversation with an incredibly brave young woman.
This episode is Part 2 of the two part series that I did with Daryl Elliott Green, who along with his partner Constable Sharnelle Cole and his sergeant were shot at close range while responding to a call for service involving firearms.
Miraculously, all three officers survived but spent years recovering physically and emotionally.
Please join us for an in depth look at how one man regained his life and is now teaching others how to regain theirs.
My special guest is a Brother police officer from Australia who was shot twice after responding to a call involving firearms in the wee hours of the 1st of May 2000.
Daryl Elliott Green was with his partner Constable Sharnelle Cole and his Sergeant Chris Mulhall. All three were shot at close range with a .22 rifle by the gunman who then fled the scene.
Even after being shot, Daryl went after the gunman before being taken to hospital.
Miraculously, all three officers survived their injuries but were left to deal with the aftermath: years of physical rehabilitation and years of ongoing emotional trauma.
Please join Daryl and I on the podcast today to find out how one man survived the years of recovery and has now made it his life’s mission to talk about how you can survive your own trauma, whatever that may be.
On the 14th of June I was honoured to be asked to be part of a panel discussing post traumatic stress and other occupational stress injuries at the PTSDx event held at the beautiful venue: Centre in the Square in Kitchener.
Ron Sonoda, who’s a former paramedic who struggled with post traumatic stress, and his brother Rob Sonoda, who is the Director of Operations for Centre in the Square, put together this event with the purpose of helping to de-stigmatize PTSD and other occupational stress injuries and provide education around the possible avenues towards healing.
This topic is so important that I would like to present to you a replay of the episode that I did with Boots on the Ground Founder, Dave McLennan and with Rob Leathen who volunteers with the organization. In this episode we talk about the importance of battling the stigma that still surrounds mental health injuries in the first responder professions.
This episode is just a little different because the guest is me. Julie Jones was our guest a couple of weeks ago and she asked me to be her guest on her Get Shit Done podcast.
What a treat. This was the first time that I have ever been a guest on a podcast.
Julie knew that I had a training company and a podcast and she wanted to talk with me about life after policing and also she wanted to know if I had any advice to people thinking about starting a business for when they retire from their main career.
And, lo and behold, I did. And this advice applies to everyone. Not just police officers.
Chris Thomas was an Air Force brat who developed his love for cycling after high school. Chris quickly fell in love with road cycling and became an avid cyclist and racer. But, as with a lot of people, alcohol got the best of Chris and almost destroyed him.
10 days before his 50th birthday Chris had a dream job and a dream life, but he was also drinking 2 - 3 bottles of vodka a week with a bottle of scotch thrown in for good measure.
Somehow, Chris found the strength to stop drinking altogether, and he found the strength to get back on his bike again.
And, somewhere in his journey, Chris found the one person who believed in him and the last person who believed in him and he started a new story.
Keep listening folks. We’re going on a little ride!
Julie Jones is a former police officer and a former SWAT officer and, she’s much more than that!
She’s an award winning international speaker, she’s the author of the internationally best selling book: Stop Waiting and Start Living. She’s an amazing coach and she’s the Chief Inspiration Officer with her Get Shit Done Platform and podcast.
As a former police officer Julie knows that there’s no promise of tomorrow for any of us and she uses that knowledge to coach individuals to face their fear and live in the moment.