The Soul of Life: Recent Episodes
Keith Miller
My mission is to bring together medical and mental health healers, scientists, musicians, athletes, and spiritual leaders to find deeper meaning and joy to energize our work, connect to life deeply, and learn to be ourselves in a rapidly changing world, so that we can innovate and achieve powerful results where we are needed most.
In this episode I speak to Norma Stevens, LCPC, the Director of Therapy Operations at Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland. Sunstone partners with companies like Beckley PsyTech, COMPASS Pathways, MindMed, MAPS (Lykos Theraputics), Reunion Neuroscience, and Usona to run studies that aim to establish the gold standard for psychedelic treatments of complex mental health challenges.
Sunstone offers research trials in a unique partnership with the Acquilino Cancer Center, a research program within Adventist HealthCare. Sunstone works with psilocybin, MDMA, 5-MeO-DMT, and LSD in conjunction with psychotherapy. We discuss the role of psychological integration after a psychedelic journey and the importance of a therapeutic set and setting.
You're in for a treat! Kathryn DeYoung and Zach Berman are two friends and colleagues who are also therapists that got roped into joining one of Calliope's ketamine-therapy retreats. Actually they both volunteered, each for interesting personal reasons. Each of the several ketamine experiences I facilitated for them were always equally profound, hilarious, and eye-opening. You'll get to hear what The Universe told Zack, once he reached its edge, and why Kathryn got "Money! Sex! Power!" tattooed on her brain after one journey. Both informative and entertaining, these two had fun along the way.
In this episode I interview the brainchild behind an increasingly influential online wiki for psychological healing, The Integral Guide to Well-Being. Levi, who prefers to stay behind-the-scenes and doesn't publicize his identity, created an interactive, graphic notebook that has around 1,300 pages, and has tens of thousands of unique readers each month.
The Integral Guide is a choose-your-own-adventure field guide that Levi began writing to aid his personal trauma recovery and self-development and to feel empowered and better-equipped to lead an enriched life. He explains that when he was debilitated by symptoms of Complex PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and OCD he wanted clear and useful help, and especially disliked people trying to "sell healing" to him.
You can find The Integral Guide at www.integralguide.com
This episode features Paula Marie Scatoloni, a psychotherapist that uses sound vibrations to reset hyper- or hypo-active nervous systems after trauma. This method is called psychoacoustics, and Paula uses a tool called the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) to stimulate the tiny muscles of the inner ear, "massaging" the polyvagal nerve, and activating the body's safety, belonging, and relaxation system. SSP has been shown to relieve symptoms of dissociative depression, and anxiety.
SSP was originally designed to treat Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) but has been widely used to treat a range of mental health and health symptoms. The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) is a creative intervention based on the polyvagal theory (Steven Porges) for improving social communication impairments by reducing auditory hypersensitivity and improving human speech processing.
The SSP rehabilitates the middle ear muscle function using filtered music that is tuned to the specific frequency of human speech. Previous studies of children with ASD using an early version of SSP reported significant improvements in their sensory problems, including auditory processing, listening, and hearing sensitivities.
From the rhythmic beats of indigenous drums to the delicate tones of Tibetan bowls, sound therapy has evolved and translated across cultural boundaries for centuries. Ancient Wisdom traditions know the benefits of using sound medicinally to supersede the mind and influence the body and nervous system. In yogic traditions that use chanting and manta, sound is vibration and vibration is the essence of all things.
Paula Marie Scatoloni holds a Master’s in Social Work and is a certified Healing Arts Practitioner in NC. She is trained in many cutting-edge perspectives on trauma and the nervous system including Somatic Experiencing. Paula serves as a mentor and consultant for the Safe and Sound Protocol. She is a co-developer of the Embodied Recovery Institute and has been at the leading edge of her field for decades developing treatment programs, teaching, and leading teams at institutions such as Duke University. Paula seamlessly blends science and spirituality together in her unique programs that integrate psychology, neuroscience, and somatics with sound and bioenergetic approaches such as Reiki. Her unique programs and services can be deeply transformative for practitioners who are interested in blending Eastern and Western perspectives. Paula's website is https://paulascatoloni.com/
I believe that therapists, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who recommend ketamine--and more and more are doing just that--should have a firsthand experience of ketamine themselves.
Today I speak with Maria Hernandez, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia, who did just that. Maria was a participant at our Bethesda, Maryland ketamine assisted psychotherapy clinic, Calliope Health.
We talk about the personal reasons each of us was attracted to ketamine for our own mental health and the overlap between the disassociative effects of ketamine and the hypnotic technique of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. I talk about my depression and how ketamine helped me get over my horrible fear of a divorce that needed to happen and Maria shares about how her ketamine and psychedelic journeys have helped her connect in healing ways to her son Andrew, who took his own life a few years ago.
I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion.
She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.
Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compassion and how anger can be compassionate, and other questions like:
- Why are men better at self-compassion than women?
- What we do find is there’s a small but consistent gender difference that actually favors men.
- Does the fact that women tend to score lower than men on self-compassion has an impact on the salary gap between men and women.
- Is there a link between so-called “compulsive caretaking of others” and autoimmune disorders and some kinds of cancer?
Kristin leads us in a self-compassion meditation, and I ask her about the infectious positivity and compassion of the television series character, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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Dr. John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.* He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe.
Mather was winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics with George Smoot for their work in the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission in the mid 1970s to measure the heat radiation from the Big Bang. Mather and his team measured the cosmic microwave background radiation—basically very faint radio noise astronomers had theorized could only come from the most distant events at the beginning of time as we know it—and their measurements confirmed the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large infrared telescope will be the premier space observatory of the next decade, and Mather has been the Senior Scientist on this project from it's origin in 1995. The James Webb is scheduled to launch in 2021 and will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
We discuss Mather's long career at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, his work on COBE and JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the planning of the Nancy Roman Grace Space Telescope.
*This episode was origionally published in February 2021.
- Replay from S2 * Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert, and author of many books on sex including Getting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together.
She's a psychotherapist, Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, university teacher, TEDx speaker and is the host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. Tammy is also a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Imago Relationship therapist, and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor.
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Nelson about what it takes to have a vibrant sex life with a monogamous partner and how cheating during COVID has taken on new proportions.
We talk about the mindset that’s required to prevent or recover from infidelity and why it can be an opportunity.
We discuss several myths about infidelity, sex, and eroticism:
"Women actually do cheat for sex. Men tend to cheat for emotional reasons."
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Do all affairs happen because of sexual problems?
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Does communication and empathy have the power to fix sexual frustration?
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Why does emotional closeness sometimes seem to kill erotic passion?
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And perhaps the million dollar question: Why does Oprah call it her "vajayjay?"
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How do you know that you’re conscious? I mean, don’t you just kind of know?
"The single thing that we know best from our own first person perspective and understand least from the perspective of objective science."
But are we seeing signs of a dawning enlightenment in this field—signs of progress in how we understand and study consciousness? I think this is important for everyone—but especially professionals like me who teach people how to have healthy minds—we kind of need to know what a mind is in the first place.
I talk to Dr. Jonathan Schooler, a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at U.C. Santa Barbara, someone who’s Resonance Theory of Consciousness is kind of become like a Grand Central Station—a hub that 32,000 academics cite in their research. (Note: The introduction to this episode misstates this as 19,000 citations).
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7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In this replay from Season One, I speak to Deirdre Wolownick-Honnald, the mother of Free Solo superstar rock climber Alex Honnald. I learn from his Mom about the human side of this person so many think of as superhuman. Alex’s Dad, she says, was a person with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. “He was in a bubble and no one could get in.” I ask Dierdre about “stonewalling,” a term we use in marriage and relationship therapy to describe being emotionally shut off to others, and whether this applies to goals Alex sets for himself. Wolonick shares about her book, The Sharp End of Life, about overcoming hardship in life and taking risks.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
I speak with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of an evidence-based psychotherapeutic model called Self-Leadership (also known as Internal Family System’s therapy or IFS) that is widely recognized as one of the most compassionate and comprehensive psychotherapies available. He is on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Self-Leadership is basically a sophisticated owner’s manual for the mind. It gives users a real-time pathway to routinely instigate new neural connections within their mindbody system—the holy grail of skill acquisition and learning. We also speak about the Mary Trump book Too Much and Never Enough, and I get Dick's thoughts on the effects of abuse that occurs in families like Trump's.
This episode is a "best-of" replay from S1 of The Soul of Life. In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Michael Mithoefer, the lead investigator that has successfully piloted the first-ever study of MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, into the third and final stage of FDA approval for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. Mithoefer is featured as a lead character in the 2015 book Acid Test by award-winning journalist Tom Shroder, a meticulously researched history of the controversy and unprecedented healing properties associated with psychedelics.
The FDA granted Dr. Mithoefer and his colleagues “breakthrough status” to expedite its application for approval because they’re seeing such dramatic results working with veterans tormented by complex PTSD which is notoriously difficult to treat even with the best and most expensive therapies.
“We’ve had people with uncontrollable rage just have that stop happening after one session.”
I talk with Michael about the safety of therapeutically-supervised MDMA and how it works in the brain. MDMA is referred to as an “empathogen,” because it activates our natural ability to be openhearted, friendly, and collaborative, something that immediately gets switched off when the brain goes into safe mode while experiencing emotional turmoil—even garden variety stress can do this, like a parent that yells every day, or a boss that expects to get perfection but only gives criticism.
But for now, Dr. Mithoefer is using particularly egregious forms of trauma—combat experience—as the test use case with the FDA. And unlike many people’s idea of all illegal drugs being dangerous or addictive, a full course of MDMA is given in micro-doses only 2-3 times in about a month—accompanied by an all-day psychotherapy session each time—but the patient essentially walks away born-again. They report seeing the world not just the way it was before their trauma but with eyes that are profoundly capable of seeing gratitude, joy and meaning in life.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
"What if I could show you a way to reconnect with the whole of who you are, in service to your highest purpose as you know it? What if I could help you break out of the invisible prison in which you have been living--the one that keeps you small and scared?"
Today on the Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Angela Heubner, author of Jailbreak: The Making and Breaking of Our Invisible Prisons; An IFS Informed Escape.
Angela describes this beautiful model of natural multiplicity of the mind, in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS): “We are inherently good.” And she describes just how different IFS is from conventional psychology like cognitive behavioral therapy. Angela talks about the most common protective parts of us, what she calls our prison guards: the pleaser, the worry-wort, the perfectionist, and the logician.
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Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
George and I talk about the tragic mistake of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who actually encouraged people to smoke if it helped them quit alcohol. "My alcoholic and drug addict people painfully but successfully get sober only to die of nicotine." Bill Wilson himself died a miserable death. Kolodner has been learning the cutting edge psychotherapy intervention known as Internal Family Systems and putting it to use especially to confidently speak hope to parts that feel despair toward a seemingly unstoppable addiction.
"Your doctor doesn't even know what the nerve innervation of the female genitalia is—which in 2022 is mind boggling."
Today I speak with Dr. Rachel Rubin, a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist.
"I’m a boner doctor."
To talk with her about the most common and serious sexual problems: Problems regarding libido, orgasm, arousal, and pain. And just how many simple and life-changing tools are available for you to take advantage of.
"We used to think it was all in people’s heads. The truth is actually it’s not very often in people’s heads. It can be a very scary marker of future cardiovascular problems."
Rachel is passionate about educating women—especially about how to take joy and pleasure in their bodies.
"It is a VERY common thing in female patients. They’re disgusted by the sight of their own genitals. It’s a very universal, icky thing...how do we change that?"
We discuss how important it is to be comfortable thinking in depth and talking in depth about our sexuality in order to untangle the painful knots that are bound to occur between couples even in healthy relationships. And I ask Dr. Rubin about the bias in the clinical counseling field to focus A LOT on psychological and emotional issues when it comes to low desire and low libido.
"We hate the idea…we HATE the idea that a pill can boost a women’s sexual function. Because we want it ALL to be psychosocial."
She has made it her mission to address fears people have about addressing the biology that underpins apathy toward sex.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
"'God' is not God’s real name." Spirituality does not shrink and fold itself tightly into the pages of a how-to manual.
"The word 'soul' is one of those finger-pointing-at-the-moon words. I can’t see my soul. I can’t see your soul. I can’t measure it with a tape measure or weigh it on a scale."
Russell Siler Jones wrote "Spirit in Session: Working with Your Client’s Spirituality (and Your Own) in Psychotherapy."
"It’s close to 90% of the people in the United States that think of themselves as spiritual. To leave that out in a conversation in therapy is like leaving one of the best players on the bench."
We know that there is a direct link between human well-being and the health of the natural environment.
When I heard about Tierra Curry’s ecological conservation work it wasn’t from reading a scholarly article about forest bathing or how much green space there is per square mile. I heard about Tierra because she had the brass to use her own body as a way to start conversations about protecting natural resources.
Last summer, Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, immersed herself in 108 rivers across the U.S. in order to bring attention to the state of water quality and it’s vital role in our own health and sustainability.
We discuss why we need new ways to think about who we are as a society. Are we just producers and consumers? Or are we more than the jobs we do and the things we have? And how do we stay hopeful and motivated in an age of climate fatigue?
Today on the Soul of Life I speak to Dr. Lesley Tate-Gould, a psychotherapist that uses Somatic Experiencing to help people overcome trauma.
Lesley runs the Lido Wellness Center, an outpatient trauma and counseling practice in Newport Beach, California.
We talk about her specialization in a form of body-focused trauma treatment called Somatic Experiencing, or SE, and her experience of benefitting from SE herself. SE was developed by Peter Levine, and like IFS therapy, deviates from the norms of traditional talk therapy and its typical cognitive and rational focus.
"Sometimes emotions are like people would rather stay away from them." Instead, SE focuses on so-called “bottom-up” neurological processing. "Emotions are, in their simplest form, they’re there to be felt."
We talk about how it’s possible to attend to feeling and sensation in a deep way when you aren’t narrating and talking and explaining.
"Some of these physiologically stuck features [like Turrets] are in a feedback loop and it wants to find a way out."
And we discuss our similar personal journeys, needing to be patient zero, using our own medicine.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:"
https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My FREE 2-hour Seminar: Slowing the Mind to Open the Heart:
https://peacemindful.com/p/slowing-the-mind-to-open-the-heart Join my Facebook
Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
Find out more about my guest, Lesley Tate-Gould and the Lido Wellness Center in Newport Beach, CA: https://lidowellnesscenter.com/team/lesley-a-tategould/
Today I speak with Dr. Daniel Siegel, founder of Interpersonal Neurobiology, about the mind and how Internal Family Systems (IFS) may function in the brain.
Dr. Siegel is someone I consider to be one of the most thoughtful and clear innovators in teaching and talking about neurobiology and how it affects our behaviors—and not just behaviors we can see but the behavior and patterns of our mind.
He created a field of study within neurobiology called interpersonal neurobiology: It addresses how the biological processes within my body at any given time are affected and changed by the biological processes going on inside the bodies of people I interact with, care for, and depend upon and vice versa.
I love hearing Dan speak about how we have healthy minds when we are connected to the various parts of us that have very distinct needs and drives. This is what he calls an integrated mind—like spokes on a wheel connected to the hub, and what is synonymous with the IFS concept of Self.
Dan speaks persuasively about the linkages between physics—and even quantum physics, the way energy behaves at the incredibly small subatomic scale—and our sense of consciousness.
Dan's Wheel of Awareness Meditations: https://drdansiegel.com/wheel-of-awareness/
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
This video was livestreamed on 1/28/22 and can be watched here: https://youtu.be/qs-2QGsjuWE
My heart is broken and grieving with the Thomas family and the Magruder community after the shooting of a 15 year-old at Col. Magruder High School in Rockville, MD on January 22nd.
I'm speaking today to help create a public space where other parents can connect in order to heal, learn, and collaborate with hard-working county and school staff who care for our children every day.
I'm the parent of two children in Montgomery County Public Schools, and husband to a MCPS teacher. I've been a social worker for 20 years and run two private psychotherapy clinics specializing in trauma recovery and relationships, and I host The Soul of Life psychology and spirituality podcast.
If my message resonates in some way, or makes you uncomfortable, I hope you would make that known and please post a comment here: https://youtu.be/qs-2QGsjuWE
My hope is that if we come together we can begin work of advocating for an increase in staffing for social workers and counselors in our schools.
Brian Lagerstrom shows people how to make food on YouTube. But he's also a chef in the real world.
"You can make world class dough with a bowl and a spoon. Truly. That’s all you need."
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
The James Webb Space telescope—decades in the making—finally launched from Earth recently and promises to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Who better about this milestone in astronomy than astronaut veteran of 5 space flights and former NASA science administrator, John Grunsfeld.
Grunsfeld became known as the Hubble Telescope’s repair man, logging more than 58 hours in 5 space walks and three repair trips to the Hubble before being the last person to touch it in 2009.
We talk about the risks of space flight, and I ask John how he felt flying in the space shuttle after the 2nd total crew loss in the 2003 Columbia accident.
"The weakness of the shuttle which we always known is the heat protection. You’re enveloped in a 2000 degree plasma. If that thermal protection is compromised then it’s a very bad day."
Would we solve the environmental crisis that we face if world leaders had the chance to see the earth’s fragile bubble from space, the way John has?
We talk about how human emotions play a role in scientific research bias and the astonishing speed of technological development of the last 200 years.
And finally I ask this NASA insider for the honest truth about UAPs.
Note: If you love astronomy you’ll also want to listen to my interview of Nobel Laureate and Science Director for the James Webb telescope, John Mather, in Season One.
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie, a short story that is the first work of fiction to sweep the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy awards. Ken is the author of an epic fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty, in which the heroes are engineers, not wizards.
Some of Ken’s stories have been adapted for animation or film, and AMC is making a TV show based on his stories in The Hidden Girl.
Liu is trained as an attorney and worked as a software engineer. His work translating many Chinese sci-fi authors into English has helped many of these authors become huge successes in the U.S., most notably Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, which Netflix just announced it acquired with several other books for what is rumored to be close to $1B.
Ken says his fiction often projects East Asian history and culture onto the backdrop of the modern American Empire and says our traditional association with Roman History in the U.S. is an artificial rigidity he hopes to bend.
"We just have a refusal to accept that the story of America includes Asian voices," says Liu.
Finally, Ken speaks about one of my favorite subjects—how our mind and our sense of Self or Soul—is actually a continuous construction process.
I ask Ken to do a little experiment with me and reflect on his own mind’s construction process listening to me read back to him some of his own writing.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow
or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
Dave Ungrady has been a man on a mission to tell the story of University of Maryland Basketball star Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose two days after he was drafted to the Boston Celtics in June 1986. He's the author of Born Ready: The Mixed Legacy of Len Bias.
Next week Len Bias will finally be inducted into the NCAA Hall of Fame.
For a long time leadership within University of Maryland athletics and some of the larger basketball world looked at Bias’ death simply as a story of tragedy and wanted to move on. But Ungrady has long sought to tell the story of Bias’ legacy as a player and as a lesson for young athletes today.
Ungrady is set to release a new documentary and podcast series to coincide with Bias being inducted into the NCAA hall of fame.
We talk about the comparisons between Bias and Michael Jordan. No doubt the NBA in the era of Jordan would have been even more vibrant with Len Bias.
We discuss former U.S. Drug Zhar Robert DuPont’s statement that Len Biases overdose from cocaine was the single most important date in U.S. history of drug abuse next to the founding of AA.
Bias also become a word used by journalists to describe the even bigger story unfolding beneath the Len Bias personal tragedy—Bias as in racial bias that became law when, just months after Len’s death, congress enacted harsh mandatory minimum sentences for possession of crack with paltry sentences for possession of cocaine.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow
or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion.
She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.
Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compassion and how anger can be compassionate, and other questions like:
- Why are men better at self-compassion than women?
- What we do find is there’s a small but consistent gender difference that actually favors men.
- Does the fact that women tend to score lower than men on self-compassion has an impact on the salary gap between men and women.
- Is there a link between so-called “compulsive caretaking of others” and autoimmune disorders and some kinds of cancer?
Kristin leads us in a self-compassion meditation, and I ask her about the infectious positivity and compassion of the television series character, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
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I speak with Father Isaac Keeley, Trappist monk and Director of the Spencer Brewery at St. Joseph’s Abbey in the Central Massachusetts town of Spencer (my hometown).
The Trappist monks of Spencer have lived a life of solitude and prayer on a 2,000 acre farm with a modest business selling jams, preserves, and handmade ceremonial garments. But 10 years ago the brothers of Spencer started researching ways to raise their income significantly.
"We know there are 6 monastic breweries in Belgium, one of whom has been doing it since the 1580s. So we said well they’ve been doing it that long, there must be some compatibilities between the rhythms of monastic life and brewing."
I asked Fr Isaac how they fit in the demands of running an industrial scale brewery with the contemplative life of the monastery.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
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Today I speak with Jaime Clemmer, author of Heartbroken, But Not Broken, which offers readers an intimate recounting of how she got through any parent's worst nightmare–her son’s sudden death at the age of 10.
Clemmer shares the details of her unfettered grief to offer license to anyone struggling to tell their own story. She invites you to walk with her. Her path is complicated and sacred, as is the case with most grievers.
Hearing her story, together, we can effectively mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who are in need of comfort. We can be present for people in their sorrow.
Jaime’s story is also a testament to us all that there are no bad emotions. There are no bad parts of us in our mind. When we can have a relationship to our feelings and embody them they can be productive and a vital part of having a balance mind and body.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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Today I speak with Dr. Patrick Oliver about the only drug approved currently to treat suicidal ideation: Ketamine.
"Where this works is literally in making connections in the brain."
Dr. Oliver is an emergency room physician that left the ER to start his own Ketamine infusion clinics because he saw a need that no one else was filling to offer life-saving treatment to people with severe depression. He says he was incredulous of the results a colleague was seeing of Ketamine for acute suicidality until he visited the clinic himself and saw for his own how "the depression just seems to go away."
We talk about how Ketamine works in the brain. "It’s not an hallucination. But it does alter a person’s experience of their sight, sound, sensation."
Dr. Oliver strongly believes that psychiatry’s current standard of care—offering Wellbutrin or Zoloft or Paxil to patients with acute suicidality—is dead wrong. "After I saw it I couldn’t not do it. Nobody was helping these patients," he says.
We discuss misconceptions some people have about what depression really is and discuss the safety of Ketamine even in treating severe depression that’s co-occurring with substance abuse.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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How did fish evolve to walk on land? What are the details of how that process happened?
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Neil Shubin, the 2004 co-discoverer of Tiktaalik, a fish fossil that is the first evidence of so-called bridge animals with features that show the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and land mammals.
Shubin is the author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body and Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA.
Neil guides us through a fascinating tour of the history of the human body. We talk about the remarkable building blocks inside DNA that are common to all living things, which is the topic of Shubin’s latest book Some Assembly Required.
"A lot of biology means using the old to make the new."
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Lou Lucas, chief of Palliative Medicine at the Nebraska and Western Iowa Veterans Health Care Systems.
As a palliative medicine doctor, Dr. Lucas is trained to pull together all of the specialists that might be caring for a patient with a life threating disease and implement a cohesive treatment plan that cares for body, mind, and soul.
She gives special attention to the well established link between mental health and physical health and the role of spirituality in healing.
"Most people have a lived experience that there’s something bigger than I am. I am part of something. There is more to live than the things you can count and categorize."
I ask Dr. Lucas to explain the mind-body connection and stress and not just their role in autoimmune disorders like gastrointestinal problems, arthritis, migraines, nerve damage, and even some cancers—but how to utilize the power of the mind to transform and heal the body.
Lou introduces me to a new word she invented about a year ago: Paleodelic.
“Paleodelic means to relieve suffering by revealing the mind.”
She is basically combining palliative medicine with cutting-edge psychedelic treatments that rapidly accelerate a person’s development of peace and acceptance with their identity and gives them lasting mental and emotional flexibility in the face of fear and stress.
And finally Lou affirms something you’re familiar with me covering frequently on The Soul of Life which is the powerful and life-changing effects—similar in many ways to a psychedelic journey—of using Internal Family Systems as a psychotherapeutic and spiritual tool.
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Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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The pandemic of 2020 brought us supply shortages. Basics like sugar and flour were scarce. But a truck driver in Houston was making sure people didn’t run out of cake.
Mark says "It’s Texas, so you know, we do things a little bit different from the rest of the country here...Gotta have cake."
If you’ve ever woken up and wondered if you’re following the path you’re meant to follow in life, you’ll appreciate Mark’s story.
Enter my current sweepstakes giveaway (https://swee.ps/lZirCOTlY): Win a Couples Vacation to the Caribbean ($1,299 Value!). Ends 10/15/21 1. All inclusive airfare for two 2. Two night stay included
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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Dr. Betty Martin has had her hands on people professionally for over 40 years, first as a Chiropractor, and upon retiring from that practice, as a certified Surrogate Partner, Sacred Intimate, and Somatic Sex Educator.
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Betty about the importance of getting to know your own body and your own sexuality.
“My sexuality and eroticism belongs to me. It was such a shock. It made me think, “Who did I think it belonged to [before]?”
We talk about the rewards and controversy of sexual surrogacy. While it’s not a mainstream intervention in sex therapy, its one that Betty says is widely misunderstood and can be highly valuable.
Betty shares about one of her favorite exercises, called The Three Minute Game, that helps resolve confusion around giving and receiving pleasure. At first blush it sounds like something you’d hear about at a swing party.
And Betty teaches about the power of slowing down your attention and learning how to trust your whole body’s sensory experience.
Betty Martin's new book is called The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent.
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Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
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Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Jay Earley, author of Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Wholeness Using IFS.
A frequent subject on this show, Internal Family Systems is a model of spiritual and therapeutic growth that I’ve practiced for the last 12 years or so that to me is the most effective tool box that I’ve ever found to address a wide range of psychological and health-related issues.
"The crucial part is not just recognizing that we’re made up of parts—subpersonalities—but that they’re really like little people living inside of us. And we can talk to them and they can talk to us and we can develop a relationship to them."
Jay and I hone in on the IFS concept of befriending our protectors. Not just thinking abstractly about your psychological defenses, but experiencing them in real time with a sort of appreciative inquiry and leadership, the results of which you experience in your body and mind.
Mike Elkin, one of my recent guests on the show described IFS like hypnosis, except it’s far more sophisticated and you can learn to do it on yourself. And that’s been Jay Early’s passion: teaching lay people the steps to learning IFS in everyday life. In self-practice.
All of us can relate to having a voice inside of you that tells you when you’ve made a mistake. For many people this mental habit can interfere with life and restrict their natural instinct and ability. But have you ever considered that you can actually interact with that part of you? Not just get that critic voice to go away, but get it to work with you and fit into your life in a more helpful way.
We talk about:
- How to deal with inner conflicts, called polarizations
- The Procrastinator-Taskmaster polarization
- Why polarizations are the root cause of all emotional and behavioral symptoms
- How to get to know and deal with your Inner Critic
- Applying Self-Leadership to polarizations in the outside world
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Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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David Wilcox is a quintessential folk singer, telling stories full of heart, humor, and hope, substance, searching, and style. His innate sense of adventure and authenticity is why critics and colleagues, alike, have always praised not just his artistry, but his humanity, as well.
In this episode of The Soul of Life David treats me to several live songs as we discuss his phenomenal ability to touch emotional chords and speak to the hearts of thousands of his listeners over the years.
On this episode David sings: "We Make the Way by Walking," "Start with the Ending," "Forest Fire," and "The Beautiful. To my surprise, he also shares a brand new, (unnamed at the time of this publication), song about listening to your body.
Wilcox is known for his trademark storytelling before and during live performances, with humor, tenderness, and full emotion. Fans will appreciate new stories with old songs and the gift of his new song debut.
David talks about music as his rescuer from a life he says he wouldn't have survived without the color and hope it brings him. And he and I banter about the work it takes to love in marriage, as he plays my longtime favorite, "Start With the Ending."
When David expressed genuine interest in my experience of depression he said, "I've got a song for you."
- Songs -
00:11:06.22 - "Forest Fire"
00:25:18.05 - "The Beautiful"
00:32:32.05 - David Wilcox Debuts New Song (Unnamed)
00:41:05.09 - "Start With the Ending"
00:47:21.19 - "We Make the Way by Walking"
Enter my current sweepstakes giveaway: Win a Couples Vacation to the Caribbean ($1,299 Value!). Ends 10/15/21
-
All inclusive airfare for two
-
Two night stay included
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
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My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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Today on the Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Corey Allan, Sex and Marriage and Family Therapist, author of Naked Marriage, and longtime host of Sexy Marriage Radio, a podcast devoted to straight forward, honest conversations about what goes on behind closed doors in your marriage.
"We don’t have sex by accident. You don’t trip and fall and wind up in a vagina. Cause if that’s the case what in the world is she laying like that on the ground for?"
Corey says sexual issues are life issues, and life issues are sexual issues: "If we could heal the sexual wounds of God’s people, we would heal God’s people."
We talk about the hard work, patience, and skill it takes to stay centered, be true to yourself, and be vulnerable to your partner with physical intimacy.
Corey’s message is that none of us in marriage or committed partnership are alone when it comes to feeling sexually frustrated at some point in married life.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
Learn about Mindful Marriage, my live, online, 7-week mindfulness-based stress reduction and basic IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
Most of us have been conditioned our whole life to have strong moral judgments against things like addictions or suicide. Right? Aren’t these just categorically bad things that we have to fight against?
This is really what is so mind-bending and revolutionary about the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychology.
Michael Elkin has a reputation within the IFS community for enthusiasm teaching about what IFS calls our Firefighter parts of us—the protective parts of your personality that typically show up as extreme beliefs or behaviors like anger, addictions, compulsions, or suicidality.
"Your willpower and your conscious decisions have very little to do with what you wind up actually doing."
We talk about how this state of mind that IFS calls Self (all of our core spiritual qualities) has the power to heal and transform any parts of you that have become extreme or unhealthy or unbalanced. I have to say this is NOT what typical psychology or typical theology offers.
Traditional psychological and religious teaching usually tells people to constrain their bad thoughts or behaviors. Manage your anger. Fight your depression. Overcome your addiction.
But these management tactics require constant vigilance, and like a virus mutating in response to survival pressure, there’s a hardening or resistance to change: We discuss how, instead of fighting and resisting so-called “bad” parts of you, it’s far more productive to become curious and explore the motivations behind behavior or feelings that aren’t in your best interest.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
Learn about Mindful Marriage, my live, online, 7-week mindfulness-based stress reduction and basic IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
Hari Sreenivasan joined the PBS NewsHour in 2009. He is the Anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a Senior Correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he was at CBS News, reporting for the "CBS Evening News,” "The Early Show" and "CBS Sunday Morning." Before that, he served as an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, working extensively on the network's 24-hour digital service "ABC News Now."
Sreenivasan also reported for "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," "Nightline with Ted Koppel," and anchored the overnight program “World News Now.” Hari also contributes to Amanpour and Company and hosts and produces the YouTube channel "Take on Fake," to expose misinformation on the internet.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
Learn about my current contest giveaway (ends 10/5/21) of a resort vacation for two to Esalen Resort in Big Sur, CA: https://app.viralsweep.com/sweeps/full/4ccad7-92414
Learn about Mindful Marriage, my live, online, 7-week mindfulness-based stress reduction and basic IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
Follow us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt are the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, a paradigm-changing and pioneering model of couples therapy that helped revolutionize the way psychotherapists view couples and the nature of healing.
Imago uses the lens of attachment-theory—the idea that, neurobiologically, we belong to one other and are expertly equipped to heal each other’s trauma from our earliest attachments in life.
Harville and Helen teach that by being aware of and reflective of these attachment patterns couples can have a "conscious relationship" that is able to transform conflict into a blueprint for growth.
They have written over 10 books, including three New York Times bestsellers. Harville has appeared as a featured guest 17 times on The Oprah Winfrey Show. They are the co-founders of Imago Relationships International, a non-profit organization that has trained thousands of therapists and educators in 51 countries around the world.
Check out my Mini-Course for couples.
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples called Mindful Marriage
Join my Facebook Group.
Learn about my current contest giveaway (ends 10/5/21) of a resort vacation for two to Esalen Resort in Big Sur, CA.
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy
My Counseling Practice.
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Today I speak with Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, about his trailblazing work educating a generation of doctors and therapists about how to heal from trauma.
His book has been on the NYT paperback nonfiction bestseller list for 141 weeks, 24 of them in the #1 spot.
We talk about what trauma really is, and whether it's possible that the term has become a bit inflated in popular culture. Van der Kolk tells the story of playing a part in the creation of the Post Traumatic Stress diagnosis and how it originally focused only on combat stress, and completely missed the far more prevalent and more destructive trauma that takes place in families.
I ask him to offer alternatives to the widespread but woefully imprecise and unhelpful diagnostic terms like narcissism, borderline personality disorder, or anti-social personality disorder and discuss our mutual distaste for the DSM—the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists and licensed professionals.
Even though Bessel contributed to the development of the DSM versions III and IV, he rails against how using labels interferes with genuine observation and connection to the suffering of each person.
"We are part of a very corrupt professions. When we start giving people labels on the basis of what you can charge the insurance company. You have lost your soul."
We discuss his proposal of a more precise replacement for the PTSD diagnosis called Developmental Trauma Disorder. And we dive into breakthrough treatments like psychedelics and neurofeedback—using a person’s own brain waves to control a video game that trains the brain to correct nervous system dysregulation that occurs as a result of abuse, neglect, or unprocessed trauma.
Finally, I ask Bessel about his last conversation with the late Rich Simon, who’s suicide in November of 2020 rocked many of us in the mental health professions.
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7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: www.souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage.
This episode is also available as a special visual presentation of the author's stunning photographs.
John Annerino is believed to have run the longest wilderness ultramarathon ever, covering 750 miles of daunting Arizona wilderness from Mexico to Utah.
In this episode of The Soul of Life we explore John's long and distinguished career a photographer, author, and adventurer of photography literary essay books, photographic essays, and calendars of the American West and Old Mexico.
Annerino's work has appeared in Time, LIFE, the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure and Scientific American, among many others. His map, "The Grand Canyon Explored," is on display at the Grand Canyon National Geographic Visitor Center.
John has dedicated his life to photographing, researching, and writing about endangered landscapes, Native peoples, Western cowboys, Spanish traditions, and trilingual borderlands. In his quest to explore the Grand Canyon's and Great Southwest's mythic landscapes and secret places by foot, raft, rope, camera, and pen, John has climbed hallowed peaks, rafted wild and scenic rivers, traversed deep chasms and painted deserts, and traced ancient Indian, missionary, and pioneer trails on foot.
His award winning books and photography include, In the Chasms of Water, Stone and Light, Vanishing Borderlands: The Fragile Landscape of the U.S.-Mexico Border, The Virgin of Guadalupe: Art and Legend, Indian Country: Sacred Ground, Native Peoples, among other distinguished publications.
**BONUS PREVIEW of S3E5 with IFS (Internal Family Systems) Lead Trainer Michael Elkin. This full episode drops on August 27th, 2021.
Most of us have been conditioned our whole life to have strong moral judgments against things like addictions or suicide. Right? Aren’t these just categorically bad things that we have to fight against? This is really what is so mind-bending and revolutionary about the IFS model.
Mike has a reputation within the IFS community for enthusiasm teaching about what IFS calls our Firefighter parts of us—the protective parts of your personality that typically show up as extreme beliefs or behaviors like anger, addictions, compulsions, or suicidality.
"Your willpower and your conscious decisions have very little to do with what you wind up actually doing."
We talk about this state of mind that IFS calls Self—but is really just all of our core spiritual qualities—which it turn out if you call upon it (and that’s really what IFS teaches people to do) it the power to heal and transform any parts of you that have become extreme or unhealthy or unbalanced—and I have to say this is NOT what typical psychology or typical theology offers.
Traditional psychological and religious teaching usually tells people to constrain their bad thoughts or behaviors. Manage your anger. Fight your depression. Overcome your addiction. But these management tactics require constant vigilance, and like a virus mutating in response to survival pressure, there’s a hardening or resistance to change: We discuss how, instead of fighting and resisting so-called “bad” parts of you, it’s far more productive to become curious and explore the motivations behind behavior or feelings that aren’t in your best interest:
**Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
**BONUS PREVIEW of S3E4 with PBS Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan. Full episode drops on August 20th, 2021.
Hari Sreenivasan joined the PBS NewsHour in 2009. He is the Anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a Senior Correspondent for the nightly program.
Prior to joining NewsHour, he was at CBS News, reporting for the "CBS Evening News,” "The Early Show" and "CBS Sunday Morning." Before that, he served as an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, working extensively on the network's 24-hour digital service "ABC News Now." Sreenivasan also reported for "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," "Nightline with Ted Koppel," and anchored the overnight program “World News Now.”
Hari also contributes to Amanpour and Company and hosts and produces the YouTube channel "Take on Fake," to expose misinformation on the internet.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy.
For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In this preview of Episode 3 of Season 3 (releasing on 8/13/21), Drs. Harville Hendrix, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, are the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, a paradigm-changing and pioneering model of couples therapy that helped revolutionize the way psychotherapists view couples and the nature of healing through the lens of attachment-theory—the idea that, in a sense, we belong to one other and are expertly equipped to heal each other’s trauma from our earliest attachments in life, by having a conscious relationship that is able to transform conflict into a blueprint for growth.
They have written over 10 books, including three New York Times bestsellers. Harville has appeared as a featured guest 17 times on The Oprah Winfrey Show. They are the co-founders of Imago Relationships International, a non-profit organization that has trained thousands of therapists and educators in 51 countries around the world.
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast?
Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome.
It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In this preview of S3E2 (full episode release: 8/6/21) you get a glimpse of my excitement about speaking with world-renown brain and trauma scientist, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.
Van der Kolk is a professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and president of the Trauma Research Foundation in Brookline, Massachusetts.
]Since the 1970s his research has been in the area of post-traumatic stress. He is the author of The New York Times best seller, The Body Keeps the Score, a widely renown book that came out in 2014 subtitled Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma.
It explores “the extreme disconnection from the body that so many people with histories of trauma and neglect experience” and the most effective paths to recovery by studying three main areas of research:
1) Neuroscience, which deals with how mental processes function within the brain.
2) Developmental psychopathology concerned with how painful experiences impact the development of mind and brain.
3) Interpersonal neurobiology, which examines how our own behavior affects the emotional and neurobiological states of those close to us.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In this preview of Season 2, Episode 1, you get a glimpse of my conversation with John Annerino, a renown adventure photographer, and author of literary essay books, photographic essays, and calendars of the American West and Old Mexico. His work has appeared in Time, LIFE, the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure and Scientific American, among many others. His map, "The Grand Canyon Explored," is on display at the Grand Canyon National Geographic Visitor Center.
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Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Today I speak with comedian Paul Gilmartin, former host of Dinner and a Movie on TBS.
After leaving standup and television, Gilmartin started The Mental Illness Happy Hour, a podcast that puts the world of living with mental illness into sharp focus and gets a laugh.
Gilmartin came up on the comedy scene in Chicago at Second City with people like Bob Odenkirk of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Paul shares the story of his unusual first encounter with Chris Farley.
His own recovery from alcoholism and depression led Paul to want to create a stage where he could do comedy but go to the depths of life and it’s suffering and to let people dealing with trauma, substance abuse and grief know they’re not alone.
We talk about being creative while sober and with a healthier mind.
Paul is also open about his childhood experience of covert sexual abuse by his mother: "She created a sexualized environment. I would years later come to know that that your body and your soul can experience two different things at the same time. My body was reacting and I blamed myself."
After sitting with Paul for two minutes, you realize you could share anything with this guy. He’s not afraid to talk about any topic on The Mental Illness Happy Hour, and his many fans credit his persistence at bringing out vulnerability in his guests for their own recovery successes.
"God, somebody needs to talk about this. The complexity of mental illness."
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Is there a right way to have sex?
Everybody thinks they’re doing it wrong or someone else is doing it better. There’s so much shame surrounding sex.
Today on the Soul of Life I speak with two Brooklyn psychologists, Signe Simon and Simone Humphrey about their podcast, LoveLink, founded to help people talk more about sex and love.
We talk about really common reasons people have problems with sexual intimacy, and challenge the traditional norms around penetration and orgasm. What happens before sex? What happens during sex? What happens after sex? What’s the appetizer, what’s the entrée, what’s the dessert? We talk about the power of discovering the difference between arousal and desire.
A lot of women in heterosexual couples come in and say, “I just don’t really want to have sex. I have really low desire. Something is wrong with me.”
The problem is that the standard of arousal is spontaneous desire. That’s what we’re taught in movies. That’s what we’re taught in day to day interactions—that we should just be turned on all the time. For men too, who have responsive desire, they also have a lot of shame. 'Well, I should just be horny all the time. I should want to have sex whenever.'
We talk about how millennials are having sex, and whether marriage matter anymore? In some places, marriage is really, really on the decline. Do you feel anxiety about having one partner for the rest of your life.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my Fall Session of this live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/p/mindful-marriage-immersive
Dominique Dawes is a three-time former U.S. Olympic gymnast and was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team and part of the gold-medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics.
Dawes recently opened her first gymnastics training academy in Clarksburg, Maryland to prove that there is a way to care for children and put the healthy minds and bodies of kids first in contrast to what she calls a culture of abuse that still exists in competitive gymnastics in this country.
Dawes left her home at age 11 to move in with her coach, and doesn’t want other kids to lose their childhood and their identity in the name of perfection on the Olympic podium. She says her training experiences took away her sense of worth and confidence in herself.
"The culture of gymnastics is a culture of fear, intimidation, and silence."
The Dominique Dawes Gymnastic and Ninja Academy in Maryland is the result of Dominique’s determination to set an example for healthy coaching.
"If it doesn’t result in the Olympics or NCAA college scholarship, I don’t care. It’s all about caring for every single kid that walks through the doors. No matter their body types. No matter what their aspirations are. No matter what their parents envisions for them. Every kid matters."
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
“Everything is magic until we understand it.”
- Arthur C. Clark
How do you know that you’re conscious? I mean, don’t you just kind of know?
"The single thing that we know best from our own first person perspective and understand least from the perspective of objective science."
But are we seeing signs of a dawning enlightenment in this field—signs of progress in how we understand and study consciousness? I think this is important for everyone—but especially professionals like me who teach people how to have healthy minds—we kind of need to know what a mind is in the first place.
I talk to Dr. Jonathan Schooler, a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at U.C. Santa Barbra, someone who’s Resonance Theory of Consciousness is kind of become like a Grand Central Station—a hub that 32,000 academics cite in their research. (Note: The introduction to this episode misstates this as 19,000 citations).
"One genuine possibility—that consciousness represents some fundamental aspect of physical reality. It is substantiated and potentiated through some tiny unit, and that through some process—and we speculate its resonance—smaller bits organize together into increasingly larger, hierarchal, organized, conscious states."
We talk about the implications of his theory in which in which biological systems within our own body and between all matter itself can develop a rhythmic sync with each other—a kind of harmony that allows them to enhance and modify each other in certain circumstances.
Schooler calls these phenomena Nested Observer Windows—a sort of channel that opens up between objects and systems.
"Not only do we have a shared resonance between different portions within our bodies but also between people."
The implications of these Nested Observer Windows—or NOWs for short—lead us to discuss Steven Strogatz’s monumental research in the mathematics of Sync.
The hippies were right. It's all about the vibrations, man.
We also discuss how this relates to mind wandering. Schooler’s lab has expanded on the conventional and two-dimensional thinking about mind wandering always being associated as problematic usually liked to anxiety and depression. He calls this "mind wondering."
We discuss how this relates to mind wandering and mindfulness, a habit that can lead to more productive and joyful moments.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Today I speak with Michael Goldberg, author of The 9 Ways of Working: How to use the the Enneagram to Discover Your Natural Strengths and Work More Effectively
"The enneagram—while it’s about individual personality types—it’s really about a pathway through life, where are you?"
I share with Michael the results of me taking a 20-minute online Enneagram test and we practice some armchair psychology, talking about Jeff Bezos and Oprah’s personality types.
And Michael delves into how he’s examining some of our culture’s ancient stories through the lens of the Enneagram in a book he’s writing that includes the Old Testament story of Jacob, and the Greek story of Medusa.
"It certainly gets harder—when we’re in survival mode—to remember that we’re magical beings."
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with IFS lead trainer, trauma therapist and former Harvard psychiatrist Frank Anderson about the surge of young children questioning their gender or seeking to transition.
One recent U.S. survey cited in a MedScape Psychiatry journal article found a 4000% increase (over 40-fold) in the number of gender dysphoria cases since 2006 (see www.SoulofLifeShow.com/Frank-Anderson for full article.)
We agree just how important it is—and rare—to find a safe space as mental health clinicians to explore our own biases, judgments and subconscious fears that could interfere with our ability to hold genuine curiosity and clarity when we see families in our practice struggling to navigate these complex decisions.
IFS stands for the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy that represents the state-of-the-art among trauma therapists for its paradigm-bending view of the mind as naturally multiple—and the view that we have protective aspects of our identity that can mask our real authentic Self.
We discuss how the IFS concept of Self—a core spiritual aspect of us that is distinct from our protective parts—could be key to help relieve distress on both sides of the cultural polarity related to kids and gender identity.
I ask Frank what Self-Led Gender Fluidity would look like if applied to children who want to identify as trans. Frank talks about his experience with kids in his practice who question their sexual orientation or gender identity—two totally distinct things—and what he calls the natural evolution of authenticity around identity development.
"It takes somebody a while to get connected to what’s authentic for them. I couldn’t explore my sexual orientation, at all, until my trauma was healed.... Let’s not make any decisions until you’ve healed your trauma."
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
1 in 13 kids have food allergies in the U.S. This scary condition that can lead to fatal anaphylaxis (the sudden constriction of airways) is debilitating to live with.
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with a doctor that is part of a handful of allergists in the U.S. that are revolutionizing the way anaphylactic food allergies are treated.
Dr. Manav Segal is an allergist based in Philadelphia to which my family owes a debt of for curing our son’s debilitating allergy to dairy by offering a treatment for food allergies called Oral Immunotherapy or (OIT).
OIT has been around in the U.S. for many years now but it is still far from being widespread among physicians who treat allergies, many of whom continue to warn their patients that a lifetime of strict avoidance is the only treatment.
I speak to Dr. Segal to share how this too-good-to-be-true story could be true for your family, and we talk about why the rate of food allergies has accelerated rapidly in the last two decades.
"The American Academy of Pediatrics and Allergy Societies speculated, 'Well maybe it’s because we’re introducing peanuts and tree nuts and milk and egg too soon.' They just got it wrong."
We talk about the budding culture shift among physicians toward widespread acceptance of OIT. It wasn’t until about 2017 that the American Academy of pediatrics changed their recommendations based on research that had come out around that time that said early introduction is what may help slow down the increased numbers of food allergies.
What’s the latest pediatric advice about early introduction of food allergies to babies? What percentage of kids will outgrow food allergies? What’s the difference between Celiac Disease characterized by wheat intolerance and a wheat allergy?
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Today on the Soul of Life I call in a professional hypnotist to help me keep my head in the game of tennis.
I think you’ll get a kick out of seeing Taylor Sherman try to improve my tennis game and you can follow right along as he uses a deep relaxation technique and guided imagery that may also help you deepen your own sharpness and energy level in your life.
People know hypnosis for really three things: stopping smoking, losing weight and lowering stress, but Taylor performs hypnosis to help people change all sorts of habits, and he specializes in using hypnosis for improving athletic performance.
We talk about how hypnosis works in the brain, what kind of people are most likely to benefit from hypnosis, and where is hypnosis less effective?
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Do the phrases “feel good movie” and “rape culture” ever belong together?
In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak again with Sandie Angulo Chen, a film critic and writer for Common Sense Media, about several new films and shows that handle some fairly radioactive cultural themes, like the Amy Pohler-directed Moxie, and Promising Young Woman.
Then Sandie and I totally shift gears, into sci-fi escapism, to talk about the new Marvel Universe series on Disney+, WandaVision.
We talk about several other noteworthy series like Boy’s State, a documentary about the Texas chapter of this national civic education group for teens across the U.S.
Sandie reviews Raya and the Last Dragon, and we talk about the 2021 Oscar nominations, Judas and the Black Messiah, and some films Sandie thinks got snubbed.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage. Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Why do we run?
When Vybarr Cregan-Reid set out to answer this question, he began a journey into the science and psychobiology of the human body which—he says—is born to run.
"We’ve been runners for probably about 2.3 million years."
In this episode of The Soul of Life we talk about Cregan-Reid’s book, Footnotes: How Running Makes us Human, and a passion for running that took him to the world’s most advanced running laboratories and research centers to learn why natural running—running barefoot—is being embraced by running enthusiasts as the solution to foot, leg, and knee injuries that some scientists attribute to modern running shoes.
Cregan-Reid says your body knows more about running than you ever will and our discussion is equally for those who say they can’t run or hate to run as much as it’s for running enthusiasts.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In the United States, the non-medical use of cannabis is decriminalized in 16 states and legalized in another 14 states. Enthusiasts say pot helps them deal with life better, manage their anxiety, and helps them with sleep.
But what are the facts about marijuana? And are we ready for large-scale commercialization this is following the rapid movement to legalize weed?
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Samoon Ahmad, author of Medical Marijuana: A Clinical Handbook (2020), that provides up-to-date scientific guidance about how marijuana may be an appropriate treatment for some medical conditions. We also examine the persistent belief among a vast group of people that marijuana is harmless.
Do the benefits outweigh the risks associated with withdrawal, addiction, and the rebound effects on anxiety and depression?
We'll address important questions, such as:
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How effective is marijuana at treating anxiety, depression and PTSD?
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How easily addictive is marijuana?
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How often does regular marijuana use lead to long-term psychosis?
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Is it true that your IQ drops from regular marijuana use?
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Why is THC intoxication so different and difficult to self-assess than alcohol and how does this affect how states are enacting sober driving tests?
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Americans (and particularly Washingtonians) love coffee and they love cafes. You only have to look at the monopoly that Starbucks has created worldwide to see this phenomenon. But is the era of Big Coffee over? Is it possible that artisanal boutique coffee shops could be clawing back into the Green Giant’s market share the way craft breweries have surprised behemoth beverage conglomerates?
That’s where the Velazquez family has a unique edge.
With their locally beloved coffee outposts, Baked & Wired located in the Georgetown neighborhood and A Baked Joint and situated near Chinatown, they have shown over their 20 years of growth that their personal touches can be successful.
In 2019 the Velazquez family—Tony and Theresa and their adult children Tessa and Zak—opened La Betty restaurant next door to A Baked Joint.
Today Tessa Velazquez joins me on The Soul of Life to talk about their success taking a stab at Big Coffee in this caffeine-fueled city, surviving as a boutique café and restaurant during the pandemic, and of course, we’ll talk about some of your favorite things like baking, bread and flour, sweets, and our relationship to the work and art of food.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Eating disorders have a reputation for wrecking emotional havoc in a family and trigger strong emotional reactions by loved ones and therapists who can end up in a tug of war to make the disturbing symptoms stop.
But eating disorder specialist Dana Harron says love and compassion are key ingredients to successful treatment. In this episode of The Soul of Life, I speak with Dana about the most common types of disordered eating, and we separate eating disorder facts from fiction.
"My partner said that I look really healthy today, and that sounds like a really good thing to say but—oh—that’s going to trigger the eating disorder really badly."
We review some of the most common eating disorders, like bingeing, bulimia, anorexia, and exercise addiction and what may be at the root of these symptoms.
Dana explains how disordered eating affects sex, often shutting down a fully in-the-moment sensory experience in place of performative detachment. And she updates us on the wildly inaccurate under-calculation of the prevalence of disordered eating among boys and men which has historically been thought of as 1 in 10 males.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
When you hear the music that 23-year old Seattle musician Alec Shaw is writing and performing you know he’s headed somewhere big. But whether he knows that yet is a different story.
Shaw had already dedicated himself to being a full-time musician and had cut three albums by the time the pandemic shut down gigs and performances that were just starting to give him a following in the Northwest.
I ask him how he’s using this downtime when stages are dark, and discover that he's currently a contestant on this year's American Idol (Season 19).
To my delight, Alec obliged when I asked if he could grab a guitar and share a song with me, and he performed an unplugged version of I’ll Just Let You Down, a new song from his upcoming album.
Several of Alec's most popular songs are featured throughout our discussion as we banter about about his romantic life, his (super talented!) creative process, and how he's dealt with stage fright and performance anxiety.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Jessica Hansen is the voice of NPR's funding credits, and serves as in-house voice coach at NPR headquarters. She coaches voice for NPR, member stations, corporate groups, executives, professional theater companies, as well as hosts, journalists, and private clients nationwide. Jessica began acting at age 5, and was a cast member of a tween TV series at 12. She's performed Guest Star roles on NBC’s Parks & Recreation and HBO’s Veep.
In today’s episode of the Soul of Life, I speak with Jessica about how she’s helping performers work with new challenges while working from home.
"That separation of your home life just doesn’t exist now. Your kid is in the room with you. The baby’s on your lap while we’re doing this work.... …You can’t curl up in a ball under a bed spread, you can’t breathe that way you can’t make sound that way.”
What kind of vocal tips does Jessica give to people like Ari Shapiro, Mary Louis Kelly, or Sylvia Poggioli? What’s in a voice anyway? Does the way we make the sound of our voice really convey what we think it does?
Bob Ross' voice is discussed, as is "vocal fry," the lowest register (tone) of your voice characterized by its deep, creaky, breathy sound.
"I think it goes back to Paris Hilton, [saying with heavy vocal fry sound] 'That’s hot.'"
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
"Mindlessness is pervasive. Virtually all of us, almost all of the time, are not there. But when we’re not there, we’re not there to know we’re not there."
Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University where she was the first woman to be tenured in the department.
She has been described as the "mother of mindfulness" and has written extensively on the illusion of control, mindful aging, stress, decision-making, and health. Her books, written for general and academic readers, include Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity, and Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. Her most recent book The Handbook of Mindfulness is an anthology that brings together the latest multi-disciplinary research on mindfulness.
She is the recipient of four Distinguished Scientist Awards and the Liberty Science Genius Award.
In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Langer about how a comfort with uncertainty and curiosity--mindfulness--creates powerful changes in the brain. We discuss her famous "counterclockwise" studies and her claims that mindfulness leads to powerful improvements in health generally, and specific improvements in memory, vision, and hearing.
Among Langer's six academic books and 200 research articles is her extensive work on the placebo effect.
"So you take that sugar pill and you get better. The question is what’s making you better. And the answer is you’re making yourself better. A good deal of our research is devoted to getting rid of the sham. You don’t need someone to give it to you. You don’t have to make believe that it’s effective. You can actually control your own health."
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert, and author of many books on sex including Getting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together.
She's a psychotherapist, Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, university teacher, TEDx speaker and is the host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. Tammy is also a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Imago Relationship therapist, and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor.
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Nelson about what it takes to have a vibrant sex life with a monogamous partner and how cheating during COVID has taken on new proportions.
We talk about the mindset that’s required to prevent or recover from infidelity and why it can be an opportunity.
We discuss several myths about infidelity, sex, and eroticism:
"Women actually do cheat for sex. Men tend to cheat for emotional reasons."
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Do all affairs happen because of sexual problems?
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Does communication and empathy have the power to fix sexual frustration?
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Why does emotional closeness sometimes seem to kill erotic passion?
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And perhaps the million dollar question: Why does Oprah call it her "vajayjay?"
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
"Kurt Cobain had actually referred to The Dutchman as ‘the grungiest place in Seattle.'"
That's from Gary Mula, former owner of the storied Duchman recording studio, an artsy warehouse recording/rehearsal facility where Gary lived and made records until 2009, when it burned to the ground.
We talk about the way music changed his life and how he developed his skill as a producer by learning when to push his ideas and when to sit back and just be wallpaper.
"The reason I decided to call myself a producer was I couldn’t just keep my mouth shut. And it wasn’t good for me to keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t honoring the artist or the music if I was....Sometimes with bands, everything’s flowing and there’s no conflict. And other times you have to fight for an idea."
I exhibit some of Gary's favorite artists like Sun Crow, Chris Orlowski, and Kevin Sur and Andrew Jocylyn; We go down a couple of musical rabbit holes talking about Tov Lo, Scientist, Wo Fat, and Courtney Marie Andrews; And I pick Gary's brain about the best mic for vocals.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Are we really such a divided country?
You’ve heard me speak before about how our mindset—what we choose to focus on—determines the results we get. The more afraid and divided we feel, the more we tend to see fear and division in others. I wonder, can we actively cultivate peace and confidence in our own minds and hearts and call on our leaders to do the same?
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Matthew Green, a professor of political science at Catholic University in Washington, DC, about cancel culture, conspiracies, and how to stay hopeful and connected to one another in an age of identity politics.
Dr. Green is an expert on the American Congress and I ask him if it’s possible to ever imagine our leaders practicing the discipline of relationship building and compromise in the political process.
Green says, “Compromise is central to how our country was created, it’s how we’ve lasted as long as we have. And you can’t really succeed in politics—particularly in Congress—if you don’t compromise.” We touch on the history of identity politics, and political paranoia in its latest form, “cancel culture.”
Green recalls the Red Scare of the 1950s and we connect the dots of culture wars in the U.S. going back to Puritanism.
Can we stay focused on things that build our connection to our common goal of solving problems?
Tune-in to this fascinating conversation to get our ideas for simple steps that can bring us closer to each other as citizens in this great union.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Dr. John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe.
Mather was winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics with George Smoot for their work in the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission in the mid 1970s to measure the heat radiation from the Big Bang. Mather and his team measured the cosmic microwave background radiation—basically very faint radio noise astronomers had theorized could only come from the most distant events at the beginning of time as we know it—and their measurements confirmed the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large infrared telescope will be the premier space observatory of the next decade, and Mather has been the Senior Scientist on this project from it's origin in 1995. The James Webb is scheduled to launch in 2021 and will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
We discuss Mather's long career at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, his work on COBE and JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the planning of the Nancy Roman Grace Space Telescope.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Coming soon in Season Two of The Soul of Life on February 26th, 2021.
Dr. Tammy Nelson is an erotic recovery expert. She’s a leading expert on infidelity and the healing of sexual relationships. Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Nelson about what it takes to have a vibrant sex life with a monogamous partner and how cheating during COVID has taken on new proportions.
"If I am a mom stuck home, homeschooling my kids, and I’ve bene in my yoga pants in seven months, and haven’t worn make up, and my life is about cheerios and how to figure out algebra. And then I meet someone online who thinks I’m sexy and alive and charming and beautiful and just wants to make out with me—I’m a totally different person for ten minutes a day and that makes you feel alive for those ten minutes."
Dr. Nelson is the author of Getting the Sex You Want, and The New Monogamy: Redefining Your Relationship After Infidelity. We talk about the mindset that’s required to prevent or recover from infidelity and why it can be an opportunity.
Coming soon on February 19th: "Kurt Cobain had actually referred to The Dutchman as 'the grungiest place in Seattle.'"
In this preview of Season Two, Episode Three, I speak with Gary Mula, former owner of The Dutchman.
“Everybody has a different way of finding meaning in their life. When I found music, everything was answered.”
We talk about his time sharing practice space with Nirvana, his journey from musician to producer, his favorite music, and his favorite recording gear.
"Sometimes with bands, everything’s flowing and there’s no conflict. And other times you have to fight for an idea."
Coming soon on Season Two of The Soul of Life on February 12th, I speak with Dr. Matthew Green, a professor of political science, about cancel culture, conspiracies, and how to stay hopeful and connected to one another in an age of identity politics.
"There are things in American politics now that are not pretty. But there are things that have happened that have been worse, in our history.”
Dr. Green is an expert on the American Congress and I ask him if it’s possible to ever imagine our leaders practicing the discipline of relationship building and compromise in the political process.
"Compromise is central to how our country was created, it’s how we’ve lasted as long as we have. And you can’t really succeed in politics—particularly in Congress—if you don’t compromise."
Can the secrets of the universe inspire and humble us to bring us together in gratitude?
My conversation with Nobel laureate and top NASA scientist Dr. John Mather reminds us of how the Apollo program in the 1960s united a nation's eyes toward the heavens.
Mather is the Science Director of the James Webb Space Telescope program at NASA, scheduled to launch in October of this year.
He is the only member of this 15-year effort that was present on day one of the project. Listen to this special preview of my full conversation with Dr. Mather, the premiere of Season Two of The Soul of Life, which will be released on February 5th.
Like you I’m ready to wrap 2020 and move on to a new year this week. This Soul of Life bonus episode will dive into very practical ways to mindfully reflect on being who you want to be in 2021.
I started this podcast when I was unmasking how my brain wasn't lighting up the way I'd always expected it to. Today, I talk about how the brain is a connection machine and how you can use moments, like little prayers, to help your brainbody connection flow and generate energy and focus.
I also reflect on wrapping Season One of The Soul of Life, with 18 episodes, and preview some of Season Two which launches February 5th.
I'm so excited about my guests for Season Two. Here's a sneak peek:
- NASA scientist and Nobel laureate John Mather
- The "Mother of mindfulness," famed psychology researcher, Ellen Langer
- Jessica Hansen, actress, voice of NPRs funding credits, in-house voice coach at NPR
- Tammy Nelson, author of Getting the Sex You Want
Leading up to the February 5th launch of Season Two. I'll be releasing bonus episodes like this one, teaching key themes about mindfulness, stress reduction, and 101 for a healthy mind.
And if you appreciate this show please consider showing me your appreciation by becoming a Patron of the show—a financial supporter. Go to https://www.patreon.com/souloflifeshow.
Thank you!
Donating at any level of support gives you access to the brand new Discord group, a private online community where you can get access to bonus content, ask me questions, and meet like-minded fans of the show to expand your curiosity about the mind and consciousness in this amazing life.
Becoming a patron of the show can also give you other cool perks like monthly Livestreaming AMA (ask me anything) sessions with me. Check it out! If there’s one thing that I promise you with all my heart that I know will not hurt you or I in 2021, it is prayer and reflection!
Nostrovia!
At the age of sixty-six, Dierdre Wolownick became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan, the iconic 3,200-foot granite "big wall" in Yosemite National Park.*
For her this wasn’t just any climb. Yes, The Captain is perhaps the most prized big wall climbs in the world. It was in June that same year that Dierdre’s son Alex Honnold stunned and terrified the world by climbing without ropes—a free solo assent—this vertical wall that rises one half mile out of the earth in Yosemite National Park.
Alex is no stranger to making news for his death-defying ability to speed climb routes, without protection, that give other expert climbers nightmares. Dierdre's son is indeed a rock climber in a special club: He's still alive.
Says Honnold's friend and rock climbing legend Jimmy Caldwell, "All the other free solo climbers in the world are dead."
Add this all together and you get the media sensation of Honnold, a paradox that his friends and family know couldn't be more opposite of his aloof and down-to-earth personality.
National Geographic's blockbuster documentary of Honnold's assent of the Freerider route of El Captain, which won 7 Emmy’s and an Academy Award for best Documentary Feature in 2019.
I speak with Alex's mom, Dierdre, to deconstruct the public's polarized reaction to her son's lifestyle and to talk about her book The Sharp End of Life: A Mother's Story, about her journey as a parent who joined her son on his adventure, pushing the limit's of what's possible.
Should we see Honnold's climbing as reckless? A sophisticated dance with passive-aggressive self-harm? Or does our strong emotional reaction to his mastery and success in this solitary sport say more about our own denial of the risks we take every day flying in airplanes, living with firearms, or any number of questionable health and dietary choices we make.
Do we envy Alex's clarity and focus and lack his courage to squarely face our own limitations and accept our own mortality?
The YouTube version of this episode, has some really cool footage of Alex climbing in the intro
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
What if you could have the eyes of God—confidence, clarity, compassion, connection, creativity—in your everyday human life?
What is an “authentic connection to the Divine?”
Grace. Love. Light. Peace. I know—at this time more than ever—if you’re on a path of faith that leads to these things, sign me up. I'm in.
But what’s the difference between a spiritual life and a spiritualizing life? And why—if so many Christians define their spiritual connection to God as loving, welcoming and accepting, do so many non-Christians define God as the opposite?
In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Jenna Riemersma, an addiction therapist and author of a book called Altogether You, about these questions.
Jenna says its possible to apply the groundbreaking psychological insights of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy—an evidence-based and mindfulness-based psychotherapy—to deepen your understanding of God as a Christian.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Today The Soul of Life is a crash course on medicine for the mind with Dr. Joel Bernanke, a Columbia and Cornell-trained psychiatrist. We cover the power, potential and pitfalls of psychopharmacology and its alternatives.
The Mind is Your Body
We try to alleviate some of the common fears of talking to a psychiatrist and expose misconceptions that stop people from treating their mind like any other part of their body. We focus especially on treatment for depression, anxiety, and one of Dr. Bernanke’s research areas—ADHD.
Recently, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published results from a survey that found prevalence of depression symptoms in the U.S. increased more than 3-fold during the COVID-19 pandemic, from around 8% of the population before COVID-19 to about 28% during COVID-19.
We discuss lifestyle changes proven to prevent or reduce anxiety and depression, and men (like me!) that avoid asking for help with emotional health.
Topics we cover:
• Misconceptions about how medicines for the mind work
• The “pill-pushing” psychiatrist
• Can genetic testing improve psychiatric outcomes?
• What role does marijuana play in causing or treating depression?
• Safety of pediatric psychiatry including ADHD treatment
• Could “California rocket fuel” help treat depression?
Need Crisis Help?
If you or someone you know are experiencing thoughts of self-harm please call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
Additional Mental Health Resources:
suicidepreventionlifeline.org
samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Grief is not usually something we plan for.
In today’s special edition of The Soul of Life we remember the life of Rich Simon—a person that was like Oprah for the mental health and counseling field—a hub and changemaker that helped launch the careers of many of the masters in our profession.
On November 10th, at the age of 71, Rich died suddenly.
Rich Simon was editor of The Psychotherapy Networker magazine for more than 40 years. It keeps clinicians up-to-date on best practices and innovations in counseling techniques.
We talk about grief with the world’s foremost expert on the subject, David Kessler, co-author and protégé to the late, great Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who developed the Five Stages of Grief.
Joe Kort, a trauma therapist and regular Networker Symposium presenter, joins us to reflect on Rich's impact on his success becoming a leader in the conversation about out-of-control sexual behavior.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
With Thanksgiving and winter holidays around the corner, there’s no better time to spend than with baker and food artist Sarah Owens. Sarah is a California-based cookbook author, baker, gardener, and instructor, and she just might have the ingredients to help us learn to come to our senses with sourdough baking that could help you practice mindfulness in physical form.
Today we’ll talk about our mothers and Sarah helps me troubleshoot my bad habits making sourdough bread. And we get some delicious recipes that will compliment your Turkey fixings this Thanksgiving.
Sarah won a James Beard award for her first book Sourdough and released her second in cook book titled Toast & Jam. Her third, Heirloom: Time Honored Techniques, Nourishing Traditions, and Modern Recipes came out just last year. But Sarah tells me it’s about how we bake, not what we bake. “I always like to say with sourdough you never watch the clock, you watch the dough. You watch the starter.”
Enter my current sweepstakes giveaway (https://swee.ps/lZirCOTlY): Win a Couples Vacation to the Caribbean ($1,299 Value!). Ends 10/15/21 1. All inclusive airfare for two 2. Two night stay included
Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ
Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage
Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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Today I talk to Sandie Angulo Chen a film critic, entertainment reporter, and book reviewer that writes for Common Sense Media, a non-profit website that gives parents in-depth reviews of movies, shows and apps so they can make informed decisions about their family’s media diet. We also dive into our favorite film picks including Watchmen, My Octopus Teacher, The Social Dilemma, and others.
Some have called Common Sense Media “nutritional labeling for media,” and Sandie gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of how they the publish detailed cliff’s notes with specifics about language, violence, sex, and consumerism as well as positive messaging and role models.
Sandie Angulo Chen is a film critic, entertainment reporter, and book reviewer. She's written professionally about movies, books, and pop culture for more than 20 years, contributing to outlets such as Common Sense Media, where she's the senior reviewer, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, EW.com, Moviefone, and Variety.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with a person that has been described by a centrist/liberal commentator at the Brookings Institute as “The most thoughtful conservative theorist of his generation.”
It’s no overstatement to say that Yuval Levin might be working in a senior position at the White House if this were an ordinary conservative President. And while you may not have heard his name before, he's one of a few influential thought leaders in what is now a Republican party that may have to reform itself after the shift in national politics during this week’s election.
Why does a social worker like me want to talk to someone like Levin?
Levin is calling for a return to humanity in our politics, saying its time to end the culture wars. And the reason for this isn’t because his party just lost—he’s been writing and speaking on this for years—it’s because he says our souls need to be nourished.
"Even in a time of great frustration we need not just to throw off what isn’t working but to build up what will work better."
Dr. Levin served as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under George W. Bush and also was executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics. But despite his resume and reputation he says it’s really the skills of a healer and peacemakers that need to step forward now:
"The capacity to resolve disputes and understand dysfunction is just enormously important now. We need a lot of middle children to get involved in our politics.”
Levin is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, and he’s the founding and current editor of National Affairs and is a senior editor of The New Atlantis and a contributing editor to National Review. You might not recognize these names if you’re not in national politics and especially if you don’t consider yourself politically conservative. But if you’re interested in real solutions to problems—not just political scorch and burn warfare—Levin is someone that wants words like “compromise” to become the heart of our political system the way, as a historian of American politics, he says it once was.
He’s the author of The Fractured Republic and most recently, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream.
If you’ve found yourself bemoaning the gridlock in Washington, or feel cynical about the party you don’t support, you’ll find comfort in Levin’s optimism:
"The more experience that I’ve had in Washington, the less cynical I’ve been about the people in Washington. There’s reasons to be cynical about certain kinds of institutional forces, but on the whole, experience gives you a sense of how things work and why."
We talk about the role of fear and paranoia in the rhetoric of both parties that distracts us from real suffering, and about our how substantial mental health care reform seems to be an afterthought to bickering about which cultural worldview is superior.
" We’re not really having a lot of arguments that are about what government should do to solve problems we’re having a lot of arguments that about whether the other party is the end of the world."
I want my kids to grow up in an America where real changes don’t come at the expense of the party or minority that loses. That's why I appreciate Levin’s courageous call to compromise and to learn from each other, to not fight fire not with fire—as seems to be the only thing that makes the news—but to fight fire with boring old water.
Love - actually - is the answer.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Shame is like a 1950's air conditioner that costs a fortune to operate electrically in the brain. My tangle with depression is teaching me to pay attention to all the "appliances" that drain energy from the soul, including my long-avoidance of a part of me that used to talk to Jesus every day. I talk with Dr. Curt Thompson, a psychiatrist and the author of The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves about the neurobiology of shame. Dr. Thompson is an expert in interpersonal neurobiology but seasons his knowledge of this budding scientific field with outright come-to-Jesus language that a devout Christian would appreciate. As much as I would have liked to edit out my relationship to Christianity and its formative role in how I learned to feel shame for being human, it was Curt’s friendship and love for me, and for his readers, that moved me past my fears to once again feel pride for my native faith as a young boy. This episode is about unashamedly exploring all sources of energy in your life, innovating to get results, and keeping a beginners mind when things look dim.
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In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Marcia Bjornerud to talk about her book Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World.
“For a society it’s not so good to be preoccupied with the now. In fact it’s the root of many of our problems…social, environmental, even spiritual, to be in the immediate, narcissistic moment and not understand our place in time.”
Timefulness is, according to Bjornerud, "an acute consciousness of how the world is made by - indeed, made of - time."
As a geologist, Bjornerud, has a breathtaking view of the world and our Anthropocene era - an ominous distinction that means we live in the age where humans are changing the planet’s finely balanced ecology and geology. Chronophobia is like a religion every human seems to practice but few are willing to acknowledge. It dissociates us from the awesome and powerful nature of earth and keeps us from remembering our insignificance.
“More pervasive and corrosive are the nearly invisible forms of time denial that are built into the very infrastructure of our society. For example, in the logic of economics, in which labor productivity must always increase to justify higher wages, professions centered on tasks that simply take time - education, nursing, or art performance - constitute a problem because they cannot be made significantly more efficient.”
Modern life keeps us captivated by the siren’s call of eternal growth (capitalism) or eternal life (religion) that makes being fully human, being appreciatively aware of our bit role, being time-full, into an enemy that must be conquered.
Bjornerud sounds the alarm, saying how we must transcend our time-illiteracy.
She doesn’t want us to miss a spiritual fork in the road that can lead to abiding sensitivity to the treasures of life, which deeply envelope us every moment of every day.
“We should all carry two slips of paper in our pockets: one that says 'I am ashes and dust,' and one that reads 'The world was made for me.'"
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
I speak to Moses Kushaba, a LGBTQI activist who immigrated to the U.S. from Uganda to escape persecution during a time when the government was escalating anti-gay policies, leading to violence, imprisonment, and death of many accused of being homosexual.
Moses was born during a civil war in Uganda and his name comes from a dramatic moment as a newborn when floods forced his mother to flee on foot. Baby Moses was placed in a wicker basket and pushed along as his family escaped. Both of his parents later died from AIDS, a pandemic that literally wiped out a generation of people in particularly hard-hit African countries.
After immigrating, Moses served in Iraq as an Army medic and later studied social work and psychology. Immigrating to the U.S. and doing a tour of duty in Iraq were a godsend for Moses.
“People ask me about my service in Iraq and I think, maybe, that was the best experience of my life.”
When Moses was publicly outed as a young person in Uganda his life was in danger. Yet he found a way out of exile. His life and career as a Healer is an inspiration to anyone that’s experienced homophobia and adversity because of their sexual orientation.
We talk about Ibram X. Kendi’s bestselling book How to Be An Antiracist, a book the New York Times called “The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.”
We’re not experts in antiracism but we are experts in how to change behaviors and heal the mind.
We discuss the vulnerability of being anti-racist and break down what it means to live in an anti-racist way, confessing "I have this racist thought" instead of denying our human instinct to make up stories about others.
I want this episode to be a challenge for you if you are White.
Even if you think you are an accepting, non-biased person with persons of color you may count as your your friends, colleagues, or spouses, it is time to roll up our sleeves and begin observing, naming, and releasing racist thoughts. I practice coming out as an antiracist, with Moses.
Oh, and I almost forgot, we talk about reparations and Watchmen.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
If you’ve ever wondered what kind of a parent you are, and whether your kids are going to wind up spending the equivalent of a college degree in therapy (or maybe they already have), I think you’ll be grateful for my conversation with Bethany Saltman.
Her journey as a mom and her book Strange Situation: A Mother’s Journey into the Science of Attachment is a gift to every parent, who like me, has been bombarded by well-intended advice about how to be the best parent in the world. In some ways Bethany is just an average mom. But she’s also a mom that—for much of her life—questioned if her mom ever loved her and in turn, questioned a lot about her own parenting.
Bethany’s a writer, and she became obsessed with a woman named Mary Ainsworth. Really obsessed. Mary Ainsworth was a pioneer in the psychology of child development—she died in 1999. And she came up with a procedure to systematically study how attached a child is to his or her caregiver. This is in the 1960s. Now terms like “secure attached,” "anxious attached," "avoidant attached," are tossed around pretty commonly if you eavesdrop into consultations with child psychologists and counselors. And the key to this diagnostic label is that attachment is, bar-none, the most researched area of psychology. It is bedrock. And it predicts mental illness and stability in adulthood.
According to Saltman, “Attachment is if you can receive your child when the child asks you, in a time of stress. And the way that we are able to do that is that we need to be able to receive ourselves.”
It’s so refreshing to hear Bethany tell us we don’t have to be perfect parents to the best parents for our children and I hope you’ll share it with moms and dads and grandparents and anyone that might ever consider being a parent.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In this episode of the soul of life I speak to the author of Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes, named one of the best science books of 2020 by NPR’s Ira Flato. Ron has a gift for making the complexities of quantum physics and technology clear and exciting.
We talk about the significance of the last 100 years in astrophysics and touch on the super weird world of quantum mechanics in which matter can be in two places at the same time.
The alternative title for this episode is Ex-nihilo Entanglement. This is the first of several episodes I plan to have on The Soul of Life that touches on quantum physics, the brain, and existence. (Ron's book isn't about psychology or existential philosophy but we veer into it briefly).
Of course, we don’t really know if things like quantum entanglement have anything to do with the hypernetwork of electrical activity that gives rise your consciousness—or whether it might one day confirm that human love and connection is in fact star-crossed and our neurons somehow are entangled with those we are parted from the way many mystical religions believe—or frankly how Luke and Obi-Wan use “the force” in Star Wars.
I share what I’ve begun to hear (cautiously) reported from a handful of scientists that study the brain and how they are—like Einstein did actually—daring to make some fascinating leaps into quantum physics because both fields are obsessed with studying the flow of energy—to imagine dimensions beyond our direct perception that nonetheless may underpin our very existence.
This episode is about Einstein. It's also about you. Your existence. And it’s also about existence itself. It gets very weird.
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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Michael Mithoefer, the lead investigator that has successfully piloted the first-ever study of MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, into the third and final stage of FDA approval for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. Mithoefer is featured as a lead character in the 2015 book Acid Test by award-winning journalist Tom Shroder, a meticulously researched history of the controversy and unprecedented healing properties associated with psychedelics.
The FDA granted Dr. Mithoefer and his colleagues “breakthrough status” to expedite its application for approval because they’re seeing such dramatic results working with veterans tormented by complex PTSD which is notoriously difficult to treat even with the best and most expensive therapies.
“We’ve had people with uncontrollable rage just have that stop happening after one session.”
I talk with Michael about the safety of therapeutically-supervised MDMA and how it works in the brain.
MDMA is referred to as an “empathogen,” because it activates our natural ability to be openhearted, friendly, and collaborative, something that immediately gets switched off when the brain goes into safe mode while experiencing emotional turmoil—even garden variety stress can do this, like a parent that yells every day, or a boss that expects to get perfection but only gives criticism. But for now, Dr. Mithoefer is using particularly egregious forms of trauma—combat experience—as the test use case with the FDA.
And unlike many people’s idea of all illegal drugs being dangerous or addictive, a full course of MDMA is given in micro-doses only 2-3 times in about a month—accompanied by an all-day psychotherapy session each time—but the patient essentially walks away born-again. They report seeing the world not just the way it was before their trauma but with eyes that are profoundly capable of seeing gratitude, joy and meaning in life.
“People think they’re grateful because they’re happy. Actually they’re happy because they’re grateful.”
I don’t think I’m the only one wondering, “Do I have to wait to get complex-PTSD to sign up?”
Wider access to these intense life-changing treatments for less acute suffering indeed may be coming down the line.
Just a week ago the bestselling self-help guru and podcast superstar Tim Ferris talked about his experience of sexual abuse in childhood, for the first time publicly, and he credits Dr. Mithoefer for what he described as a breakthrough treatment with MDMA, as well as Dr. Richard Schwartz and IFS therapy, someone I interviewed in episode 4 of the Soul of Life podcast. (By the way, the Tim Ferris episode that talks about MDMA and Internal Family Systems Therapy is episode #464 of his show, which I’ll put a link to in notes here at souloflifeshow.com.)
As a psychiatrist for many decades, Michael describes how all psychoactive medicines—medicines that act on brain function—are merely tools to help free the brain up to do what it knows how to do. Heal and function as a whole.
“Anybody really paying attention realizes there’s so much more to psychological healing than isolating it to ‘You’ve got to reprocess your trauma,’ or ‘You’ve got to correct these cognitive distortions.’ Both of those may well be true [but] if you get out of the way and be curious and encourage people to be open to what comes, you find that the breadth and the depth and the complexity to each individual’s healing process is beyond what we could have cooked up with our rational minds as a plan. And it’s far more beautiful and far more effective.”
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*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
Did you know that pregnant women are scientifically shown to become more xenophobic—fearful of outsiders—during their first trimester? Turns out, that’s when they are most susceptible to infections so the body actually has what researchers call the “behavioral immune system.”
And there’s wisdom to get from studying how we do this thing that humans love to do which is divide people into groups…to label others as either safe or unsafe, friend or enemy.
In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Olga Khazan, a talented writer that covers health, gender and science for The Atlantic Before that she wrote for the LA Times and the Washington Post. And she just published a book called Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider’s World.
We talk about her personal experience as an outsider growing up a Russian Jew in widely evangelical West Texas and some of her interviews with people who don’t follow the crowd and it works in their favor, the way it did for a survivor of the Jonestown massacre: “I had this totally different impression of Jonestown. I thought people were totally brainwashed.”
Khazan chronicles the people who stand out, who don’t fit in, and so doing illustrates how loners and outsiders are not really alone.
“Even in a cult, you can have someone who’s like “I’m not going along with what someone else is doing.”
Olga’s a talented, award-winning writer and yet she cautions about letting ourselves be lulled into mistaking the stories and knowledge we consume for real action that changes people’s lives.
“I think it’s kind of a testament to the Black Lives Matter Movement, that they have been so successful at raising awareness effecting real change. But they didn’t do it through Malcolm Gladwell books. They did it through direct action, and protest in the streets. Not just ‘clicktivism.’”
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
I speak with Reverend Doctor Dennis Edwards, a minister in cities for 30 years, about his identity as a healer and how he stays whole as a person within Christian communities where it may not always be welcome to let your real feelings show.
We talk about Black lives Matter and the awakening of White people to the uncomfortable truth about the burden of fear and mistrust towards police that Black Americans carry every day.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
I talk with songwriter and social worker, Dan Menz-Erb. Dan has played in the pop/funk band Holy Ghost Machine Gun.
If you Google that phrase, you’ll see clips from an 80’s televangelist who coined the rather interesting term.
However, your search results will not tell you much about the beauty of Dan’s poetry in his song, John Bagwell, which he shared with me in this podcast.
We discuss where he found his soul and let go of religious dogma that taught him to be afraid of people different from him, and his identity as a musician and social worker.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
I speak with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of an evidence-based psychotherapeutic model called Self-Leadership (also known as Internal Family System’s therapy or IFS) that is widely recognized as one of the most compassionate and comprehensive psychotherapies available. We discuss Mary Trump's book Too Much and Never Enough and how the abuse that Mary reports in Donald Trump's family could explain his fear-driven narcissism.
Self-Leadership is basically a sophisticated owner’s manual for the mind. It gives users a real-time pathway to routinely instigate new neural connections within their mindbody system—the holy grail of skill acquisition and learning.
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I speak with Dr. David Min, an oncologist that has special meaning in my life for how his personal touch and realness with me solved a mysterious neurological condition that took me to over 40 medical visits with more than 12 specialists.
I asked him where he learned to practice medicine that left room for him to show up personally the way he did with me and I learned that his worldview was radically torn down by the day he rushed to ground zero on 9/11 and tried to save firefighters that were seriously injured.
He was experiencing PTSD and depression but readily embraced treatment and recovered.
Looking back, David realized that he couldn’t find the true meaning of his life until he was broken, despite having success by the world’s standards.
He shares about how his Korean family inherited a sense of fear of failing so they were taught to always aim far higher than you actually need to get but how crushing this weight was to his soul.
David’s oncology practice was struggling to be profitable until he let go of these pressures and decided to show up for people. Today he’s pioneered a system that’s not only profitable but provides free cancer treatment to the uninsured when no one in the medical field is there to step in.
And he has a message that anyone touched by the shadow of cancer needs to hear.
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.
*7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course***
If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your partnership, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Mindfulness and IFS course, called Mindful Marriage.
Partners of any kind are welcome. It's a one-of-a-kind offering that can truly transform how you show up in intimacy. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/