Category: Spirituality

S2 E3: The Commitment to Stay Conscious

Even when you’ve devoted yourself to spiritual work, it can be difficult to maintain mindful awareness. In this episode, Michael speaks on the difficulty of maintaining consciousness and equanimity when we seem hardwired to be hooked by outside stimuli.

Unshakable Inner Peace: What Does That Mean, and Is It...

Shannon Kaiser is the bestselling author of five books on the psychology of happiness and fulfillment, including The Self-Love Experiment, Adventures for Your Soul, and Joy Seeker. As a life coach, international speaker, and retreat leader, she helps people align with their true selves so they can live their highest potential.

In this podcast, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with Shannon about her new book, Return to You, and how we can embrace every part of ourselves and realize “an unshakable inner peace.” They also discuss the spiritual lesson that “if you don’t go within you go without,” identifying your particular intuitive style and tapping your innate wisdom, working with anxiety and shifting from fear to love, the practice of “alchemizing fear” so as not to bypass it, ways to amplify our sense of love and connection, why in order to really know something you must know its opposite, personal expansion and reclaiming your power, how to “turn your resistance into assistance,” cultivating an “activation mindset” to sustain calm, and much more.

Is There a Holy Grail of Healing?

Lissa Rankin, MD, is a New York Times bestselling author of multiple books including Mind Over Medicine, a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute and the nonprofit Heal At Last, and mystic. Lissa has starred in two national public television specials, her TEDx Talks have been viewed over 4 million times, and she leads workshops both online and at retreat centers like Esalen, 1440 Multiversity, Omega, and Kripalu.

In this podcast, Dr. Rankin speaks with Sounds True founder, Tami Simon, about her new book, Sacred Medicine: A Doctor’s Quest to Unravel the Mysteries of Healing. Their conversation explores: the placebo effect and the mega-placebo effect; the scientific method and some assumptions we should question; the relationship between trauma, the nervous system, and healing; connectivity and co-regulation; developmental trauma, or what Mark Epstein calls “the trauma of everyday life”; the concept of spiritual bypassing; chronic inflammation as a root cause of many diseases; the paradoxes of healing; our four “intelligences”—mental, somatic, intuitive, and emotional—and what to do when they “disagree”; Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and working with the polarized parts within ourselves; healing the collective; and more.

Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean?

Adyashanti is a widely beloved, American-born spiritual teacher whose practice is rooted in Zen Buddhism but has expanded beyond any one path or perspective. He has created many books and audio programs through Sounds True, including Resurrecting Jesus, Emptiness Dancing, and Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness. In this episode of Insights of the Edge—which previously appeared as part of the provocative interview series Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean?—Tami Simon and Adyashanti inquire deeply into what exactly constitutes “awakening.” Adya describes his own experiences of awakening, vividly comparing and contrasting his felt sensation of each of these life-changing experiences. Tami and Adya also discuss whether awakening is a sudden or gradual process, and what one can and cannot expect from these moments of profound epiphany. Finally, Adya shares his pith instructions on how to encourage such a spiritual awakening.

Tracking Wonder

Jeffrey Davis is a researcher, consultant, and the founder of the Tracking Wonder Consultancy. With Sounds True, he’s released the new book Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Jeffrey about his lifelong work of understanding and spreading wonder. Jeffrey explains the six emotional facets that come together to create wonderment, as well as how to cultivate each in your daily life. Tami and Jeffrey discuss the value of accepting confusion, what we can learn from challenging times, and the positive emotions wonder cultivates. They talk about “wonder interventions” in the workplace and the untapped potential of focused daydreaming for robust creativity. Finally, Jeffrey and Tami discuss the power of personal devotions and the joyous act of gifting someone else with wonderment.

What We Long For

Becca Piastrelli is a writer, speaker, ancestral folk medicine keeper, and women’s group facilitator. She is a leader in women’s empowerment and earth wisdom, teaching women how to cultivate a greater sense of belonging. With Sounds True, she has authored the book Root and Ritual. In this podcast, Becca joins Tami Simon to discuss the lifelong journey of reclaiming our sense of belonging, with a particular focus on four areas: land, lineage, community, and self. Becca and Tami also explore the concept of loneliness as both a personal and a systemic challenge, humbling ourselves to the natural world, confronting the pain and grief of colonization, listening to the soul of your home, healing the “great severing” of our root systems, the Indigenous concept of the “ever happening” and receiving the support of our ancestors, the somatic experience of ritual, the importance of being witnessed in our journey of transformation, and much more.

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