Valerie Gangas

Valerie Gangas is a speaker, transformational life coach, and author who specializes in helping people gain a deeper understanding of who they are, so they can genuinely thrive and unleash their magic more fully. She has worked alongside the David Lynch Foundation and Oprah Winfrey, speaking to large groups nationwide about meditation and the benefits of expanding consciousness, and has contributed to Thrive Global and Spirituality & Health. She lives in Iowa. For more, visit valeriegangas.com.

Author photo © Jai Girard

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Valerie Gangas: In Deep Shift

When our lives are unexpectedly overturned, how do we regain our footing and make something new and better of ourselves? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with author Valerie Gangas about her book, In Deep Shift: Riding the Waves of Change to Find Peace, Fulfillment, and Freedom, an empowering guide to help us navigate those times when life turns upside down and inside out. Give a listen as they talk about spontaneous awakenings and spiritual “emergencies,” the connection between deep despair and deep shifts, spiritual sensitivity and how to stay grounded, the power of complete surrender, the practice of transcendental meditation, “opposite land” and the discovery that nothing is at is seems, out-of-body experiences versus embodied presence, cultivating your intuition, manifestation and listening for that which wants to be created through you, removing the distractions on the path to living your purpose, and more.

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Richard Rohr: Gratuitous Goodness in an Age of Outrage

The prophets and mystics of the Judeo-Christian tradition each had their ways of bringing attention to the hypocrisies and injustices of their particular period in history. Here in the year 2025, as we navigate our own time of disruption and upheaval, how can we as individuals raise our voices and become the compassionate, conscious change agents our world so desperately needs? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher Richard Rohr about his new book, The Tears of Things, and what we can learn from the “sacred revolutionaries” who came before us. 

Tune in to explore: the prophet’s mission and “making good trouble”; self-critical thinking (and how it’s unknown to most major institutions); sacred criticism and the revelation of the shadow; the paradigm of order, disorder, and reorder; outrage, cosmic sadness, and unlimited praise; using anger to cover up sadness; grief work and “getting to the hallelujah”; discovering the foundation of hope; contemplative thinking; conversion and transformation; opening to grace; letting go of control; why “what we don’t want to see is the problem”; waking up from our collective illusion (especially around power and control); living in a deceit-allowing culture; the word “evil”; an ever-present sense of goodness in the world; holding the tension of opposing truths; gratuitous goodness; realizing a joy that cannot be taken from you; the prophet Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations; why the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty; acting from the highest levels of motivation; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Suzanne Giesemann: Dancing Between Being a Soul and a ...

What is the soul? How do we stay in relationship with the eternal aspect of ourselves? Is it possible to honestly trust that “everything is in order” when all we see is chaos and confusion? 

In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with acclaimed author and evidence-based medium Suzanne Giesemann about her journey from being a commander in the U.S. Navy to one of today’s most sought-after guides on the path of spiritual awakening. In this eye-opening conversation, you’ll learn about: the two keys to communicating with the departed: belief and intention; the three Es: educate, experience, and engage; the Sip of the Divine practice; the observer perspective and the importance of one’s point of view; patterns of consciousness interacting across time and space; a meeting with Albert Einstein; past lives; preparing for “a good and free and blessed death”; Wolf’s story; passing through an “elevation”; shifting out of left-brain dominance; curiosity and playfulness; the emotional heart and the spiritual heart; vagus nerve breathing; why there is “purpose in every passing”; Earth as a school for the evolution of our souls; transcending the sense of incompleteness inherent in “the story of you”; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

John J. Prendergast: Meeting Your Deepest Ground

At a time when things feel utterly groundless for so many of us, Dr. John J. Prendergast offers a practical approach to “meeting your deepest ground”—a stabilizing core of awareness and truth that is at once within and all around you. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with the retired therapist and spiritual teacher about his new book, Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality

Settle back for a fascinating conversation filled with both practical insights and esoteric wisdom for anyone on a path of growth and transformation. Tami and John explore overcoming deep inner resistance to what we would rather not face; how traumatic “material” becomes frozen in the body; Kundalini awakening; how to attune to your body’s “subtle sensitivity” to receive the wisdom it has to offer; relaxing the mind; touching reality through and beyond the body; the “underground dimension” that is both personal and collective; the work of Carl Jung; becoming more intimate with the archetypal dimension of life; the challenge of defining the undefinable “absolute ground” of our being; transmitting a felt experience within a shared field of openness; the two kinds of inner blockages, psychological and existential; the core theme of safety; welcoming difficult feelings and experiences in order to better understand them; activating the light of awareness that leads to transformation; the practice of paying attention to the space behind you; mindfulness and witnessing our thoughts; humility and the pilgrimage from the head to the heart; the futility of “seeking” what is always already here; the disorientation that often precedes a reorientation; common symptoms people experience during the process of unwinding core contractions; letting go (and doing it with trust); the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth; why psychological healing is a necessary component for spiritual awakening; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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