600 Podcasts and Counting...
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Lisa Lahey: Your Immunity to Change and How to Overcom...
Lisa Lahey, EdD, is an author, the codirector of the Minds at Work consulting firm, and a faculty member at Harvard University. She is a featured presenter for the Inner MBA program, a new Sounds True multimedia learning experience that explores how to bring principles of presence and conscious leadership to the business world. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lisa about the inherent difficulty of making large personal changes—especially when they are essential to the advancement of your career. They talk about the inherent human resistance to change and the need to be fully aware of our “inner landscapes.” Lisa explains how much of our resistance to change is rooted in self-protective patterns that need to be reckoned with before we can move forward. Tami and Lisa also discuss how to cultivate skills such as time management and communication, as well as what we can do to regulate work-based anxiety. Finally, Lisa details the three evolutionary steps for creating meaning and shares her hopes for the Inner MBA program.(67 minutes)
Your Body Is Not What You Think: Looking Beyond the Ph...
This model of a multidimensional body applies directly to the theme of the Deep Heart. I would not write about the importance of the heart unless I knew it intimately firsthand and also understood its critical role in psychological healing and spiritual awakening. If there are, as I propose, layers to the heart ranging from the relatively gross, through the refined, to the transcendent, then many of us will be able to directly or indirectly sense this in some way.
One of the easiest ways to sense the emotional and energetic reality of the heart area is to notice what we sense and feel when we fall in love or, conversely, when we lose someone we have loved via death or a painful breakup. Heart openings are intoxicatingly joyful, and heart breaks are extraordinarily painful. Have you ever wondered why this is the case? Are the opening and closing of the heart purely physiological, or might something else be going on? We will explore romantic love in a later chapter, but for now I’ll just acknowledge the central role that the heart area plays in human relationships and in genuine spiritual openings. The majority of popular songs and a large number of our most compelling stories revolve around love found and lost.
In order to explore your heart in any depth, it’s helpful to sense your whole body with as few ideas as possible. Clear the slate—be open to the possibility that your body is not what you think it is. Rather than approaching your body as a familiar solid object made up of skin, bones, muscles, organs, tissues, and cells governed by neural and hormonal networks, I encourage you to approach it differently—as a field of vibration filled with space.
In the next exercise, you will experience the body as a field of vibration. This meditation is inspired by the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, a key experiential text in Kashmiri Tantric Shaivism that was authored over a thousand years ago. It’s a good idea to record this guided meditation on your smartphone, and I recommend pausing between the steps outlined below for at least twenty seconds. Including the pauses, please allow for at least ten minutes in total. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, sit comfortably, and close your eyes.
BODY SENSING PRACTICE
Sensing the Body as Vibration
Take a few deep breaths and allow your attention to settle down and in.
Feel the weight of your body being held by whatever you are sitting on and let yourself be completely held.
Sense the bottoms of your feet, the tips of your toes, and notice a lively vibration. Imagine it growing stronger, gradually enveloping both feet, and then moving up both legs.
Sense the palms of your hands and the tips of your fingers. Notice a subtle vibration—a sense of aliveness.
Feel it enveloping both hands and slowly spreading up both arms.
Feel this sense of vibrant aliveness growing into your hips and shoulders.
And then into the belly and the chest, including your back.
Sense this lively vibration moving up the neck and into the head, suffusing the mouth, ears, eyes, and brain. Take your time.
Now let go of any focusing and sense your entire body as a diffuse field of lively vibration. Notice that it is difficult to tell exactly where your body ends and where the so-called world begins. Allow this sense of vibration to extend out into space in all directions: front … back … left … right … up … and down.
Rest in and as this expansive sense of vibrant spaciousness as long as you like.
Journey into the depths of your own heart with Dr. John J. Prendergast’s guide, The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence.
Lance Allred: The New Alpha Male
Lance Allred is a former NBA player (who was the first legally deaf player in the league), public speaker, and author. With Sounds True, he has published The New Alpha Male: How to Win the Game When the Rules Are Changing. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lance about the experiences he had in professional sports that led him to reevaluate what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Lance explains how his upbringing in a rural, polygamous commune informed his original ideas about masculinity, highlighting the subconscious assumptions about money and power that affect American men’s self-worth. Tami and Lance also discuss the roles of emotional vulnerability and surrender in the lives of modern men. Finally, they talk about the principle of perseverance and the increasingly urgent need for all cultures to reexamine their assumptions and core values.(63 minutes)
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Choosing to Live Well with Pain and Illness
Tami Simon speaks with Vidyamala Burch, who for over 30 years has lived with chronic back pain as a result of a car accident, multiple surgeries, and congenital spine weakness. Searching for a way to cope with her situation she started practicing mindfulness meditation to help accept and move beyond the pain. She is cofounder of the Breathworks organization in the U.K. where she teaches mindfulness-based approaches to living with physical pain and illness. She is also author of the new Sounds True book Living Well with Pain and Illness. Vidyamala speaks about what it means to turn toward pain and soften, and how to live one moment at a time. (56 Minutes)
The Trickster Redeemer: Woof, Woof, Wanna Play?
Tami Simon speaks with Caroline Casey, whose unique fusion of astrology, compassionate social activism, esoteric spiritual wisdom, and humor is known to audience internationally. Caroline hosts “The Visionary Activist Show” on KPFA in the San Francisco Bay area. With Sounds True, she is the author of the audio learning course Visionary Activist Astrology and the audio program Making the Gods Work For You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche. In this playful yet insight-filled discussion, Tami speaks with Caroline about the myths that are most relevant to our culture at this time, the cultural forces surrounding 2012, and how we can invite the “trickster redeemer” to play an essential role during this time when we most need it. (67 minutes)
Susan Kaiser Greenland: Nothing Is More Important Than...
Susan Kaiser Greenland is an author, meditation teacher, and the founder of the Inner Kids Foundation, which is devoted to bringing the lessons of mindfulness to children. Her books include The Mindful Child and Mindful Games. With Sounds True, Susan has created Mindful Parent, Mindful Child, a 30-day training program for integrating mindfulness into your family’s everyday life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Susan about her efforts to fold mindfulness into basic childhood education, as well as how she came to this work after 20 years as a corporate lawyer. Susan outlines some of the practices that are ideal for children and why parents should have their own mindfulness routine. Susan and Tami discuss mindfulness-based games and the steps to making common practices (such as a body scan) more fun and engaging. Finally, they consider how to balance the ideal of non-striving with motivated work, as well as what the future of children’s mindfulness education might look like. (62 minutes)
