Untangle, The Podcast From Meditation Studio

Today’s guest is Dr. Tobias Esch. He is a primary care physician, pioneer in holistic general medicine, and expert in the neurobiology of happiness. He shaped mind-body medicine and integrative health in Germany and as Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School. He has published more than 300 scientific works. His background is in primary care, neurobiology, and positive psychology and his work focus has been on promoting good health, patient activation and behavior change. In this interview we dive into his Happiness Model, and what he calls the U Curve of happiness which is both surprising and fascinating. The good news is that happiness can be shaped through practice. Life satisfaction and happiness are both deep feeling states, but he defines them differently. His wisdom is cultivated through a rich blend of neuroscience, medicine, positive psychology, mindfulness, gratitude, stillness, and acceptance. He believes in listening deeply and connecting with his patients to uncover what might be beyond the

Guest Shannon Harvey is an award-winning Australian health journalist, author, and filmmaker. In her film (and now a book, My Year of Living Mindfully), Shannon committed to meditating every day for 365 days. She enlisted a team of top scientists from around the world to track everything from her stress hormones to her immune function to her cellular aging and gene expression to her subjective wellbeing. Overwhelmed with insomnia, autoimmune disease, and a family history of mental health issues, Shannon was highly motivated to find a way to address the challenges she faced, and those we all face with the growing epidemics of stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction. The results were surprising! She hopes that the film will spark meaningful conversations and help all of us feel more grounded and calm as we face the inevitable challenges of being human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's guest is Oliver Nino, Energy Healer and Author of the new book, Spiritual Activator: 5 Steps to Clearing, Unblocking, and Protecting Your Energy to Attract More Love, Joy, and Purpose. He discusses his 5-step energy detox program that helps to remove negative blocks and emotions. The detox process, he shares, can help remove feelings of being stuck, ease relationship issues, and help deal with feelings related to lack of abundance, purpose or confidence. He also shares how he’s helped people with anxiety, depression, and an overall feeling of unhappiness. We’re energetic beings and we get affected by all kinds of energy, more than we’re ever aware. We may ‘feel’ something and even find it hard to explain what it is we’re feeling. Energy, like air or oxygen, is invisible. Every one of us, he says, is naturally wired to clear our energy fields. This takes us to our natural state— often where we’re closest to our soul. His goal is to help people restore their energy to optimal levels and to unlock our

Psychedelic Assisted Therapy has the potential to help us overcome our fears and learn from the contents of our subconscious. Dr. Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), is at the forefront of this research and advocacy, and working with the FDA to bring psychedelics to legalization. He shares beautiful insights about the mind, fear, war, and how he sees that psychedelics can save us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Master Somatic Leadership Coach, Trauma Psychologist, and Mindfulness Instructor Chris Johnson. In her book, The Leadership Pause, she shares how to quiet the noise of the daily hustle so you can hear the still-small voice of purposeful curiosity that lives within you. This spaciousness breeds more wisdom in both work and life. She shares how mindful awareness can lead to clarity of heart and mind plus increased resilience AND help you to be a better, more natural leader with a clearer vision and a deeper connection to yourself and others. She says…”It’s all about the pause.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's guest is Dr. Emeran Mayer, a Distinguished Research Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Physiology, and Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is a world-renowned gastroenterologist and neuroscientist with 35 years of experience in the study of clinical and neurobiological aspects of how the digestive system and the nervous system interact in health and disease. Today, we discuss his bestselling book, The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health. The book combines neuroscience with the latest discoveries on the human microbiome with lots of insights on the biological link between the mind and the digestive system. He shares the science behind the mind-gut communication pipeline…and discusses how we can harness the power of this connection to take charge of our health and listen to the innate wisdom of our bodies. Our favorite quote: “The time has come for us to empower ourselves to be the engineers of our

Brilliant choreographer Alonzo King shares how finding stillness is key to fueling our creativity and intuition, cultivating the relationship we have with ourselves, and tapping into our natural state of joy. He finds stillness and his own inner voice through yoga and meditation, and inspires his dancers to use heart and mind in addition to the body. Encore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Sharon Salzberg, one of the most prominent voices in the field of meditation, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, and author of 11 books including the NY Times Best Seller Real Happiness. Our conversation is about her newest book, Real change, Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World. It’s an incredibly timely book because she shares great examples of how we can bridge the worlds of mindfulness and social action. Sharon has a way of expressing complex ideas in her signature, down-to-earth style. She invites us to rethink how we approach some of our most difficult emotions with grace and dignity. Encore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you a little fed up with your partner sometimes? Or looking to be a better partner yourself? Our guests this week are a married couple, Nate and Kaley Klemp, who teach us how to be better, more mindful partners. They are mindfulness and organizational dynamic experts who get real about strategies to show up for the other person, even when the other partner might not be so mindful all the time. Encore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest, in honor of Valentine's Day, is Loretta Breuning, PhD and author of several books including Habits of a Happy Brain and The Science of Positivity. She is the Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute where she studies the brain chemistry we share with mammals. It’s fascinating how she connects our behaviors with those of mammals, especially as she dives into the neurochemicals…dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and cortisol — that drive love, relationships, and much of our lives. You’ll learn a lot about the neurobiology of love, how to turn on the happy chemicals — and how you can build new neural pathways anytime. A little piece of advice she shares…Love is a neurochemical roller coaster, and managing your own chemicals works FAR better than blaming your partner for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Dr. Molly Maloof. She is the author of a new book called The Spark Factor. The Secret to Supercharging Energy, Becoming Resilient, and Feeling Better Than Ever. In this interview, she shares her research and insights on the key pillars of women’s health and wellbeing. I found this to be like an encyclopedia chock full of information and data related to our brains, gut, mental and physical health. She’s passionate about biohacking, lifestyle interventions, personalized medicine, and optimizing performance. It’s a rich look at how we manage our own health so we don’t have to rely on the healthcare system to ‘fix us’ when something goes wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, you can learn more about what you eat affects the health of your brain. Dr. Lisa Mosconi, Alzheimer's researcher, and nutritionist gives us a step-by-step guide to what foods to eat and what foods to avoid for the best brain health. Encore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matt Zemon, our guest today, has a Masters's in Psychology and Neuroscience and is the editor of the book Psychedelics for Everyone — A Beginners Guide to These Powerful Medicines for Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Expanding Consciousness. The book is a compilation of writings from a number of different experts. In 2019 Matt had an opportunity to experience a guided psilocybin (magic mushroom) journey and, he says, it completely changed his worldview. Since then, he has gone from someone who had never taken any drugs, with the exception of a little cannabis, to a deep dive into the study of human consciousness with the help of psilocybin, ayahuasca, ketamine, MDMA, and more. Psychedelics for Everyone is his attempt to share some of the insights he’s gained. He feels these drugs can sometimes play a powerful role in healing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on the Untangle Podcast, learn how to create any habit you want! By celebrating even the smallest changes as victories, you can rewire your brain to tackle your year's challenges successfully. Learn more about BJ Fogg at www.bjfogg.com and read his book, "Tiny Habits". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is an author, speaker, and Harvard-trained neuroanatomist. You may remember her from her Ted Talk (viewed by over 27 mm people) and her NY Times best-selling book, My Stroke of Insight, A Brain Scientists Journey. In this book, she chronicles the experience of her rare stroke at the age of 37. She lost her ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her past. It took eight years for her to rebuild her brain — to recover all physical, emotional, and thinking abilities. Her second book is called Whole Brain Living, The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. In this book, she blends neuroanatomy with psychology to illustrate how we can short-circuit emotional reactivity to lead a more fulfilling and peaceful life. Most of us have been led to believe that our right brain houses our emotions and the left brain our rational thinking. Jill shares that it’s not that simple. Each of our hemispheres has both an emotional and a thinking brain. In this book, sh

At the end of each year, I love to look back at some of the gems that have come from Untangle. It’s such a joy to be reminded of all the insights and inspiration that our guests invite us to explore. This year there are some wonderful themes: Accepting all of who we are…the wholeness and the brokenness; Being in alignment with our values and our true nature; Noticing the fragility of life as we behold the joys and sorrows; Allowing for the idea that ambiguity teaches us that there can be multiple interpretations and possibilities to any situation; Cultivating friendships is a key to meaning and happiness. There’s more in this annual episode of Untangle. We hope you enjoy it. Happy 2023 to all! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As children, the holidays hold an undeniable sense of magic. As adults, we can lose our sense of that magic in the busyness and obligation of the season. In this special holiday episode of Untangle, we learn that we can uncover the magic and mystery that is there for us all to savor--if we can get quiet enough to listen. This beautiful episode inspires us to hear, see, and taste the magic of the season. It might just change how you think about the holidays! Our guest is Father John Markey, an LGBTQ Roman-Catholic priest, and professor of theology and spirituality at Oblate School of Theology. We've saved everyone a seat at our holiday table! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is writer, singer, songwriter, and teacher, Marisa Handler. Marisa is the author of the memoir, Loyal to The Sky, and is a longtime spiritual practitioner and teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition. She’s also a Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie. Marisa teaches creativity, meditation, and transformation at places like Stanford University, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and California Institute of Integral Studies. Today we talk about her 9-month program called Live Your Creative Genius: Birth Your Most Brilliant Work where she integrates creativity, art, meditation, spirituality, and community. She shares how we can let go of old ways of creating, identify resistance and blocks that get in our way, open up a clear channel for our creative energy and vision all while finding and expressing our true creative voice. I especially like her ideas about confidence, trusting yourself as a creative, and knowing that what you have to say matters. You can find out more about her one-on-one coachi

Today's guest is author and dance movement therapist, Erica Hornthal. Her book is called Body Aware — Rediscover Your Mind-Body Connection, Stop Feeling Stuck, and Improve Your Mental Health with Simple Movement Practices. Erica believes that traditional talk therapy can only get you so far. Dance Movement Therapy, on the other hand, uses movement to integrate mind, body, and spirit…as well as the social, cognitive, emotional, and physical aspects of an individual. For Erica, it’s about bringing nonverbal communication into the therapeutic process. There’s quite a bit of mindfulness and awareness of the body and sensations in her body aware practices. Muse's Holiday Sale is On! By using the promo code HOLIDAY2022, you will receive a 20% discount on Muse at https://choosemuse.com/shop! For users in Canada, use the promo code MM-HOLIDAY2022 to receive 15% off a Muse Membership at choosemuse.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shama Rahman is a successful musician, actor, and PhD neuroscientist who studies creativity and flow. Listen as she unravels what’s happening in your brain when you’re getting creative or experiencing flow, and hear tips on how we can all spend more time in those states. Encore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices