Untangle, The Podcast From Meditation Studio

Eric Maisel is a psychotherapist, teacher, coach, and author. His most recent book is called The Power of Daily Practice: How Creative and Performing Artists (and Everyone Else) Can Finally Meet Their Goals. The idea is that a Daily Practice is a muscle that can be acquired and can lead to genuine accomplishments. Meditation is one daily practice, but this book talks about 18 different practices for the many different parts of our lives and it includes the necessary elements of a practice…like self-discipline, self-direction, and devotion, and the many challenges we can, in fact, overcome to optimize our practices. Lots of great food for thought! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After last year, we might be a little shy to do visioning or goal setting for 2021, but this week’s guest, learning expert Candice Faktor, makes it empowering to do this year. She guides us in how to create inspiring guiding principles for the year and then allow the year to unfold as it will, in service of you. In this episode, she’ll walk you through how to do it, step by step, and shares insightful jewels of wisdom along the way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kristin Neff is the author of "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself", and is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion. She teaches several courses, including one with Brene Brown that examines why we’re always our toughest critic. Kristen gives us tools to be kinder to ourselves and teaches us why this is so important. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nina Grae is an exceptional singer song-writer who in this episode inspires us with her wisdom and moves us with her music, to recognize that we have the power to be the creators of our own life. Nina shows us how to “cut through the noise” of 2021 to find our own voice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Elisha Goldstein is a psychologist, author, speaker, and the co-founder of the center for mindful living in LA. He's also one of our top teachers on Muse and Meditation Studio. Elisha shares some jewels from his new Life Shift program designed to help us make more graceful and lasting transitions — and life changes this year. He talks about the messiness of change, the importance of connecting with our hearts and minds, visualizing what we want to change so that it really sticks, understanding the reality of our interconnections with others, and building our emotional vocabulary so we’re able to better understand and communicate how we’re feeling. There’s great inspiration here for getting unstuck — regardless of where you might be stuck. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Each year we like to reflect on the top five things we’ve learned from our wise and inspiring Untangle guests. This year has been unusually hard to navigate, so our guests have focused on helping us to stay more grounded and they have inspired us to learn new ways to care for ourselves and our families. 2020 has also underscored the importance of cultivating our internal resources…which give us the tools we need to control the things we can, in fact, control. We hope that as we close out 2020…and look forward to 2021, we’re feeling more introspective than isolated and we hope that we’re even feeling a little more connected to what is most meaningful in our lives... We framed the top five as questions so we can keep reflecting on these together. We would love to hear what you’ve learned this year and what has sparked your curiosity, so please send in your thoughts to untangle@choosemuse.com. We at Untangle, are wishing you much health and happiness in the coming year. We hope that all your connections are m

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

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

Musician Chad Lawson recently released his debut solo piano album, You Finally Knew, which was recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios and was inspired by his favorite poet, Mary Oliver. The album features ten pieces he wrote to inspire listeners to take time every day to consciously be still, to improve our mental clarity and overall calm. Chad crafts his music with an emotional pulse that dials into the heart of every listener, inviting us to pause and look inside ourselves to see what makes each of us uniquely us. At the end of the interview, we’re sharing STAY, one of his beautiful solo pieces from the Album. We hope you enjoy it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes the most amazing things can happen effortlessly when you surrender to the moment and let it flow. That's the kind of music that Grammy-nominated instrumentalist Stu Fuchs plays on his ukulele--the kind of music you get lost and find peace in. Just listening can lighten up even the darkest parts of your soul. Stu leads an annual music and meditation retreat at the Omega Institute, honoring and applying the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh to the ukulele. www.stufuchs.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Epstein is a family physician, palliative care Dr., author, researcher, and teacher of communication and mindful practice in medicine. His book, Attending, Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity explores how the foundations of mindfulness can help clinicians expand their capacity to provide high-quality care, and how doctors, patients, and their families can more collaboratively and mindfully approach medical decisions. He shares how the practice of mindfulness in medicine helps support a deeper understanding and connection between clinicians and patients, how we can flourish and be more resilient in the midst of uncertain situations, and how healthcare professionals can more skillfully cope with the discomfort of ambiguity. He also discusses his hope that the human aspects of medicine can become at least as important as the technical aspects of the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving. We’re grateful for you, our listeners! We may or may not be physically with the people we love today, but this Positive Reflection meditation invites us to remember them and to feel grateful that they are in our lives. It also invites us to reflect on what’s good in our lives at this moment and to feel grateful for the big and little joys. We at Untangle, Muse, and Meditation Studio are wishing you a safe, loving, and happy thanksgiving wherever you are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fascinating brain-based perspective on why we are feeling and acting the way we are as a society right now, and what we can do to replenish ourselves at this moment. Dr. Feldman-Barrett helps us understand the cultural context of uncertainty and echo-chambers that we are experiencing, and directs us to the right self-care practices our brains need to help us replenish and thrive in this world. And as a bonus- how to feel more connected even over Zoom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Shelby Harris is a Clinical Psychologist, Board Certified in Behavioural Sleep Disorders, and the former Director of the Behavior Sleep Medicine Program at Montefiore Medical Center. Her new book is called The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia — Get a Good Night Sleep Without Relying on Medication. Shelby covers the nuts and bolts of a good night's sleep, how our hormones affect our sleep, and how we can change certain habits, thoughts, and behaviors so we can stomp out insomnia for good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Winter is a neurologist, sleep specialist, and author of the book, "The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It." He explains why we’re a culture of poor sleepers and how we got that way, and includes five things we can do to improve our sleep right now. Spoiler alert: an attitude change might be the best tactic of all... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kern Beare is the author of the book, Difficult Conversations, the Art and Science of Working Together. He shares strategies to help us have more productive dialogues and to resolve differences when it matters most. Whether in relationship, work, or political conversations, he discusses the importance of dropping our egos, letting go of feeling like we need to be right all the time, deep listening to truly understand the other, and seeing beyond our own stories. Understanding our implicit triggers and underlying ’stories’ can help us to be more self-aware when we’re in the heat of a difficult discussion or, as he says, about to ‘flip our lid.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todays Guest is Dan Harris, ABC News journalist and author of 10% Happier and Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Dan has a humorous way of turning ancient wisdom into useful everyday tools for staying sane. In this interview, we talk about Election Sanity (or lack thereof) and trainable mental skills and practices that can give us a bit of a boost right now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of our most important podcasts ever, a riveting story that teaches us how to overcome our divides through respect, patience, and recognition of shared humanity. Daryl Davis is a black man who has gotten over 200 KKK clansmen to leave the KKK by becoming friends with them. Daryl tells incredible stories of these meetings and shares his powerful method for conversing with someone from another viewpoint. It is a snapshot of what is possible to achieve in our divided country, and a methodology we can all use to do it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Koshin is a zen teacher, monk, author, and the founder of the Zen Center for Contemplative Care in NY. He's also a favorite teacher on Muse and Meditation Studio. Koshin helps us deal with stressful reactions, especially those triggered by the US election and the many other events we’re all experiencing. He shares some tools, practices, and inner resources that he's tapping into right now. At the end of the interview, he asks...how do you want to live today? how are you going to nourish your life? How are you going to leave sorrow behind so you can be of service to yourself and to the world? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to be free? The journey begins within. Diego Perez, aka "Yung Pueblo", talks about understanding your mind to set yourself free, find contentment, connection--and maybe even save the world! Get inside the head of this incredible poet, meditator, and speaker who inspires hundreds of thousands of people daily on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices