Untangle, The Podcast From Meditation Studio

Dr. Epstein is a family physician, palliative care Dr., author, researcher, and teaches 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. Encore episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todays guest is Cheryl Richardson. Cheryl has written 7 books and has dedicated her life to the practice of self care. When we begin to care for ourselves, we naturally begin to care for others…families, friends, the environment and the world. There are so many wisdom nuggets in this episode. She invites us to look at what’s draining our energy so that we can let go of what no longer serves us; she shares how to make our inner lives more of a priority and discusses how to set up priorities and boundaries. I love her phrase; “stop doing things that bore you.” This can be the biggest energy drain of all. She also suggests that doing the opposite of what you normally do or even think you can do can be a great way to change stagnant habits and break some old patterns. Cheryl shares why focusing on self care is so important for all of us. She also discusses how to make soul vs. ego more of a focus as you move into your later years; how to look at what’s draining your energy by making a list and eliminating each

Todays guest is Ozan Varol. Ozan is a native of Turkey and moved to the US to study astrophysics when he was 17. He started out as a rocket scientist and later became a law professor. In our interview, he reflects on how there were so many moments where on paper everything looked great, but intuitively there was something deep down in his gut that felt very wrong. He couldn’t rationally explain the feeling…but he knew he needed to make some changes in his life. And he did. His mission now is to help others reimagine the conventional wisdom that led them to decisions that govern their lives…but no longer need to. I like when he says “is your safety net really a straight jacket?” His book is called Awaken your Genius. Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary. Genius, to him, means being who you were meant to be; not what others expect. Unlock your originality and unleash your unique talents to discover your true nature. I think you’ll find his perspectives super interesting, and a great

Welcome to another meditation edition of Untangle.I’m excited to introduce you to Shawn Moore. Shawn is a meditation and yoga teacher, and loves to create spaces for stillness and self-inquiry to help leaders and all of us… align our strengths, intention, and impact. Today’s meditation lives in the Optimal Brain States Collection on the Muse app. Shawn leads all of the community initiatives at Muse and is passionate about bringing people together to connect, learn and be inspired by one another. Today’s meditation is about the gifts of a growth vs. fixed mindset. He invites us to leave lot’s of room for reflection here. My favorite part? He asks us to ponder this question. How do you react when working outside your comfort zone? Head over to choosemuse.com to check out his meditations on the Muse app. Use Untangle15 for your discount code. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todays guest is Rob Schwartz. You may not know him, but you’ve likely heard of his dad, Morrie. Bestseller, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” sold over 18 million copies after it was released in 1997. While Morrie, a beloved dad and professor at Brandeis University, was dying of ALS, Mitch Albom, one of his students, sat down to interview him every Tuesday for 12 weeks. This became a treasure trove of his philosophy as his health declined. It was very early in our understanding of ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Several years after “Tuesdays with Morrie," and the death of his father, Rob, found an almost finished manuscript in his dad’s desk drawer. He decided to edit this book as a tribute to his dad. Now, “The Wisdom of Morrie," recently released, is a new look at Morries’ life wisdom and lessons. I was happy to be reminded of the spirit and light that filled his life, despite that he was dying. A reminder from Morrie: “Dying is only one thing to be upset about; living an unhappy life is something else.” Show Not

Enjoy this lovely meditation, by Kate Johnson, in honor of World Meditation Week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest interviewer > Ariel Garten! Do you want to wake up feeling great, and be productive through the rest of the day? Make the most of your day by optimizing your mornings. Charming British brother and sister therapists, Toby and Kate Oliver, give dozens of practical, science-backed techniques to try at the start of the day, to improve your morning and the whole day. Whether you’re a morning person or a night owl, this episode will help you transform your life, one morning at a time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's guest is Dr. Greg Wells a Physiologist, Scientist, Author, and renowned health and high-performance expert. He has dedicated his career to studying the science of human limits and developing practical strategies to help individuals and organizations perform at their best, even under the most challenging circumstances. He’s even worked with Olympic athletes. But his most important work is with those of us who simply want to optimize health every single day. His guidance in this interview relates to protecting and optimizing our Mitochondria, which affects every aspect of our lives. It’s a really interesting way to look at how we can have some agency over our mental and physical health so we can live our best lives. Note: Use discount code UNTANGLE15 at choosemuse.com to order your Muse Headband. Show notes: We get our energy from mitochondria. These are tiny structures inside our cells that break down the foods that we eat to create energy. They're in our muscles, our brains, they're all over the pl

4X NYT best-selling author, the hilarious and poignant AJ Jacobs, spent a year following every commandment in the Bible, to see what would happen. He then dove deep into gratitude by traveling around the globe to thank every person who had helped produce his morning coffee. In an incredibly interesting conversation, he shares his witty and profound insights from these experiments, and also teaches us what it takes to accomplish the things we want in our own lives, and gives us techniques we can use to motivate ourselves towards our goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is all about behavior change. Dr. Allison Grupski, PhD and Clinical Health Psychologist specializing in weight management and eating behaviors is the Head of Behavior Change at Weight Watchers, referred to as WW in this interview. She shares many of the behavior change strategies she’s used to drive real-life behavior change for millions of people. Change can be difficult, especially when it’s tied to deeply engrained habits. And, when it comes to eating and weight management, it may be even more complicated given the many factors that influence us. Her thoughts on disrupting routine behaviors as a way to shift habits are fascinating. You won’t be surprised to know that she includes meditation in many of her workshops and meetings. She also shared the top five behaviors that help people reach their healthy weight goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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