Untangle, The Podcast From Meditation Studio

Work has looked very different over the pandemic. In this episode, we look at what we learned in the transition to work from home, and what work can look like when we go back to the office…. Or not. We show employees and leaders how to mindfully create cultures of trust, and how to ask your boss for your ideal work scenario. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Baraz is the author of the book, Awakening Joy. 10 Steps to Happiness. Many of us are asking the question, ”how can we feel joy in the midst of war and suffering — and the many terrifying things that are happening in our world.” James believes that it’s more important than ever that we open up to this feeling. And, if the word joy doesn’t feel right, he says, we can consider the many dimensions of wellbeing— from joy to happiness to goodness to contentment and peace. All of these wholesome states inspire love, kindness, generosity, and compassion. We need this now. It’s a time for our hearts and minds to be expansive so that we can process all of the challenges in our world. If we only focus on sorrows, we’re contracted, living in despair, hopelessness, and negativity. If we’re only living in joy, we are missing the totality of life…the larger perspective. Both are always present. 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. It’s the full range of life experiences that shapes our capacity for compassion and who we

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

Want a Fitter Mind? Better Mental Health? Better Brain Health? Neuroscientist Dr. Jennifer Heisz shows us what kind of exercise will get you there, with an in-depth dive into the mechanisms that make exercise so helpful for brain health and cognition, how it helps decrease anxiety and depression, and how to choose the optimal type of exercise to suit your own brain and mental health needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

World-leading Neurologist and best-selling author, Dr. Stephen Laureys is our guest. His latest book is called the No Nonsense Meditation Book— a Scientists Guide to the Power of Meditation. He shares the data and evidence on how meditation impacts our brains. He says that it’s a ‘free source’ of reduced stress, sharpened attention, better sleep, and a more contented mind. He’s been known to prescribe medication and meditation to his patients and, often, just meditation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Fletcher, Ziva Meditation founder, and Meditation Studio app teacher, shares how meditation helps us to be a more ‘present’ partner in our relationships and--bonus!--gives us a boost in our sex lives too. Spoiler alert? Don’t expect someone else to ‘complete’ you: it all begins with loving and accepting ourselves first. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We look into our brains to answer if True Love is real? How to find a mate? Keep one? Do opposites really attract? Our guest is Dr. Helen Fisher, anthropologist, an expert on the neuroscience of love, and the Chief Science advisor of Match.com. She’s seen it all lately- from the eternal qualities of mate selection to changing trends in love during covid, to why the next generation of families might be more stable, and how, according to our brain, to make love last. Dr. Fisher gets personal and shares it all with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Valentine's day edition, we learn about Mindful sex. Our guide is Jessica Graham mindfulness teacher, actor, and author of “Good Sex” A fun, sensitive, and informative guide that shows you how to bring mindfulness into sex for a bigger, richer, and more present life. No partner required. We also look at how to use mindfulness to unwind some of the difficulties we can have with sex. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sebene is a renowned meditation teacher, speaker, and author of the new book, You Belong, A Call for Connection. She talks about how meditation has transformed her world and how we can bring these teachings into every part of our lives. She believes that we are all inherently interconnected and shares how meditation has been a catalyst to expand awareness, reduce suffering, stay in the present moment, and to generally see the world more clearly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is the amazing Parker J Palmer. At age 82, he is one of the wisest souls I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. It’s our luck that he’s written 10 books that share so much of this wisdom with heart, vulnerability, and authenticity. When I read his work, I know that we are all connected as humans, that we all are both whole and broken at the same time. He is a writer, speaker, activist, poet, founder, and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. He has reached millions worldwide through his books, including the best-selling Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, and A Hidden Wholeness. His latest bestseller is On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old, which is what we discuss today. I devoured this book on my last birthday, feeling the weight of age and time passing. It was like wrapping myself up in a warm blanket. He also holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and 13 honorary doctora

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 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 coach

In the perfect Zen antidote to new year’s resolutions and planning and striving, Zen priest Rev Angel Kyodo Williams shows us the simplicity of returning to the self. To our enoughness. To the present moment. To our multiple and ever-changing purposes. To the joy that unfolds from just being, not doing, planning, or striving, and to the timelessness of the value of life- whatever year it is. This podcast offers a collective exhale to just be and take life as it is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re so grateful for the gifts our experts share from their own personal experiences or from the work they do out in the world. We’ve learned tools to help with the grip of anxiety and uncertainty, how to cope with difficult feelings and emotions, and, maybe most importantly, how to be compassionate with ourselves and others. We need this now more than ever. We’ve also learned a lot about our brains and how how to get a better night's sleep and, perhaps, we have a greater understanding of all that it takes to be a human. it helps to know that there is a common humanity that we all share; that we all have a mix of joy and suffering in our lives. We wish you lots of love in the coming year, a measure of peace and tranquility, and, of course, fresh perspectives as you continue to live your very best life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the author of several mindfulness books. In this interview, we talk about the importance of forgiveness in our lives and why carrying our anger or resentment around with us is like carrying hot coal. Dropping the hot coal can lead us to more freedom, openness, and joy. It doesn’t mean we have to condone or forget, but it is truly an act of self-compassion. It’s simply good for us and the practices she teaches can be really powerful. The first step, she says, is to have the willingness to even start working on forgiveness — whether it’s forgiving another person for hurting you, asking another person to forgive you, or, also extremely important, forgiving yourself. None of this is easy…but it can make a big difference in our own health and ease. Letting go of these difficult feelings is a great way to begin a new year filled with more open, positive, and productive energy. Learn more about your ad choi

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

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

From all of us at Untangle, Meditation Studio, and Muse, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! This special Morning Gratitude Practice is from our brand new Gratitude Collection in the app. We hope you’ll all take a moment to remember what you’re grateful for, what gives you joy, and what fills your love bucket. We wish you much happiness and love throughout all the upcoming holidays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shelly Tygielski is the author of the book 'Sit Down to Rise Up. How Radical Self- Care Can Change the World'. She’s the founder of the grassroots campaign called Pandemic of Love which is a mutual aid organization she created early on during the Covid pandemic…so that people could help one another. One person needs something; another gives something. Simple! Her organization has had more than 2 million peer-to-peer transactions, worth over $60 mm in donor/recipient transactions. Her mantra is…show up for yourself…with radical self-care and for others…in any way that you can. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Music has the power to move us deeply. Music can shift our energy on demand, organize our thoughts, stimulate our body to move, reset our emotional state, and allow us to pass through the day in a more relaxed harmonious manner. Using audio examples throughout the podcast, In this episode, we learn how to use it to its full potential with multi-platinum Hollywood composer and music expert Frank Fitzpatrick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices