Ever wondered what the connection between chi and the mitochondria might be? Want to know why relaxation is all about activating the parasympathetic nervous system? The human body is endlessly fascinating, which can also make getting and staying healthy feel terribly complicated. That is, until you have an expert explain it to you in a way that makes perfect sense. Dr. Frank Lipman is a leader in integrative and functional medicine, my personal doctor, a New York Times best-selling author of fiv...
Apr 03, 2018•43 min
mbg Collective member Paige Bourassa MSTOM, L.Ac., RHN, is a licensed acupuncturist, registered holistic nutritionist, Chinese herbologist, and has her master's of science in traditional Oriental medicine. She's one of the most qualified holistic and integrative practitioners bringing ancient wisdom and modern science to treat pain, psycho-emotional disorders, and chronic illness. In the episode, the Vancouver native generously shares her knowledge, giving us a full breakdown of her education an...
Mar 27, 2018•56 min
Valter Longo, PhD, has been studying longevity for years. It wasn't long before he became fascinated by the world of fasting and calorie restriction and how they can help us maintain a healthy body and prolong our lifespan. He is now the director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, creator of the ProLon fasting-mimicking diet, and author of the best-selling book The Longevity Diet. In this episode of the mbg podcast, we talked about the five pillars of longevity ...
Mar 20, 2018•59 min
Functional medicine trailblazer Dr. Mark Hyman knows a thing or two about optimal living. A man with many titles—practicing family physician, ten time #1 New York Times bestselling author, and director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, just to name a few—Hyman has been force in the wellness world, revolutionizing our approach to eating, moving, thinking, and ultimately, thriving in transformative and healing ways. His upcoming book, Food: What The Heck Should I Eat? aims to...
Mar 06, 2018•48 min
Teacher and innovator Light Watkins has been revolutionizing the practice of meditation since 1998—and now, he's on a mission to make meditation an everyday practice, for everyone. As first a meditation practitioner and then apprentice to his Vedic Meditation teacher, Light has worked to deconstruct meditation and make the practice more accessible and sustainable. He’s the instructor of the mindbodygreen classes A Meditation Expert's 14-day Guide and Meditation For Anxiety and founder of The Shi...
Feb 20, 2018•1 hr 9 min
It all started with blueberry muffins. Elizabeth Stein made them to woo clients for her health and nutrition, not to start a business —- but everyone was obsessed with the combination of healthy ingredients and great flavor. Ever the brilliant entrepreneur, she recognized the demand and pivoted her business. Now, only a few short years later, Purely Elizabeth is a nationally renowned brand with granolas, instant oatmeals, and more—and plans to grow far beyond breakfast. I sat down with Elizabeth...
Feb 13, 2018•1 hr 2 min
Deepak Chopra, M.D., is one of the first pioneers of wellness and quite possibly the most widely recognized spirituality figure in the world. He began his career in the 1970s as an internist and went on to specialize in neuroendocrinology, the study of neuropeptides and neurotransmitters, which at the time was groundbreaking. That was just the beginning! Flash-forward to 2018, and he's just released his latest book—one of at least 80 he's written in his 71 years on Earth—called The Healing Self,...
Feb 06, 2018•1 hr 20 min
Seth Kaufman knows about healthy food. As the head of PepsiCo's North American Nutrition division (whom we partnered with for our Next Great Nutritionist competition!), he's responsible for helping the mega-corporation make healthy options accessible and affordable for people all over the world. It's a weight he feels profoundly. "Talking about this idea of affordable nutrition, if we're not going to do it—with the scale that we have—who can?" he says. In this podcast, we talk about PepsiCo Nort...
Jan 30, 2018•1 hr 16 min
Paul Hawken's expansive career as an environmentalist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur began with a case of greenwashing. Get the scoop on that story and so many more in this intimate podcast episode that spans from the civil rights movement into the present day and decades into the future. Hawken's expansive resume as founder of health food mecca Erewhon and lifestyle brand Smith & Hawken, author of a dozen books, and prolific public speaker and activist is only part of what makes him...
Jan 23, 2018•1 hr 30 min
JJ Virgin is, without a doubt, one of the biggest names in health and wellness. She's a certified nutrition specialist and health and fitness instructor, has had numerous books hit the best-seller list, and leads a new class at mindbodygreen called Boost Your Metabolism. Raised on Pop-Tarts and Cap'n Crunch, she went rogue and visited a health food store at the early age of 12, which sparked her interest in health and nutrition. Virgin never looked back and has since dedicated her life to helpin...
Jan 16, 2018•59 min
Some of us know what it's like to reach a moment of reckoning—a low point in life when we know that something has to change, and there's nowhere to go but up. For Dan Harris, this moment occurred on live television in front of 5 million people. It took a panic attack reading the news on Good Morning America to make the journalist and anchor realize he needed to address his anxiety. After years of searching, Harris found his savior in meditation. But ever a skeptic at heart, Harris had to first c...
Jan 02, 2018•1 hr 12 min
Norma Kamali is 72 and has been an ageless wellness queen since she was born. Her mother juiced, educated herself on supplements, and introduced Kamali to healthful foods at a very young age. Although she rebelled at first, wellness became a part of her DNA, and her company's. Back in 2001, Kamali opened her wellness cafe uptown in New York City in response to the September 11 attacks—she was way ahead of the wellness curve. Since then, she's written a book called Facing East, started a campaign...
Dec 26, 2017•50 min
What makes for a healthy, happy human? Dan Buettner, author, athlete, and National Geographic explorer, has traversed the world searching far and wide for the answer—and he's found it. His book, The Blue Zones, identifies the five areas of the world where people live the longest and are healthiest, snagging the secrets to longevity along the way. (Hint: Nurturing your personal relationships, eating a plant-based diet, and sleeping eight—yes, eight—hours a night all play a role.) His latest proje...
Dec 19, 2017•57 min
This special edition episode is a reflection on mindbodygreen's 2018 wellness trends! Every year in December, we release a report of our biggest trends and predictions for next year, and this time we have a sneak peek into the thought process behind the trends with our founder and CEO, Jason Wachob, along with co-founder and chief brand officer, Colleen Wachob. "It is a really exciting time to be in wellness," Jason said, as he reflected on mbg's track record for setting and predicting trends. I...
Dec 15, 2017•21 min
GT Dave is the founder of the world's most successful kombucha company, GT's Kombucha. A native Californian, he was born a vegetarian and raised by two very holistic parents who always looked at life—and more importantly, health—from a holistic perspective. His journey with kombucha began in 1994 as a teenager when his parents starting making and drinking it regularly. Not long after, his mother—who was healthy and active—was diagnosed with breast cancer. When weeks later her doctors downgraded ...
Dec 12, 2017•58 min
As founder and CEO of 22 Days Nutrition and author of the New York Times best-selling book The 22-Day Revolution, Marco Borges is one of the most sought-after experts in the field of plant-based nutrition and functional foods. Growing up in Miami in the late '70s—and attending public school during the heyday of cocaine in the city—he credits his strong sense of self and determined personality for his lack of interest in drugs and alcohol. He originally wanted to be a doctor, but the more he lear...
Dec 05, 2017•1 hr 36 min
Six years ago, Ella Mills was so ill that she could barely get out of bed. She spent hours watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians and browsing her friends' Facebook feeds, growing increasingly depressed. Doctors had diagnosed her with postural tachychardia syndrome, a rare disease, and pumped her full of medicine, but she knew there had to be a better way. Eventually, while browsing the internet, she read about the power of diet and lifestyle to heal and began experimenting with a plant-based ...
Nov 28, 2017•1 hr 5 min
Mark Sisson is the founder of Mark's Daily Apple and Primal Kitchen (the mega-popular brand of salad dressing, energy bar, protein powder and more), the author of the brand-new The Keto Reset Diet: Reboot Your Metabolism In 21 Days to Burn Fat Forever, and the man responsible for empowering millions of people to take back control of their health. While he's now renowned as the founder of the modern-day paleo or primal diets, he wasn't always this way. Once an Ironman athlete and competitive runn...
Nov 21, 2017•1 hr 12 min
Byron Katie is a wellness icon. Unlike a lot of popular theories today, her system of self-inquiry, known as "The Work," helps people to separate their beliefs from what is true. In other words, she cuts through the bullsh*t pretty quickly. "The Work is not meant to support you to feel good. There’s no feel good in it. It’s about waking up to the reality," Katie said in our interview. That's the good stuff. She wasn't always the super-successful author, teacher, and beacon of light she has becom...
Nov 14, 2017•59 min
If you've seen more men with mustaches growing in lately, you can thank Justin Coghlan ("JC"), one of the founding members of The Movember Foundation. With 20 participating countries, more than 5 million individual participants, and $850 million raised to date, Movember has become the world's largest men's health movement. Like most brilliant ideas, it started at a bar and was kind of an accident. After having a drink together almost 15 years ago, Travis Garone and Luke Slattery decided to reviv...
Nov 07, 2017•48 min
Jimmy Chin is an adventurer, artist, and filmmaker whose awe-inspiring photos have graced the pages of National Geographic and Outside magazine, not to mention the feeds of his 1.7 million Instagram followers. He's directed and starred in Meru, a moving documentary following his attempt to conquer the most daunting mountains in the world, and has been named one of the most influential climbers in the world. Considering his career in the clouds, you'd never guess Jimmy grew up in the cornfields o...
Oct 24, 2017•1 hr 12 min
Tara Stiles is the co-founder of Strala Yoga and author of six books, including the new Guiding Strala: The Yoga Training Manual to Ignite Freedom, Get Connected, and Build Radiant Health and Happiness. She's also a new mom and a resident of DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York's latest booming wellness mecca. Tara started her yoga journey in the woods of the Midwest where she grew up. Tara remembers spending hours practicing meditation (although she had no idea that was what she was doing at the time). Sh...
Oct 17, 2017•1 hr 29 min
Barry Stuart Sternlicht is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, and chairman of Starwood Property Trust, the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the United States. He's the brains behind W Hotels, Bliss Spa, and environmental flagship brand 1 Hotels—oh, and he's also a billionaire. But he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a Holocaust survivor from Poland, his mother a biology teacher (later turned stockbroker) born and raised in New York. When you ...
Oct 10, 2017•1 hr 45 min
Dr. Mark Hyman is a pioneer in the field of functional medicine and a nine-time New York Times best-selling author. He's an internationally recognized leader, speaker, and director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. We discussed his life and background in health—from working for a year in China to starting his yoga practice in 1979, when it was still a fringe activity. He also revealed the details of the two major health crises he's suffered in his life. The first occurred w...
Oct 03, 2017•50 min
Kelly LeVeque is a certified holistic nutritionist, wellness expert, health coach, and author of the best-selling book Body Love, which has been taking the wellness community by storm. She serves as the guide for our new advanced functional nutrition program, where we'll teach you everything you need to know about functional food and the endless healing abilities of nutrition. "Live in balance, weigh what you want, and free yourself from food drama forever" is the mantra LeVeque lives by. She st...
Sep 26, 2017•55 min
Dr. Frank Lipman and mbg go way back—if you dive into the mindbodygreen archives, you'll see his contributions started in 2010, just a year after we launched the site. Aside from being my personal doctor, Dr. Lipman is internationally recognized as one of the leading experts on healthy detox and is a pioneer of the holistic, East-meets-West functional medicine movement. He noticed early on that Western medicine was ideal for helping acute medical events like heart attacks and broken bones, but i...
Sep 19, 2017•49 min
Sadie Lincoln is the founder of Barre3, a beloved workout designed to give you a deep muscle burn, a strong endorphin high, and a centered mind. These days, Sadie's life in Portland, Oregon is bursting with success and joy, but she had her fair share of struggles on her rise to the top. Sadie met her husband and business partner while working at 24-Hour Fitness, and the duo instantly connected. After getting married and buying a house in the Bay Area, the couple decided to uproot, moving to Port...
Sep 12, 2017•51 min
Seamus Mullen is a world-class chef, a James Beard award semifinalist, the owner of two popular NYC restaurants, and a regular on the Food Network. Today, his life looks happy, healthy, and thriving. But it was just six years ago that he was suffering from a maelstrom of maladies, from rheumatoid arthritis to injuries from a motorcycle accident to a deep-vein thrombosis incident that nearly killed him. After his cocktail of prescription medicines caused him to have a grand mal seizure in Thailan...
Sep 05, 2017•1 hr 16 min
As the president of the National Resources Defense Council, Rhea Suh leads the 500 scientists, attorneys, and policy experts that make the NRDC one of the country's most effective environmental action organizations. As the world enters into an unprecedented age of climate instability, Rhea is at the forefront of the fight to protect our planet. From energy policy to wildlife conservation to transportation innovation, she's tackling the issues that move the needle on climate change in big ways. I...
Aug 22, 2017•43 min
Samantha Boardman, psychiatrist and M.D., spent years treating clients with traditional psychiatric techniques—until a patient fired her. She told Dr. Boardman that every session made her feel worse. And it made sense. After all, therapy, the way most psychologists and psychiatrists are taught, focuses on the negative to the exclusion of the positive. And, Boardman realized, "she was right. I knew how to dial down her misery, but I knew nothing about how to build up her strengths and cultivate w...
Aug 08, 2017•1 hr 5 min
