In this episode I speak to Norma Stevens, LCPC, the Director of Therapy Operations at Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland. Sunstone partners with companies like Beckley PsyTech, COMPASS Pathways, MindMed, MAPS (Lykos Theraputics), Reunion Neuroscience, and Usona to run studies that aim to establish the gold standard for psychedelic treatments of complex mental health challenges. Sunstone offers research trials in a unique partnership with the Acquilino Cancer Center, a research program wit...
Jun 01, 2024•47 min
You're in for a treat! Kathryn DeYoung and Zach Berman are two friends and colleagues who are also therapists that got roped into joining one of Calliope's ketamine-therapy retreats. Actually they both volunteered, each for interesting personal reasons. Each of the several ketamine experiences I facilitated for them were always equally profound, hilarious, and eye-opening. You'll get to hear what The Universe told Zack, once he reached its edge, and why Kathryn got "Money! Love! Power!" tattooed...
May 02, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 4
In this episode I interview the brainchild behind an increasingly influential online wiki for psychological healing, The Integral Guide to Well-Being. Levi, who prefers to stay behind-the-scenes and doesn't publicize his identity, created an interactive, graphic notebook that has around 1,300 pages, and has tens of thousands of unique readers each month. The Integral Guide is a choose-your-own-adventure field guide that Levi began writing to aid his personal trauma recovery and self-development ...
Apr 01, 2024•56 min
This episode features Paula Marie Scatoloni, a psychotherapist that uses sound vibrations to reset hyper- or hypo-active nervous systems after trauma. This method is called psychoacoustics, and Paula uses a tool called the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) to stimulate the tiny muscles of the inner ear, "massaging" the polyvagal nerve, and activating the body's safety, belonging, and relaxation system. SSP has been shown to relieve symptoms of dissociative depression, and anxiety. SSP was originally...
Mar 01, 2024•49 min
I believe that therapists, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who recommend ketamine--and more and more are doing just that--should have a firsthand experience of ketamine themselves. Today I speak with Maria Hernandez, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia, who did just that. Maria was a participant at our Bethesda, Maryland ketamine assisted psychotherapy clinic, Calliope Health . We talk about the personal reasons each of us was attracted to ketamine for our own mental health and the overlap betwe...
Feb 01, 2024•44 min•Season 5Ep. 1
I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion. She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive . Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compassion and how anger can be compassionate, and other questions like: Why are men better at self-compa...
Oct 04, 2023•48 min
Dr. John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.* He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe. Mather was winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics with George Smoot for their work in the Cosmic Backgrou...
Aug 01, 2023•50 min
* Replay from S2 * Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert, and author of many books on sex including Getting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together. She's a psychotherapist, Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, university teacher, TEDx speaker and is the host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. Tammy is also a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Imago Rel...
Apr 01, 2023•52 min
How do you know that you’re conscious? I mean, don’t you just kind of know? "The single thing that we know best from our own first person perspective and understand least from the perspective of objective science." But are we seeing signs of a dawning enlightenment in this field—signs of progress in how we understand and study consciousness? I think this is important for everyone—but especially professionals like me who teach people how to have healthy minds—we kind of need to know what a mind i...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr
In this replay from Season One, I speak to Deirdre Wolownick-Honnald, the mother of Free Solo superstar rock climber Alex Honnald. I learn from his Mom about the human side of this person so many think of as superhuman. Alex’s Dad, she says, was a person with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. “He was in a bubble and no one could get in.” I ask Dierdre about “stonewalling,” a term we use in marriage and relationship therapy to describe being emotionally shut off to others, and whether this applies...
Jan 01, 2023•1 hr 4 min
I speak with Dr. Richard Schwartz, the founder of an evidence-based psychotherapeutic model called Self-Leadership (also known as Internal Family System’s therapy or IFS) that is widely recognized as one of the most compassionate and comprehensive psychotherapies available. He is on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. Self-Leadership is basically a sophisticated owner’s manual for the mind. It gives users a real-time pathway to routinely instigate new neura...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr 11 min
This episode is a "best-of" replay from S1 of The Soul of Life. In this episode of The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Michael Mithoefer, the lead investigator that has successfully piloted the first-ever study of MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, into the third and final stage of FDA approval for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Mithoefer is featured as a lead character in the 2015 book Acid Test by award-winning journalist Tom Shroder, a meticulously researched history of the...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 28 min
"What if I could show you a way to reconnect with the whole of who you are, in service to your highest purpose as you know it? What if I could help you break out of the invisible prison in which you have been living--the one that keeps you small and scared?" Today on the Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Angela Heubner, author of Jailbreak: The Making and Breaking of Our Invisible Prisons; An IFS Informed Escape . Angela describes this beautiful model of natural multiplicity of the mind, in Internal...
Oct 01, 2022•44 min
George and I talk about the tragic mistake of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who actually encouraged people to smoke if it helped them quit alcohol. "My alcoholic and drug addict people painfully but successfully get sober only to die of nicotine." Bill Wilson himself died a miserable death. Kolodner has been learning the cutting edge psychotherapy intervention known as Internal Family Systems and putting it to use especially to confidently speak hope to parts that feel despai...
Aug 31, 2022•44 min•Season 4Ep. 62
"Your doctor doesn't even know what the nerve innervation of the female genitalia is—which in 2022 is mind boggling." Today I speak with Dr. Rachel Rubin, a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist. "I’m a boner doctor." To talk with her about the most common and serious sexual problems: Problems regarding libido, orgasm, arousal, and pain. And just how many simple and life-changing tools are available for you to take advantage of. "We used to think it was all in people’s heads. ...
Jul 01, 2022•44 min
"'God' is not God’s real name." Spirituality does not shrink and fold itself tightly into the pages of a how-to manual. "The word 'soul' is one of those finger-pointing-at-the-moon words. I can’t see my soul. I can’t see your soul. I can’t measure it with a tape measure or weigh it on a scale." Russell Siler Jones wrote "Spirit in Session: Working with Your Client’s Spirituality (and Your Own) in Psychotherapy." "It’s close to 90% of the people in the United States that think of themselves as sp...
Jun 01, 2022•43 min
We know that there is a direct link between human well-being and the health of the natural environment. When I heard about Tierra Curry’s ecological conservation work it wasn’t from reading a scholarly article about forest bathing or how much green space there is per square mile. I heard about Tierra because she had the brass to use her own body as a way to start conversations about protecting natural resources. Last summer, Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, immer...
May 01, 2022•45 min
Today on the Soul of Life I speak to Dr. Lesley Tate-Gould, a psychotherapist that uses Somatic Experiencing to help people overcome trauma. Lesley runs the Lido Wellness Center, an outpatient trauma and counseling practice in Newport Beach, California. We talk about her specialization in a form of body-focused trauma treatment called Somatic Experiencing, or SE, and her experience of benefitting from SE herself. SE was developed by Peter Levine, and like IFS therapy, deviates from the norms of ...
Apr 01, 2022•41 min
Today I speak with Dr. Daniel Siegel, founder of Interpersonal Neurobiology, about the mind and how Internal Family Systems (IFS) may function in the brain. Dr. Siegel is someone I consider to be one of the most thoughtful and clear innovators in teaching and talking about neurobiology and how it affects our behaviors—and not just behaviors we can see but the behavior and patterns of our mind. He created a field of study within neurobiology called interpersonal neurobiology: It addresses how the...
Mar 01, 2022•53 min•Season 4Ep. 3
This video was livestreamed on 1/28/22 and can be watched here: https://youtu.be/qs-2QGsjuWE My heart is broken and grieving with the Thomas family and the Magruder community after the shooting of a 15 year-old at Col. Magruder High School in Rockville, MD on January 22nd. I'm speaking today to help create a public space where other parents can connect in order to heal, learn, and collaborate with hard-working county and school staff who care for our children every day. I'm the parent of two chi...
Feb 03, 2022•27 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Brian Lagerstrom shows people how to make food on YouTube. But he's also a chef in the real world. "You can make world class dough with a bowl and a spoon. Truly. That’s all you need." Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage Join my Facebook Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.co...
Jan 28, 2022•44 min
The James Webb Space telescope—decades in the making—finally launched from Earth recently and promises to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Who better about this milestone in astronomy than astronaut veteran of 5 space flights and former NASA science administrator, John Grunsfeld. Grunsfeld became known as the Hubble Telescope’s repair man, logging more than 58 hours in 5 space walks and three repair trips to the Hubble before being the last person to touch it in 2009. We tal...
Dec 31, 2021•49 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie , a short story that is the first work of fiction to sweep the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy awards. Ken is the author of an epic fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty , in which the heroes are engineers, not wizards. Some of Ken’s stories have been adapted for animation or film, and AMC is making a TV show based on his stories in The Hidden Girl . Liu is trained as an attorney and worked as a software ...
Nov 26, 2021•48 min•Season 3Ep. 18
Dave Ungrady has been a man on a mission to tell the story of University of Maryland Basketball star Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose two days after he was drafted to the Boston Celtics in June 1986. He's the author of Born Ready: The Mixed Legacy of Len Bias . Next week Len Bias will finally be inducted into the NCAA Hall of Fame. For a long time leadership within University of Maryland athletics and some of the larger basketball world looked at Bias’ death simply as a story of tragedy ...
Nov 19, 2021•47 min•Season 3Ep. 17
I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion. She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive . Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compassion and how anger can be compassionate, and other questions like: Why are men better at self-compa...
Nov 12, 2021•48 min•Season 3Ep. 16
I speak with Father Isaac Keeley, Trappist monk and Director of the Spencer Brewery at St. Joseph’s Abbey in the Central Massachusetts town of Spencer (my hometown). The Trappist monks of Spencer have lived a life of solitude and prayer on a 2,000 acre farm with a modest business selling jams, preserves, and handmade ceremonial garments. But 10 years ago the brothers of Spencer started researching ways to raise their income significantly. "We know there are 6 monastic breweries in Belgium, one o...
Nov 05, 2021•40 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Today I speak with Jaime Clemmer, author of Heartbroken, But Not Broken , which offers readers an intimate recounting of how she got through any parent's worst nightmare–her son’s sudden death at the age of 10. Clemmer shares the details of her unfettered grief to offer license to anyone struggling to tell their own story. She invites you to walk with her. Her path is complicated and sacred, as is the case with most grievers. Hearing her story, together, we can effectively mourn with those who m...
Oct 29, 2021•41 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Today I speak with Dr. Patrick Oliver about the only drug approved currently to treat suicidal ideation: Ketamine. "Where this works is literally in making connections in the brain." Dr. Oliver is an emergency room physician that left the ER to start his own Ketamine infusion clinics because he saw a need that no one else was filling to offer life-saving treatment to people with severe depression. He says he was incredulous of the results a colleague was seeing of Ketamine for acute suicidality ...
Oct 22, 2021•48 min•Season 3Ep. 13
How did fish evolve to walk on land? What are the details of how that process happened? Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Neil Shubin, the 2004 co-discoverer of Tiktaalik, a fish fossil that is the first evidence of so-called bridge animals with features that show the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and land mammals. Shubin is the author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body and Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of ...
Oct 15, 2021•52 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Lou Lucas, chief of Palliative Medicine at the Nebraska and Western Iowa Veterans Health Care Systems. As a palliative medicine doctor, Dr. Lucas is trained to pull together all of the specialists that might be caring for a patient with a life threating disease and implement a cohesive treatment plan that cares for body, mind, and soul. She gives special attention to the well established link between mental health and physical health and the role of spi...
Oct 08, 2021•50 min•Season 3Ep. 11
