Episodes
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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 within Adventist HealthCare. Sunstone works with psilocybin, MDMA, 5-MeO-DMT, and LSD in conjunction with psychotherapy. We discuss the role of psychological integration after a psychedelic journey and the importance of a therapeutic set and setting.
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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 on her brain after one journey. Both informative and entertaining, these two had fun along the way.
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Missing episodes?
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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 and to feel empowered and better-equipped to lead an enriched life. He explains that when he was debilitated by symptoms of Complex PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and OCD he wanted clear and useful help, and especially disliked people trying to "sell healing" to him.
You can find The Integral Guide at www.integralguide.com
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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 designed to treat Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) but has been widely used to treat a range of mental health and health symptoms. The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) is a creative intervention based on the polyvagal theory (Steven Porges) for improving social communication impairments by reducing auditory hypersensitivity and improving human speech processing.
The SSP rehabilitates the middle ear muscle function using filtered music that is tuned to the specific frequency of human speech. Previous studies of children with ASD using an early version of SSP reported significant improvements in their sensory problems, including auditory processing, listening, and hearing sensitivities.
From the rhythmic beats of indigenous drums to the delicate tones of Tibetan bowls, sound therapy has evolved and translated across cultural boundaries for centuries. Ancient Wisdom traditions know the benefits of using sound medicinally to supersede the mind and influence the body and nervous system. In yogic traditions that use chanting and manta, sound is vibration and vibration is the essence of all things.
Paula Marie Scatoloni holds a Master’s in Social Work and is a certified Healing Arts Practitioner in NC. She is trained in many cutting-edge perspectives on trauma and the nervous system including Somatic Experiencing. Paula serves as a mentor and consultant for the Safe and Sound Protocol. She is a co-developer of the Embodied Recovery Institute and has been at the leading edge of her field for decades developing treatment programs, teaching, and leading teams at institutions such as Duke University. Paula seamlessly blends science and spirituality together in her unique programs that integrate psychology, neuroscience, and somatics with sound and bioenergetic approaches such as Reiki. Her unique programs and services can be deeply transformative for practitioners who are interested in blending Eastern and Western perspectives. Paula's website is https://paulascatoloni.com/
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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 between the disassociative effects of ketamine and the hypnotic technique of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. I talk about my depression and how ketamine helped me get over my horrible fear of a divorce that needed to happen and Maria shares about how her ketamine and psychedelic journeys have helped her connect in healing ways to her son Andrew, who took his own life a few years ago.
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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-compassion than women? What we do find is there’s a small but consistent gender difference that actually favors men. Does the fact that women tend to score lower than men on self-compassion has an impact on the salary gap between men and women. Is there a link between so-called “compulsive caretaking of others” and autoimmune disorders and some kinds of cancer?Kristin leads us in a self-compassion meditation, and I ask her about the infectious positivity and compassion of the television series character, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis.
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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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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 Background Explorer (COBE) mission in the mid 1970s to measure the heat radiation from the Big Bang. Mather and his team measured the cosmic microwave background radiation—basically very faint radio noise astronomers had theorized could only come from the most distant events at the beginning of time as we know it—and their measurements confirmed the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large infrared telescope will be the premier space observatory of the next decade, and Mather has been the Senior Scientist on this project from it's origin in 1995. The James Webb is scheduled to launch in 2021 and will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
We discuss Mather's long career at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, his work on COBE and JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the planning of the Nancy Roman Grace Space Telescope.
*This episode was origionally published in February 2021.
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* 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 Relationship therapist, and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor.
Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Nelson about what it takes to have a vibrant sex life with a monogamous partner and how cheating during COVID has taken on new proportions.
We talk about the mindset that’s required to prevent or recover from infidelity and why it can be an opportunity.
We discuss several myths about infidelity, sex, and eroticism:
"Women actually do cheat for sex. Men tend to cheat for emotional reasons."
- Do all affairs happen because of sexual problems?
- Does communication and empathy have the power to fix sexual frustration?
- Why does emotional closeness sometimes seem to kill erotic passion?
- And perhaps the million dollar question: Why does Oprah call it her "vajayjay?"
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SoulOfLifeShow or Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at [email protected].
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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 is in the first place.
I talk to Dr. Jonathan Schooler, a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at U.C. Santa Barbara, someone who’s Resonance Theory of Consciousness is kind of become like a Grand Central Station—a hub that 32,000 academics cite in their research. (Note: The introduction to this episode misstates this as 19,000 citations).
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulofLifeShow
Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at [email protected].
***7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course*** If you and your significant other are looking for ways to improve communication and strengthen your bonds, there is still time to enroll in my upcoming live 7-Week Stress Reduction & Relationship Growth Course. For more information visit: https://community.souloflifeshow.com/
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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 to goals Alex sets for himself. Wolonick shares about her book, The Sharp End of Life, about overcoming hardship in life and taking risks.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: 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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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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 neural connections within their mindbody system—the holy grail of skill acquisition and learning. We also speak about the Mary Trump book Too Much and Never Enough, and I get Dick's thoughts on the effects of abuse that occurs in families like Trump's.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: 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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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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 controversy and unprecedented healing properties associated with psychedelics.
The FDA granted Dr. Mithoefer and his colleagues “breakthrough status” to expedite its application for approval because they’re seeing such dramatic results working with veterans tormented by complex PTSD which is notoriously difficult to treat even with the best and most expensive therapies.
“We’ve had people with uncontrollable rage just have that stop happening after one session.”
I talk with Michael about the safety of therapeutically-supervised MDMA and how it works in the brain. MDMA is referred to as an “empathogen,” because it activates our natural ability to be openhearted, friendly, and collaborative, something that immediately gets switched off when the brain goes into safe mode while experiencing emotional turmoil—even garden variety stress can do this, like a parent that yells every day, or a boss that expects to get perfection but only gives criticism.
But for now, Dr. Mithoefer is using particularly egregious forms of trauma—combat experience—as the test use case with the FDA. And unlike many people’s idea of all illegal drugs being dangerous or addictive, a full course of MDMA is given in micro-doses only 2-3 times in about a month—accompanied by an all-day psychotherapy session each time—but the patient essentially walks away born-again. They report seeing the world not just the way it was before their trauma but with eyes that are profoundly capable of seeing gratitude, joy and meaning in life.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: 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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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"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 Family Systems Therapy (IFS): “We are inherently good.” And she describes just how different IFS is from conventional psychology like cognitive behavioral therapy. Angela talks about the most common protective parts of us, what she calls our prison guards: the pleaser, the worry-wort, the perfectionist, and the logician.
Love The Soul of Life and want to express your gratitude? Please consider becoming a financial supporter of this show.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: 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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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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 despair toward a seemingly unstoppable addiction.
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Love The Soul of Life and want to express your gratitude? Please consider becoming a financial supporter of this show.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: 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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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"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. The truth is actually it’s not very often in people’s heads. It can be a very scary marker of future cardiovascular problems."
Rachel is passionate about educating women—especially about how to take joy and pleasure in their bodies.
"It is a VERY common thing in female patients. They’re disgusted by the sight of their own genitals. It’s a very universal, icky thing...how do we change that?"
We discuss how important it is to be comfortable thinking in depth and talking in depth about our sexuality in order to untangle the painful knots that are bound to occur between couples even in healthy relationships. And I ask Dr. Rubin about the bias in the clinical counseling field to focus A LOT on psychological and emotional issues when it comes to low desire and low libido.
"We hate the idea…we HATE the idea that a pill can boost a women’s sexual function. Because we want it ALL to be psychosocial."
She has made it her mission to address fears people have about addressing the biology that underpins apathy toward sex.
Love The Soul of Life and want to express your gratitude? Please consider becoming a financial supporter of this show.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:" https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up: 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
My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL
My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com
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"'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 spiritual. To leave that out in a conversation in therapy is like leaving one of the best players on the bench."
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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, immersed herself in 108 rivers across the U.S. in order to bring attention to the state of water quality and it’s vital role in our own health and sustainability.
We discuss why we need new ways to think about who we are as a society. Are we just producers and consumers? Or are we more than the jobs we do and the things we have? And how do we stay hopeful and motivated in an age of climate fatigue?
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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 traditional talk therapy and its typical cognitive and rational focus.
"Sometimes emotions are like people would rather stay away from them." Instead, SE focuses on so-called “bottom-up” neurological processing. "Emotions are, in their simplest form, they’re there to be felt."
We talk about how it’s possible to attend to feeling and sensation in a deep way when you aren’t narrating and talking and explaining.
"Some of these physiologically stuck features [like Turrets] are in a feedback loop and it wants to find a way out."
And we discuss our similar personal journeys, needing to be patient zero, using our own medicine.
Sign-up for my free "Quickstart Guide to IFS in 30 Minutes:"
https://event.webinarjam.com/register/3/on5lnf1
Check out my FREE Mini-Course for couples, called Marriage Tune-Up:
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
My FREE 2-hour Seminar: Slowing the Mind to Open the Heart:
https://peacemindful.com/p/slowing-the-mind-to-open-the-heart Join my Facebook
Group called "Bring Love Alive:" https://www.facebook.com/groups/601405257684922
Find out more about my guest, Lesley Tate-Gould and the Lido Wellness Center in Newport Beach, CA: https://lidowellnesscenter.com/team/lesley-a-tategould/
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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 biological processes within my body at any given time are affected and changed by the biological processes going on inside the bodies of people I interact with, care for, and depend upon and vice versa.
I love hearing Dan speak about how we have healthy minds when we are connected to the various parts of us that have very distinct needs and drives. This is what he calls an integrated mind—like spokes on a wheel connected to the hub, and what is synonymous with the IFS concept of Self.
Dan speaks persuasively about the linkages between physics—and even quantum physics, the way energy behaves at the incredibly small subatomic scale—and our sense of consciousness.
Dan's Wheel of Awareness Meditations: https://drdansiegel.com/wheel-of-awareness/
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
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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 children in Montgomery County Public Schools, and husband to a MCPS teacher. I've been a social worker for 20 years and run two private psychotherapy clinics specializing in trauma recovery and relationships, and I host The Soul of Life psychology and spirituality podcast.
If my message resonates in some way, or makes you uncomfortable, I hope you would make that known and please post a comment here: https://youtu.be/qs-2QGsjuWE
My hope is that if we come together we can begin work of advocating for an increase in staffing for social workers and counselors in our schools.
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