Finding Zen with Michael Pottern

What happens when your life has been built around intensity and it suddenly stops? In this conversation, retired Green Beret Chris Morris shares what it was like to live at full throttle for two decades and what followed when that pace caught up with him. He talks about leadership, loss, and the reality of coming home to a nervous system that never powered down. He also gets honest about where tra...

Tyler Martin is a thinker, father, and emerging psychotherapist whose work centers on lived experience, emotional growth, and personal transformation. Shaped by profound challenges within his family, he brings a deeply honest perspective on trust, faith, imagination, and how we evolve through real life. What does it actually mean to have faith and trust? In this conversation, Tyler Martin explores...

What if the biggest thing holding you back isn’t what you don’t know—but what you’re avoiding? In this episode, Michael Pottern sits down with executive coach Robert McNaughton to explore the hidden cost of inaction. From difficult conversations to leadership under pressure, Robert shares why the time between decision and action is the most expensive gap in business—and in life. They unpack the te...

What if everything you’re searching for about yourself could be distilled into just one word? In this deeply reflective conversation, Michael Pottern sits down with Erin Weed to explore the process of uncovering your most authentic self. Not by adding more, but by remembering what’s already there. From personal loss to purpose-driven work, Erin shares how her journey led to creating The Dig, a met...

Devon Kerns is an entrepreneur-turned-guide in conscious exploration, blending years of business-building with a deep commitment to inner work. After navigating the volatility of entrepreneurship from a young age, he shifted his path toward service and support for others through meditation, intuitive insight, and expansive dialogue. Through his work on Insight Timer and beyond, Devon explores the...

What if singing isn’t about performance, but about regulation, connection, and coming back to yourself? In this episode, Orange Peel explores how voice, play, and novelty can shift our nervous systems and open access to joy in ways that feel both simple and profound. Through singing and shared experience, we begin to move out of rigid patterns and into something more alive, responsive, and connect...

In this episode of Finding Zen , Michael sits down with relational coach and tea ceremony practitioner Bu Nan Brown to explore the deeper art of connection in an increasingly distracted and disconnected world. Together, they discuss how modern life often pulls us away from genuine relational presence and why many of our struggles stem not from a lack of knowledge, but from a lack of attunement to...

What does peace really mean to someone who grew up under the threat of war? In this powerful episode of Finding Zen , Michael Potter sits down with Yovel Peretz — Israeli special forces veteran and founder of Let’s Do Podcast — for a raw conversation about resilience, legacy, and redefining success. From learning how to wear a gas mask in kindergarten to building a purpose-driven media company in...

In this episode of Finding Zen, Michael sits down with Dr. Christine Smith, a holistic physician with backgrounds in neuroscience, chiropractic, psychology, and functional medicine, to explore what it truly means to regulate the nervous system in a hyper-stimulated world. Together, they unpack how modern life keeps us locked in survival states, why you can’t out-supplement a stressed nervous syste...

They explore how alignment influences leadership, decision-making, relationships, and growth. Drawing from Jason’s experiences coaching executives and navigating high-risk environments like paragliding, aviation, and whitewater rafting, the conversation reveals how grounded presence and intuition guide wise action—even in uncertainty. 1. Jason Gore is a CEO coach who has worked with hundreds of CE...

Episode Theme: Devotion - Breathwork, forgiveness, and frequency. Claudia shares how embodied healing and devotion reshape daily life, parenting, and nervous-system regulation. In this episode of Finding Zen, Michael sits down with Claudia Nannino for a deeply human conversation about breathwork, embodied healing, and the quiet power of devotion. Claudia shares her personal journey through addicti...

Episode Theme: Guardian - A powerful exploration of guardianship, integrity under pressure, and how human-first leadership can transform policing, heal trauma, and restore trust within strained systems. Episode Description In this deeply personal and systems-level conversation, Michael Pottern sits down with Sarko Gergerian, a police lieutenant and licensed therapist, to explore the evolution from...

Episode Theme: Trust VR. AI. Psychedelics. Death. This episode explores how trust, not technology, is the true gateway to healing and connection. In this episode of Finding Zen, Michael Pottern sits down with Jeremy Nickel to explore how trust forms the invisible architecture beneath spiritual practice, technology-mediated connection, and psychedelic-assisted healing. From VR meditation and the Ov...