BEING with Sally Wilson

Highly awarded film maker, Bill Bennett, heard a voice which saved his life. Determined to understand this experience, Bill traveled all over the world speaking to intuition experts across science, religion and spirituality. The result was a highly acclaimed film, from which developed a book. (Links below.) Bill realized that the main thing preventing us from tapping into our intuition (or PGS – p...

After his business premises burned to the ground, Dr. Jim Skivalidas found himself considering suicide. He could easily have become one of the six men who, each day in Australia, takes his own life. Floods of self-doubt, sense of unworthiness and self-hatred rose to the surface. He found himself thinking: “I’m a disgrace”. He felt full of shame, and his whole identity as provider for his wife and...

He grew up in a housing commission flat in poverty, became a leading chef in some of the Bellarine’s most prestigious restaurants and now, with co-founder Lana Purcell and a team of almost 200 volunteers, delivers around 7,000 meals per week to people in need. They also have a donations-only grocery story, coffee shop and restaurant, and they always have space for more volunteers! Anthony Woodbury...

Clinical neuroscientist and researcher, Dr. Izelle Labuschagne, has been studying the hormone oxytocin for a long time. Known as the love hack chemical, her research has shown that it’s so much more! Its administration via nasal spray can, for example, temporarily relieve extreme social anxiety in young people. It induces feelings of connectedness and promotes resilience, among other things. In th...

Grace Kim has always known the value of making music a part of children’s lives and the crucial role it plays in brain development. But when her oldest child was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and struggled in live music settings, she saw a need to bridge the gap between comfortable performance environments and audiences with special needs. And so, Sensory Concerts was born. Whether it’s a sen...

When did we come to believe that expressing ourselves musically isn’t for everyone? When did you first believe, as so many do, that you can’t sing? Can you imagine learning music as a child, simply through play and fun? Music educator, Dr. James Cuskelly, has taught music to people of all ages and levels, and does just that with his young students. He talks with great passion about the far-reachin...

Jo Farkas was 20, parasailing in Bali, and something went wrong. She found herself under the water with a rope wrapped around her neck. And then the most extraordinary thing happened; she experienced a sense of expansion and oneness, an unconditionally loving, neutral presence, and it seemed as though she was the only thing in the world. Jo remembers thinking, “Well, this isn’t such a bad way to g...

Charles Crawford has written and contributed to speeches for British Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, the British Royal Family and foreign dignitaries as well as composing and delivering his own speeches during his diplomatic career. He was described as “the Dale Carnegie of speechwriting” by John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher. You could say, he knows a thing or two about...

Lesley Williams has an extraordinary knack of making you feel welcomed into her life, her presence, her story, into our shared history and making you feel like you belong – the opposite of her experience growing up under the control and monitoring of the QLD government under their ‘protection’ acts. In this episode Lesley talks about life under the protection acts, which led her to her quest for j...

Fabiola Campbell describes her loss of identity and sense of belonging, when she migrated from Venezuela to Australia, as the “death of her superwoman”.  In a very different way to what she’d expected, she discovered her adult identity through the experience of being an immigrant. The process was rocky, at times humiliating, sometimes devastating, but ultimately became a journey of transforma...

August 2009 Katherine Varley’s car spun out of control, hitting a tree and leaving her with a serious brain injury. She was in her 30’s. She has little memory of that time and the first stages of her rehabilitation process, but she had to relearn how to eat, how to walk, talk… All those capabilities most of us take for granted every day. Katherine has been a “success story”, you could say. She now...

Giving ourselves time and space is something many of us struggle with in our society. When was the last time you allowed yourself to do nothing – not reading, not watching TV, not chatting to a friend or checking social media – Nothing?... Yeah, I thought so! Holistic health and movement coach, Ross De Vincentiis and I, discuss the importance of creating mental space, why most of us struggle with...

Matthew Boyd strives every day to use his career to create positive impact in this world. 5 years ago he decided to quit his marketing job and founded Vollie, an online marketplace that’s unlocking a new style of skills-based remote volunteering. In 4 years of operation, Vollie has seen 4,000+ social impact projects completed to date, through 200,000+ skilled volunteering hours, generating over $5...

Linda Deverell walked an extraordinary journey with her partner when, diagnosed critically ill and with 2-3 months to live, he decided to take the route of voluntary assisted dying. At the time Linda hadn’t realized that in helping him with this she was breaking the law, but insists emphatically that she’d have done the same even if she had. Since this intense, heart-breaking yet life-affirming pe...

Dog-eat-dog Darwinism is questioned and a win-win future is offered here, with both optimism and realism. It’s an exciting ride…  Donna Eiby has had a career in the military, worked on billion dollar projects, has a number of undergraduate and graduate degrees and a PhD with a research focus on the intention of employers to train their workforce in what she calls “uniquely human skills”. With...

New York-based composer, Jerome Kitzke, embodies independence and freedom of spirit in his music as in his life. In fact, his music reflects all facets of his life and what’s important to him – the beautiful, the challenging and the painful. His musical voice is free and inspired and his breath-taking hand-written scores have featured in exhibitions, inspiring through their visual as well as music...

Ever been told that PTSD can’t be resolved? Steve Gardiner is living proof that that’s simply not true. Steve was conscripted into the army in Zimbabwe as a medic and his experience there led to post-traumatic stress – though at that time it didn’t have a name. Here he talks about what it’s like to have PTS – the anger, guilt, hypervigilance, flashbacks and resultant exhaustion. He also talks abou...

Brent McKean has done a huge amount of walking all over the world, from the Inca Trail to the Blue Mountains, easy strolls in nature to incredibly demanding rugged walks of hundreds of km’s, and now he's editor of Australia's only dedicated bushwalking magazine, “Great Walks”. In this episode he describes what he calls the “primitive freedom” he associates with being out in nature, relaxing back i...

Kirsten Macdonald has lived with the knowledge that she could die any day, at any moment… She has an inoperable brain aneurism. I met her as the Founder and Chief Editor of Ponderings Magazine, and knew nothing about her bewildering story. When I saw Kirsten across the room of business owners and professionals, I just knew: “Wow. I need to meet her.” And I am so very, very glad I introduced myself...

As soon as you hear him speak, his resonant, rich voice demands attention. Built like a Gridiron footballer and with charisma galore, Berlin-based Derrick Lawrence chose opera singing over football. He won the world’s most prestigious singing competition in New York when he was 23, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it all came easily. Derrick talks about the road to “overnight success”, th...

Artist, conservationist, naturalist, author… Richard Weatherly is a curious man with many talents, much experience and a spellbinding knack of storytelling! Richard speaks of his initially accidental artistic career, beginning in London, and our conversation winds around the sensitivity of an artist who works from and in nature and deeply cares about it and for it, the fragility of our ecosystems,...

Getrude Matshe embodies Ubuntu – the African philosophy with which she grew up in a small town in Zimbabwe. She’s a warm-hearted whirlwind of passion, drive, energy and vision, and believes she has been given this life in order to make a difference to the world and to even out the inequality she sees.  The Ubuntu philosophy is a way of acknowledging our common humanity, and it starts at home....

Unconscious bias – it’s part of our innate survival mechanism and, at its worst, it can threaten our survival. Justine Cooper has been delving into and training people, teams and organisations on unconscious bias for decades. With humility, humanity and wisdom she talks us through her personal realisations and experience around unconscious bias, how we can become aware of our own biases and how, e...

Have you ever been to a business networking event which starts with a meditation? No? Justin’s does! And by the way, no one talks about their business or what they do. It’s Different. Justin Cooper is a man with passion and drive, and in this episode we explore mission and purpose, and a way of approaching business and business practice that values intuition, fun, vulnerability, stepping away from...

Who hasn’t ever agonised over a difficult but necessary conversation OR avoided it altogether? (Yep, I hear silence here…) Cameron Shepherd is the master of ‘difficult conversations’. As an HR consultant he’s had to have them on behalf of different companies in vastly varying situations all over the world. Cam has learned through experience, and that’s obvious when you hear him speak. Now he teach...