Explore Spirituality

Kristen Neff is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at University of Texas, Austin, specialist in self-compassion research, and author. Her new book is Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. Read Neff’s interview by Spirituality & Health’s Stephen Kiesling in the May/June 2021 issue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

Tracee Stanley doesn’t want you to fear rest. Stanley is a yoga Nidra lineage holder, meditation and self-inquiry teacher, and co-founder of the Empowered Wisdom Yoga Nidra School. Her new book is Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity. Be sure to read Stanley’s essay, “Embrace the Transition” which appears in the May/June 2021 issue of Spirituality & Health. “We have be...

Grace Ji-Sun Kim is a Korean-American theologian and Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion. She is the author and editor of 20 books, a contributor to Spirituality & Health online and in print (Tune in for her upcoming article in the July/August 2021 issue!), and the host of Madang podcast hosted by The Christian Century.  In her recent digital article for Spirituality & Health, “Bod...

Lyanda Lynn Haupt is a naturalist, writer, educator, and the author of six books, including Mozart's Starling, an account of the composer's relationship with a unique bird who sang a version of his Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major. In her latest work, Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit, Haupt writes about how science, poetry, mysticism, and the traditions of earth-based...

Dr. Peter Lovatt is a dance psychologist, former professional dancer, and current teacher at the Royal Ballet School in London, UK. He is the founder of the Dance Psychology Lab at the University of Hertfordshire and has been a featured speaker alongside Barack Obama, Oprah, and Sir Richard Branson. Rabbi Rami and Dr. Lovatt discuss the universality of dancing within the human condition, how danci...

Hala Khouri has been teaching yoga and movement for over 25 years. As a trained psychologist, she does clinical work with people struggling with trauma, depression, and anxiety. She trains clinicians and yoga teachers as well as educators and non-profits to be trauma informed. She and Rabbi Rami discuss her new book, Peace from Anxiety: Get Grounded, Build Resilience & Stay Connected Amidst the Ch...

Brian McLaren is a leading voice advocating for a new kind of Christianity. He was featured in Spirituality and Health’s January/February 2021 issue as one of the seven trailblazers who are helping define the future of spirituality. He and Rabbi Rami discuss McLaren's latest book Faith After Doubt, and the dangerous rise of right-wing Christian nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

This week it is our pleasure to interview Luvvie Ajayi Jones. Luvvie is an author, a sought-after speaker, and a podcast host who thrives at the intersection of comedy, technology and justice. She penned the New York Times bestselling I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual. Her latest book is Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual. Who is a professional troublemaker? They are the necess...

Rabbi Rami's guest this week is author Natalie Goldberg. She is the author of 15 books, including the classic Writing Down the Bones, (Shambhala, 1986). Her new book is Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode’s guest is Maci Daye. Daye is a licensed professional counselor, a certified Hakomi therapist, and certified sex therapist. She and Rabbi Rami discuss the connection between spirituality and sex, and how mindfulness techniques can be used to rediscover erotic potential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Rev. Jes Kast. She is a pastor at Faith United Church of Christ in State College, Penn. Rev. Kast is featured as one of the trailblazers in the Jan./Feb. 2021 issue of Spirituality and Health, in the feature story “7 Spiritual Radicals.” It interviews seven leaders who are redefining contemporary religion and making it more inclusive. Learn more about your ad choice...

This week, Rabbi Rami speaks with Kevin Anderson, Ph. D. Dr. Anderson is a psychologist, life coach, author, and speaker. His recent books include Now Is Where God Lives: Nested Meditations to Delight the Mind and Awaken the Soul and The Inconceivable Surprise of Living: Sustaining Wisdom for Spiritual Beings Trying to Be Human.  Using a playful approach to words, such as with nested meditations,...

Individualism and capitalism are simply not working. Author Sarah Wilson talks with Rabbi Rami about the challenges we face as humans, such as climate change and racial injustice, and proposes healthier systems to heal a fractured world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robyn Moreno is a certified yoga teacher, trained life coach, and practicing curandera (Mexican folk healer). In the past, she led a go-go life in publishing and as an Emmy-nominated TV host. But internally, she was in crisis—with unresolved childhood trauma and deep burnout. She calls this a soul crisis. Moreno found deeper roots, and healing, when she transitioned from media maven to modern cura...

Who do you want at your deathbed? We do not like to think about such things, yet we will all die, and wrestling with such finitude can actually make our lives richer. Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Lydia Dugdale MD, an associate professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. She is an internal medicine primary care doctor and a medical ethicis...

From a very young age, Jacqueline Suskin felt called to the path of poetry. Her most recent book is Every Day is a Poem (Sounds True, 2020), and she is the author of six other books including The Collected, Go Ahead & Like It, The Edge of The Continent Volume One, The Edge of The Continent Volume Two, Help in the Dark Season, and The Edge of The Continent Volume Three. With her project Poem Store,...

Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist minister, activist, yoga instructor and authorized Lama (Buddhist teacher) in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. Owens holds a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School and has given talks, retreats and workshops around the U.S. and internationally. He is considered a leading teacher of his generation. In this week's podcast, he and Rabbi Rami discuss O...

In this electrifying conversation, Rabbi Rami talks with the Most Rev. Michael Curry. He is the presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church. They discuss his new book, Love is the Way, and how Jesus has over the millennia been turned into a meeker and milder version than the radical figure he may have actually been at the time. He was founding a nonviolent movement, true, but he was chall...

Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Jaimal Yogis. Yogis is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker, and we are delighted to have him gracing our September/October 2020 cover, along with his insanely cute son. A graduate of Columbia Journalism school, Yogis is featured in our annual Books We Love feature. He has an impressive body of work, including three coming-of-age/journalistic memoirs: Saltwa...

This week, Rabbi Rami puts on his wellies and garden gloves to interview celebrated gardener Sue Stuart-Smith. She is also a prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and the author of the book The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature. It weaves together stories about neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and how gardening can heal us mentally and physically. The book is especially timely...

Did you know we can reverse-engineer happiness and contentment by warming up our body’s own neural circuitry? That is the essence of the new book, Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness, by Rick Hanson, PhD. In this episode of the podcast, he and Rabbi Rami have a very deep conversation about Buddhism, the Buddha (who Hanson likes to see kind of as a...

“Our birthright is innate resilience,” Dr. Rangel says. The question is how to build that up, and nurture it. This week, Rabbi Rami is talking with one of Spirituality and Health’s newest contributors, Dr. Josefa Rangel. Dr. Rangel is a board-certified internist and integrative medicine specialist who trained at Stanford University School of Medicine, the University of California San Francisco, th...

This week’s guest is Sarah Bowen. Bowen is an award-winning author, multifaith spiritual educator, animal chaplain, and is completing postgraduate work at Chicago Theological Seminary on the intersection of human spiritual values and animal welfare. She and Rabbi Rami discuss how we humans tend to categorize animals into groups, such as the ones we love, the ones we eat, the ones we wear... Bowen...

“We were doing spine surgeries on anxiety, and it doesn’t work,” David Hanscom, M.D. tells Rabbi Rami. Hanscom is former spinal surgeon. His most recent book is Do You Really Need Spine Surgery? Take Control with a Surgeon’s Advice. After more than 32 years of surgical practice (and 15 years of suffering through chronic pain himself) he quit in 2018 to focus on teaching people how to break through...

This is the final episode in Rabbi Rami’s special four-part series on how to stay healthy from social, psychological, and spiritual perspectives during the COVID-19 crisis. This week, Rabbi Rami focuses on the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, which fosters compassion. This practice encourages us to wish others well, and allows us to be free from fear. Rabbi Rami bases some of the con...