Groundless Ground Podcast

It's time to say farewell to the GG Podcast.   GG Episodes are now housed on Lisa's YouTube Channel. This is an invitation to all the GG listeners to subscribe and listen to the new Buddhist Psychology Podcast . Thank you for all your support over these 6 years. See you on BPP which cam be found on all the usual podcast apps and my Integrative Psychotherapy Substack ! Subscribe to the Buddhist Psy...

Clinician Paula Scatoloni returns to the Groundless Ground 6 years later, to share the evolution of her clinical work which now integrates sound therapies and energy medicine techniques along with somatic psychotherapy. This is a fascinating episode covering several kinds of sound modalities, such as: The Safe and Sound Protocol a unique listening experience that has been filtered through a patent...

How can mental health professionals understand mental confusion from a Buddhist psychological perspective? This episode features a dharma talk by Lisa Dale Miller on a profoundly informative Sutta from the Pali Canon which offers answers to that question. Lisa also provides supplementary psychological commentary on the Sutta after the talk is finished. This is a public episode. If you would like t...

Lisa Dale Miller starts this episode with an explanation of why the Groundless Ground Podcast has been on hiatus for the last year. Then the episode presents a dharma talk Lisa gave at Marin Sangha one month ago. Her talk is a reminder that every moment is an invitation to decrease the mass of human suffering by seeding the world with at least one more quiescent, wise, and compassionate mind commi...

This is a recording of a dharma talk Lisa Dale Miller gave March 19, 2003 at Marin Sangha.  Recently neuroscientist Richard Davidson reiterated a long-held tenet of Tibetan Buddhism that all human beings share the same wish to be happy and free of suffering, and that this wish emerges from innate basic goodness . This goodness is often viewed in Mahāyāna and Vajrayana Buddhism as an expression of...

Psychologist, researcher, and executive Cassandra Vieten and I dialogue about a wide range of interventions that can shift the mental health crisis into a mental health renaissance. Cassie’s many years of offering patients empirically-based, mind-body tools for sustainable transformation, has taken place at several renowned academic medical institutions and greatly contributed to psychology’s inte...

This is a very special and quite different kind of episode to finish out the Groundless Ground’s 5th season. I have a frank discussion about the pitfalls of packaging and delivering meditation as a performative act in health contexts with Donna Sherman —clinical social worker and teacher of practical wisdom from yoga sciences, mindfulness meditation and behavioral sciences. Since Donna has studied...

Alison Ash PhD is a sex and intimacy coach, educator, and creator of many sex positive workshops including her upcoming, very popular Sexual and Emotional Intimacy Skills Mastercourse . This dialogue was stunningly rich and informative for both of us. We freely converse about sex positivity and how consent skills make it possible to skillfully and joyfully give and receive pleasure, flirt and sedu...

Psychologist Raja Selvam, discusses his new book, The Practice of Embodying Emotions: A Guide for Improving Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Outcomes .  Raja is the creator of Integral Somatic Psychology™ (ISP™) , an effective somatic therapy that encourages optimal mental health by fully embodying emotions. Raja and I explore how clinicians can facilitate patient resolution of difficult emoti...

Richard Hill and Matthew Dahlitz have written a comprehensive, definitively modern psychotherapy textbook titled, " Practitioners Guide to the Science of Psychotherapy ". Their book covers basic neuroscience, body-brain systems, genetic processes and the application of integrative psychotherapy modalities for mental health disorders. This is the textbook I wished for many years ago when I attended...

This episode features a rich, in-depth dialogue with Buddhist teacher and author Shaila Catherine on her new book, Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind .  Using a Theravada Buddhist approach for cultivating focus, clarity, and wise action, Shaila offers an effective five-step method for changing distorted, habitual thoughts: 1) replace unwanted thoughts; 2) examine the dangers...

Eric Garland, PhD, LCSW, and I discuss exciting new research on the effectiveness of Mindfulness Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) —his unique mindfulness intervention—for alleviating the cognitive-affective distress associated with chronic pain and co-occurring opioid misuse. We also focus on the value of meditation, expanding consciousness, and experiencing bliss in decreasing reliance on opi...

It’s been a very disturbing few weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine. Coincident with the initiation of war, clinician, author and dharma teacher Lisa Dale Miller taught two weeks in a row at Marin Sangha. These two dharma talks explore, from a Buddhist point of view, what it means to be wise, compassionate, and even awakened in the midst of difficult circumstances. The second talk, which starts at...

Consciousness remains a scientific puzzle: what it is, what creates it, and though all known conscious systems are alive, not all living systems are conscious. These days cortical-based theories of consciousness are all the rage. However, renown neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst Mark Solms has put forth, in his book “ The Hidden Spring ”, a radically convincing theory for the subcortical, homeos...

This is a very special episode with Beverley Kane, MD, discussing her book  Equine-imity: Stress Reduction and Emotional Self-Regulation in the Company of Horses , which introduces us to somatic horsemanship—a therapeutic practice for exploring the physical relationship between humans and horses, on the ground and on the horse, to promote body-mind-spirit well-being in both species. Dr. Kane portr...

Stuart Shanker, MD and I address the loss of virtue as a fundamental part of societal and individual conduct and how to reinvigorate it. He notes with sadness the quaint overtones and ironic sarcasm that has infected discussion of virtuous conduct; particularly in politics, journalism, academia, and psychology. We name the war between reason and emotion, rationality and irrationality, and discuss...

Psychologist Jim Hopper and I discuss the neurobiology of trauma, MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, the critical role embodied treatment modalities play in trauma healing, and use of Buddhist psychology and Internal Family Systems (IFS) for trauma resolution. He fully explicates the process used in the FDA-approved and MAPS-sponsored MDMA phase 3 trials, discusses the results, and clarifies for whom...

Two recent dharma talks given by Lisa Dale Miller at Marin Sangha explicate what kindness is from Buddhist psychological perspective and how it radically differs from niceness. To lay the groundwork of what kindness is, the first talk employs a very challenging sutta , “The Simile of the Saw”, where the Buddha proscribes wholesome conduct in all manner of difficult relational engagements.  The sec...

Stuart Shanker, PhD is a world-renown author, researcher and scholar on self-regulation science and creator of the groundbreaking Self-Reg method for cultivating mental and physical well-being. His life’s work has focused on the beneficial role that positive stress plays in children’s development and learning, and the harmful effects of excessive negative stress on parents, educators, and children...

Get ready for a microbiome geek-fest with Cornell Professor Emeritus, health scientist, and author Rodney Dietert, as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of his pioneering book,  The Human Super-organism . Rodney shares the fascinating history of microbiome research and recounts his own life-changing, career-shifting revelations about microbiome-first medicine in reversing the modern epidemic of non...

Jeremy Lent’s new book,  The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe offers a coherent worldview of deep interconnectedness by integrating ancient Taoist and Buddhist views of humanness and awakening, with a modern scientific, conceptually-oriented view of human capacity. Jeremy makes the case for reigniting lost ethical values that can shift th...

This is a very special episode featuring Anne C. Klein, PhD, aka Lama Rigzin Drolma; Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, Buddhist Studies scholar and Tibetan translator, author, and Tibetan Buddhist teacher. It was such an honor to discuss Dr. Klein’s groundbreaking book, Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse Foundational Practices and the Transmission of the Longchen Nyingthig . We spe...

Psychiatrist, renown mindfulness and habit change researcher, Jud Brewer, MD, PhD once again disrupts conventional framing of mental health disorders and their treatment. This time the target is anxiety. Jud says you cannot think your way out of anxiety.  Because anxiety is actually a habit loop—an unrewarding reward that experientially and neurobiologically mirrors addiction. Jud unpacks this bri...

Kathy L. Kain, PhD returns to share her unparalleled expertise on effective use of somatic interventions in in-person and online psychotherapy. She gets very specific about what interventions work and don’t work, and the kind of patients that may benefit or be underserved when the medium of contact is screen-only. And Kathy gives in-depth analysis of the interplay of awareness and points of contac...

Soul initiation is an essential and hazardous spiritual adventure that most modern cultures have forgotten. Eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin discusses this mythopoetic, life-altering journey which he beautifully explicates in his new book, Journey of Soul Initiation . I chose to commence GG Season Four with this riveting, deep and edgy dialogue on the transformative and profound path of forging a tru...