Odyssey & Alchemy: Conversations on Spirituality, Psychology & Inner Transformation

What if the ceiling you keep hitting was installed before you were old enough to question it? Dr. Tara Perry is a hypnotherapist, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, and one of the most effective subconscious reprogrammers working today. For 25 years she's worked with Olympians, celebrities, and first responders — going directly into the subconscious mind to find the root cause of what's b...

Frank Mesa spent 30 years at MTA Metro-North — starting as an assistant conductor and working his way to Chief Operations Training Officer, responsible for developing 7,000 employees in one of America's most demanding and high-stakes environments. Then he walked away and started over. In this episode, Frank breaks down his ERD framework — Evolve, Revolve, or Devolve — a decision-making system he d...

What happens when you stop choosing between the sacred and the worldly? You get David Nichtern. Grammy-nominated songwriter. Four-time Emmy winner. Buddhist teacher for over 50 years. David wrote "Midnight at the Oasis," played with Jerry Garcia and Paul Simon, and spent two decades studying under the legendary Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Today he runs Dharma Moon — a global platform training the ne...

Julie Brams has spent over 30 years helping people get out of their own way — in the therapy room and in the forest. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, eco-psychologist, and certified Forest Therapy guide whose work sits at the crossroads of inner healing and the natural world. In this conversation we go deep. We talk about nervous system dysregulation as a cultural disease, not a per...

What if your voice was broadcasting the state of your nervous system — and you didn't even know it? In this episode I sit down with Alexander Fredericks, founder of ToneWell and a man who has spent over two decades bringing other people's ideas to life across music, cleantech, neuroscience, and wellness technology. What started as a mission to save his wife's health became a decades-long journey i...

What happens when a nurse trained in evidence-based medicine becomes a target of black magic — and survives to heal others? Shaman Sondra Bailey spent years bed-bound, stripped of her home, her career, and custody of her child. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong. The tests came back clean. What they missed — and what Western medicine has no language for — was a deliberate, sustained dark ene...

What does it actually take to flourish? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Scott Glassman — psychologist, professor at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and author of A Happier You — to explore the science and soul of living a genuinely happy life. Scott opens up about his own battle with depression as a teenager, how being bullied reshaped his relationship with himself, and why...

Most of us treat sleep like an afterthought — something we'll get to when everything else is done. Alison Anandi Francis spent 15 years paying the price for that mistake, battling chronic insomnia while running a successful business and holding it together on the outside while quietly falling apart within. What she found in a yoga ashram in India — specifically through the breath — became the foun...

In this episode, Martin Prihoda speaks with Naomi Jason about embodiment, Dance Temple, Qigong, healing, rites of passage, and what it means to return to the wisdom of the body. Naomi is the co-founder of Dance Temple and a medical Qigong therapist, ritualist, dancer, farmer, and community leader devoted to helping people reconnect with themselves through movement, ceremony, and embodied practice....

In this episode of Odyssey & Alchemy, Martin Prihoda speaks with Boysen Hodgson about men’s work, emotional healing, shame, anger, authenticity, and the healing power of brotherhood. Boysen reflects on the early experiences that shaped his view of masculinity, the cost of living behind a mask, and how men’s groups helped him move from performance into honesty, connection, and purpose. They exp...

Jungian psychotherapist and executive coach Dr. Melinda Fouts, PhD on shadow work, narcissism, feminine power, dream work, and the blind spots that keep high performers stuck. With over 30 years coaching CEOs and founders across the globe, Dr. Fouts brings depth psychology into the boardroom. We cover Carl Jung, the "emotional operating system" installed in childhood, why James Bond is the wrong a...

What if the most powerful therapeutic breakthrough of our time has been hiding in plain sight for 40 years? Jonathan Robinson — psychotherapist, bestselling author of 14 books, and one of the world's longest-practicing MDMA-assisted therapy guides — has sat with over 600 people at their most open, most vulnerable, and most human. In this conversation, we explore how MDMA dismantles fear, floods th...

75% of suicides every year are men. In Canada, it's the second leading cause of death for men under 50. And yet we barely talk about it. In this episode, Martin sits down with Dr. John Ogrodniczuk — Professor of Psychiatry at UBC, founder of Heads Up Guys, and author of over 300 scientific publications on men's mental health — for one of the most honest conversations we've had on this show. Martin...

Odyssey & Alchemy Episode 16 features Kat Weed, psychotherapist and creator of the Rewired Woman framework, sharing how high-functioning people can escape survival mode, heal complex trauma, and build authentic lives. From her "hot mess" past of anxiety, addiction, dissociation, and broken relationships to helping successful women regulate their nervous systems, Kat breaks down attachment styl...

In this powerful episode of Odyssey and Alchemy, Martin Prihoda sits down with Kiem Schutter, founder and CEO of Qi Integrated Health in Vancouver, to explore the deep connection between body, mind, trauma, and healing. Kiem shares how an early childhood experience shaped his lifelong relationship with energy work, why traditional Chinese medicine became the foundation of his practice, and how acu...

The Inner Sanctum is a place set apart — a guided meditation within the Odyssey & Alchemy library for those drawn to the deeper waters of inner work. This is one of its offerings, released freely into the world. A 12-minute guided breathwork practice to begin your morning with intention. Using the fourfold breath — box breathing at a 4-4-4-4 count — this meditation gently wakes up your nervous...

What happens to your body when grief goes unprocessed? In this powerful episode of the Odyssey and Alchemy Podcast, host Martin Prihoda sits down with holistic health practitioner, author, and regenerative wellness coach Julie Brar to explore the profound connection between emotional trauma, autoimmune disease, and the body's innate ability to heal. After losing her husband suddenly to a heart att...

What if your body already knows how to heal — and the only thing standing between you and wholeness is the courage to slow down and listen? Julia Gabrielle is a Registered Clinical Counsellor based on Salt Spring Island, BC, whose practice weaves together somatic therapy, Hakomi, mindfulness-based counselling, attachment theory, and transpersonal psychology. She specialises in life transitions, gr...

What does it mean to heal in a way that reconnects you — not just to yourself, but to the living world around you? Meghan Taia Jacobson is a ceremonialist, psilocybin facilitator, spiritual counsellor, and PhD student in East-West Psychology. Trained at Naropa, Esalen, and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and deeply rooted in Amazonian shamanic tradition and the Santo Daime lineage, T...

What if midlife isn't a crisis — but an invitation? Michael Talbot-Kelly is a narrative psychologist, counsellor and men's inner work guide who has spent decades helping men rewrite the stories that are quietly running their lives. In this conversation Martin and Michael explore the Johnny story — a man who went from psychiatric ward to PhD and what that reveals about human resilience — the differ...

In this episode Martin sits down with Marcia Burton — Senior Hakomi Trainer, Registered Clinical Counsellor and Certified Teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion — for one of the most quietly powerful conversations the show has produced. Marcia has spent 25 years doing some of the most important and least celebrated work in human healing. She trained directly with Ron Kurtz, the creator of Hakomi, unti...

Satyen Raja has spent 40 years living at the intersection of warrior and sage — as a Kung Fu master, spiritual teacher and founder of WarriorSage, a global movement that has transformed over 100,000 people across 50 countries. His name means Truth in Sanskrit. This conversation lives up to it. Martin and Satyen explore what it means to move beyond peak performance into peak existence, why testoste...

Eoin Finn is one of Canada's most celebrated yoga teachers and movement philosophers — founder of Blissology, author of the newly released Yoga Optimized, and a man who has spent 35 years bridging the science of the body with the wisdom of the soul. In this conversation, Martin and Eoin explore what yoga actually is beyond flexibility and shapes, how our emotions live in our bodies and create phys...

James Cameron didn't want a song at the end of Titanic. Robert Kraft helped change his mind. Robert Kraft is one of Hollywood's most storied music executives — an award-winning composer, producer, and the former President of Fox Music. Over a remarkable career spanning four decades, he helped shape some of the most beloved soundtracks in cinema history: The Little Mermaid, Titanic, Avatar, The Mam...

What if the path to healing after the worst thing imaginable ran straight through the person who caused it? Aaron Lyons has spent over 20 years guiding some of the most painful conversations a human being can have — between murder victims' families and the people responsible, between communities torn apart by violence, between Israeli and Palestinian youth who grew up seeing each other as the enem...