The Aware Mind

Send a text In this episode, two of Sarah's clients, Brian and Ali, share their personal experiences leveraging mindfulness to facilitate their own emotional healing. Experiences of fear, insecurity, shame and worry are really messy and can leave us feeling confused about how to feel better. Sarah's guests do a wonderful job sharing how they came to understand their fears and insecuritie...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Mike Comparetto, discuss the actions you can take to reach your highest potential. Mike shares his "Motivation Equation" which shows how you can tip the balance towards moving in the direction you intend. Sarah shares "Procrastination Hacks," such as the two-minute launch and identifying what drives your avoidance. Both, Sarah a...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Joanie Lamb, child and family expert, discuss the ways our phone apps keep us going back to our phones instead of using other ways to entertain or soothe ourselves. This all has to do with dopamine and can be reversed with a routine dopamine cleanse. Learn the signs of smartphone addiction and hear alarming statistics on human's smartphone use...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Dr. Breese Annable, discuss the many reasons we experience anxiety and stress during the holidays. However, there are ways to show up for yourself that will leave you feeling more whole and relaxed, instead of frustrated and exhausted. Learn the differences between "stress" and "anxiety", so you can better determine what you are...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest Mike Comparetto, a licensed therapist, discuss the reasons why doing "emotional work" lowers your anxiety. Emotional work involves identifying specific words to describe your emotions, being mindful of your body during emotions, being aware of your thinking during emotions and supporting yourself with validation and compassion. If you are...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest Emelda De Coteau, Mindfulness Coach, discuss the importance of taking a pause when you are met with difficulty and giving yourself compassion. So often situations cause us to spiral down emotionally and cause our nervous system to engage. These moments are a struggle for most of us. However, there are ways to pull yourself out of the darkness and li...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah introduces a new "disorder" experts are getting behind and spearheading a movement to include in the DSM. Self-love Deficit Disorder shows up when we ignore our own needs to fill other people's needs. SLDD also looks like a struggle to understand what your emotions are and express them to others. These are also the qualities attributed to codepende...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest Stacey Curnow, a licensed couples therapist and relationship expert, break down what happens within our nervous systems when we enter conflict. Learn if it is best to address the issue in the moment or wait until later. Find out what soothes your nervous system and how to help your partner soothe theirs. Stacy discusses the importance of making agre...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah details Brene Brown's latest book "Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience". In this book Brene highlights 87 emotions, explaining what these emotions truly mean and gives advice on what we can do to experience these emotions in the healthiest way possible. Learn ways to minimize worry and learn techni...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Mike Comparetto, unpack what it means to have biases, especially the ones that are self-defeating. Do you know what your core beliefs are? For most people, these beliefs are completely unconscious. However, with mindfulness, you can uncover these beliefs and see how they act as a hurdle to you achieving your goals and becoming your best self.   Res...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Dr. Breese Annable, discuss how awareness of our fears can actually calm our anxiety. It sounds counter-intuitive but asking questions about what the deeper fears are driving your concerns and worry, can actually reduce your discomfort. Worry, over-eating, and hyper-planning are unhealthy responses to fear. With mindfulness, you can shift the way y...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah shares how a little self-validation can go a long way when it comes to reducing stress. What if the next time you found yourself in a stressful situation, you paused to validate your stress response? "It's understandable that I am feeling stressed, there is a chance I am going to be late for my meeting." Validating yourself for the uncomfortable em...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, licensed therapist Mike Comparetto, discuss why simple body awareness exercises help us better process our emotions, gain a better perspective and move us through difficult situations in a healthy way.  Our psyche comes up with a million reasons to resist our experience. And we usually follow through on most of them. However, accepting, instead of,...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Doctor Breese, discuss what shame feels like and sounds like, especially as relates to negative body image. Learn the differences between negative body image and body dysmorphia and how dieting is often a form of disordered eating. However, with mindfulness, we can wake up to our patterns of thinking and behaviors and lean into our emotional experi...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah's current coaching client and guest, Jasmine, tells her story of healing from childhood trauma with the help of the tools provided by TSD Mindfulness practice and coaching. Jasmine grew up in a home with alcoholism and at a young age learned she needed to ignore her needs in order to "keep the peace" at home.  Even as an adult she still struggled t...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Brianna Cuthrell, discuss how mindfulness can be used to minimize anxiety caused by anxious thinking. 90% of people have intrusive thoughts but it is rare for people to share their uncomfortable thoughts with others. We often experience shame about the thoughts that our minds create, which causes even more anxiety. Not to mention the anxiety and fi...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Sonya Strange, discuss why fawning and people-pleasing is a survival response caused by past trauma. This fawning response can affect every aspect of our relationships including sexual encounters. There is limited information available on the topic of fawning during sex, therefore this is an important episode to listen to and become educated on why...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Melanie Haskell, discuss the ways learning about the Enneagram can change your life. The Enneagram is a circle of personality types that identify how people interpret the world and manage their emotions. The Enneagram describes nine personality types and maps each of these types on a nine-pointed diagram which helps to illustrate how the types rela...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guests, Ali Sweeney and Marzia Bosi, discuss the ways mindfulness can break down perfectionism into its various parts so you can better manage stress caused by perfectionism. Perfectionism can result in physical symptoms, relationship stress, anxiety and depression. TSD Mindfulness provides tools for healing through perfectionism, including naming your th...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Emelda De Coteau, discuss the ways mindfulness can reduce overwhelm, feelings of shame and disconnection. They talk about the importance of taking a pause instead of simply pushing through every single moment. What are we missing when we do not acknowledge our difficulty and simply power through instead?  Emelda shares true stories of three of her...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and her guest, Heather Liv Melver, discuss the ways mindfulness can reduce, and sometimes even eliminate, experiences of anxiety. Heather shares her personal story of how she learned to accept the realness of what she was feeling in the present moment and trust that life will unfold in a way she can feel good about. Heather was formally diagnosed with Generalized...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and Jacob talk about the three doorways of liberation in the Buddhist teachings,  emptiness, signlessness and aimlessness. Kinda sounds like a wondering fool doesn't it? Could it be that forgetting the details of who you are, giving less meaning to your circumstances and reducing your goal-setting are actually all the things that contribute to happiness? Sar...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and Jacob talk about their personal struggles and triumphs with worthiness. A lack of worthiness can show up in our lives as packed schedules, lack of boundaries with difficult people, a need to be successful, fear of failure or not capable of feeling difficult emotions in a healthy way. Take the "Worthiness Test" with Sarah and Jacob and find out which...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah and Jacob talk about their personal meditation practices and what they have found to best support them to gain benefit from sitting. One of the most important teachings related to meditation focus on how we handle losing focus. When we meditate we periodically lose awareness and concentration and go into a state of daydreaming or unconscious. Sarah and Jacob disc...

Send a text In this episode, Sarah explains that any idea begins in the mind and then is executed. If this is true, then mindfulness of the workings of your mind and your preset mindsets are key to effectively executing any idea. Sarah and Jacob discuss mindful leadership and how this practice can be used by anyone from a business owner, executive, stay-at-home parent, or employee. Research shows...