The Mind Bod Adventure Pod

Hi friends! The Mind Bod Squad is BACK! After a few months apart (Jeff squirreled away up in BC, Tasha bummin’ around in Toronto), we’re returning to you on this, America’s birthweek. And we’re here to celebrate INTERdependence instead of independence. This week we’re hanging with Jeremy David Engels — Penn State rhetoric professor, yoga teacher, student of meditation, and author of the gorgeous l...

This week we’re hanging with Ivan Bercholz , co-owner of Shambhala Publications , publisher of Bala Kids , and co-author (with illustrator Lasha Mutua l) of My Friend Tara , a children’s book that introduces kids to Tara, the Buddhist archetype of compassion. Ivan set out to create a book that gets straight to the heart of practice: how can kids actually relate to an archetypal quality? How do you...

This week we're hanging with wandering Celtic teacher John Philip Newell and Earth & Soul Director Cami Twilling to talk about what it means to connect to the sacred when you're living outside the bounds of formal religious tradition. John Philip is an ordained-minister-turned-spiritual-exile who spent years with one foot in the church and one foot out in the wilderness, before finally giving back...

Happy New Year! One week into 2026 and we’re already firing on all cylinders. So let’s kick it off with some destress tools to keep us all cool as cucumbers when things get spicy. 🥒😅🌶️ This week we sit down with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar , physician, Harvard Medical School faculty member, and author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain for Less Stress and More Resilience . We talk about what stress actua...

This week we’re hanging with our friend Chela Davison — facilitator, sacred mischief maker, former master coach, and writer of the Substack, Wisdotainment . She brings her trademark mix of depth and irreverence to the question of what it means to live a “ regenerative calling”, a purposeful life that actually feeds you instead of wringing you dry. Chela walks us through 4 dimensions of personal ca...

We chase healing in all directions: therapy, breathwork, cold plunges, maybe a lil microdosing… but what if all your nervous system is asking for is a safe place to land? This week, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. David Rabin joins us to talk about how safety is the foundation of healing. His research explores how vibration, touch, and rhythm can retrain the body for calm. He’s the creator of...

How do we stay aware in a world designed to steal our attention? This week, we sit down with Jay Vidyarthi — designer, tech founder, meditation teacher, and author of Reclaim Your Mind: Seven Strategies to Enjoy Tech Mindfully — to explore what it means to live mindfully with technology instead of fighting against it. We look at how our phones, apps, and algorithms are constantly training our nerv...

When it comes to “getting to know ourselves,” we talk about mindfulness, creativity, career… basically everything except sex. But as Dr. Juliana Hauser argues, sexuality might be the most direct doorway into who we really are. In this episode, she takes us past the performance of “being sexy” into the raw territory of authenticity, agency, and connection. Dr. Juliana has spent over two decades hel...

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a creative? Chelene Knight answers without hesitation: “I think the biggest mistake was just not being me.” This week, we sit down with acclaimed poet, novelist, memoirist, and Tasha’s own writing mentor, Chelene Knight, to talk about what it means to build a creative life. Not the tidy, “professionalized” version, but the messy, alive, human one that actu...

This is an exciting one, friends! Stephen Porges is the visionary scientist who gave us polyvagal theory —a framework that’s reshaped how the world understands trauma, safety, and human connection. His work has influenced everyone from therapists to meditation teachers to parents trying to soothe a colicky baby. And now he’s here with us, alongside his brilliant co-author Karen Onderko, to talk ab...

This week on the Pod, we’re joined by the luminous Sherri Mitchell: Indigenous rights attorney, activist, ceremonial leader, and the author of Sacred Instructions . We dive into the birth canal of this moment — a world in transition, contracting and expanding as it labors to bring something new into being. Sherri doesn’t shy away from the pain, confusion, or cultural clusterf*ck of our times and s...

This week on the pod, we’re joined by writer and teacher Sarah Selecky for a beautiful, funny, and surprisingly deep exploration of writing as a contemplative practice. Sarah teaches writing as presence. As a way of being and noticing . She helps writers get out of their own way so that something real and alive can come through the page (or the google doc 😅). Together, we explore: * the overlap b...

This week on the pod, we’re joined by Chan teacher and sociologist Rebecca Li for a luminous practice session in Silent Illumination , a deceptively simple, deeply transformative form of open awareness meditation. Rebecca guides us through a full-body relaxation and easefully invites us into the “method of no method,” offering a living glimpse into this subtle and powerful practice. As we settle i...

This week, we’re in conversation with therapist and longtime Focusing teacher Serge Prengel about the transformative power of slowing down and listening from the body. Serge is one of those rare people who seem to live from a deeper layer of presence. His work blends Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, Core Energetics, and Polyvagal Theory to support real, embodied change. What stood out for us was ho...

This week on the Mind Bod Adventure Pod, we get our somatic groove on with tapping wizard and trauma therapist Mirjam Paninski. Miriam guides us into the world of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) —a deceptively simple practice where tapping acupressure points while speaking truth can open up big shifts in the body, mind, and heart. It’s part therapy, part ritual, part emotional plumbing. In this...

This week on the Mind Bod Adventure Pod , we sit down with Dr. Joel Schwartz, a psychologist and one of the early architects of the Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy movement. Joel is known for speaking truth to systems that pathologize difference — and for offering a way of working with our minds that’s healing, joyful, and radically humane. In this episode, we explore: * Why the “pathology model”...

This week, we sit down with relational facilitator James-Olivia Chu Hillman , whose teachings on radical responsibility, integrity, and unconditional positive regard are already shifting how Jeff shows up in relationship… and how Tasha tries not to ghost people who annoy her. 😅 Together, we explore: * The four core skills of relating well * why being “right” isn’t the same as being relational * W...

What if happiness wasn’t just a feeling but something you could train and reinforce? This week on MindBod AdventurePod , we sit down with Dr. Axel Bouchon , a neuroscientist and biotech entrepreneur who spent 20 years searching for a cure for depression—only to realize he’d been asking the wrong question. Instead of curing sadness, he discovered the source code for happiness —a set of six neurotra...

What if the secret sauce to navigating the world isn’t hustling harder, fixing yourself, or achieving inner peace like it’s an item on your to-do list—but something way simpler and right under your nose? This week on the Mind Bod Pod, we sit down with Oren Jay Sofer, a meditation teacher, communication wizard, and all-around wise human, to talk about his book, Your Heart Was Made for This . We dig...

In this episode, we remix therapy and healing with Angela Ai, a syncretic teacher practitioner of Core Energetics, Radical Aliveness, and Human Design. What the heck are these modalities? Good question! In a nutshell: they’re different ways to get insight into — and intuitive contact with— the human experience. Into our internal patterns, our relationships, and the ways we meet the world. This is...

This week, we go deep into the spiritual heart of psychedelics with Celina de Leon, founder of the Circle of Sacred Nature Church , and adjunct faculty at the Graduate Theological Union. Celina has spent 20 years working with ayahuasca – or yagé, as it’s known in the Kamentsa indigenous community of Colombia, her root lineage. We talk about the contemplative practice of yagé, its unique characteri...

Cara Lai is awesome. That’s the first thing to say. She is humble and real and willing to explore a heated topic without having any easy prepared answers. Backtrack! Cara is a dharma teacher, artist, Mom and former therapist. These days she mostly teaches meditation retreats and a fun online drop-in class called “Meditate Your Face Off!” (Jeff: Be still my heart.) Our subject is the shitstorm happ...

In this episode we welcome Caverly Morgan, former Zen monk and author of The Heart of Who We Are . Caverly is also the founder of Peace in Schools, a teen-centered mindfulness curriculum for teens. We jump right into it with a discussion of how teens very naturally want to challenge many of the culture’s bogus assumptions – in her words, teens “are on fire with wanting to dismantle what’s not real...

Well, this one is cool. It may change your meditation practice and – if you stay with the inquiry – your life. You’d hardly know how ambitious it is though, from our guest Kevin Schanilec’s humble, deadpan delivery. Kevin is a long-time Buddhist practitioner from Seattle who has formalized a process for seeing through what Buddhists call “The Ten Fetters.” The fetters are fundamental (mis)beliefs...

Today we head off the rails and into the spiritual undergrowth, where the wild things are. Our guest is Diana Piruzevska, aka Neon Dreamer – psychic, medium, healer. Yup – all that! Not her choice - at least not at first… Skeptics might scoff at these intuitions, experiences, and capacities, but that doesn’t change the fact that they kept happening to Diana and have always happened to some of her...