The Mindful Journey

This episode is for anyone who's been told the world outside is dangerous and quietly organizes their life around that fear. Joe Hehn, a mindset expert and consciousness teacher who spent a decade traveling after the loss of his wife, joins host Sana on The Mindful Journey to make the case for a different starting belief: that the world is kind. Joe shares what nearly 40 countries and years of tra...

This episode is for anyone facing something so heavy it feels impossible to carry, and wondering how to keep showing up anyway. Jonathan Brandt joins host Sana on The Mindful Journey to share his and his late wife Christy's story: back-to-back cancer diagnoses, and the philosophy they built together called Go Out Living. Jonathan reflects on the attitude that carried them through years of treatmen...

There's a quiet frustration many people carry. They have done the work: meditation, journaling, therapy, books, podcasts. They know their patterns by name. And yet something keeps repeating, something that awareness alone cannot seem to reach. Ali Christos has spent years sitting with people in exactly that place. On The Mindful Journey, he joins Sana to explore what quantum healing hypnosis opens...

What if the body remembers belonging long before the mind does? What if the nervous system we keep trying to fix with advice and apps was simply waiting for something older: trees, soil, wind, the slow rhythm of a forest? Frankie Edwards joins Sana for a tender conversation on forest bathing as a path back to belonging, especially for the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and why this is less a wellness trend t...

Most of us have spent so long living in our heads that we've forgotten a quieter intelligence moving through us all day, asking nothing. It's the breath, and this conversation is about coming back to it. Julie Rea, an intuitive energy healing practitioner, joins Sana to explore how slow, deep breathing settles the nervous system, and how something this simple can gently bring us home to ourselves....

Sensitivity note : this episode includes the guest's personal health experience and her own critical views of conventional medicine and the food industry. These are presented as her perspective, not as medical advice. Listeners should consult a qualified professional for health decisions. The green-room political discussion was not part of the published episode and is not reflected here. We want t...

Some seasons change us so quietly we barely notice. A loss, a diagnosis, an ending. Most of us were taught to grieve by staying strong and moving on, but underneath that, a quieter pathway asks us to turn toward ourselves, not away. Steven Ferrara joins Sana to share how the sudden loss of his 23-year-old son led him, through journaling and stillness, from grief toward gratitude and an inner pathw...

If you've ever told yourself you loved a job while your body quietly fell apart, this conversation will feel familiar. Michelle Marie Rose spent twenty years in a corporate legal career before being downsized from a role she thought would carry her to retirement. What looked like an ending became the slow, honest beginning of her healing. In this episode of The Mindful Journey, Michelle and host S...

A Gentle Note Before You Listen Our guest, Barry Deeks, is a survivor of a catastrophic road accident that temporarily took his ability to speak and continues to affect his voice today. At times in this conversation, his words may not sound as fluent as he would like them to, but every thought he shares is considered, intentional, and deeply felt. We ask you to listen with patience and with an ope...

We talk endlessly about connection, to others, to community, to purpose. The one most of us quietly neglect is the connection to ourselves, the one that makes every other connection possible. This is for anyone who feels disconnected even while showing up for everyone else. Somatic coach Lindsay Little joins Sana to explore self-connection not as a wellness slogan, but as a felt, body-level practi...

Some health struggles stay invisible for years, dismissed, mislabelled, or shrugged off as "just stress." This conversation is for anyone who has felt unwell for a long time and grown tired in their will to keep searching for answers. Functional medicine doctor and chiropractor Dr. Kate Davis joins Sana to share her own decade-long battle with chronic gut issues, and what it taught her about looki...

Some of us can feel deeply lonely while surrounded by people, ticking every box that should mean we have arrived. This one is for anyone sitting in a quiet that feels less like peace and more like absence. Author and spiritual facilitator Catherine Crestani joins Sana to reframe loneliness, not as a problem to fix or fill, but as an invitation to meet the self we have been avoiding. A slow convers...

A gentle heads-up : This conversation touches on adoption and trauma. Listen at your own pace, and if it stirs something deep, that's worth honouring, not rushing past. Some of us carry stories we were never meant to tell. This one is for anyone who has folded a hard truth up small, unsure the world could hold it. Memoirist and adoptee advocate Patricia Knight Meyer joins Sana on writing to heal:...

A Note on Language This episode includes mild adult language. The book at the heart of the conversation is titled A Little Bit of A$$hole , and the language is part of the message. Episode Summary: We grow up being told that being good means agreeing with everyone, keeping the peace, and putting others first. And somewhere along that road, a lot of us start quietly disappearing. Not all at once. O...

Most of us know meditation is good for us. We have read the studies. We have tried the breathwork, the apps, the body scans. And somewhere along the way, when the thoughts refuse to slow down, we quietly decide that maybe stillness just isn't meant for us, and we move on with our day. But what if everything we have been practising is only the surface? What if beneath the techniques, beneath the ca...

Sometimes the deepest mindfulness teachers are not the ones who came to the practice in a quiet room. They are the ones who found stillness in the loudest place a human being can be. In this episode of The Mindful Journey, host Sana sits with Fernando Ruiz, founder of TruHope Recovery, author, speaker, and meditation teacher. Fernando's path to mindfulness moved through trauma, addiction, homeless...

When was the last time you were actually here? Not thinking about this morning. Not running through tomorrow's to-do list. Not replaying a conversation from last week. Just here. Present. In this exact moment. It sounds simple, and yet for most of us, truly living in the now feels like something we keep meaning to get to, just as soon as things settle down. Host Sana sits down with Billy Mandarino...

Think about the last time you felt truly heard. Not just listened to. Actually heard, by someone who understood not only your words, but what you meant underneath them. For most of us, those moments are rare. We are communicating all day, at work, at home, in the spaces in between, and still going to bed feeling unseen, misunderstood, or quietly disconnected from the people who matter most. Host S...

Most of us were quietly taught that the answers live somewhere outside of us. So we keep checking with experts, frameworks, and louder voices, and slowly stop trusting the quiet knowing that has been with us all along. This episode is for anyone who senses that inner voice is still there, just buried under noise. Stephanie and Natalie, co-founders of Immersive Spirit, sit down with Sana to talk ab...

We spend so much of our lives trying to outrun pain. We stay busy, stay distracted, stay one step ahead of the feeling. But what if pain is not the problem, and the real invitation is simply to learn how to be with it without being consumed by it. That quiet capacity has a name. On this episode of The Mindful Journey, host Sana sits with Brooklyn-based somatic coach and psychological bodyworker De...

For centuries, "hysterical" has been a word the world used to dismiss women, their pain, their intensity, their knowing of their own bodies. But what if the women being called hysterical were never the problem? What if their bodies were trying to say something the world refused to hear? In this powerful episode, host Sana sits with Jacqui Tilwick, founder of Totally Hysterical, an oncology social...

Imagine being handed a cardboard box at 63. Eighteen years of early mornings, missed dinners, and weekend emails — reduced to whatever fits in your arms on the way out. Most people would call that an ending. David Nassif called it a wake-up. In this episode of The Mindful Journey, David shares what happened in the 72 months that followed — how he went from staring down financial ruin, with barely...

That voice that questions, doubts, and compares? You probably know it well. The one that tells you your last presentation had too many ums, that you don't really deserve the role you're in, or that the person scrolling past you on social media is somehow doing life better. Most of us spend years trying to silence this inner critic, treating it as the enemy. But what if it has been misunderstood al...

Think about the last time you felt truly heard. Not just listened to. Actually heard. Where someone understood not just your words, but what you meant underneath them. How often does that really happen? Most of us communicate all day long. At work. At home. In the small spaces in between. And still, so many of us go to bed feeling unseen, misunderstood, or quietly disconnected from the very people...

Most of us don't talk about our mental health battles until we are on the other side of them. And even then, even then, we choose our words carefully. We edit. We soften. We make it sound more manageable than it actually was. There is something quietly powerful about the person who decides to stop editing and look at what they have lived through and say, all of it is worth telling. In this episode...