The Mindful Living

What if the body is quietly telling a story we have not yet learned to hear? If you are curious about nervous system regulation, trauma and whole-body wellness, this unhurried conversation is for you. Sana and Andrew Scheim explore breath, listening practices, cold, movement and the questions worth asking before you trust any approach. About the Guest: Andrew Scheim is an integrative wellness educ...

What if the thing that broke you is also the beginning of who you are becoming? If life has split into a before and an after, this slow, honest conversation is for you. Sana and Chris McCarthy explore rebuilding identity after loss, finding purpose beyond outward success, and letting each hard season teach you something. About the Guest: Chris McCarthy is an entrepreneur, speaker, father and autho...

What does home mean when everything has been taken apart? If you are carrying pain, shame or the weight of past choices, this conversation offers a gentle place to rest and begin again. Sana and author Angel Willard speak about living with chronic pain and disability, the difference between accountability and shame, and holding onto love for your children. About the Guest: Angel Willard is the aut...

Your life may look impressive on paper, yet something quieter runs underneath. This episode is for high achievers driven by fear, self-doubt, guilt, or shame. Sana and Steve Barton explore the Game Often Played, the reactive loop of conditioning, and the Game of Ten, a path back to awareness. You will leave with gentle ways to forgive yourself and ease overthinking. About the Guest: Steve Barton i...

Think of the last time you felt low. Did you open an app, add something to a cart, or buy a beautiful journal? This one is for anyone who has tried to shop their way to calm. Sana and Dr. Tejvir Sekhon explore mindful consumption, the hedonic treadmill, and how algorithms shape our idea of a good life. You will leave with gentle questions to pause before buying, and a clearer sense of your own goo...

When everything feels loud at once, how do you make a decision you can trust? This episode is for anyone carrying pressure at work, at home, or inside their own head. Sana and Silvia Rizzo explore leadership under pressure and decision making in uncertainty. You will leave with a gentler way to untangle overwhelm and keep moving without waiting for fear to leave. About the Guest: Silvia Rizzo is a...

The news can leave the chest tight and the mind restless. This episode is for anyone who wants to stay engaged with the world without being owned by outrage. Pastor and author Brian Drinkwine shares how switching off the news and returning to his faith tradition changed the way he sees people. It is a gentle invitation to notice what shapes you, not to pick a side. About the Guest: Brian Drinkwine...

You followed the map. You achieved the goals on your vision board. So why does something still feel incomplete? Diane Van Buren, an award winning architect who walked away from a celebrated career, joins The Mindful Living to talk about honoring the quiet signal that something is missing, even when success looks complete from the outside. She shares how she learned to listen to her heart instead o...

Why do you react before you even decide? This episode explores the answer. Neurophilosopher Alan Bodnar spent ten years studying five hundred books on neuroscience and mindfulness to explain why we live on autopilot, and how deliberate attention can rewire automatic fear into responses that serve you. About the Guest: Alan Bodnar is a neurophilosopher and researcher who spent the past decade study...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, Sana talks with Bradley Gabbert, author of the memoir The Agreeable Child, about how a near-fatal accident at thirty months old shaped a lifetime of people pleasing, passivity, and fear of conflict. Bradley traces his story from a childhood coma and the family dynamics that followed, through decades of staying quiet to stay safe, to the moment in therapy, bre...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, Sana sits down with Christian author Marcia McFarland to talk about her book Perfect Glory, a collection of short reflections on identity, purpose, grace, and perseverance. Marcia shares the story behind the book, a prophetic directive she received to "get busy writing," and explains the three sections that structure it: Believe, Receive, and Achieve. The con...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, host Avik sits down with certified transformational life coach and NLP practitioner Liz Coleman to explore what really keeps us stuck in cycles of overwhelm. Liz explains that the real block is rarely the to-do list itself, it is the inner story running underneath it, the belief that we have to earn love, prove our worth, or stay busy to be enough. She walks...

Christy Thiel, master nutrition therapist and founder of Soulfull Bloom, joins Sana to explore why healing is never meant to happen in isolation. Drawing on two decades of work at the intersection of nutrition science and spirituality, she talks about the roots of self-destructive thoughts, the role of community in recovery, and how her entheogenic church approaches psilocybin with education, safe...

Dr. Maria Van Der Maaten joins Avik to challenge the myth that self-care has to be a solo act. A sociologist and community development practitioner, she shares the research behind her upcoming book Even Monks Meditate Together, and why the wellness habits that actually stick are the ones we build alongside other people. About the Guest: Dr. Maria Van Der Maaten is a sociologist and community devel...

Our relationship with money is rarely about the numbers. It's about a story, one inherited from family, written during hard seasons, and rarely ever questioned. Sana talks with CPA and holistic financial coach Estelle Gibson about the four levels of belief that shape how we handle money, and why financial dependency is common even among high earners. About the Guest: Estelle Gibson is a CPA, TEDx...

For many women, the relationship with their own body has been adversarial for decades, something to manage or apologize for. Underneath that managing, the body has been trying to say something the whole time. Sana talks with life success coach Carolyn Hatton about women in their forties, fifties, and sixties who've absorbed the belief that aging limits them, and what changes when you stop fighting...

Most of us try to fix an emotional issue by working directly on it, talking it through, analyzing it, managing it. But what if the real shift happens underneath the emotion? Sana talks with Tamara Andreas, co-author of Core Transformation, about accessing the deep state beneath a feeling instead of just managing the feeling, and why that makes change actually last. About the Guest: Tamara Andreas...

Millions of thoughts run through our heads every day, and most of us never question whether they're true. We just assume they are, because they're ours. Sana talks with coach and podcast host Anthony Johnson about telling the difference between what's happening now and an old wound resurfacing, and which one is actually running the show. About the Guest: Anthony Johnson is a coach, speaker, and ho...

There's a version of mindfulness we're sold: calm, still, figured out. But nobody shows the laundry pile growing while you're trying to find five minutes to breathe. Sana talks with author and life coach Kirana Sidin about the comment from her youngest son that changed everything, and why mindful living is less about calm and more about honest, conscious participation. About the Guest: Kirana Sidi...

Most of us reach for our phones before our eyes are even open, and by the time we're out of bed, we're already carrying a weight that wasn't there when we woke. Sana talks with Sam Brooks, founder of the good-news platform Rally, about the gap between the world's reality and the version of it we're shown, and how to build a gentler relationship with the news. About the Guest: Sam Brooks left a car...

For anyone who's ever fought their pain harder than the pain itself, this episode asks a slower question: what if healing isn't something you chase, but something you stop resisting? Zach Rehder returns for a third, unscripted conversation on The Mindful Living, exploring boredom as a doorway, the difference between feeling something and owning it, and why every trigger might be an invitation towa...

What does it look like when two people in one home face cancer, one after the other, and still find their way back to joy? Jonathan Brandt returns to share how he and his late wife Kristie became chemo buddies, and how Go Out Living still helps others hold onto hope. About the Guest: Jonathan Brandt is a Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor and helicopter pilot whose wife, Kristie, faced cervical cancer a...

This episode is for the woman who has been told that if she just breathed deeper, thought more positively, or organized better, the overwhelm would finally lift. Sana sits down with high performance productivity coach Sandi Glandt to ask a harder question: what if burnout in working moms was never a mindset problem at all, but a missing system. Sandi walks through her S3 Framework, Systems, Strate...

Trauma doesn't just live in memory, it writes code, a program running quietly in the background of your mind, deciding what feels safe long after the danger is gone. Sana sits down with returning guest Fadi Sarieddine, a spiritual healer and author, to talk about what it actually takes to rewrite that program and reconnect with hope. Fadi breaks down the real difference between in-the-moment fear...

It's one thing to green a building, it's a very different thing to green your own life. Sana welcomes back returning guest David Gottfried, widely known as the father of the global green building movement, for a deeply personal conversation that goes well past his environmental work into the personal life balance sheet framework he built for himself. David shares the backstory behind his 2009 memo...