The Soul of Life

"'God' is not God's real name." Spirituality does not shrink and fold itself tightly into the pages of a how-to manual. "The word 'soul' is one of those finger-pointing-at-the-moon words. I can't see my soul. I can't see your soul. I can't measure it with a tape measure or weigh it on a scale." Russell Siler Jones wrote "Spirit in Session: Working with Your Client's Spirituality (and Your Own) in...

We know that there is a direct link between human well-being and the health of the natural environment. When I heard about Tierra Curry's ecological conservation work it wasn't from reading a scholarly article about forest bathing or how much green space there is per square mile. I heard about Tierra because she had the brass to use her own body as a way to start conversations about protecting nat...

Today on the Soul of Life I speak to Dr. Lesley Tate-Gould, a psychotherapist that uses Somatic Experiencing to help people overcome trauma.   Lesley runs the Lido Wellness Center, an outpatient trauma and counseling practice in Newport Beach, California.   We talk about her specialization in a form of body-focused trauma treatment called Somatic Experiencing, or SE, and her experience of benefitt...

Today I speak with Dr. Daniel Siegel, founder of Interpersonal Neurobiology, about the mind and how Internal Family Systems (IFS) may function in the brain. Dr. Siegel is someone I consider to be one of the most thoughtful and clear innovators in teaching and talking about neurobiology and how it affects our behaviors—and not just behaviors we can see but the behavior and patterns of our mind. He...

This video was livestreamed on 1/28/22 and can be watched here: https://youtu.be/qs-2QGsjuWE My heart is broken and grieving with the Thomas family and the Magruder community after the shooting of a 15 year-old at Col. Magruder High School in Rockville, MD on January 22nd. I'm speaking today to help create a public space where other parents can connect in order to heal, learn, and collaborate with...

Brian Lagerstrom shows people how to make food on YouTube. But he's also a chef in the real world. "You can make world class dough with a bowl and a spoon. Truly. That's all you need." Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflif...

The James Webb Space telescope—decades in the making—finally launched from Earth recently and promises to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Who better about this milestone in astronomy than astronaut veteran of 5 space flights and former NASA science administrator, John Grunsfeld. Grunsfeld became known as the Hubble Telescope's repair man, logging more than 58 hours in 5 space...

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Ken Liu, author of The Paper Menagerie , a short story that is the first work of fiction to sweep the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy awards. Ken is the author of an epic fantasy series called The Dandelion Dynasty , in which the heroes are engineers, not wizards. Some of Ken's stories have been adapted for animation or film, and AMC is making a TV sh...

Dave Ungrady has been a man on a mission to tell the story of University of Maryland Basketball star Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose two days after he was drafted to the Boston Celtics in June 1986. He's the author of Born Ready: The Mixed Legacy of Len Bias .  Next week Len Bias will finally be inducted into the NCAA Hall of Fame. For a long time leadership within University of Maryland...

I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion. She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive . Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compa...

I speak with Father Isaac Keeley, Trappist monk and Director of the Spencer Brewery at St. Joseph's Abbey in the Central Massachusetts town of Spencer (my hometown). The Trappist monks of Spencer have lived a life of solitude and prayer on a 2,000 acre farm with a modest business selling jams, preserves, and handmade ceremonial garments. But 10 years ago the brothers of Spencer started researching...

Today I speak with Jaime Clemmer, author of Heartbroken, But Not Broken , which offers readers an intimate recounting of how she got through any parent's worst nightmare–her son's sudden death at the age of 10. Clemmer shares the details of her unfettered grief to offer license to anyone struggling to tell their own story. She invites you to walk with her. Her path is complicated and sacred, as is...

Today I speak with Dr. Patrick Oliver about the only drug approved currently to treat suicidal ideation: Ketamine. "Where this works is literally in making connections in the brain." Dr. Oliver is an emergency room physician that left the ER to start his own Ketamine infusion clinics because he saw a need that no one else was filling to offer life-saving treatment to people with severe depression....

How did fish evolve to walk on land? What are the details of how that process happened? Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Neil Shubin, the 2004 co-discoverer of Tiktaalik, a fish fossil that is the first evidence of so-called bridge animals with features that show the evolutionary transition between swimming fish and land mammals. Shubin is the author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3....

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Lou Lucas, chief of Palliative Medicine at the Nebraska and Western Iowa Veterans Health Care Systems. As a palliative medicine doctor, Dr. Lucas is trained to pull together all of the specialists that might be caring for a patient with a life threating disease and implement a cohesive treatment plan that cares for body, mind, and soul. She gives special...

The pandemic of 2020 brought us supply shortages. Basics like sugar and flour were scarce. But a truck driver in Houston was making sure people didn't run out of cake. Mark says "It's Texas, so you know, we do things a little bit different from the rest of the country here...Gotta have cake." If you've ever woken up and wondered if you're following the path you're meant to follow in life, you'll a...

Dr. Betty Martin has had her hands on people professionally for over 40 years, first as a Chiropractor, and upon retiring from that practice, as a certified Surrogate Partner, Sacred Intimate, and Somatic Sex Educator. Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Betty about the importance of getting to know your own body and your own sexuality. "My sexuality and eroticism belongs to me. It was such a s...

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Jay Earley, author of Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Inner Wholeness Using IFS . A frequent subject on this show, Internal Family Systems is a model of spiritual and therapeutic growth that I've practiced for the last 12 years or so that to me is the most effective tool box that I've ever found to address a wide range of psychological and health-relate...

David Wilcox is a quintessential folk singer, telling stories full of heart, humor, and hope, substance, searching, and style. His innate sense of adventure and authenticity is why critics and colleagues, alike, have always praised not just his artistry, but his humanity, as well. In this episode of The Soul of Life David treats me to several live songs as we discuss his phenomenal ability to touc...

Today on the Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Corey Allan, Sex and Marriage and Family Therapist, author of Naked Marriage, and longtime host of Sexy Marriage Radio, a podcast devoted to straight forward, honest conversations about what goes on behind closed doors in your marriage. "We don't have sex by accident. You don't trip and fall and wind up in a vagina. Cause if that's the case what in the wo...

Most of us have been conditioned our whole life to have strong moral judgments against things like addictions or suicide. Right? Aren't these just categorically bad things that we have to fight against? This is really what is so mind-bending and revolutionary about the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychology. Michael Elkin has a reputation within the IFS community for enthusiasm teaching...

Hari Sreenivasan joined the PBS NewsHour in 2009. He is the Anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a Senior Correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he was at CBS News, reporting for the "CBS Evening News," "The Early Show" and "CBS Sunday Morning." Before that, he served as an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, working extensively on the network's 24-hour digital service...

Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt are the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, a paradigm-changing and pioneering model of couples therapy that helped revolutionize the way psychotherapists view couples and the nature of healing. Imago uses the lens of attachment-theory—the idea that, neurobiologically, we belong to one other and are expertly equipped to heal each other's trauma from our...

Today I speak with Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, about his trailblazing work educating a generation of doctors and therapists about how to heal from trauma. His book has been on the NYT paperback nonfiction bestseller list for 141 weeks, 24 of them in the #1 spot. We talk about what trauma really is, and whether it's possibl...

This episode is also available as a special visual presentation of the author's stunning photographs. J ohn Annerino is believed to have run the longest wilderness ultramarathon ever, covering 750 miles of daunting Arizona wilderness from Mexico to Utah. In this episode of The Soul of Life we explore John's long and distinguished career a photographer, author, and adventurer of photography literar...