A Quest for Well-Being

— As a health-focused chef, Ellen lives by the well-known motto: "Let food be thy medicine." It is obvious that eating more fruits and vegetables is in your best interest, but simply knowing that is not enough. By embracing the connection between self-care, better choices, enhanced gut health, cognitive functions, and hormonal balance, we begin to heal. Plus, food inspires! It gives us the opportunity to create and gather in community to enjoy the flavors each season brings.

Valeria interviews Ellen Postolowski — the author of "Gut Driven: Jump-Start Digestive Health to Nourish Body, Mind, and Spirit."

Integrative health coach and nutritional food chef Ellen Postolowski embraces optimal whole-body well-being by emphasizing the essentials of robust gut health with balance, awareness, and education on and off the plate. Ellen resides in Allendale, NJ, with her husband, Lou, and dog, Dug. She strives to create a ripple effect highlighting the benefits of self-care for all clients with Gut Driven.

To learn more about and her work, please visit: chefellen.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— Love is the Universal Goal. Because love is what we are, it is what we have always looked for. We have discovered that we don't always understand what love is. And if one doesn't understand what it is then how can one achieve it?

Valeria interviews Collin Hansen — Core is Collin's passion. You might wonder what that means. To him, it is happiness, fulfillment, joy, connection, kindness, confidence, peace.

This is who he believes we truly are at our core. We are simply learning to uncover it. Achieving Core has been Collin's life's goal, not only for him, but now, for his clients too. He has been helping others find Core since 2017 as a licensed mental health counselor. He mostly work with men struggling with sex addiction and their partners who face severe trauma as a result. The process of healing from such circumstances is grueling. But it is possible with lots of consistent effort and the right guidance. Collin is certified as a Sexual Recovery Therapist and a Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapist through the American Association of Sexual Addiction Therapy. His greatest hope is for your healing.

To learn more about Collin Hansen and his work, please visit: kirutz.com and collinahansen.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— "Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit.

— Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. — Pema Chödrön.

Valeria interviews Allie Vaknin — she serves as a Registered Mental Health Counselor Intern in Orlando, Florida, working primarily with adolescents and adults who suffer from anxiety, depression, trauma, identity issues, and relationship difficulties.

Allie graduated from Columbia University with a Master's in Mental Health Counseling, and prior to that, received degrees in Human Communication and Sociology with a minor in Leadership Studies from the University of Central Florida. A majority of her clinical experience has focused on serving individuals from marginalized and underserved communities across the country, including Miami, Orlando, [near] Los Angeles, and New York City. As the daughter of immigrants, a Colombian mother and Israeli father, her multicultural background and diverse clinical experiences have been an asset when working with issues of identity and complex trauma.

Her approach focuses on helping clients develop self-understanding and learn practical skills. She believes education is a form of empowerment, so she frequently infuses opportunities for clients to learn about psychological concepts that can help them understand their own experience. She also incorporates mindfulness and self-compassion techniques, which help clients become more present and less harsh on themselves. Overall, her style of counseling can be described as supportive, empowering, insightful, collaborative, and oftentimes funny. She genuinely loves her job, and she's grateful for each opportunity to cross paths with, and support, a fellow human being.

To learn more about Allie Vaknin and her work, please visit: wildheartscounseling.org

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— Laurie provides a safe space where clients can reveal their challenges and together work to uncover the thoughts, emotions and behaviors that create obstacles to well-being. To better understand unhealed patterns, there's a stage of exploration of events from early life that have created automatic reactions. As you become more conscious of these automatic responses, you will find that you have more choice and will feel more empowered. One recognizes him- or herself as a valuable individual who, though tempered by mis attunements from childhood, has risen and moved beyond the trauma.

Valeria interviews Laurie Pantell — she is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Laurie works with individual adults and couples and is passionate about helping others to understand the hurt places inside that create blocks for them, to transform those hurts, and to find their particular path of meaning.

Earlier in her life, Laurie was on a trajectory of intellectual development and achievement. After receiving an undergraduate degree from Brown University and graduate degrees from Princeton and UC Berkeley, she realized that her path was actually quite different than the one she was on. Through a gradual process of evolution and greater self-understanding, Laurie embraced psychology as a career and committed to her own healing and spiritual journey.

Now, drawing on close to 20 years of experience guiding others as well as her own lived experience, Laurie looks forward to each workday, meeting her clients where they are at and seeing the wisdom of their healing unfold. Laurie also offers case consultation to other therapists and healers who want to better understand the interplay between their own psyche and what is coming up with their clients.

To learn more about Laurie Pantell and her work, please visit: bayareatherapypractice.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— As Survivors of Childhood Trauma, we have been conditioned to expect bad things to happen. We are often overwhelmed by negative expectations about our lives, our relationships and about trying new things. Because the brain gets programmed to expect negativity, our feelings, thoughts and behaviors reinforce unwanted outcomes. And the negativity loop continues. With that conditioning, we learn to scan all the time for what can go wrong . . . so we can prepare for the worst. Negative expectations become a habit that is also reinforced by the trauma-related experience of getting triggered. Every time we struggle with a trigger, the negative "loops" in our brains and bodies get reinforced. In Tamara's own trauma recovery journey, she realized that even after years of erasing triggers, she still had expected negative experiences — even after trauma was no longer part of her daily life. The reason that your trauma was traumatizing is that as it happened, you knew that something wasn't ok! THIS is your wisdom self! And it is your wisdom self that holds hurt, fear and anger because your wisdom self isn't encouraged to come forward. Tamara guides you return to that wisdom and to acknowledge, and honor it and trust it!

Valeria interviews Tamara Ridge — the author of "Gratitude & Inner Wisdom Journal for Trauma Survivors: with Prompts & Educational Support for Self-Guided Healing."

Tamara Ridge is a survivor of childhood trauma who knows first-hand how childhood experiences of trauma perpetuate into romantic relationships that repeat the patterns of childhood because the relationship skills needed to survive a harmful childhood aren't the same skills that lead to healthy, safe, secure adult friendships and romantic involvements.

Like many Marriage and Family Therapists, Tamara pursued her career as a therapist from a subconscious drive to resolve her own painful experiences and try to correct the harm done to her by "healing the world." She became a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist over 25 years ago and has since been extremely disappointed with what the mental health field has to offer survivors of childhood trauma.

Armed with a unique approach that combines lived experience with self-healing practices and a sharp research mentality, Tamara created The TraumaErase Method: to empower trauma survivors to systematically eliminate the impact of trauma in their lives. She is the founder and director of Trauma Free Nation, a closed online social network where members actively benefit from the Trauma Erase Method as well as support from Tamara twice per week via group zoom meetings where members are empowered in applying the principles in their personal healing journey.

Tamara is also the author of the Inner Wisdom & Gratitude Journal for Trauma Survivors which is featured in Tamara's weekend Mini-Workshop that helps survivors reconnect with their inner wisdom that was lost because of trauma.

To learn more about Tamara Ridge and Trauma Free Nation, please visit: centerforhealingtrauma.com

You can also find Tamara on Facebook, YouTube, IG and Tik Tok!

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— "The state of full consciousness exists in the absence of all thought: not only the strategic thoughts which revolve around our material and personal existence, but also the intellectual faculty of observing and witnessing is no longer called for. I knew I was creating myself and the whole world. Just by being in the state of constant, inexhaustible inspiration, in effortless and peaceful ecstasy of potential creation, all life is realized. I say "potential" because that's the essence of consciousness, the energy that creates unlimited potential. What we experience as our life is a result of our multidimensional perceptions." – Monique

Valeria interviews Monique Rebelle — She is the author of "Transcendence Calling: The Power of Kundalini Rising and Spiritual Enlightenment."

Monique was born in Warsaw, Poland. She left Poland on her own as a teenager to pursue a career as a visual artist in London, Amsterdam, and Paris.

Her paintings from those years were done in a postmodern, neo-expressionist style, one was purchased by the Royal Dutch Collection in Den Haag. After moving to the United States and settling in Los Angeles, an epiphany experienced in 1988 made her art shift into a new, nonobjective direction. In 1992 she experienced an even more profound, life-changing occurrence. Following years of contemplation of the experience, Monique became a spiritual teacher. Her book, "Transcendence Calling" describes the experience, transformation, and insights, and offers a general description of the system of Our Multidimensional Consciousness that Monique teaches. Since the experience, Monique lived in Maui, Hawaii, Anchorage, Alaska, and is now permanently settled in Reno, Nevada. "Transcendence Calling" has been in the ranks of an Amazon bestseller for 4 years. Monique's new book, titled "Seven Steps To A Better Human" scheduled to be released next year, goes deeper into the system of Our Multidimensional Consciousness and practices focusing on training and cultivating chakras. Monique continues working on her art in abstract and figurative styles.

To learn more about Monique and her work, please visit: moniquerebelle.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— Learning how to reprogram your subconscious mind is one of the most amazing life-changing experiences we will have. Your subconscious mind has the power to show you who you are in the deepest levels of your being. Yet, most of us will spend our entire lives entrapped by our subconscious programs. In this episode, Steffo Shambo will explore and guide us to move into conscious awareness, retrain our neural pathways and build the life we dream of!

Valeria interviews Steffo Shambo — is a sex, love, and relationship expert with a holistic tantric approach and the founder of The Tantric Man Experience.

Steffo helps married men reignite their passion in a lackluster relationship and help single men attract their dream partner in nine weeks. He's on a mission to guide men towards an intimate, connected, and meaningful love life, and end the war with their sexuality, so they can finally become integrated men, fathers, brothers, husbands, and leaders in the world.

To learn more about Steffo Shambo and her work, please visit: tantricacademy.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— You are experiencing an intentional life? Do you know what it really means to be intentional and what it is like to do think and act with intention? And most important, can we all live intentionally?

Valeria interviews Kelsey Schad — she is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in the state of Texas and holds a master's degree in psychology as well as master's in counseling from Houston Baptist University (HBU).

During her time at HBU she completed a thesis on 'Media Influence and Symptoms Associated with Eating Disorders, ' which led her to practice in both inpatient and outpatient hospital settings that focused on mental health and addiction related disorders. Through this work she found purpose in advocacy and helping populations that are deeply stigmatized as well as underserved. She took this passion to a Residential Treatment Facility (RTC) where she provided therapy services to adolescent females in Child Protective Services (CPS) who had significant trauma history as well as maladaptive behaviors.

Currently, Kelsey works at a Prosperity Counseling Services, which is a private practice in Katy, Texas. She specializes in trauma work and is trained in Eye Movement Desensitization's Reprocessing (EMDR) and Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT). Kelsey's passion is rooted in trauma and how attachment styles are impacted. She finds significant value in understanding how we learn to love and how we integrate ourselves into relationships by exploring childhood unmet needs, lack of praise, emotional neglect, and high achievement expectations.

To learn more about Kelsey Schad and her work, please visit: psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/kelsey-schad-katy-tx/937865 and prosperitycounseling.org/staff/kelsey-schad-lpc/

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— "The belief that I am a separate individual that exists within creation is strong. The perception that I was born and I will die, but while I'm here I am going to do the best that I can. I want to succeed, I want to get as much for me and mine as I can. This is basically what happens lifetime after lifetime. We descend down into creation. We have our life. We go through ups, we go through downs, there's happiness, there's sadness. Everything is duality. There are two sides to every coin. We get something, we lose something, we love, we hate. There's never a sense of true happiness or true satisfaction. It's always just striving on and on and on. It's a grind, it's hard work and eventually the soul starts to come out of this cycle. Lifetime after lifetime, the soul eventually realizes that it's never going to find lasting happiness in this outside world, in this illusion, in this maya. The soul then starts to cry out for something greater than itself. This is where the Supreme Being starts to descend down in the form of a Guru or a teacher. — Gareth

Valeria interviews Gareth Duignam — the author of " Waking Up From The Dream: An Extraordinary Journey Of One Man's Spiritual Awakening"

Gareth Duignam was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1979. In this book, he shares his life experiences which led him to spirituality. An awakening which directs him towards becoming a teacher able to transmit powerful transformative energies including Shaktipat and the Supramental Force. This honest and enlightening autobiography touches on his life of non-conformity before awakening and his miraculous discovery of what lies behind the veil of illusion. It then goes on to document his inspiring journey to become an irreverent, humorous and loving teacher for the students in his group, True Spiritual Awakening.

A unique aspect of his teaching style is the way in which he sees himself as a friend, an equal, and a teammate to his students, rather than a guru. His mission is to empower others to reach the heights that he himself has reached. In the context of this story are many descriptions of epiphanies Gareth has had. His students have noted that when reading these, a transmission of energy can be felt. Therefore reading this book can be a spiritual meditation practice in and of itself.

The personality which Gareth retained after attaining the highest level of consciousness is down to earth, funny as hell, and above all kind and genuine. This book is a gift to the world although Gareth would be too humble to say that himself. A must read for modern day spiritual seekers

To learn more about Gareth Duignam and his work, please visit: truespiritualawakening.eu

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.

— "We cannot handpick which emotions we do and don't want to feel. If we numb or ignore some of them, we crate distance from all of them. Feeling disconnected and numb to our emotions, life can also lose a sense of vitality and zest. In cutting out feeling vulnerable, we have also sacrificed feeling so much joy, peace, and goodness."

Valeria interviews Dr. Pauline Yeghnazar Peck — She is a licensed psychologist in CA and NY with a private practice in Santa Barbara.

She specializes in working with the children of immigrants to navigate their relationships (with parents, spouses, children) by understanding their background, breaking cultural trauma patterns, and integrating themselves to become fuller and freer versions of themselves.

To learn more about Dr. Pauline Yeghnazar Peck and her work, please visit therapywithpauline.com

— This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well.