By Suzanne Falter
The podcast currently has 19 episodes available.
If you haven’t experimented with binaural beats, may I suggest you give today’s podcast a good listen? Or perhaps you already have.
Karen Newell is the co-founder of Sacred Acoustics, and she and her co-engineer have created a clean, beautiful way for us to put our brain power to best use.
Binaural beats help you get rid of ‘monkey mind’, settle down and either get things done, go to sleep, or just relax. And they are mightily effective. The beats pair two frequencies, one in each ear of your (recommended) headphones. One beat is attuned to waking, analytic consciousness … while the other matches the vibration of your preferred state, i.e. a Delta wave, for relaxation, or possibly an engergizing Alpha wave.
This prompts the brain to basically get with the program, and supports you in whatever you’re trying to accomplish. In this interview, Karen goes on at length about how the beats are particularly helpful in transcending everyday reality, so you can travel more easily to the other side. Or, say, hang with your divine guidance.
How cool is that?
In this broadcast, we also play a brief sample of the beats Sacred Acoustics has created. The variety of topics and interests they cover is vast. A favorite of mind: Heart Center.
Here’s what I learned:
If you dig in and try binaural beats, do let us know how they are working for you!
RESOURCES
Sacred Acoustics
https://www.sacredacoustics.com/
Free Download: https://www.sacredacoustics.com/pages/free-download-sign-up
Free Trainings
https://www.sacredacoustics.com/pages/training-series
As an innovator in the emerging field of brainwave entrainment audio meditation, Karen Newell empowers others in their journeys of self-discovery. Using Sacred Acoustics recordings, she teaches how to enter and engage your own consciousness in order to connect to inner guidance, achieve inspiration, improve wellness and develop intuition.
At international workshops presented with best-selling author Dr. Eben Alexander, Karen demonstrates key practices of consciousness exploration: heart awareness, intention, maintaining neutrality, emotional management and cultivating internal knowing.
Karen joined with Kevin Kossi to create original recordings unmatched by any others either of them had experienced. Together, they created Sacred Acoustics.
I begin this week’s episode with my own little essay about what it takes to move through a mid-life crisis … and what the ‘life lesson’ potential is of such time. Interestingly, I compare my own five year journey back to serenity – and beyond – with that of my father, who went through a similar letting go in his fifties.
And why do I focus on life lessons? Because, hey, that’s what it’s all about … right? Hence my invitation for the following guest.
Deepak Romala is a 25-year-old Indian with an intense passion for learning. Particularly, he loves those little lessons in life that are so critical … and that we learn from our fellow common man, not from great pundits.
Indeed, some may say such lessons are the very purpose of life. Over the last eight years, Deepak has collected more than 65,000 of them.
After working extensively with the Indian school system to gather lessons, he developed a way to share them through interactive learning experiences – so many people could learn from one person’s experience.
Now he speaks to all manner of people, “from ages five to 100,” as he puts it. And his website shares a TedX talk that summarizes just why these lessons may be important. Our conversation was fun, energizing and very deep at the same time. I loved this chat and I hope you do, too.
From Deepak I learned:
This is a particular meaty interview. Enjoy!
RESOURCES
http://projectfuel.in/
Where to Submit Your Own Life Lesson [INCLUDE FROM SITE]
BIO
Deepak Ramola is Founder, Artistic Director of Project Fuel.
This week we are celebrating our first six months as an up and rolling podcast. (Hooray!) You are the reason I do this … so I want to thank you for listening and adding your comments. This week you’ll hear fun snippets from our three most popular episodes.
In my interview with astrologer John Marchesella, he shares the astrological dope on the current political situation in the U.S. and what the overall trend is for the next 8 years. Then hear from Michaela McGivern, a California shaman, about how she does her work by crossing to the other side. Finally, inspirational author, life coach and happiness blogger, Shannon Kaiser has some relevant words to say about how to go a whole lot easier on yourself. Don’t forget her new book, Self-Love Experiment.
So … in honor of all of this … I’m sharing an essay I wrote about how the podcast came to be. Which is, not surprisingly, a magical but true story. One that taught me a lot about right timing.
Thanks so much for being in the game with me!
I drove up to Sebastopol on a foggy Bay Area morning last fall because something was pushing me. I just kept feeling the urge to go back to this sweet town where I once lived. At the time, I felt stuck. I couldn’t move forward, though I badly wanted to.
In my meditation, when I asked what was next for me, the image of Sebastopol’s main street and its intersection in the middle of town was shown to me. It was an image that had come to me repeatedly since Teal’s death, at one point prompting me to live there for a year and a half.
Although I moved away, Sebastopol still calls to me and invites me in …this is a place where I resonate and where Teal’s spirit really comes alive for me. Especially as I drive up there.
While I was driving on that particular day, I felt so lost. I was at some kind of crossroads with my work. The novels were being published but I felt incomplete. I submitted an excerpt from my memoir to an agent and was waiting for her feedback. I was ‘on hold’ and I didn’t like it.
So I prayed to Teal as I drove. “Please show me what I’m supposed to do. Make yourself apparent to me. Help me know what is next.”
After I got to Sebastopol, I did what I always do … I went into Infusions, ordered a cup of tea and a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, and put down my backpack. Then I looked through the big glass doors of the tea shop.
Standing there was a blonde woman talking to Magick, the psychic who usually sits outside. I studied her. I was instantly drawn to her though I really didn’t know why. It could have been because she is beautiful, but there was some other, bigger reason I couldn’t put my finger on. I thought perhaps I knew her.
Then I realized it was Michaela, the shaman who Teal had done a session with her only a week before her death. It was Michaela who’d gotten Teal so very interested in shamanic healing in the first place.
It was in this very spot that I’d run into Michaela several times over the last four years. I said hello to her, we hugged, then spontaneously sat down to tea together.
Ninety minutes later, I had a clear sense of my purpose moving forward.
Because Michaela is a shaman, she ‘travels between worlds’ and often talks to beings such as Teal who inhabit the other side. We started chatting and inevitably Teal’s essence began seeping into the conversation.
We talked about life and then moved on to the topic of organ donation. Teal’s heart was donated to another young woman about her age whose life was saved, and who moves through this walking life right now because of Teal.
Michaela began to receive all kinds of information from Teal, then, about what happens to the stored memories in the cells of the transferred organ. She went on to channel Teal at length, ending with these words.
“When my heart stopped I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. My soul was ready to go, but I was not aware that my heart had a different trajectory … when I was young I didn’t understand the pain that my heart was in. And I didn’t know if I could sustain it. There was an aspect of denial that is part of being young, which prevented me from expressing the pain and working with it in a substantive way.
And yet, my heart’s journey was really to impart information from another dimensional aspect, so people could hear the wisdom of my heart and other hearts. I was not capable of doing that psychologically in my body, and with the personality that I had. I wasn’t evolved enough to understand that in order to heal the heart, I had to experience what the heart was harboring.
Now when I look at it, it’s more like I had to learn how to play the chords, so that I could improvise in a major way. I’m now improvising in a major way, but I didn’t have the tools to do that when I was young and alive.”
Then Michaela looked at me. “Teal says, ‘To be continued,” she said.
Michaela had no way of knowing that that Teal was a musician … a musician who loved to improvise. Nor did she know that when Teal was dying, she came to me several times as thoughts in my head. When I asked what she was doing, she told me, “I’m trying to reconcile my heart and my soul.”
At the end of our conversation, we both felt great. Uplifted, serene, content, happy. And energized in an entirely new way.
And suddenly I knew exactly what I needed to do next – the path was crystal clear. I knew I was to create a podcast and have Michaela as my first guest … and a repeat visitor. It was to be an exploration of the Afterlife, and whatever we can learn from this side of the divide.
I got my confirmation on the drive home. Sensing Teal around me once more, I turned on my iPod which is always set to Shuffle. Immediately, I heard Teal humming the beginning of the introduction I’d recorded a few years earlier for a podcast that never happened.
Of the nearly 2000 songs on my iPod … this was the first one I heard Now it all made perfect sense.
RESOURCES:
Won’t you please let us know in a review on iTunes how you liked this episode? Thanks so very much!
“If there’s something I want strongly enough … I will find a way to make it happen” says my guest Linda Claire Puig.
Linda has had a successful career teaching people how to create Internet based businesses … and what she wanted, and badly needed, was a sabbatical. In fact, she was ‘desperate’ for one, as she put it. So she took one … for a total of ten months.
After literally years of working her heart out, Linda set out to travel the world. She planned the year as she went along, seeing The Northern Lights in Norway, Belgium, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Argentina, and Uruguay.
During this time, Linda kept her own Net business going. But she worked only 5 to 10% of her normal rate.
So … short of receiving a windfall … how does the ordinary person do this?
Linda didn’t have a windfall, but she did have a very strong intention to make this miracle happen. For her, it began with taking a cold, hard look at her finances, and how she truly wanted to live.
The lessons she learned were significant. And she didn’t lose a damn thing. In fact, if anything, Linda gained a great deal. For one thing, she saw what she had been doing to herself with her overwork. And she discovered the power of not doing … anything.
This is an important talk for anyone who’s been feeling stressed, confused, exhausted or just plain fed up by life. Is it time for you to plan some kind of a healing break as well?
Listen as Linda shares the nuts and bolts on how she managed to take her sabbatical – and how it changed her life.
Here’s what I learned from Linda:
BIO
Linda Claire Puig is an internationally recognized marketing expert who helps solo-business owners develop profitable relationships and portable businesses that go with them wherever they want to go. Linda has taken her own business abroad for months at a time all over the globe. Linda's 6-Figure Newsletters division provides done-for-you newsletter articles and do-it-yourself newsletter training, while her Portable Profits Club provides the training and support to help travel-loving entrepreneurs take their business on the road with them. She is also the founder of a new global home exchange community for entrepreneurs. Linda is an award-winning journalist and writer for the past 30 years, and her articles have appeared in newspapers, magazines and newsletters around the world.
“I’m not a teacher, I’m not a guru, I’m not an anything. All I am is a sharer, and it seems unusual because it’s the stuff no one talks about … “ begins author Timber Hawkeye.
Best known for his book, Buddhist Boot Camp, Timber has continued to write and speak about what It means to be at peace in this world. Particularly, he loves to talk about letting go, and how to appreciate what’s right in front of you. And people lap up his message. Awarded 900+ five star reviews on Amazon, Buddhist Boot Camp continues to be a perennial best seller.
It’s odd that we need reminding about the simple truth of letting go. And yet … we do. In fact, Timber says, letting go and seeing our world as abundant removes the barriers between us.
“There’s a constant flux of incoming and outgoing, if I live with this perspective of abundance and enough … that nothing is missing. The moment I realize that I have more than enough – I pass it on and that keeps the abundance flowing to all. That breaks the boundary between us and them.”
In our conversation, I was really struck by how light-hearted, genuinely peaceful and fun Timber is. He has an admirable clarity and calm in a time most of us find turbulent.
Timber Hawkeye calls himself ‘A Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love’ … and I agree.
Here’s what I learned from him:
BIO
Timber writes:
Ten years ago, when I left the corporate world and moved to Hawaii, I started emailing my friends and family every month to let them know what’s going on in my life. About eight years later, my friend Kim suggested that I share those emails with the world because she found the letters inspirational, and she figured other people would benefit from reading them as well. That’s how the blog-to-book Buddhist Boot Camp was born! Each chapter is only a page or two long, and you can read them in any order.
Faithfully Religionless reads more like a conversation that we might have on a park bench somewhere. It is an open and honest memoir that gets more intimately personal than Buddhist Boot Camp did, while still sharing the underlying intention to awaken, enlighten, enrich and inspire.
Kim was right! People all over the world have found the message in Buddhist Boot Camp refreshing, inspirational, and more importantly, motivational!
Here is the ‘Part Two’ I referred to in my last podcast with Chel Hamiton. Honestly, we had such a fired up conversation going, we just kept recording. And so this episode was born.
It’s on getting real about life
Chel Hamilton, a successful hypnotist and host of the Meditation Minis podcast, says: ‘We are literally being programmed all the time … any time we are on social media, standing in check out surveying candy and magazines, turning on the TV. If we practice getting calm so we can remain clear for most of five minutes, and we then reengage in life, we can see this life as it really is.’
This statement got me thinking. What if the antidote to the rampant fake news that is now sweeping the world is … meditation?
Can it really walk us back to a more perceptive, less inundated frame of mind, so we can accurately pinpoint what is true and what is false around us?
In this wonderful, wide-ranging conversation, Chel shares her ideas about ‘Knee jerkery’ – the impulse to respond quickly and without thinking. She says the more we can get knee jerked by life, the less we embrace reality.
She notes how belief structures keep us stuck in webs of illusion. These would be the realms of addiction, politics, romance novels, pornography, advertising and compulsive shopping, among other things.
And yet … there is hope.
Take a few breaths, Chel advises. Go back to nature – even if that is looking out the window at a tree. Sit and breathe and reconnect yourself to the planet. That’s where re-acclimating your senses begins.
What I learned in this episode:
BIO
Chel Hamilton is the founder of Columbus Ohio Hypnosis. She has been practicing as a full time Hypnotherapist since 2007. Before that she worked with alcoholics and drug addicts for over 11 years helping them overcome their addictions and recreate their lives.
In addition to seeing clients one-on-one, she also teaches classes in weight loss hypnosis four times a year through the Upper Arlington Life Long Learning Program. Chel speaks at events and schools about hypnosis, hold day long workshops in subjects such as Past Life Regression Hypnosis, Self Hypnosis for Sports Performance, and more.
Chel sees clients ages 8 to adult for a wide variety of issues and offer a mix of weekend, evening, and daytime appointment hours.
Chel is the host of the popular Mini Meditations Podcast, and has been a successful hypnotist for more than ten years. She’s also an articulate spokeswoman for the landscape of the mind.
If you’re inclined to lie awake at night, this one’s for you. So yeah … ultimately, this episode is about that healer of all healers, meditation. Which also turns out to be a powerful tool for insomnia.
I begin this episode with my biggest question: can meditation heal insomnia? (Take note if you’re a woman of a certain age who hangs out for hours, awake, at night.) Chel says, “It’s like creating an anxiety attack … only you’re doing it in bed.”
So true! “On a neurobiological level we are being programmed all the time,” Chel notes. That includes any time we are on social media, standing in check out lines surveying candy and magazines, or just turning on the TV.
The antidote is meditation, which allows us to get into a calm place, Chel says. Without this we can make the worst decisions and take the worst actions. But if we practice getting calm and clear even just for five minutes per day, we can ultimately see this life as it really is.
I invite you to listen in to what was a fascinating discussion of the impact of meditation on the mind … even if you think you’re not a meditator.
What I learned:
BIO
Chel Hamilton is the founder of Columbus Ohio Hypnosis. She has been practicing as a full time Hypnotherapist since 2007. Before that she worked with alcoholics and drug addicts for over 11 years helping them overcome their addictions and recreate their lives.
In addition to seeing clients one-on-one, she also teaches classes in weight loss hypnosis four times a year through the Upper Arlington Life Long Learning Program. Chel speaks at events and schools about hypnosis, hold day long workshops in subjects such as Past Life Regression Hypnosis, Self Hypnosis for Sports Performance, and more.
Chel sees clients ages 8 to adult for a wide variety of issues and offer a mix of weekend, evening, and daytime appointment hours.
I start this episode with some ideas about something I call a ‘Why Not List’. Kind of like a To Do List, but infinitely more joyful. Because if you’re like me, that relentless taskmaster is always keeping score of what we get done.
So this is a sweet way around that heavy burden.
I’ll also be interviewing popular happiness podcaster Jen Riday on this hot topic: ‘If mom ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy’ …
Jen reminded me of this old phrase in telling her story. She’s a mother of six (yes … six!) who does not send her children to daycare. And yet she still has a flourishing career as a happiness coach and podcaster. So how the heck does Jen do this?
The key, she says, is getting clear about the things that are important to us. After getting her PhD, she had a clarifying thought: “How would I like my children to remember me? Will it be as a frustrated, grumpy mom with a big to do list … or will it be as a move involved, more present parent?”
So Jen’s self-care efforts shifted accordingly. This included no longer baking six to twelve loves of home baked bread per week, but instead, spending more quality time with her kids. And still keeping her head on straight with hot yoga and all sorts of self-care. Which is exactly what made me want to speak with her!
Here’s what I learned from Jen:
BIO
Jen Riday is the host of the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast, and speaks and writes about how women can find greater light and meaning – regardless of their circumstances – through meditation, listening to intuition or a Higher Power, letting go of the “shoulds” and filling their cups. She believes every woman on this planet has something special to contribute to the world and will be happiest when she is living true to her purpose.
This week I’m turning my mind towards angels and how to connect with them. I’ve had my own angelic experiences, which I share in my intro. But then, just to seal the deal, I invited in an expert in angels of all kinds.
I had such a delightful time speaking to Sandra Rea, an Irish angel expert who helps people transform their lives thru energy healing … Her lovely voice and accent evoke misty walks on moors and all manner of mysteries, angelic and otherwise.
And, as expected, Sandra had much wisdom to share. She said this to me:
“We are all holding ourselves back in so many ways, so it is important to step into our lives more fully. I’m the catalyst to help people to do that …” Indeed, she is.
In our free-roaming, all-things-Spirit, conversation, Sandra and I talked about angels, vibrations and just how Spirit intersects our daily lives.
“We come from Spirit and it is unrestricted, unlimited, free and unbounded, and to it we will return. It’s like returning home … you remember your essence, who you truly are. So it becomes like a relief when you return to the Other Side.”
Bottom Line: The angels are always there for us … so we must invite them to be there for us. Unless we ask them for help, they can’t interfere with our lives.
Yes, ‘interfere’ … that is the word that is used. Me, I love a little divine interference! Maybe you, too?
Here’s what I learned talking to Sandra:
RESOURCES
Sandra’s Healings – (Scroll down to see her helpful Chart of Angels)
angelicbodies.ie
Sandra’s Angels Aid Book
About Sandra
Sandra is here to help you to feel better than you have felt in years. Release the blocks which have been holding you back (some of which you may not even be aware of). Gain clarity in your life and step into your power and purpose.
Think of Her As……your zen Deity of transformation. Through Reiki Healing, Angel Healing, Intuitive Mentoring, and her Courses, she turns your suffering into ease, your pain into relief and your confusion into clarity.
She Believes……that everyone has the ability to heal, that healing comes from within – not from a healer (I simply facilitate the healing process) and all illness/issues have a purpose. When we learn the lessons the problems we’re facing have to teach us, we can integrate the teaching and heal on a deep level, becoming unstuck and allowing our lives to move forward.
Once in a while, I get the rare chance to sit down and talk with a person who is truly happy. Andrew Matthews, a happiness expert and author in Australia, is just one of those people.
Frankly, I’ve often been suspicious of ‘happiness experts’. Sometimes such people are secretly tormented, right? But what I learned from Andrew is that a) he’s not actually a happiness ‘expert’ per se. He just likes to think about such things. And b) even happiness experts experience hard times.
This made me feel infinitely better! What Andrew does is help us reframe our current situation to get back to more peace, more serenity, and more ease in life. And who doesn’t need this? It’s like a great infusion of joy at just the right moments.
He says gratitude is the key. “People often think, ‘When I am happy, then I’ll be grateful.’ But here’s the reality … when I’m grateful, then I’ll be happy.”
Here here! Enjoy this stimulating chat. I did!
Here’s what I learned:
BIO
Millions of people have seen Andrew Matthews speak. His blog, The Being Happy Podcast, is top rated. And he is one of the world’s most widely read self-help authors,
His books are best-sellers in the USA, UK, China, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia – and Iran!
Andrew is a popular international speaker who has addressed over 1000 international corporations. His presentations are laced with humor, and he draws lightning-fast cartoons as he speaks.
Andrew’s clients include Shell, McDonalds, Lenovo, Wal-Mart, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, Honda and HSBC.
The podcast currently has 19 episodes available.