Compassion In Action

https://youtu.be/zpKfCyjyvys

Byron Katie has been bringing The Work to millions of people for more than thirty years.

In 1986, at the bottom of a ten-year spiral into depression and self-loathing, Byron Katie woke up one morning in a state of joy. She realized that when she believed her stressful thoughts, she suffered, but that when she questioned them, she didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Her simple yet powerful process of self-inquiry, which she calls The Work, consists of four questions and the turnaround, which is a way of experiencing the opposite of what you believe.

Her books include the bestselling Loving What Is now in a revised edition, I Need Your Love—Is That True?, A Thousand Names for Joy, and A Mind at Home with Itself. For more information, visit thework.com.

https://youtu.be/Sts2dVx6-N0

My conversation with Dr. Michael Gurian explores the neuroscience of a the brain of a male, the importance of having a male figure in the life of a growing boy, and other things to consider when guiding our sons through their youth.

Dr. Michael Gurian is a marriage and family counselor in private practice and the New York Times bestselling author of thirty two books published in twenty three languages. As a social philosopher, he has pioneered efforts to bring neuro-biology and brain research into homes, schools, corporations, and public policy. The Gurian Institute, which he co-founded, conducts research internationally, launches pilot programs, and trains professionals.

One of the world’s foremost gender experts, Michael travels extensively to provide keynotes and consulting. His engaging and dynamic presentation style, along with the use of case studies, visual aids such as PET and SPECT scans, and interactive demonstrations will help you better understand and assess the needs of both sexes and all genders, and most effectively intervene and work with children and adults from birth through adulthood.

Michael has spoken for the United Nations on violence against women; provided information on boys’ and girls’ educational needs to the White House; and briefed Members of the 114th Congress on the boy crisis in America. A number of Michael’s books have sparked national debate, including THE WONDER OF BOYS, THE WONDER OF GIRLS, BOYS AND GIRLS LEARN DIFFERENTLY!, and LEADERSHIP AND THE SEXES.

https://youtu.be/DIy1HLEdXfE

Known around the world as “The Father of Biohacking,” Dave Asprey is an acclaimed health science entrepreneur, founder of Bulletproof Coffee and Danger Coffee, four-time New York Times bestselling author, and host of an award-winning, top 100 podcast, The Human Upgrade. Dave’s mission is to empower and enable people to lead happier, more conscious lives by using biohacking techniques and technology to improve the functioning and destiny of the body and mind.

Dave has created billion-dollar industries to support his breakthrough protocols, including MCT oil, collagen protein, and functional coffees. He’s the founder and CEO of Upgrade Labs, the first biohacking gym, and the creator and host of the Biohacking Conference, the largest, longest-running Biohacking Conference in the world, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2024. Most recently, he launched the 5-day intensive program for upgrading the brain, 40 Years of Zen, an exclusive retreat that combines neuroscience, nutrition, and neurofeedback practices. Working alongside world-renowned doctors and researchers, Dave continually pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in the name of science and evolution.

https://youtu.be/XL3NpMeIG9s

Phil Stutz shares his wisdom and “lessons for living.”

Phil Stutz is the creator of The Tools®. “He is the author of the incredible book: “Lessons for Living.”

With his coauthor, Barry Michels, he wrote the New York Times bestseller “The Tools”, and its sequel, Coming Alive.

Phil graduated from City College in New York, received his MD from New York University, and did his psychiatric training at Metropolitan Hospital. He then worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island before going into private practice in New York City. He moved to Los Angeles In 1982, where he practiced until his recent retirement. 

https://youtu.be/WKujCtC5Hzk

James S. Gordon, MD, a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, is internationally recognized for using self-awareness, self-care, and group support to heal population-wide psychological trauma. He is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., a clinical professor at Georgetown Medical School, and was chairman (under Presidents Clinton and GW Bush) of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.

Dr. Gordon has also authored several books, including Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing, Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out of Depression, Manifesto for a New Medicine: Your Guide to Healing Partnerships and the Wise Use of Alternative Therapies, and the award-winning Health for the Whole Person. Dr. Gordon’s latest book, Transforming Trauma, helps readers understand that they will all experience trauma at some point in their lives, and that trauma is a human experience rather than a pathological anomaly. Drawing on current scientific research and 50 years of his own clinical experience, Dr. Gordon demonstrates how people can meet the challenges trauma presents head on and discover that there is joy, meaning, and purpose to be found.

https://youtu.be/dD5tTuQ85CE

Devika Bhushan, MD, is a pediatrician and public health leader on a mission to drive health innovation, resilience, and equity. As California’s Acting Surgeon General (2022) and its inaugural Chief Health Officer (2019-2022), Dr. Bhushan was a key public health advisor to the California Governor. In these roles, she led policy and practice innovation at a statewide level by co-leading the launch and implementation of the ACEs Aware initiative, focused on healing from childhood trauma.

Her expertise spans trauma-informed systems, stress and resilience, mental health, and gender and health equity — with work and perspectives featured in The Lancet, Pediatrics, JAMA, Slate, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, and Forbes Health. Dr. Bhushan trained at Harvard and Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Bhushan is also an award-winning mental health spokesperson. Having publicly shared her own journey with bipolar disorder in 2022 to destigmatize mental illness and spread hope, she now leads a newsletter community and YouTube channel/podcast to share evidence-based insights for well-being.

Dr. Bhushan is a parent, an immigrant, and a first-generation Indian-American.

https://youtu.be/B8JQ_MKFpv8

Fritzi Horstman interviews Michael Singer about his phenomenal books and perspective about becoming untethered, letting go and “making it nice in there.”

Michael A. Singer is the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Untethered Soul and New York Times bestsellers The Surrender Experiment and Living Untethered, which have been published worldwide. He had a deep inner awakening in 1971 while working on his doctorate in economics and went into seclusion to focus on yoga and meditation. In 1975, he founded Temple of the Universe, a now long-established yoga and meditation center where people of any religion or set of beliefs can come together to experience inner peace. He is also the creator of a leading-edge software package that transformed the medical practice management industry, and founding CEO of a billion dollar public company whose achievements are archived in the Smithsonian Institution. Along with his nearly five decades of spiritual teaching, Michael has made major contributions in the areas of business, education, healthcare, and environmental protection.

https://youtu.be/5c9ENKpK1Fk

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., is the President of the Trauma Research Foundation, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical School and author of NYTimes Bestseller “The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

www.besselvanderkolk.com

After a twenty-year career in family practice, Dr. Gabor Maté began working in Vancouver’s Eastside area with patients who were challenged by addiction and mental illness. Dr. Maté is the best-selling author of four books published in over twenty-five languages, including In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder and, along with Dr. Gordon Neufeld, Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.

Dr. Maté is an internationally renowned speaker, highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development and the relationship between stress and illness. He is currently writing his next book entitled The Myth of Normal: Illness and Health in an Insane Culture, due out in late 2021.

Dr. Maté developed a new therapeutic approach called Compassionate Inquiry which is now being studied by hundreds of therapists, physicians and counselors in their practices.

2:32 – The system is working the way it was designed to. When They See Us – TV series discussed.

3:50 – Quote from Gabor Maté’s book and Fritzi’s 8 ACEs.

4:54 – Promiscuity, workaholics – the need to be lovable and valuable. Addiction patterns serve a purpose.

6:30 – Society belittles people for their trauma coping behaviors.

7:27 – Manifestations of trauma (violence, obesity examples) – society’s attitude and self judgement.

8:17 – What if instead, everyone from schools to courts took trauma into account?

8:50 – People in leadership roles are in fight or flight when making decisions about our lives.

9:08 – Leaders (like Presidents) and their traumatized behaviors.

10:42 – Lawmakers have no problem supporting wars, causes of poverty.

11:10 – Traumatized people in positions of power.

12:15 – Comparing President Carter with Presidents JFK and Clinton.

14:52 – The system is running as it was designed to.

15:29 – Traumatized people who volunteer for the military – PTSD and addiction.

17:30 – Former Veteran in prison.

18:02 – Society creates trauma in the first place then turns traumatized into enemies.

18:40 – Protecting society from violent criminals doesn’t mean we need to put them in prison in its current format.

19:50 – False equivalence between current prison system and protecting society.

20:11 – How the system has failed.

20:52 – We are only tough on lower class crime.

21:44 – Accountability and the hypocrisy of the prison system.

22:10 – Prisoners charged money to call families or buy enough food.

24:24 – Correctional Officers are also highly traumatized.

25:30 – Many professions have tremendous stress, but no one helps the employees.

26:23 – Systemic ignorance of trauma and stress.

27:16 – Self-care while under stress – Gabor describes his ordeal as an expert witness for the courts system. Courts don’t care about the truth, only who wins.

32:19 – How can the average person deal with assaults and hostility within the courtroom?

33:37 – Court appointment physicians thought the accused had a happy childhood. Gabor Mate’ discovered he in fact did not.

35:55 – Addicts are not making a conscious choice – there is a good reason behind the behavior.

37:11 – Addiction behaviors make people feel like a human being, alive and vital.

38:55 – Protective shutting down of emotion by the brain during childhood trauma.

39:20 – Medical professionals including a famous Psychiatrist who don’t understand trauma (ACEs).

41:00 – Things are starting to slowly change for the better.

41:36 – Trauma education is needed so that we can stop hurting our children.

42:35 – Prevention of trauma should begin with prenatal care.

43:15 – Quote from Joseph Campbell

44:09 – How bringing compassion to those who feel they don’t deserve it (in prison) makes incredible difference.

45:19 – Mentally insane woman who was executed.

46:50- Wesley Purkey – ACE score of 10 also executed.

47:35 – The heartbreak of losing people we care about at CPP.

48:24 – Self-care is essential to continue the work of changing the system.

49:00 – Rapists were raped, pedophiles were raped as children.

49:40 – Marshall Rosenberg amazing quote after visiting a convicted pedophile/murderer.

50:46 – Understanding is not excusing.

51:42 – Edith Eger, Hungarian psychotherapist who was in Auschwitz.

53:11 – Do we want to be conscious and aware or act from vengeance and unresolved anger?

53:53 – Great spiritual teachers like Buddha and Jesus.

55:15 – When They See Us – Netflix series.

56:01 – Why does the media not seek the truth?

58:00 – CPP creating awareness of Do No Harm.

58:31 – Norway prison model.

59:04 – The Presence Process by Michael Brown sent to prisons.

59:58 – Compassion Inquiry training.

1:00:46 – Very few of us are wholly integrated.

1:01:55 – Making conscious choices and apologizing when wrong.

1:03:20 – The term “Digging In” when feeling under attack.

1:04:37 – People not wearing masks thinking they’re being manipulated or bullied.

1:07:00 – Value is in the work itself when it comes to changing the system.

1:10:00 – Prisons are the most challenging manifestations of society’s trauma, but there is a ripple effect from helping someone.

Dr. Perry is the Principal of the Neurosequential Network, Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy and a Professor (Adjunct) in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and the School of Allied Health, College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia.

Over the last thirty years, Dr. Perry has been an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety of academic positions. His work on the impact of abuse, neglect and trauma on the developing brain has impacted clinical practice, programs and policy across the world.

Dr. Perry is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered. Dr. Perry’s most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey was released in 2021.

In this interview we discuss: