What if you’re not seeing with your eyes at all?

In this conversation, with Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman - optometrist, vision scientist, mystic and author - explores light, perception, intuition, healing and the quiet intelligence that breathes us.

Jacob’s journey began in conventional science. Trained as an optometrist and researcher, he built his career around the mechanics of vision - lenses, retinas, prescriptions. But in 1976, during meditation, something happened that would change the course of his life forever. With his eyes closed, he experienced crystal-clear vision. When he opened them, his eyesight had permanently improved - without any change to the structure of his eyes. That experience led him beyond the physiology of sight and into a deeper inquiry: What is it that truly sees?

Jacob explores:

– The difference between thinking and direct experience

– Why most of what we perceive is filtered through conditioning

– The “observer” behind the mind

– Light is the fundamental organising force of biology

– Intuition as a built-in guidance system

– Why stress is often a product of thought, not circumstance – How awareness changes the body at a cellular level

– And what it means to live “choicelessly” guided rather than efforting

Jacob speaks about light not only as a physical phenomenon, but as a living intelligence, the energy that regulates circadian rhythms, influences cellular timing, and underpins both perception and consciousness itself. He challenges the idea that we must “fix” ourselves. Instead, he suggests that healing often occurs when the glue of our labels dissolves, when we stop identifying with the mind and return to simple awareness.

This is not a conversation about adopting beliefs. In fact, Jacob is clear: don’t believe anything he says. Instead, notice what resonates. Notice what catches your eye. 

Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman

Former optometrist and vision scientist who has spent over five decades exploring the relationship between light, perception and consciousness. He is the author of several books, including Light: Medicine of the Future and Luminous Life, and has pioneered work in light therapy, colour, effortless learning and intuitive perception. Now based in Maui, he mentors individuals around the world in integrating awareness, biology and direct experience into everyday life.

Feelings with Strangers

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Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman

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Ellen has spent decades studying what happens when we stop moving through life on autopilot. When we stop treating our assumptions like facts. When we replace certainty with a simple act: noticing. In this episode, we talk about mindfulness without meditation—her version of mindfulness that doesn’t require silence or a retreat. Just attention. Just the willingness to admit: I don’t know.

We move through her iconic experiments - like turning back the clock on ageing, or rigging clocks to show how perceived time changes what happens in the body. We talk about why stress isn’t caused by events, but by the meaning we attach to them. And why so much of what we call reality is really just… a story we’re clinging to because it makes us feel safe.

That the body doesn’t just respond to biology — it responds to meaning.

Ellen's work is quietly radical. Her work time and again shows that we have far more influence over our biology than we’ve been taught. Not through force. Not through positive thinking as a performance. But through attention. Through flexibility. Through refusing to collapse life into single answers and embracing the constant change.

Ellen J. Langer

Ellen J. Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher best known for developing a Western, evidence-based approach to mindfulness without meditation—often described as “the simple act of noticing new things.” She is widely recognised for decades of research on mindlessness, decision-making, ageing, health, and what she calls mind–body unity. Her work has earned major honours, including multiple Distinguished Scientist Awards and the Liberty Science Center “Genius” Award, and she has been repeatedly named one of Harvard’s favourite professors by students. Her recent books include The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health (released in 2023) and Finding Happy, an illustrated book exploring everyday mindfulness and wellbeing. She shares more of her work at her website.

Feelings with Strangers

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Ellen J. Langer

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https://www.ellenlanger.me/

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https://www.ellenlanger.me/home#book-s

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What happens when the cultural story of “we’re all the same” collides with biology?

World-renowned relationship expert John Grey explores what has changed, and what hasn’t, since Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus reshaped the conversation on modern relationships.

Together, they move beyond slogans and into the deeper architecture of connection: hormones, polarity, evolutionary biology, childhood imprinting, stress, sexuality, and the subtle misunderstandings that quietly erode intimacy over time.

John argues that much of today’s relational suffering isn’t because men and women are broken - but because we’ve lost fluency in our differences. As women have become more independent and men increasingly uncertain of their role, the hormonal and psychological dance between masculine and feminine energy has shifted. Stress rises. Attraction fades. Communication collapses.

But beneath the tension, he suggests, there is a blueprint.

We discuss 

Why misunderstanding differences creates resentment

How stress hormones affect empathy and emotional connection

Why “talking it out” can sometimes make things worse

The role of polarity in sustaining sexual attraction

How childhood wounds shape adult relationships

Why happiness in one partner affects the other biologically

The subtle ways modern culture may be weakening both men and women

And what it really means to support - rather than compete with - one another

The conversation also moves into deeper territory: forgiveness of the father, repeating ancestral patterns, the biology of bonding, the role of space in love, and even the spiritual dimension of intimacy through Taoist and tantric traditions.

This is not a nostalgic call to return to the past. It’s an invitation to move forward with greater awareness of how we’re wired - and how that wiring can either divide us or bring us closer.

John Gray, Ph.D. is one of the world’s most recognised relationship experts and the author of the international bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which has sold over 50 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages.

For over four decades, he has counselled individuals and couples, integrating insights from psychology, biology, spirituality and Eastern traditions. A former celibate monk and long-time meditator, Gray combines practical relationship tools with a broader understanding of consciousness and hormonal health.

His recent work explores how modern cultural shifts have altered male–female dynamics and what couples can do to restore polarity, emotional safety, and lasting attraction.

John's new book out now - "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus – For Women Only: Be Happy With or Without a Man" 

Feelings with Strangers

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John Gray

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https://www.marsvenus.com/john-gray

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Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist-turned-consciousness researcher whose work lives right on that edge where science, healing, and the mystery of being human start to overlap.

Lynne is best known for The Field, and The Intention Experiment - and for taking a question most feel:  What if thoughts and intention don’t stay inside us? What if they have influence and reach we can only begin to imagine? In this conversation, we get practical and specific. Lynne breaks down what “intention” actually is (and what it isn’t), why language matters, why groups consistently amplify outcomes, and how the Power of Eight approach became a kind of global laboratory - not in theory, but in real experiments, with measurable results.

This conversation is an invitation to consider that the world is more connected than we’ve been trained to believe - and that there is a disciplined, repeatable way to work with that connection to radically change your life.

Lynne McTaggart

An award-winning journalist, author, and researcher known internationally for her work on consciousness, healing, and the science of intention. She is the author of The Field, The Intention Experiment, The Bond, and The Power of Eight, and she co-founded What Doctors Don’t Tell You, which began as a newsletter in 1989 and grew into an international health publication. Lynne also teaches the Intention Masterclass, a year-long program focused on her “13 Keys to Intention Mastery” and the Power of Eight® group method. The 2026 lesson plan lists the first live session as Saturday, February 28, 2026.

Feelings with Strangers

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Lynne McTaggart

Website https://lynnemctaggart.com/ Intention

Masterclass https://lynnemctaggart.com/courses/intention-masterclass/

What Doctors Don’t Tell You  https://www.wddty.com/about-us/

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https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@lynnemctaggart4255⁩ 

Today’s conversation is with Hitesh Bhatt - the voice behind Echoes of Existence, a YouTube channel and podcast dedicated to spiritual inquiry, self-realisation, and inner transformation.

Hitesh calmly speaks to the things we tend to avoid - death, fear, suffering, and the pressure of trying to “get life right”. He has this rare ability to make the big existential questions feel… workable. 

In this episode, we talk about fear - not as something to eliminate, but something to clarify. Hitesh shares how, in his early twenties, he quit the path he was expected to follow and began travelling - not as an escape, but almost as a set of lived experiments: meeting people, sleeping rough at times, and finding out what’s actually real underneath the mind’s worst-case stories.

We also go into the difference between ambition and clarity - the kind of ambition that runs on willpower and validation, versus the clarity that doesn’t need force because it comes with its own energy. And later, we touch on manifestation - not as “getting what you want”, but as learning to inhabit a way of being, rooted in presence.

Hitesh Bhatt

Is a long-time yoga teacher, and through Echoes of Existence, he shares short contemplative reflections on ego, identity, freedom, and the deeper texture of everyday life - often from a place that feels more like a fellow traveller than a teacher. This is a space for quiet exploration - of movement, stillness, and the nature of being. 

If you enjoy conversations that don’t rush to conclusions, and that aren’t afraid to sit with paradox, I think you’ll get a lot out of this one.

Feelings with Strangers

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Hitesh Bhatt

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Water isn’t a utility, and it’s not just “hydration.” It’s memory, relationship, it's the animator of life. The quiet medium everything living moves through - and in this episode, you’ll hear why the quality of that medium shapes far more than we’ve been taught to notice.

My guest is Mario Brainovic, CEO of Analemma - a company exploring what they describe as “coherent” water: water brought into a liquid-crystalline, ordered state using a quartz tool filled with what they call “Mother Water,” alongside ongoing research of its profound effects for humans, plants, and other living systems.

We talk about the practical side - what most people miss about water, even when they filter it - and then we move into the edge of the map: coherence, biophotons, brainwave harmony, nature’s timing, and that water is not only alive… but highly sophisticated and intelligent. 

If you’ve been searching for conversations that feel less like content… and more like a doorway into higher levels of health, consciousness, and connection, this is it.

Mario Brainovic

Mario Brainovic is the CEO of Analemma. In Analemma’s published materials and media releases, he’s described as helping lead the company’s research and communication around coherent water and its potential effects on living systems, alongside collaborations and studies referenced on their site. Mario Brainović is an entrepreneur, researcher, and visionary in health and wellness, best known for his work in what’s often called structured or coherent water science and for leading companies focused on health-related innovation.

Analemma

Analemma is a wellness and research-focused company centred on “coherent water”, — including a quartz wand product filled with “Mother Water,” and a broader mission statement oriented toward restoring water to what they describe as its natural coherent state. Their site also references an advisory board and multiple research tracks (including human, plant/soil, and other studies).

Feelings with Strangers

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Mario

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https://www.instagram.com/mariobrainovic/?hl=en

Analemma

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https://www.analemma-water.com/

Use DISCOUNT CODE  'feelings' at checkout for 10% off. 

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In this episode, I sit down with Bill McKenna and Liz Larson, the co-creators of Cognomovement, to explore one of the most influential - and least examined - forces shaping our lives: the subconscious patterns running quietly in the background.

Most of us sense these patterns only when we’re forced to confront them - repeating the same relationship dynamics, sabotaging ourselves around money or health, and reacting in ways we don’t fully understand. We can often see the pattern, but knowing it’s there doesn’t necessarily give us a way out.

This conversation moves into that gap.

We talk about the subconscious not as something abstract, but as the nervous system itself - a living, biological process that generates emotion, perception, and reaction before thought ever arrives. Bill and Liz describe how these emotional circuits can act like an “electric fence” around our lives, quietly defining what feels possible, safe, or threatening.

We do a live, unscripted Cognomovement process around a long-running pattern of mine. What unfolds is not analysis or storytelling, but a direct shift in perception: how something that once felt immediate and charged can suddenly move into the past, creating space for entirely new options to appear.

We also explore grief, cravings, confirmation bias, projection in relationships, and the strange way reality seems to reorganise itself when an internal pattern collapses.

If you're looking to break a pattern in your life, then this is the episode for you.

Feelings with Strangers

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Conomovement 

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https://www.cognomovement.com/

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https://www.instagram.com/cognomovement/

Over the last six months, I’ve been keeping a dream journal, not to “decode” anything perfectly, but to listen. And what’s surprised me most is how the dream-state speaks in a language that doesn’t make sense until it does: symbols that feel abstract…and then, weeks later, land with uncanny precision in waking life.

My guest today is someone who’s spent decades mapping that invisible terrain, not to make it more mystical, but to make it more usable: as a tool for healing, for creativity, and for self-trust in a world that’s getting louder by the day.

In this episode, we explore why modern life is quietly eroding dream recall, how emotion and symbol work together like an inner therapist, why meditation and nature can sharpen the signal, and how dreaming might be less about “escaping reality” and more about remembering what we are beneath it.

This is a conversation about intuition, balance, and the quiet intelligence that’s been with you every night of your life.

My guest is Theresa Cheung. 

Theresa Cheung is a bestselling author and researcher who has spent over twenty-five years writing about spirituality, dreams, and the paranormal. She studied Theology and English at King’s College, Cambridge, and her work bridges mystical experience with ongoing dialogue in psychology and consciousness research.

Theresa is the author of numerous international bestsellers, including two Sunday Times Top 10 titles, and her Dream Dictionary from A to Z (HarperCollins) is widely regarded as a modern classic in dream interpretation. Her books have been translated into 40+ languages.

She’s a regular dreams and spirituality expert across major media — including ITV’s This Morning, and she hosts her own podcast White Shores as well as the weekly UK Health Radio show The Healing Power of Dreams.

Feelings with Strangers

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Theresa Cheung

Site

https://www.theresacheung.com/

Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/white-shores-with-theresa-cheung/id1475553348

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https://www.instagram.com/thetheresacheung/

There are conversations that offer answers, and then there are conversations that remove your certainty. This is the latter. In this episode, I’m joined by Stephen Jenkinson—author, cultural activist, former palliative care worker, and relentless truth-teller—whose work refuses comfort in favour of meaning.

Stephen doesn’t speak in soundbites. He speaks in reckonings.

What begins as a conversation about his new book, Matrimony, quickly opens into something far wider: a meditation on beauty, elderhood, ritual, grief, marriage, culture, and the quiet devastation of a world that has forgotten how to belong to itself. We talk about what happens when beauty becomes a rumour. When ritual becomes performance. When marriage becomes an event instead of a binding to community. When homes are built without hearths, and lives without elders.

Stephen asks a question most of us were never taught how to answer: What does it actually cost to be human together?

This is not a conversation about nostalgia or returning to the past. It’s about conjuring something that no longer lives in living memory. About taking responsibility for what has been lost—without blame, without sentimentality, and without pretending the work is easy. Truths that don’t ask for agreement, only attention. This is a conversation about matrimony, yes. But more than that, it’s a conversation about what we owe each other—and whether we’re willing to pay the price.

Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW ~ Culture activist/ farmer/author ~

Stephen teaches internationally and has authored seven books of cultural critique. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. The School’s new project, The Scriptorium (2025), is creating an archive and library of his life’s work.

Apprenticed to a master storyteller as a young man, he worked extensively with dying people and their families. He is former programme director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. Stephen has Masters’ degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work).

In 2023 Stephen received a Distinguished Alumni Honours Award from Harvard University for “helping people navigate grief, exploring the liminal space between life and death, and connecting humanity through ceremony and storytelling.”

Stephen’s newest book: Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work. 

Site

https://orphanwisdom.com/

Events

https://orphanwisdom.com/events-list/

Feelings with Strangers

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It's not often I feel nervous. I worked for many years as a photographer and met people from every stratum of society, from the wealthy and famous to the outcast and downtrodden. One thing I learnt early on is that nerves resulted in bad imagery. So when it came time for this podcast with Stephen Jenkinson, a man whose work I've followed for nearly a decade, I was nervous. It's not that Stephen is difficult to talk to or combative; it's because Stephen is a master of the English language, and each word he uses is carefully chosen based on its etymology. He also doesn't let you get away with anything if he believes you've incorrectly identified something. My nerves quickly abated once I felt Stephen's generosity of spirit.

This is one of the most meaningful conversations I've had. Stephen traverses:

- What we have lost in our modern societies, if there is a way back, and if there were, to what we think we are to return to.

- Death and our lack of education around the ultimate which every life faces.

- What it truly means to cultivate a mindset that sees us creating genuine connections to one another to create communities that will benefit future generations.

Most of all, Stephen reminded me that our lives are shaped by the questions we ask rather than the answers we seek—in his own words, "I'm far more in favour of the wonder of the question than the certainty of the answer." As the great poet E.E. Cummings phrased it, "Always the most beautiful answer to he who asks the most beautiful question."

It was an honor to speak with Stephen, and I know you'll get something significant from his life-long pursuit of asking the most beautiful questions. 

It was an honor to speak with Stephen, and I know you'll get something significant from his life-long pursuit of asking the most beautiful questions. 

About

Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW ~ Culture activist/ farmer/author ~

Stephen teaches internationally and has authored seven books of cultural critique. He is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. The School’s new project, The Scriptorium (2025), is creating an archive and library of his life’s work.

Apprenticed to a master storyteller as a young man, he worked extensively with dying people and their families. He is former programme director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. Stephen has Masters’ degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work).

In 2023 Stephen received a Distinguished Alumni Honours Award from Harvard University for “helping people navigate grief, exploring the liminal space between life and death, and connecting humanity through ceremony and storytelling.”

In August 2025, Sounds True will release Stephen’s newest book: Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work. 

He is also the author of Reckoning (co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson in 2022), A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002). He was a contributing author to Palliative Care – Core Skills and Clinical Competencies (2007).

Since co-founding the Nights of Grief and Mystery project with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins in 2015, he has toured this musical/ tent show revival/ storytelling/ ceremony of a show across North America, U.K., Ireland, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. They released their first Nights of Grief & Mystery album in 2017, and at the end of 2020 released two new records: Dark Roads and Rough Gods. A new album release is planned for 2025.

Stephen Jenkinson is also the subject of the feature length documentary film Griefwalker (National Film Board of Canada, 2008, dir. Tim Wilson), a portrait of his work with dying people, and Lost Nation Road, a shorter documentary on the crafting of the Nights of Grief and Mystery tours (2019, dir. Ian Mackenzie).

He was a stone sculptor turned wood-carver, and learned the arts of traditional birch bark canoe building. His first house won a Governor General’s Award for architecture. He now lives on a small scale organic farm in an off-grid straw bale house. The 120 year old abandoned granary from across the river which appeared in Griefwalker was dismantled last year and re-erected at the Orphan Wisdom farm, where it is again a working barn.

Site

https://orphanwisdom.com/

Events

https://orphanwisdom.com/events-list/

Feelings with Strangers

Socials

https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/

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https://www.youtube.com/@FeelingswithStrangers