Gina Gardiner & Friends

Michael Ockrim is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, the founder of Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, Illinois, and the author of Death Resistant. Here's the rest of the story…

Family

Michael has been married to Carey since 2004. They have four children and live in the western suburbs of Chicago, where he coaches his kids and their friends in a variety of sports. He and his son Nicholas founded Sunday Funday Sports, a nonprofit youth sports league, and the family stays active outdoors year-round.

Author

Michael writes about strength, nutrition and recovery for families. Death Resistant: A Common Sense Guide to Live Long and Drop Dead Healthy has been translated into Spanish; 13 Pounds in 30 Days and Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition followed. He also writes a free weekly newsletter.

Speaker

Michael is a keynote speaker and regular podcast guest on youth strength training, family health and longevity. Talk topics and past appearances are on the Speaking page. To book him for an event or broadcast, email [email protected]

Website: https://www.michaelockrim.com

Sarah Dawkins

Holistic Health Coach – The Adaptation Architect

After more than 20 years as a Registered Nurse, Sarah began questioning whether managing symptoms was enough to truly understand health.

Her own healing journey opened the door to holistic health, the mind-body connection and a deeper understanding of how our experiences shape us. She eventually left nursing to become a Holistic Health Coach, Author and Speaker.

Today, as The Adaptation Architect, Sarah brings together her clinical experience, personal journey and years of working with people to explore the adaptations that shape how we think, feel, behave and experience life.

Sarah is the author of Heal Yourself and host of Mind Body Medicine for Self Healers, where she continues to explore the fascinating relationship between our minds, bodies and experiences.

You are not broken. You adapted. Now it’s time to understand why.

Website: https://sarahdawkins.com

Angela Murray is a psychology specialist, hypnotherapist, author and Scottish entrepreneur who helps ambitious women uncover the hidden beliefs that may be limiting their income, confidence and capacity to receive more.

As the founder of Aurilah, a house of purpose-led boutique brands, Angela understands that financial success is not always a simple matter of working harder. Our earliest experiences of money, identity and self-worth can unknowingly shape what we charge, pursue, keep and believe is possible for us.

Angela’s wealth mindset hypnotherapy sessions are designed to help clients move beyond scarcity thinking, self-sabotage and financial fear, replacing outdated subconscious patterns with greater calm, confidence and possibility. Her approach brings together hypnotherapy, psychology and practical mindset work in a way that feels grounded, compassionate and relevant to real life.

Angela is also the author of Reprogram Your Mind for Riches, a thought-provoking guide to the subconscious beliefs behind financial behavior. Rather than glorifying hustle or treating wealth as a measure of personal worth, the book explores money as a source of freedom, security, choice and the ability to create a life aligned with your values.

As a guest, Angela offers a refreshingly honest perspective on why intelligent, capable people can still feel stuck around money, why success may feel unsafe even when we consciously want it, and how the language we use can reinforce either limitation or possibility.

Listeners can expect a warm, engaging conversation about money beliefs, confidence, visibility, receiving, ambition and the inner shifts that support lasting change.

Angela’s message is simple: struggling with money confidence does not mean they are lazy, incapable or destined to stay stuck. Many of the beliefs shaping our financial lives were absorbed before we were old enough to question them. Once we recognize that, we can begin letting go of the shame, reconnecting with possibility and building a richer life with greater confidence, calm and self-belief.

Kate Alderson - Founder and CEO of Freeater

Freeater began by wanting to make a difference to my family and friends. I grew up vegetarian myself. Largely inspired by seeing the daily struggles of my dad (gluten intolerant and vegetarian), (pictured above). Along with my grandma (lactose intolerant), uncle (coeliac) and friends (severe food allergies). I'm passionate about helping everyone to be able to eat with more confidence at the table. Whatever their dietary profile.

Former founder of ‘Fine Art Kate’ with international clients and exhibited in the Wales Contemporary. Studied at both Cambridge & Loughborough Uni, BArch (Hons) DPS, MSt (Cam) and MSc Management (Distinction).

Website: https://www.freeater.com

From Kathleen Heubner:

When I divorced my husband, I hit rock bottom. I felt unworthy, like a failure, lacking purpose, direction, and passion. I felt completely lost. I realized I was walking behind him for years rather than alongside him, and I wasn’t living for ME.

That’s when I knew something needed to change. Through coaching, movement, and aligning my mind, body, and spirit, I finally found the happiness I had been searching for. A fire was lit inside me, and I wanted others to feel the same joy I found. 

YOUR COACH AND MENTOR. 

My Mission is to empower and guide you to create inner peace and personal growth by focusing on an action plan encompassing the mind, body, and spirit.  

I believe that each person's journey is unique and that empathy and understanding are essential to helping people find their life purpose and strive to become their best selves. 

I am here to give you the tools and guidance to find direction and uncover the beliefs, emotions, and patterns that no longer serve you — the tools that allow you to become more confident, effective, and fulfilled. 

I can’t wait for you to experience the freedom and joy that comes from within when you finally discover how to live the luxurious life you so deeply desire!

Website: https://whisperswithinus.com

Ruth Pearson's life is one of overcoming challenges and using them as stepping stones to greater things. Her attendance at a women retreat, in May 2014, called 'Overcoming Emotional Baggage' was to change her life in a miraculous way and it started her journey of being an author. Ruth attended the event on the Friday, lame, unable to walk without assistance, but left on Sunday walking! You can read about this miracle in her book, 'Listening for God's Voice.'

Ruth has taken her writing skills to the next level. In November 2020 she launched Listening To Your Voice Publishing.

Ruth is also an inspirational motivational speaker, Wellbeing and Conflict Resolution Trainer and Coach. She is the founder of her own coaching strategy called Empowering Transformations: To Bring out the Greatness Within. With all of these skills she works with clients so they can say "yes" to new opportunities!

Steve Ferrara has been a lifelong dedicated student of spirituality since his teenage years. He has committed his life to personal development and assisting others in their spiritual journeys. For two decades, he served as an instructor for the Concept Therapy Institute, which offers comprehensive courses on physical, mental, and spiritual education. His life has also been significantly influenced by the teachings of A Course in Miracles, Eckhart Tolle, David Hawkins, and Michael Singer. Through these studies, Steve has developed a profound understanding of consciousness, presence, meditation, and inner peace.

In his professional career, Steve Ferrara expanded a small family insurance business founded in his hometown of Newark, NJ, into a large financial services firm. He held the position of CEO for 25 years before selling the company in 2020 to dedicate himself entirely to his spiritual pursuits. 

The tragic loss of his 23-year-old son, Christopher, followed by the passing of his wife, Alie, thoroughly challenged Steve’s spiritual understanding, prompting him to delve deeper into the questions of what and who are we, and seek greater clarity regarding death and life. Through this challenging period, he discovered the transformative and healing power of gratitude, ultimately finding a pathway to peace.

In his book, Grief to Gratitude: Finding the Inner Pathway to Healing and Peace, Steve shares his most personal journal entries, providing intimate and candid insights into his emotions, struggles, and revelations. His primary goal is to offer a clear pathway for others embarking on their own journeys of self-discovery, hoping to inspire them towards peace and gratitude even in the darkest times.

Steve is devoted to his family with two daughters, Dani and Alex, their growing families, and his fiancée, Jeanne. He has always made family and his commitment to personal growth and awakening his utmost priority. He lives in Delray Beach Fl, enjoys staying active, riding motorcycles, and engaging in deep, meaningful conversations.

Website: https://www.stevenferrara.com

Ravinol Chambers is an Irish-born monk turned movie maker, focusing on stories that cross boundaries and aim to connect us as humans, at the deepest level.

As a teenager in Dublin he wanted to be a stockbroker, but his search for deeper meaning was to take him east, on a very different journey.

After studying Psychology at university, he committed most of his twenties to a life of devotion, meditation and service, studying and living by the philosophy of the ancient Vedas, as a full-time Krishna monk.

During this time he spent a year living in India, studying the ancient books of wisdom alongside the culture and traditions that seek to support a life, lived in pursuit of higher ideals.

Ravinol and his British Indian wife have been happily married since 2006 and have two boys.

Making this film has challenged the gender roles in their own marriage and made them deeply consider the importance of bringing up their boys to be gender equitable, in a world that often sends messages to the contrary.

The film poses the question - how can we take tradition, culture and wisdom from the past, and bring it into the future, so it is practical and helpful?

'A Girl Can Touch The Sky' is Ravinol's debut feature-length documentary.

Website: https://www.agirlcantouchthesky.com

Jacob (linkedin.com/in/jacob-elliott) is the author of The Density Melt (www.thedensitymelt.ca). After experiencing three unexplainable events over the past 30 years of pushing the limits of what life had to offer he found himself stuck playing a character he no longer recognized.

Facing the dissolution of his own corporate identity, he removed himself from his adventure to rest and recuperate. During that time he wrote his first book.

The Density Melt is the result of three years of work studying the nature of society, reality and the soul to create a bridge between the unexplainable events of his life, the character he became and the environment that character operated in. It provides specific guidance on how and why we become characters and what we can do to reconnect with our true selves.

LinkedIn

Gina Gardiner

Gardiner is the host of the Gina Gardiner & Friends Show. Gina’s guests share their experiences and approach to life and to business, providing inspiration, practical approaches, a shift in perspective or a challenge to your thinking. Every episode offers an authentic and organic conversation designed to be of interest and of positive value to you the listener.

Gina shares with you a wide variety of guests each with their own unique set of experience, expertise, enthusiasms and views on life. Gina brings her unique take on life based on a ‘Can Do’ approach to the conversation and together they offer a different perspective and positive solutions to the challenges life offers.

Her holistic approach to consulting, training and coaching supports the development of self-worth, confidence, self-reflection, emotional intelligence, curiosity, intuition in others. She empowers people to become the leaders of their own life and then to lead others with integrity, compassion and courage.

Gina facilitates leaders to work smarter and think strategically and fully develop the potential of their team so that they become truly enlightened leaders. Doing so leads to highly motivated and engaged staff who see themselves as part of the solution. The outcome is better staff relationships, greater creativity and increased productivity, excellent leadership and change management and significantly increased profitability.

Gina is the CEO of Genuinely You Ltd, and of Gina Gardiner Associates. She has created many courses and programs including the Thriving Not Surviving (Personal and Spiritual Development Program), and The accredited Enlightened Leadership Program and many more.

Gina has been described by Ofsted as an “inspirational leader” and by Investors in People as an “impressive coach and exceptional mentor who has developed an innovative and exemplary training schemes”.

Following a serious ski accident in 1983 and two failed back surgeries Gina has learned to walk twice as an adult and for over 20 years ran an award-winning school, for the most part from a wheelchair. Her school was on Her Majesties Inspectors (HMI) List of the Top 100 Schools in England twice during her tenure. The gift of this experience was the creation of a unique approach to life and the development of leadership which has continued to be at the heart of her life’s work.

Gina lives in the UK, she loves to spend time with family and friends, to travel, see live theatre and is a keen gardener.

Gina has a huge mission – to positively impact on over a million people through the development holistic, spiritual, enlightened and profitable leadership within the next three years. She is absolutely passionate about helping people have the integrity, compassion and courage to be their ‘BEST’ selves.

To find out more about working 1:1 with Gina or to explore the benefits of becoming a participant in a Enlightened Leadership Mastermind with Gina email: [email protected]

To book Gina as a speaker email: [email protected]

Meet Marta Czajkowska

I left Poland after seeing a climbing movie about Yosemite. I was eighteen, had two hundred dollars and the conviction that freedom was somewhere on the other side of a hard enough climb.

For thirty years I chased summits across the remote reaches of the planet, from El Cap to Fitz Roy to Tasmania to the big walls of Yosemite. I taught technical rockcraft to Navy special warfare teams, in places where a dysregulated nervous system is the difference between coming home and not.

For a long time the climbing was the answer. And underneath all of it, a nagging question kept running: what does freedom actually mean, if I've built a whole life to escape into it?

I was very good at one thing in particular, and it had nothing to do with rock. World-class at overriding myself. Minimize, manage, keep going, don't be the problem. When I broke my back, the first thing I said was, let's not tell anyone. That instinct kept me alive across three decades in environments that punish hesitation. It was brilliant. And then it kept going, right past the signals my body was sending, well past the point where it was serving me, because the override doesn't turn itself off when the environment changes. It performs as discipline. As drive. As the thing everyone admires. And you cannot see it from inside it.

So I know the difference between a woman who is strong and a woman who has learned to override herself. I was the latter for most of my life.

I came back from the other side of that collapse with both a story and the science to explain it. Most people have one or the other. The story without the framework, or the framework without the lived cost. Mine came out of the full collision: thirty years where regulation determined whether I lived, and the specific experience of watching the same pattern that kept me alive nearly take me down a different way entirely.

That collision is the work I do now. Eight years of coaching senior women and leaders, running a continuous coaching group. I nurture and protect my clients the way I was never protected. I train the capacity underneath the performing, in real mountains, so the women I work with can lead and decide and meet what's in front of them without abandoning themselves to get through it. I hold the parts most coaches sidestep. The grief. The fear. The version of you that is ending so a truer one can form.

The entire hard-things industry is built by men for the performance of more, and I do the opposite work: healing over achievement, which is the correction that industry has never made. I learned why the hard way, and I will not run you the way I was once run.

Website: https://mastersofbadassery.com