LaidOPEN Podcast

In this guided somatic meditation, I'm inviting you to explore what it feels like to take up space with more ease, confidence, and choice.

We'll work with bone breathing, grounding, body awareness, energetic boundaries, and visualization to notice the ways we may habitually shrink, harden, or disconnect from ourselves when we feel threatened, insecure, ashamed, or uncomfortable being seen. From there, we'll practice expanding into our full length and width while staying connected to ourselves and our surroundings.

I'll also guide you through a visualization practice for moving through crowded or high-stakes environments—from a busy grocery store or train station to a stressful meeting, performance, or difficult interpersonal situation—so you can begin building new somatic patterns of confidence and self-trust.

This is a practice in remembering: I get to exist. I belong here. I am safe inside myself.

The more we practice inhabiting our bodies with intention, the more choice we can have when life asks us to hold a boundary, be seen, speak up, or take up space.

You can find more of my somatic and energetic practices, learn about my upcoming coursework and four-week groups, explore my workbook Pathways to Peace: Regulate Your Nervous System and Transform Your Life, or learn more about working with me one-on-one at charnacassell.com. You can also learn more about my private practice and in-person offerings at passionatelife.org.

In this episode, I'm exploring the somatics of presence, pleasure, and expansion—and how our experiences can shape the way we physically and energetically move through the world.

People who feel confident often take up space naturally. They stand taller and wider, breathe more easily, move with intention, and carry a sense that they have a right to be heard. But for those of us who have experienced trauma, abuse, oppression, shame, or simply learned early on that being visible wasn't safe, taking up space can feel much more complicated.

Our bodies adapt to what we experience. We may shrink inward, hold our breath, tighten around the spine, disconnect from our bodies, or develop a more rigid, performative physical presence as a way of communicating that we're strong and protected. These patterns can become so familiar that we stop noticing them.

I share some of my own experience with this—from being a deeply embodied reader and artist as a child to discovering somatic practices, yoga, and dance, and eventually experiencing what it felt like to expand into my body and discover that taking up space could actually feel pleasurable.

We'll explore what it means to occupy our width—to feel our shoulders, ribcage, hips, and entire physical presence—and how that can connect to belonging, safety, confidence, and our ability to stay connected to ourselves and others.

This conversation leads directly into this month's guided meditation, which focuses on physically and energetically reoccupying your width. You can use the meditation as an ongoing practice alongside yoga, breathwork, bodywork, or whatever other practices support your embodiment.

I also share more about my new full-color workbook, Pathways to Peace: Regulate Your Nervous System and Transform Your Life, available beginning August 13, as well as my Embodied Relating group, which is now structured in four-week cycles.

If you're interested in learning more about somatic and energetic practices, join me for my monthly guided meditations and explore my groups and other offerings.

In this month's Chakra Clear Out, I invite you to explore the relationship between structure, habits, and self-trust.

We often think of structure as something external—our schedules, routines, work, or commitments—but our internal structures shape our lives just as profoundly. In this guided meditation, I'll lead you through each of the seven chakras, helping you release inherited beliefs, outdated patterns, and energetic habits that no longer support who you're becoming.

As we move through each energy center, you'll reconnect with your own energy, strengthen your intuition, and reflect on the internal and external structures that best support the life you want to create.

Whether this is your first chakra meditation or part of your regular spiritual practice, I hope you'll leave feeling more connected to yourself and clearer about the structures that will best support your growth.

✨ If this meditation resonates with you, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who could use a moment to reconnect.

Explore more guided meditations, somatic healing practices, and conversations on the LaidOPEN Podcast, and visit charnacassell.com to learn more about my work.

If you're new to meditation, or finding yourself caught in cycles of anxiety, stress, or overthinking, this guided practice offers a place to begin.

In this Chakra Clear Out from my Anarchist Medicine series, I guide a simple meditation designed to help you create internal space, ground in your body, and reconnect with perspective.

Rather than trying to stop thoughts or force calm, this practice explores neutrality—the ability to observe what is happening inside you without immediately reacting to it.

Together, we work with grounding, visualization, and attention practices that support regulation and presence. You'll be guided through calling your energy back to yourself, grounding through the body, and noticing how attention shifts your experience of urgency, emotion, and thought.

This is a practice you can return to anytime you feel overwhelmed or disconnected, especially in moments when you want to slow down and come back to yourself.

Join me live for Chakra Clear Out at 9:00 AM on the first Wednesday of every month sign up on my website.

Explore more of my offerings:

✨ LaidOPEN Podcast

✨ Newsletter + upcoming offerings

✨ charnacassell.com

If this practice resonates, leave a comment and let me know what you'd like to explore in future Chakra Clear Outs.

What is meditation and how do you start? Charna shares a gentle, beginner friendly introduction to meditation, mindfulness, and practice.

Have you ever wondered what meditation actually is... and whether you're doing it "right"?

In this special introductory episode, I'm stepping away from interviews to talk directly about meditation: how I found it, why it became foundational to my healing journey, and how you can begin a meditation practice without pressure, perfection, or needing to clear your mind.

Drawing from decades of experience in somatic work, mindfulness, embodiment practices, and my own personal healing, I explore different approaches to meditation and share practical ways to get started.

Inside this episode:

• What meditation is (and what it isn't) • Why meditation can feel difficult at first • Trauma informed considerations for meditation • Mindfulness, embodiment, breath, mantra, visualization, and heart centered practices • How meditation changed my relationship to stress and reactivity • Simple ways to start a sustainable practice

If meditation has always felt intimidating, inaccessible, or confusing, this episode is your invitation to begin.

While the podcast is on hiatus, I'll be releasing guided meditations here on the feed, many of which come from the free monthly meditation gatherings I offer through my Anarchist Medicine series, which you can watch on Youtube or do live with me the first Wednesday of the month at 9am PST. You can sign up to be notified here.

Subscribe so you don't miss future meditation sessions and guided practices.

Are you carrying energy that doesn't belong to you?

This guided chakra clearing and cord cutting meditation is designed to help you release energetic attachments, reclaim your energy, and clear emotional residue from past relationships, family systems, creative partnerships, religious conditioning, and other draining connections.

In this meditation, you'll learn how to:

• Call your energy back to yourself • Release energetic cords and attachments • Clear emotional and psychic overwhelm • Strengthen energetic boundaries • Ground your nervous system • Restore clarity, intuition, and focus • Move forward without carrying the past

This practice moves through all seven chakras, helping you identify and clear energetic leaks that may leave you feeling exhausted, distracted, emotionally stuck, anxious, disconnected, or unable to focus.

Whether you're healing from a breakup, toxic relationship, family conditioning, burnout, spiritual manipulation, or simply feeling energetically overwhelmed, this meditation offers a powerful reset.

Part of the monthly Anarchist Medicine series with Charna Cassell.

Join us live the first Wednesday of every month at 9 AM PT. Sign up for updates and workshops at Charna Cassell

Subscribe for more guided meditations, nervous system healing, embodiment practices, energy work, and intuitive development.

What if your trauma isn't something to extract, but something that has shaped you the way weather shapes an ancient tree?

In this episode I sit down with Josh Schrei, creator and host of the beloved Emerald Podcast, for one of the most expansive and nourishing conversations I've had on this show. Josh brings the wisdom of animist and mythic traditions to the very modern problem of living in a fractured, overstimulated world, and what emerges is a roadmap for healing that goes far beyond talk therapy.

We explore why ritual is actually trauma work, how the cycles of nature are mirrored inside your nervous system, and what the trickster archetype has to do with this particular cultural moment. We get honest about the cost of doom scrolling for sensitive and porous people, the difference between an open heart and a guarded one, and why community and embodied practice rewire us in ways thinking alone never can.

The episode closes with a guided dissolution meditation drawn from the ancient Indian concept of pralaya that you won't want to miss.

Josh Schrei is the host of The Emerald Podcast and creator of The Mythic Body, a yearlong course in mythic and animist tradition. Find him at themythicbody.com/courses

I'm Charna Cassell, a licensed trauma-trained psychotherapist and somatic coach with over 20 years of experience helping people heal from trauma and reclaim pleasure and vitality in their bodies. You can pick up my workbook Pathways to Peace: A Practical Guide to Embodied Healing and Living Somatically on my website, and learn more about me and my course work at charnacassell.com and passionatelife.org or follow along on Instagram and Facebook at @LaidOPENPodcast.

Ever feel stuck in the same patterns no matter what you try? You might be living out a soul contract. In this episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, Charna sits down with Gellyahnah, a channel for divine wisdom and spiritual guidance, to uncover how your karmic and spiritual blueprint might be shaping your life, and how to break free.

What you'll discover in this episode:

• The difference between soul and spirit
• What a soul contract really is
• How your birth name rules impact your path
• The origins of sound frequency and energy healing
• How karmic patterns show up in your body and relationships
• Tools for self-discovery, awakening, and breaking recurring cycles
• The power of forgiveness, free will, and validation over victimhood

Whether you're exploring energy healing, spiritual awakening, karmic cycles, or practical guidance for self-growth, this episode gives you insights you can start using immediately.

🎧 Listen, subscribe, and start uncovering your soul's blueprint today.

If you've ever wondered if anyone can really develop their psychic abilities? This episode is for you. I sit down with Chase McCarty, the creator of Social RV, an app that gamifies remote viewing, intuition, and all the weird little psychic skills you didn't think you could train. We talk about psi abilities like remote viewing and intuitive perception. Chase shares how he went from a skeptic to someone who built a digital space to help people train their intuition and perceptual capacities in a structured, measurable, and safe way.

We talk about what psi really means, not as mysticism but as a capacity that we all have, and how early research — including government remote viewing studies and platforms like the Telepathy Tapes — helped shape modern interest in these abilities. Chase recounts the origins of his own journey and what it felt like to test these practices on himself.

Together we explore how the Social RV app works, what it's like to practice remote viewing, and how intuitive perception feels in the body — including physical sensations like bilocation or subconscious symbolism that show up during practice. We also talk about how trauma and hyper‑sensitivity can heighten perceptual attunements, how to distinguish intuition from fear responses, and why gamifying these practices might help normalize and destigmatizepsi‑related experiences in everyday life.

This conversation is both grounded and expansive, offering practical ways to explore intuition, sharpen perceptual awareness, and approach psi practice with safety, curiosity, and care. If you've ever wondered about the space between intuition and unconscious intelligence, or how you might train that capacity, this episode meets you there.

The episode closes with Chase guiding a 12-minute meditation, designed to help you fine-tune your psychic senses, connect with subtle energies, and tap into your intuition in a tangible way. It's not just a talk, it's a hands-on experience for anyone curious about the unseen.

Find Social RV and start training your psi skills at https://www.socialrv.com.

Connect with me, Charna: Website: https://www.charnacassell.com Instagram: @laidopenpodcast Threads: @laidopenpodcast Facebook: @laidopenpodcast

psychic ability, remote viewing, intuition, Social RV, telepathy, psychic training, develop psi powers, consciousness, mind powers, paranormal, Monroe Institute, psi research, intuitive development, Charna Cassell, Chase McCarty

In this episode of LaidOPEN, I'm joined by Gabrielle Felder, author of The Five Blessings of Ifá.

We talk about returning to spiritual lineage, writing about Ifá as a living oral tradition, and what it meant for Gabrielle to publish this work after being raised Baptist. She shares how being on ancestral land in the American South changed her relationship to history and belonging.

We explore Oshun and Obatala, gender expansiveness in Yoruba cosmology, burnout and joyful militancy, and how to remain spiritually grounded in times of cultural instability.

LaidOPEN offers intimate conversations at the intersection of sexuality, spirituality, and relational healing. If you're longing for depth, warmth, and nuance, follow the show and share this episode with someone who might need it.

Show Notes:

00:00 – Welcome & Introduction 02:42 – Writing Process 04:18 – Family, Faith & Secrecy 08:06 – Parents at the Book Event 09:24 – Publishing as Coming Out 12:26 – Writing About Ifá 14:11 – Southern Ancestry 18:12 – Embodying the Land 22:30 – Entering Ifá 24:43 – Mississippi River & Oshun 27:22 – Orishas & Creativity 28:03 – Beyond the Love Goddess Trope 29:00 – Yoruba Language & Gender 31:22 – Orishas & Gender Fluidity 34:18 – Micro-Acts of Freedom 35:31 – Burnout & Joy 47:17 – Collapse & Rebuilding 52:22 – Spiritual Hygiene 55:34 – Closing