"Art and music is such a visceral thing, and it's so experiential. And storytelling is a way to convey eons of moral compass and tradition as well. Every culture of the world has their own stories, and by telling those you don't tell people, 'This is the exact history, and this is what happened, and this is what happened.' It's more like these myths emerge through these cultures that people really latch on to and people connect with. And so, I was hoping to kind of create this new myth in a way to connect people to nature as well as humanity and compassion for other people."

Special Guest: Gabriel Vanaver.

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I really enjoy this field so much because it gives you a very practical way of investigating the spiritual mysteries of the world. so that we can gain inspiration to look deeper into ourselves. But also, it is a very practical way of helping people with very difficult problems—people with very powerful kinds of pain and those that feel like they're locked in a body that's going to hurt for the rest of their life, and nothing can be done about it. And then I say, ‘You don't live in reality.’ If it feels like you do and that you're trapped in this pain body, but I can teach you how to alter that.

Special Guest: Ian Wickramasekera.

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"So, I went to the first summer of Naropa. And, it was not cool to be like a hippie anymore. There was an aggression of turning away from society. So, we encourage students to do meditation practice, but also to cut your hair, become a member of society, get a job, and having sort of this basic sanity notion of just having a quote, unquote normal life. Cleaning up your kitchen and going to work and doing a good job and meditating—like that's all you need. You know, you didn't have to do this fight against society. You just kind of go along with the energy."

Special Guest: Jim Jobson.

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"[Meditation] can be a little unfamiliar and scary, but it's something that we all can do. We just lean into it. Lean into the openness. What is it like to just be free? I mean, think of when you graduated college for instance—you'd been studying your whole life—filling your time with acceptance essays or homework or a thesis or something like that, and then you come out the other end of the education curriculum. And suddenly there's all this room. It's like, what do I do? And society says get a job. But for a brief moment when we graduate—it’s like what's all this space? What's going on here? It's a little like that."

Special Guest: Dungse Jampal Norbu.

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"The natural world is unconditional, and it welcomes us in whatever state we bring ourselves to it. It invites a level of presence. It sort of insists on a quality of presence, because while there's incredible stillness in the natural world there's also sort of constant movement—even if that's grass being blown by the breeze in a meadow, or a squirrel in a pine tree preparing for winter. There's always a little bit of movement and there's this quality of vastness, right? The natural world is so much bigger than us and in that unconditionality, I think we're invited into an experience that helps us deepen our connection with ourselves, but also helps us get out of our own way."

Special Guest: Kate Mazuy.

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Bari Tessler is encouraging people to take a more mindful and conscious approach to their relationship with money. When Tessler finished a graduate degree in Somatic Counseling, she sought financial help to help guide her career. She found that most of the financial guidance offered was coming from older white males and was focused on traditional money management, how to pay off loans, invest, etc. Tessler was curious, “Where does the body come in?” and her subsequent work has been about helping people examine and heal their relationship with money to lead more empowered, sucessful lives. Learn more about Bari and her work in this exciting conversation with Mindful U podcast host, David DeVine.

Special Guest: Bari Tessler.

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"Dharma isn't sexy, or glamorous for me..., it’s just work. It's discipline and work, and I do it because the fruit is spaciousness; this openness. Where I can just be with my life. That spaciousness is where liberation actually happens. Over the years of practice, you realize you've become a different person. You begin to trust yourself more because you're always in tune with your experiences...and that is what I love. It just becomes very ordinary." - Lama Rod Owens

Special Guest: Lama Rod Owens.

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Naropa University presents encore presentations of our most popular and heartfelt podcasts from 2018, including Phillip Stanley talking on The Relationships Between Sense Perceptions, Concepts, and Emotions :

Dr. Phillip Stanley, PhD, speaks about one of his favorite class topics: the relationship between sense perceptions, concepts and emotions. Such an exploration leads to surprising insights that leave students often dumbfounded. We think we know what sense perceptions are–concepts, and so forth–but if you start looking into it it can be quite surprising.

Special Guest: Dr. Phillip Stanley, PhD.

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Naropa presents some of the most popular and moving episodes of MindfulU from 2018, including "The Discovery of Meaning and Purpose, with Dr. Itai Ivtzan."

The disciplines of psychology and spirituality both offer us humans a gift. Psychology, being the mind-oriented discipline, seems to offer us a chance to envision ourselves within our surroundings. At the same time, spirituality invites us to move beyond the mind, and even beyond the definitions of a self. Most of us tend to focus on one or the other over our lives. But, in doing so, we often narrow our experience. When these two disciplines are married, however, we can achieve an incredible explosion of potentials to live life as fully as possible.

Special Guest: Itai Ivtzan.

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While Naropa University spends some contemplative downtime with families and friends for the holidays, we present some of our most popular an moving episodes from 2018, beginning with the Rev. angel Kyodo williams...

Radical dharma and mindfulness - everybody is going to get a little taste of some meditation, and its great - whatever door you use to enter into practice is great. But - the conflation of mindfulness with a depthful practice that includes an ethic view is a problem. When mindfulness becomes yet another thing that we can modify, and we think is something that is there so that we can consume it, then it’s actually serving our ego. It's serving our ideas of who we are and who we would like to be seen as, in our performance as ourselves. In that way, it can become a factor in our incarceration rather than our liberation.

Special Guest: Rev. angel Kyodo williams.

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