Radiant Rest Podcast with Tracee Stanley

What are the lessons you’re tired of learning? In yoga philosophy, the kleshas are patterns that create suffering, and exploring them can help us find peace and ease in our personal lives and within the collective. In this conversation, Tracee Stanley is joined by author, activist, spiritual teacher and practitioner, racial equity consultant and trainer, and intuitive healer Michelle Cassandra Johnson, whose new book, Illuminating Our True Nature: Yogic Practices for Personal & Collective Healing is a guide for turning towards—instead of away from—our suffering, not only to better understand why we suffer but also to also open up pathways to freedom. 

Tune in as Tracee and Michelle discuss:

• Why we resist suffering and how yogic tools and practices can help us overcome our samskaras (patterns)

• How avidya (ignorance) fuels our feelings of separation—especially from nature—and is at the root of suffering 

• The prevailing wisdom of honey bees 

• Why spiritual bypassing leads to more suffering

• Surprising lessons Michelle learned while writing her book

• Much more! 

Michelle’s new book, Illuminating Our True Nature: Yogic Practices for Personal & Collective Healing, is available now wherever books are sold! Learn more here.

Connect with Michelle and explore her books, offerings, and events at michellecjohnson.com

How does life shift when we give ourselves permission to slow down? In this episode, host Tracee Stanley and Rosie Acosta, author of You Are Radically Loved: A Healing Journey to Self-Love, dive into the ways we can savor the little moments and find peace in the practice of slowing down—even when we’re in a season where it feels like everyone is speeding up.  

They discuss: 

• Why it’s important to intentionally slow down into presence

• Sacred boundaries and the practice of “compassionate no”

• Examining our tendency to fill our schedules 

• Why we live in an optimization culture

• Much more!

Connect with Rosie at radicallyloved.com and instagram.com/rosieacosta

Tune in to her podcast, You Are Radically Loved, here

More about Rosie Acosta, in her own words: 

I’m an Author, Meditation & Mindfulness Teacher. I am a first generation Mexican-American, grew up in the early 90’s in East LA during the “Decade of Death.” We are talking drive-by shootings, gang violence, everything one would need to grow up with PTSD. I’ve been on a 20-year journey through yoga and mindfulness, that completely changed my life. I've been teaching for over fifteen years. From my East Los Angeles roots to working with Olympic athletes, NFL champions, NBA All-Stars, and veterans of war, my mission is to help people overcome adversity and embrace self-love. Currently teaching on the #1 Meditation App, Headspace.

When things fall apart, we may need support accessing our inner knowing and inner compass to navigate the grief. Sara Avant Stover wrote Handbook for the Heartbroken: A Women’s Path from Devastation to Rebirth to help orient people experiencing a variety of forms of personal or collective heartbreak and support them in feeling a sense of validation and clarity. 

In this conversation, host Tracee Stanley and Sara discussed:

• Different types of heartbreak
• Intuition and reckoning with what we already know before our rational mind acknowledges it
• Bringing our true Self in relationship to the subconscious parts of ourselves created by upbringing and culture
• Collective heartbreak
• The necessity of processing grief in community
• The role of rest in healing from heartbreak
• Much more!

Connect with Sara and get your copy of Handbook for the Heartbroken at saraavantstover.com

Sara Avant Stover (she/her) is a Certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner and business strategist to spiritual, entrepreneurial women. Specializing in supporting women to discover and fulfill their true potential at the intersection where entrepreneurship meets personal and spiritual growth, she's also the author of The Way of the Happy Woman (2011), The Book of SHE (2015), and Handbook for the Heartbroken (2024). 

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa cum Laude from Columbia University’s all-women’s Barnard College, Sara had a cancer scare, moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and, there, embarked on a decade-long healing and spiritual odyssey throughout Asia. Since then, she’s gone on to uplift the lives of tens of thousands of women worldwide. 

Having taught at some of the world's leading retreat centers like Kripalu, 1440 Multiversity, Shambhala Mountain Center, Sara has been featured in Yoga Journal, the Huffington Post, Newsweek, Natural Health, and on ABC, NBC, and CBS. She lives in Boulder, CO.

What does it mean to live with a free open heart? To live boldly? To stop holding back and dive into the divine chaos and art of life? 

In this episode of Radiant Rest Podcast, host Tracee Stanley is joined by Alexandra Roxo, author of the new book Dare to Feel: The Transformational Path of the Heart. As a relationship and intimacy coach, a mentor to women, as well as a new mother, Alexandra is passionate about breaking patterns that keep us feeling alone and stuck. She brings psychology, spirituality, and conscious relationship work to her practice with couples and single women longing to call in and keep love. 

In this conversation, Tracee and Alexandra discuss:

• The ways in which we are taught not to feel 

• Core wounds as a pathway to healing and reclaiming our essential Self

• What having a child revealed to Alexandra about her discomfort with chaos 

• The breath is as a portal to the heart

• The writing and editing process of writing Alexandra’s book

• More!

Connect with Alexandra at alexandraroxo.com

Alexandra’s new book, Dare to Feel: The Transformational Path of the Heart, is now available where all books are sold 

Free Sensual Embodiment Practice: Take a few minutes of your day to drop into your gorgeous body and feel your heart open and sensuality come online with Alexandra’s signature embodiment practice.

About our guest:

Alexandra Roxo is an artist, bestselling author, transformational coach, and teacher. She has been featured as a guest speaker on many renowned podcasts and at numerous festivals and events worldwide and has been featured in multiple TV appearances, including two seasons of Netflix’s hit show, Too Hot to Handle. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times,  Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The Guardian, Nylon, and Playboy. Her latest book, 'Dare to Feel', is out with Sounds True and explores how to work through blocks to intimacy and passionate living through deep feeling and embodiment.

“The natural cycles of life create harmony, which ultimately leads to long-term sustainability. In our hubris and forgetting, we have decided to break the cycles because we are afraid of inefficiency. I think that, literally, is the root of why we have a chronic disease epidemic.” —Dr. Casey Means

Metabolism is the power of our life force that literally fuels our lives, according to Casey Means, MD, a Stanford-trained physician who left traditional medicine to devote her life to tackling the root cause of why Americans are so sick. Her new book, Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, outlines a framework for the causes and cures of symptoms and diseases, and how to unlock our cellular health through a more spiritual lens.

In this episode, Tracee and Dr. Casey discuss:

• The definition of metabolism, from the process of converting food energy to cellular energy to its deeper and more subtle meanings.
• Disconnection from nature as the root cause of cellular dysfunction and metabolic dysfunction, and why the collective forgetting our true nature is at the center of the American chronic disease epidemic.
• How breaking our natural and seasonal cycles in favor of short-term approaches to modern “productivity” creates cellular dysfunction.
• The parallels between the ongoing spiritual process of dying and being reborn and the natural process of our cell turnover.
• How systems—from healthcare to capitalism—weaponize our existential fear of death, which leads us into a merry-go-round of treatments and consumerism that don’t support our well-being.
• The five basic biomarkers that reveal metabolic health.
• The six principles of “Good Energy” nourishment.
• The mitochondrial impact of community—and loneliness.
• Much more!

Connect with Dr. Casey Means:

• Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health is available now
• caseymeans.com
• Instagram @drcaseyskitchen 

Tracee Stanley chats with Kaya Mindlin, sought after and beloved Yoga educator. Kaya is a steward of Vedic teachings and brings her wisdom about divine timing and so much radiant wisdom about the New Year ahead. Find Kaya at yogawithkaya.com to explore her many rich offerings. 

Kim Krans, visionary artist, author, musician, and yoga nidra guide, speaks with Tracee Stanley about her latest creation - the new game, Renunciation. This game asks you to take a rest from the overculture and reclaim what is most important in life as you let go of capitalism and explore karma. Originally recorded as part of the Creative Spark Series in the Radiance Subscription, we just had to share this on our podcast. 

You can explore yoga nidra with Kim here- You can also listen to music by Kim here.

Kim received her BFA in drawing at Cooper Union in NYC, MFA in mixed media at Hunter College, and an MA in depth psychology and creativity at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. Her seeker's heart has brought her to study in-depth practices of Classical Hatha, Kundalini Yoga, and shamanism in India, Africa, Europe, and the UK. Kim teaches events and workshops that activate the forces of creativity and radical transformation through art, meditation, mysticism, and movement.

Quote from the Bhagavad Gita 18.47: It is better to do one's own dharma, even though imperfectly, than to do another's dharma, even though perfectly. By doing one's innate duties, a person does not incur sin.

Chelsea Jackson Roberts joins author Tracee Stanley to discuss embracing transitions and how her practice has supported her journey through the ebbs and flow of life as a new mother and householder, and star Peleton teacher. Read more about Dr Chelsea here: https://www.chelsealovesyoga.com/

Tracee Stanley discusses the power of rest, transition, and pause with Octavia Raheem author of Gather, and the upcoming new book Pause, Rest, Be. They discuss the moment that Octavia knew that her life of "doing" needed to change and how rest inspires her work in Devoted to Rest a rest-based mastermind for high achieving Black Women and Women of Color. 

Artist, writer, and yogini Elena Brower and host Tracee Stanley invite you to join them for a candid and personal talk on the creative processes and connection to Spirit. They discuss Elena’s newest book Being You and her methods of writing and painting for the book. Elena and Tracee delve into the impacts of yoga on their creative practices, and the ways in which creativity,yoga , and meditation are intertwined. Elena stresses the importance of her morning meditations, as well as the ways in which she reminds herself of who she is every day. In a very special conclusion to their discussion, Elena leads listeners in an immersive and moving meditation.