The Enneagram is a widely used, multi-dimensional therapeutic tool revealing the core issues of nine different personality types. Yet beyond the typologies pertaining to increased self-awareness, it is a path of self-knowledge highlighting what matters most on an authentic psychospiritual journey. In this episode of Soul Portals, we will explore the inner territory of soul growth with a view to the Enneagram roots of specific deep-seated identifications. Since “every problem contains the seed of its own solution”, each type’s ‘fixation’ also holds the potential for the emergence of one’s essential nature or ‘true self’.

Podcast-related book | The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up: Find Your Path, Face Your Shadow, Discover Your True Self

Website | www.cpenneagram.com

YouTube | Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy

Instagram | cpenneagram

Facebook | Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Our June Soul Portals guest is the author of The Psychology of Spirituality, which is a comprehensive exploration of the interface between the two domains, that in turn informs best practices. Spiritually integrated practitioners seek to explore the ways in which spirituality, religion, and the search for meaning influence their own lives and the lives of their clients. It is based on the premise that a sense of the sacred has always been a primary attribute of human nature and a major positive force in the lives of many people. Spirituality is therefore fully woven into human experience and is part of the therapeutic process whether we attend to it or not. It represents the quest for the transcendent and the deeply human desire to experience something of ultimate value.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

In our last Soul Portals episode, we investigated how individual therapy gains a much broader scope when the existential and philosophical issues we all grapple with are included in the process. This month we welcome a guest whose healing practices actively link our inner wisdom and intuition with the needs of collective consciousness and global evolution. We will find out how Kate, as a multi-modal intuitive guide, tends to the soul retrieval of ancestral lineages, while aligning personal therapeutic growth with what’s essential for the soul work of the world at large.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Kate Graham

Website: http://www.heartsfrontier.com/

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/shamanicoraclekate

In this episode of Soul Portals, we are honoured to have a guest steeped in existential psychology who understands that the walls of the therapy room cannot just contain case histoires and ‘evidence based’ clinical interventions. Emmy van Deurzen has helped expand the scope of individual practice by reuniting the therapeutic quest with perennial concerns of humankind. Our current global crises obviously need ‘treatment’ as much as any individual might. Social, political, moral, and spiritual issues are embedded if not embodied in the client’s personhood. Emmy being no exception, shares how she has not kept her personal history and emotional life apart from the professional domain. The paradoxes, dilemmas, and dichotomies of life are common to us all (e.g. solitude/companionship, safety/adventure, stability/change). Our podcast conversation will explore how personal struggles and collective pathfinding on a troubled planet are inextricably woven together in this very human journey we all share.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Our March ’25 Soul Portals guest views Qigong energy practices and his musical vocation as intertwined spiritual paths. In this episode we will explore how Qigong can inform the healing arts, specifically in the context of Hua Gong (the style of Qigong that Loz Speyer practices, as a proponent of that school and lineage). Part of the podcast interaction will be experiential – a short participatory exercise for attendees.

Hua Gong is an artistic style of Qigong focusing on health and spiritual development. The practiceawakens and cultivates the vital subtle energy or Qi (Chi), which opens a flow of Qi through the body and surrounding energy field and can have profound benefits for health and well-being.

For Loz, finding Hua Gong opened up a way forward - further elucidated in his compositions for improvisers based on the Five Animals Qigong forms – and lately in a series of workshops combining Qigong and improvised music, using sonic and rhythmic exercises that do not require prior musical training. The two practices combine to guide the group in attuning to the collective energy field.

Loz at Centreline Qigong: https://www.facebook.com/CentrelineQigong

Hua Gong school: http://chineseheritage.co.uk/

“Five Animal Dances” by Inner Space: https://spherical-records.bandcamp.com/album/five-animal-dances

Website: https://www.lozspeyer.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CentrelineQigong

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

With Valentine’s Day (and all the mixed feelings it may bring) following our February episode of Soul Portals by a couple of days, we welcome Malcolm Stern, the author of Falling in Love, Staying in Love: How to Build a Strong, Lasting Relationship. When relationship is viewed as a vehicle for soul growth individually and spiritual evolution collectively, it changes the way we approach the complex dynamics of intimate partnerships.

A spiritual relationship moves through stages of togetherness, yet at the same time it is an ongoing process of individuation. It also requires a shared vision or transcendent faith to support it, beyond the negotiation of ego needs. Taking responsibility for one’s own shadow and its projections is essential. Given enough self-awareness, trust and transparency, “There is no better guru on the planet than our partner when we have embraced the spiritual purpose of our relationship.” (Paul Ferrini)

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Our New Year guest, Casey Muze, adds another element to wellness practices such as meditation, mindful movement, prayer, or immersion in nature. Hand drumming is a creative practice promoting resilience, emotional balance, and personal growth. It also offers a multitude of social and psychospiritual benefits, especially when viewed through the lens of bilateral theory. Casey uses drumming for early childhood education, neurodivergent clients, elderly individuals with dementia, and those with social or developmental hindrances. In this episode of Soul Portals, we will explore how incorporating bilateral stimulation supports social, emotional, and holistic health needs. Hand drumming has been a powerful tool in Casey’s own journey, which led to his wider vocation connecting with a collective audience around the world as a motivational speaker.

Website: TRAP - Learning: https://traplearning.org/ | https://caseymuze.com/

Holistic Mental Health, Vol 2, Casey's Chapter: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211437560-holistic-mental-health

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Good people of privilege are increasingly aware of racial injustice but are often unsure how to venture into challenging dialogues and spaces, and even afraid to ‘go there’. In this episode of Soul Portals, we explore how to value risk-taking in this domain as the path toward a more equitable and just world. The experiences of our guest Rev. Teri McDowell Ott – including learning, teaching, leading, following, going, and staying – have informed her work with diverse populations as the chaplain of a liberal arts college and as a volunteer in a men's state prison. The vocational challenge, including mistakes in often tense settings, has forced her to confront and wrestle with the systems and structures that have privileged her as a white Christian woman. With humility, she relates how her risk-taking has led to profound changes in herself and her community.

Website | www.terimcdowellott.com

Book | Books - Teri McDowell Ott | Necessary Risks: Challenges Privileged People Need to Face by Teri McDowell Ott | Goodreads

Review | Necessary Risks: Challenges Privileged People Need to Face - The Presbyterian Outlook

Newsletter | Encouraging Courage | Teri Ott | Substack

YouTube | BookTALK with Teri Ott: Necessary Risks

Facebook | Teri McDowell Ott

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

In this episode of Soul Portals, we expand the standard view of cancer care to include new approaches derived from integral psychology models. Our guest, Georgia Efremova, is a pioneer in the field of holistically informed cancer care, bringing psychospiritual support and consciousness skills to the discipline of psycho-oncology. She also works with communities nurturing social cohesion and belonging as essential aspects of global healing as well as personal restorative paths. Based on her own lived experience and research, Georgia believes deep intentional healing requires broader support and conditions than current clinical modalities provide. Her practice is grounded in healing circles and assisted by several complementary modalities. Join us to explore how illness can serve as an initiation to personal and collective healing, by recovering and meeting deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs.

Georgia Efremova Website | gergina.org/ | healingcirclesglobal.org/

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents 

Our October guest, Gary Lachman, has extensively researched the (secret) history of consciousness – what we take for granted when facing psychotherapy clients – that most of us have a self-referenced inner life to explore in relation to outer circumstances. Yet our present state of self-awareness has fascinating pre-rational antecedents and post-rational potential coming into view on the evolutionary horizon. The inner world of persons is unfathomable based solely on psychobiology and a strictly clinical or scientific point of view. There are radically different modes of being in the world which came before us and will come afterwards. We will delve into all this in what is bound to be an intriguing episode of Soul Portals.

Gary Lachman Website: www.gary-lachman.com/

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents