The Hoffman Podcast

“You can see their eyes brighter, and they finally feel like, Oh, there’s a lot of possibility … to be authentic self. That’s so powerful and meaningful for me to see that happening in China.“ – Jessie Feng

Master Certified Coach, Hoffman Process teacher, and Director of Faculty, Hoffman China, Jessie Feng joins Sadie for an inspiring conversation about growth, possibility, and healing generational patterns.

Although Jessie completed her Process in early 2025, her Process story really begins in 2011. Her relationship with her daughter was strained, so Jessie began coaching training, sure the issue was with her daughter. Many of us think similarly, until we begin our own inner work. Through coaching training and the Process, Jessie underwent a profound transformation. Her awareness grew and sense of self clarified. Her understanding of relationships, and why and how we can struggle in them, did too.

As an integral part of the new Hoffman Institute China, Jessie now teaches the Process in China. Very aware of the traditions between parents and children in her country, she shares how remarkable it is to witness her students realize that long-standing traditions passed down generation to generation are simply patterns. Limiting patterns that do not serve us can be transformed into healthy, freeing alternatives. Jessie explains how remarkable it is that her students now see possibility in their lives. They now realize they can be authentic in their lives and relationships. In doing so, they find compassion and love for themselves and their parents.

This conversation helps illuminate how the Process works in diverse cultures globally. The Process supports each person in finding liberation from limitation and compassion for themselves and those who raised them.

Today, Jessie and her daughter have a great relationship. We hope you enjoy this powerful conversation with Jessie and Sadie.

Jessie Feng is a Master Certified Coach (MCC). She holds an Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC) credential with the International Coaching Federation. Jessie also holds a Master’s degree in Marketing from the University of New South Wales in Australia and a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in the United States. 

For more than two decades, Jessie has worked in leadership development, team coaching, and personal transformation, supporting individuals and teams as they navigate complexity, relationships, and change. Having lived and worked in Germany, the United States, Australia, and China, she brings a deeply cross-cultural perspective to her work and a lifelong curiosity about one essential question: How can we live more authentically? 

Jessie believes that every person possesses innate wholeness, inner wisdom, and a unique path through life. Her own experience with the Hoffman Process became a significant turning point. It helped her see the patterns that had shaped her life more clearly and opened the possibility of living with greater freedom and choice. This experience eventually led her to become deeply involved in bringing the Hoffman Process to China and developing its teaching locally. 

In her work, Jessie often encounters the patterns people have learned to protect themselves—control, anger, pleasing, perfectionism, shame, and fear. Yet what moves her most is what emerges beneath those patterns: something softer, more alive, and deeply human. 

Again and again, she is reminded that beyond our different identities, cultures, and life stories, we share a profound longing for love, connection, freedom, and to be truly seen. 

For Jessie, growth is not about becoming a “better” version of ourselves. It is about finding the courage to become more fully who we already are—and trusting that beneath our patterns, there is love, light, and life. 

•   Hoffman China

Co-Active Training Institute

Vicious Cycles

A little more about the Internship portion of Hoffman teacher training:

Phase 2 (of 3) of Hoffman teacher training is the Internship Program, where learning moves into real experience. During this phase, a teacher candidate begins working alongside certified Hoffman teachers, observing and participating in actual Hoffman Processes. Over several internships, the teacher candidate works directly with students, teaches presentations, facilitates experiences, and gradually takes on more responsibility, with guidance and feedback from an experienced training teacher.

Internship is more than learning teaching skills. It is a time when something deeper begins to develop. Through continued immersion in the Hoffman Process, teacher candidates become more aware of patterns, more attuned to what is happening within themselves and with others, and increasingly connected to their own intuition and spiritual awareness. They are learning not only how to teach the Process, but how to embody it. With experience, practice, mentorship, and reflection, the teacher candidate grows into the presence and confidence needed to lead a Process.

Phase 2 is the pathway to certification as a Hoffman Process teacher, a meaningful step in becoming a teacher who can truly hold the space for others.

“The experience of the Process was life in full, in its magnitude, in seven days.” – Natasia Schumacher

Professional Certified Coach, Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner, and athlete Natasia Schumacher arrived at White Sulphur Springs to take the Hoffman Process in 2018. She says, “I didn’t choose the Process; it chose me.”

As Natasia poured over her Process homework, this question stopped her: “What is your relationship to spirituality?” Eight years ago, she had no idea what spirituality or spirit meant. Her response to the question? “None.” Looking back, Natasia saw that this was the first indicator of where the Process would lead her.

In Natasia’s Process, she had a profound realization that who she thought she was has never been who she is. Her visceral experience of the Process felt like a turbulent storm: deeply uncomfortable, confronting, and exhausting, while also deeply loving. Natasia shares stories of the profound emotional, intellectual, somatic, and spiritual insights, epiphanies, and transformation during and after her Process.

Many grads discover after the Process that even though they have changed, the people in their lives have not. For Natasia, this dynamic provided more opportunities to release patterns and deepen her sense of who she really is. She describes how she navigated this change with both her husband and mother. Natasia’s ability to articulate what happened is insightful and helpful information. She also found, post-Process, that she needed to connect with the parts of her who weren’t sober. Today, she has been sober for many years.

Natasia speaks of and lives with love and reverence for her true self, her Spirit. As she says, her Spirit “is me.” We hope this articulate, insightful, deeply spiritual conversation inspires you.

Follow Natasia on Instagram and LinkedIn.

This episode is marked explicit for language and may not be suitable for children. Please use your discretion.

https://youtu.be/TAtO34Z9EWc

Natasia Schumacher is the founder of Shift & Play, a Montréal-based self-leadership practice that helps people stay connected to themselves when it matters most — through change, uncertainty, and discomfort.

By her 30s, Natasia had built a life that looked successful from the outside. She held senior leadership roles, carried significant responsibility, and became very good at being who she thought she needed to be. Internally, she was struggling. She was performing life, moving through roles and expectations while becoming increasingly disconnected from herself.

In the Hoffman Process, she confronted the gap between the person she presented to the world and who she was underneath it all. It became part of a larger reckoning that included sobriety, motherhood, career reinvention, entrepreneurship, and learning to hear her own voice, trust it, and act from it.

That journey informs her work today.

A Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner (EQ-i 2.0), lululemon ambassador, and athlete, Natasia brings mind, heart, and body into her work. Through one-on-one coaching and designed group experiences, she works with high performers who are skilled at achieving, performing, and meeting expectations, but have lost touch with themselves along the way.

Movement is woven into this approach. Natasia believes the body often reveals what the mind has learned to override. She uses movement to help people notice their patterns, meet discomfort, and practice making conscious choices in real time. Currently training for and leading a team through her second 650-kilometre ultra relay, she lives the same practice she invites others into.

For Natasia, self-leadership isn’t something you master. It’s the practice of staying with yourself in discomfort long enough to hear what’s true — and having the courage to choose from there. Follow Natasia on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Read about the Hoffman Retreat Site at White Sulphur Springs, CA.

Homework:

Post-Process weekend:

“Post-Process… I could see those things differently. I could see them from the bigger view. And I could also feel how good I felt and how proud I was of myself. I knew that I could trust myself.“ – Kari Kuwahara

Kari Kuwahara came to the Hoffman Process knowing the timing was right. After a traumatic life event triggered old traumas and buried feelings, Kari was ready to do the deep work to heal her pain from her relationship with her mother. The Process offered her a way to resolve the pain of her past. Kari was ready for the freedom to come.

Before we dive into emotional terrain, we often fear the power of the feelings we will meet and the unknown chaos we might encounter within. The Process’s cathartic work and safe environment supported Kari as she went deep into her inner world. Her teacher gave her loving guidance when he said, “We’ve got you.” As Kari describes, she realized that she wasn’t doing it alone and that there were “guardrails in place.” Through the expression work, she finally released her anger. Intense, overwhelming grief that had been buried under her anger then flooded in. Kari “was finally able to go there and just let it out.” She realized that this release was, in itself, what she’d been searching for. 

After the cathartic expression, Kari journaled. Reading a sentence she’d written back to herself, Kari reached a powerful understanding. Speaking about her mother, she’d written, “I can’t fathom the pain her anger wouldn’t let her feel.” In experiencing the depth of her own pain under her anger, Kari saw her mother. In seeing her mother, Kari saw herself. This is a profound example of the power in healing negative love.

Through her courageous surrender to the Process, Kari found freedom from the pain of her past. We hope this powerful conversation with Kari and Drew moves and inspires you.

Kari Kuwahara has a diverse background in the food world.  She is a chef focused on health-supportive cooking, a culinary event producer, and a retail program and project manager.

Her path has never been entirely linear. After studying at UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Kari explored several career directions before a family member’s serious illness shifted her perspective and sparked a deeper interest in healing foods, nutrition, and health.  That spark grew, and she enrolled at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York, with little idea of what a career on the other side might look like. That leap became a turning point.

What began as a job to gain experience in a natural-foods grocery store quickly became a leadership position. At the same time, she stepped into a separate role producing culinary demonstrations for nationally recognized chefs at a large-scale food and wine festival. Driven by curiosity and a desire to grow, she joined a national grocery retailer in a larger regional role, where she developed culinary programs, menus, recipes, venues, and operational systems across the region.

Eventually, Kari moved to Seattle, where she lives today. After several intense years navigating the grocery industry through the COVID era and leading her teams through a large restructuring, she stepped away from that role in search of something that felt more aligned.

Life soon brought another profound shift.

Kari’s partner was diagnosed with cancer, beginning a three-year journey through treatment, recovery, uncertainty, and ultimately, healing. Drawing on her earlier studies in healing foods, nutrition, and health, Kari supported her partner throughout this journey.

But the healing extended beyond the physical. There was also a need to heal emotionally—not only from the toll of her partner’s illness, but from experiences rooted in her own childhood.  She and her partner both attended the Hoffman Process in the spring of 2026. Through all her roles, Kari remains deeply curious and committed to nurturing ourselves, our bodies, and our relationships.

Follow Kari on Instagram.

Post-Process work:

Quad Check:

Instagram Lives:

Join our daily Appreciation and Gratitude practice on Instagram at 6:00 pm PT. You’ll find that the Appreciation and Gratitude practice is a nourishing way to reflect on your day. This practice will support your Spiritual Self’s natural desire to appreciate and give thanks for all that life brings you.

Our Instagram Quad-checks and Appreciation and Gratitude practices are open to everyone.

“Over the past few years, I’ve dug deeper into connecting with the universe, connecting with nature, knowing that I am supported by forces outside of me.” – Suha Patel

Suha Patel arrived at the Hoffman Process eight years ago. Her mantra coming in was, “I want to know who I am. I want to love myself. I want to know what I want. And I want to be able to ask for it.” Over those seven days and the eight years since, Suha has worked hard to know the answers to her questions and live into what she has longed for.

Suha spent the majority of her life in her head, problem-solving everything, including herself. But knowing and loving oneself requires more than intellect. During her Process, the Quadcheck, a Hoffman tool, helped Suha discover her whole self. She dove into her whole self when she discovered her Quadrinity: intellect, body, emotional self, and Spiritual Self. Suha describes coming to know a whole inner community within herself, including her dear inner child. When she talks about her inner child, her voice lights up with joy. By spending time with her inner child, she realized why she stayed small and hadn’t stood up for what she wanted.

For Suha, one of the great gifts of taking the Process has been a deepened spirituality. Growing up in India, she’d never been to a temple or sought out God. At Hoffman, she connected to something greater than herself – the Universe, nature, and the spiritual forces that support her. By the end of her week at Hoffman, Suha realized the first item in her mantra: to know who she is. She found she knew herself in new and beautiful ways. Asking for what she wants has taken longer, but Suha is steadily working toward fulfilling her beautiful mantra. We hope you enjoy this joyful conversation with Suha and Sadie.

Suha Patel is a global business leader, mentor, and lifelong student of human behavior whose journey has spanned four continents, executive leadership, and deep personal transformation.

As a biotech executive, she spent decades leading in high-performance environments while quietly believing that staying small and silent was the safest way to move through the world. Her path into self-awareness, nervous system healing, and inner-child work has radically changed the way she understands leadership, relationships, identity, and emotional well-being.

Today, Suha is passionate about exploring the invisible patterns that shape our lives – the survival strategies we mistake for personality, and the ways unresolved emotional experiences quietly influence how we love, lead, speak, and connect. Through honest storytelling and deep reflection, she brings a grounded, compassionate perspective to conversations about healing, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and what it truly means to feel safe enough to become oneself.

Follow Suha on Instagram.

Hoffman Q2 Intensive: Our three-day graduate program

The Enneagram (of Personality)

Undefended Love by Jett Psaris

The QuadCheck (Quadrinity Check-in):

A Hoffman tool done daily to check in with all four parts of the Quadrinity: the intellect, the emotional self, the body, and the Spiritual Self.

Instagram Lives:

We host two Instagram Lives daily.

¤ Join our virtual community Quad-Check at 8:00 am PT on Instagram. The Quad Check practice supports you in integrating and honoring your Quadrinity: Spiritual Self, Intellect, Emotional Self, and your Body.

¤ Join our daily Appreciation and Gratitude practice at 6:00 pm PT on Instagram. The Appreciation and Gratitude practice is a beautiful way to reflect on your day. This practice supports your Spiritual Self’s natural desire to appreciate and give thanks for all that life brings you.

Elevators –

17:15 – 18:31  Suha describes what an elevator is and what happened for her when she did them at the Process.

The Hoffman App

After completing a Hoffman course, the Hoffman App can support you as you continue this journey, today and far into the future. The app offers guidance, practices, and visualizations to inspire and help you achieve your personal goals. We like to think of this app as “Hoffman in your pocket.” The Hoffman App is available at the App Store.

Find out more about the creation of Hoffman’s app with Kevin Eyres, Hoffman Teacher, on the Hoffman Podcast: Beyond the Intellect.

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, by David Brooks.

“Whether you did the Process with someone in your cohort or you find someone at a coffee shop with a Quadrinity sticker on their water bottle, there’s sort of that immediate recognition of, ‘Hello, another me, myself! Hello, a kindred spirit!‘” – Jasin Deegan

Hoffman Alumni Department Manager Jasin Deegan completed the Hoffman Process at White Sulphur Springs in 2019. Just a few months later, he joined the Hoffman Institute in his first role. Jasin has a hunger to serve others. It’s the nature of his Spirit. And he loves the Process. Six years on, it’s a beautiful match that now serves the global Hoffman community.

Before taking the Process, Jasin completed many personal transformational experiences. He arrived at the Process wanting “all the self-help resources” so he could “finally be this optimal person of service in the world.“ In his Process, he realized this was his own form of Do-Be-Have, trying to find his true Self by collecting more and more tools and resources. In an epiphany, Jasin realized he already was this “person of service.” It was simply time to be himself in a role that brought him joy and purpose. This seed of understanding was planted in his Process. It has steadily grown within him over the past six years at Hoffman.

And now, with ith Jasin at the helm of the Alumni Department, the alumni department team has created the new Hoffman Alumni Home and Hoffman Alumni Circle. These online community spaces are where we can gather as a global alumni community of all Hoffman Programs. As Jasin says, there’s “an immediate recognition” when we meet another Hoffman friend, a kindred spirit.

We hope you enjoy this warm conversation with Jasin and Sadie.

Jasin Deegan has served as a transformational facilitator and guide for over fifteen years. He is dedicated to serving others on their healing and transformational journeys and is passionate about how peak experiences expand human consciousness.

Jasin completed the Hoffman Process in December of 2019 and has been part of the Hoffman Institute since June 2020. Now serving as Alumni Department Manager, Jasin passionately supports Hoffman graduates who continue to do their post-Process work. As Alumni Department Manager, Jasin has led the development and design of Hoffman Alumni Home. This online community centralizes graduate resources and provides a space where Hoffman graduates can connect and build community.

Before joining the Hoffman Institute, Jasin was a Shamanic Breathwork facilitator, using breathwork, ritual and ceremony, and contemplative practices to support others along their transformational and healing journeys. Jasin is trained and certified in Shamanic Breathwork through Venus Rising Association for Transformation. There, he cultivated his passion and sacred purpose for transformational service work through these direct studies.

Jasin is pursuing his degree in psychology from San Francisco State University and lives with his husband in San Francisco, California.

HOFFMAN ALUMNI HOME

HOFFMAN ALUMNI CIRCLE

Liza Ingrasci, Past CEO and President

The Ceremony of Integration Dinner:

Bob Hoffman

The Hoffman Q2 Intensive

Hoffman Webclasses

Graduate Groups

Coaching Programs

The Hoffman Quadrinity Symbol

What is Breathwork?

Nita Gage, Hoffman Teacher.

Be-Do-Have vs. Do-Have-Be:

Dharma

“Maybe there’s a person who’s written a book, or a professor who’s done some kind of research, and then they build a curriculum based on that perfectly wonderful approach to things. But that is not the Hoffman Process, right? Because, really, Bob Hoffman understood things more intuitively. …This is a wisdom tradition program.“ – Jo Mattoon

Welcome to season 13 of Love’s Everyday Radius. Our guest is beloved Hoffman Process teacher, Jo Mattoon. In this fascinating conversation, Jo shares the ongoing changes happening within Hoffman Institute Foundation and the new Hoffman centers worldwide. Behind the scenes, Hoffman teachers and staff work to support the change and growth needed to meet the desires of those ready to take the Process and of our alumni.

You’ll hear stories about Bob Hoffman and his collaborators who supported him in creating the Process. As Programs Manager, Jo shares how the Process training guide is continually updated while remaining true to its roots. And in the stories about the new Hoffman Center in China, you’ll discover how the wisdom tradition at the heart of the Process can support different cultures worldwide.

From the growth and development of our teaching team, to the occasional updates integrated into the Process, to our new alumni portal, Hoffman Alumni Home, the Hoffman Institute continues to fulfill Bob Hoffman’s vision of “world peace one person at a time.” Hoffman International continues to grow its capacity to offer the Process around the world and shepherd serious change and transformation in those who attend through the opening of new centers around the world.

At the center of everything Hoffman does are the deep roots of wisdom that have grounded the Process since its earliest inception. Deep roots support new strong shoots. We hope you enjoy this grounded, wise conversation.

https://youtu.be/F9iq_XheMDM

Jo Mattoon holds a B.A. in the Humanities and a Master’s in Public Administration. Her first career was as a Human Resources executive; her second career was as an executive coach/leadership trainer. She has now found her true purpose in teaching/coaching for the Hoffman Process.

In addition to teaching and coaching, Jo leads the Programs Team for Hoffman Institute Foundation (HIF). The team is responsible for the development and upkeep of all of HIF’s program curriculum, including the Process and alumni offerings.

A fourth-generation Coloradan, Jo loves travel, learning, finding the humor in life, coyotes, the arts, and tasty food. You can find out more about Jo by following her on Instagram.

Hoffman Process Canada venue in Calgary, Alberta: Sanctum

Hoffman Center, China

Hoffman International

Hoffman teachers & staff mentioned concerning Hoffman China:

Bob Hoffman, Founder of the Hoffman Process.

Claudio Naranjo, Chilean psychiatrist and pioneer in integrating psychotherapy and spiritual traditions.

Raz Ingrasci, beloved Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.

Andy Milberg, a beloved Hoffman teacher.

Hoffman Programs Team:

Jasin Deegan – Alumni Department Manager and creator of Hoffman Alumni Home

HOFFMAN ALUMNI HOME: 

¤  The Cycle of Transformation:

https://youtu.be/EIKfjNdpgsk?si=Sl8B_9hJpTI7aib8

Self-Compassion & Kristin Neff

Kristin also writes about Fierce Self-Compassion, as diagrammed below.

“If we imagine fear as this tight fist that says, I’m not going to let go, I need to keep you safe, love comes in as just this warm hug, and it’s like, It’s all right, sweetheart, I’ve got you, you don’t have to hold this burden anymore. And the fear doesn’t want to do this…. It is doing it because it does not believe there is another path for you in order to survive or get your needs met.” – Cory Muscara

Former monk and down-to-earth spiritual teacher Cory Muscara wraps up Season 12 with a powerful exploration of the lived human experience. Cory is not a graduate of the Hoffman Process, but he has recommended it to many and plans on attending in the near future. The ethos of his work blends beautifully with that of the Process.

After a painful relationship breakup in his twenties, Cory began to meditate as a way to support himself. Realizing he wanted to go deeper into meditation, he headed to a monastery in Burma for a 6-month meditation retreat.

Truly, it is hard to summarize this conversation. Like life, it must be experienced. You can feel the invitation to soften when in Cory’s presence as he articulates the process of internal healing and self-compassion.

Later in the conversation, Drew mentions that a Process is completing just down the hill. He asks Cory what he might tell them. Cory offers a compassionate response to them and ultimately to all of us. He shares that leaving a retreat such as the Process and heading back into life offers us the opportunity to continue the work to heal, realizing that life is the meditation cushion. Life is where the ‘work’ continues. It is also where love can blossom with more ease and grace for ourselves and others.

We hope you enjoy this wise and compassionate conversation with Cory and Drew.

We’ll see you again in late August when we launch season 13. Thanks for listening and watching. We appreciate you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgf3BpOFloY

Cory Muscara is a former monk, host of the Practicing Human podcast, and bestselling author of the book Stop Missing Your Life. With over 1.5MM followers across his social media channels, Cory has gained popularity for his down-to-earth teachings on mindfulness, wellbeing, and mental health.

Cory has taught mindful leadership at Columbia University, is an instructor in Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and, for the last decade, has offered mindfulness keynotes, workshops, and retreats around the world, helping people find peace and transformation in a chaotic world. Cory’s meditations have been heard more than 50 million times in over 150 countries. His goal is to share wisdom teachings in a practical and accessible way.

Discover more about Cory here and find resources here. Follow Cory on Instagram and LinkedIn.

The monastery Cory resided at is Panditarama Hse Main Gon Forest Meditation Center in Burma.

Cory’s teacher, Sayadaw U Pandita

Sayadaw means “venerable teacher.”

Vipassana Meditation.

Walking meditation:

Attunement

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

The productivity tool Cory mentioned is ToDoist.

C.A.R.E. – Connect. Appreciate. Reveal. Empathize.

Two levels of pain: Primary and Secondary pain

Cory’s episode is the first one we filmed at our new Hoffman Podcast Studio at Santa Sabina.

“It was this conversation between three generations — but I was the only one who could speak. Someone wise told me to recognize the gifts that come with change. That was really a gift. There’s a connection there across generations. And that’s really what Hoffman does.”

Hoffman’s Director of Marketing, Mike Ingrasci, sits down with Drew to talk marketing, brand, and his Hoffman experience. The son of Raz and Liza Ingrasci, founders of the Institute, Mike’s experience of Hoffman goes way back. He shares, “I think that I got Hoffman a bit through osmosis, whether it was like whispers in the house, teachers who came to visit at dinner, just the way in which my parents raised us as children. …They really let us be kids, and they were protective of that, because they had done the Process, and they knew what that meant.”

Since Raz’s passing, Mike has reflected on the gifts that come with change. His friend suggested this as a way through the tough time ahead. Between the day Raz passed away, Dec 31, 2025, and the day of his Celebration of Life in March, Mike and Sara needed to take turns putting Leo to bed. Leo was going through a stage where he didn’t want to be left alone. So every other evening, Mike would lie on the floor by Leo, writing into his Notes app on his phone. One night, he realized that there were three generations linked – father, son, grandson – and only one of them – Mike – could speak. He continued to write the words from this generational connection, eventually sharing them with the over 1500 friends and family gathered. As Mike shares, this is a cornerstone of what Hoffman is about.

As Director of Marketing, one of Mike’s goals is to align and refine Hoffman’s brand to accurately reflect the decades of powerful transformational experiences of well over 100,000 Process graduates. When young, Mike had a hard time knowing how to talk about the Process. He knew his parents were ‘helping people,’ and that they loved and wholeheartedly believed in the Process. Once Mike took the Process in 2009, he understood, as a lived experience, what he could never conceptualize. And now, it is perfect that he is the guide for this elevation of Hoffman’s brand into something that reflects what it is and makes it welcoming, understandable, and reflective of its organic coolness. Armed with a mood board, Instagram, and a lifetime surrounded by Hoffman, Mike is crafting an ever-evolving invitation into the profound beauty and magic of the Hoffman Process.

For Mike, Brand = Promise + Experience + Reputation.  At Hoffman, these three things have always been incredibly strong. The Process delivers on its promise, the experience is transformative, and the reputation speaks for itself. Mike’s approach isn’t about changing any of that…it’s about building the world around it: creating an ecosystem that feels thoughtful, elevated, and welcoming for both people discovering Hoffman for the first time and graduates who continue to engage with it for years. His goal is simple: to make every touchpoint reflect the integrity of the Process, and elevate how Hoffman is experienced and perceived while remaining true to the work itself.

We hope you feel the warmth and care of this invitation and conversation.

https://youtu.be/OlvZy60Vjkc

Long before joining the Hoffman Institute as Director of Marketing, Mike Ingrasci was embraced by the Process. His parents, Raz and Liza Ingrasci, served as its stewards for decades. Hoffman was woven into the fabric of Mike’s childhood.

Over twelve years, Mike helped build John Elliott into one of the world’s most respected independent fashion brands. He led sales and brand marketing while helping shape its creative voice. During Mike’s tenure, the brand earned accolades, including GQ’s Best New Menswear Designer, presented runway shows in New York and Paris, and collaborated with globally recognized brands Nike, Converse, Gap, and more. That experience shaped Mike’s approach to marketing: the best stories don’t sell — they connect.

Follow Mike on Instagram and Facebook.

Raz and Liza Ingrasci, Founders of the Hoffman Institute Foundation

Mike filming during the Obama campaign.

Oprah and Raz on the Oprah Podcast

Maria Shriver shares her Process experience on the Oprah Podcast.

Hoffman on Instagram:

Inside(r) Baseball

New Age

Hoffman Process Scholarships

Ongoing Hoffman programs:

The iPhone Notes App

The Ingrasci Family photo, Thanksgiving, 2025

Charles “Raz” James Ingrasci Obituary

Video recording of Charles “Raz” Ingrasci Celebration of Life, March 14, 2026

“Look at the hoop, close your eyes, and think of something you love, and it will go through.” – Raz Ingrasci

“Love is a renewable resource.” – Raz Ingrasci

“There was something about the Process that really allowed me to understand that there’s also a lot of healing that comes from pleasure and play and connection, and to really disentangle the parts of me that were so attached to being a sufferer, to being someone who struggled.” – Sara Bissell Rubin

Medical Sociologist and Hoffman Process grad, Sara Bissell Rubin, holds a PhD in the neuroscience of pain and is a chronic pain educator. Sara joins Sadie to talk about the physical and emotional experience of pain, the science behind pain, and her experience in the Process as someone who lives with a chronic pain condition.

Special note: Sara’s video episode is one of the first recorded in our new Hoffman Podcast Studio at Santa Sabina, our new retreat site. So, welcome, Sara, and welcome all to our new podcast studio home.

This conversation is a warm doorway into a topic most of us would rather not discuss. With Sara’s wisdom and compassion, we can begin to change how we relate to our own pain. Sara shares that it can be hard to see our way out of pain when we’re in it. We learn to relate to pain in our childhood and take those patterns into adulthood. By disconnecting from these patterns through the Process, we can begin to relate to pain in a new way.

During her Process, Sara did exactly this. She saw that she tended to relate to pain through suffering and struggle. Through the Process, Sara found that play, pleasure, and connection are powerful allies in healing. Sara says she trusts in love and compassion and is reclaiming self-trust in relation to pain.

We hope you enjoy this healing conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPmSCfAfauM

Sara Bissell Rubin has spent a lot of her life thinking about pain. A medical sociologist and chronic pain educator, Sara received her PhD from UCSF. There, she studied how neuroscience makes sense of pain and how those understandings shape the way we think about and treat it. Before that, she was a clinical bodyworker providing hands-on care for people with severe chronic pain and PTSD.

During grad school, Sara developed her own chronic pain condition. This lent a layer of urgency and fervent curiosity to her research topic. She brings these three ways of knowing – academic, somatic, and lived experience – to her work as she guides individuals and groups towards finding their own resolution from chronic pain.

In part because of the nature of her work, which involves walking with people through the most difficult areas of their lives, Sara came to the Hoffman Process strongly identified with her dark side. She held a strong belief that life’s struggles were where the truth lay, and that embracing them was the only path to real healing. Sara also had a secret wish that the Process would finally fix her for good. Although she advocated in her research and her work for the human capacity for agency, she didn’t truly believe that change was possible because she hadn’t experienced any lasting change in herself. During her Process, Sara realized that the constant striving to be fixed was reinforcing the shame message that she was broken and in need of fixing in the first place, and that, for her, real growth comes from love, play, and connection.

Learn more about Sara at www.painfermata.com. Follow Sara on Instagram and Facebook.

Michael Klein, PhD, Therapist and teacher of Mindfulness and Self-Compassion

Chronic Daily Migraine

Sara’s teacher, Jason Beegle.

“It was always in a weird way, I wouldn’t say triggering, but I just didn’t like it. And then by the end, I really did love it. It just felt really heartwarming when different people in the Process, even still, since we all – a lot of us still keep in touch, and they call me Bubba, it makes me smile.” – Julie Shapiro

Hoffman grad, Julie Shapiro, found herself at a crossroads. She knew what she wanted to change in herself. Yet, she also felt unable to make that change. There’s change we can make through our choices, and then there’s change that must come from deeper within. The Hoffman Process works in this deeper place within us through the Cycle of Transformation. This is the place where the “magic” of the Process happens.

Julie’s story is one of courage, desire, and willingness. She came to the Process with profound scepticism. But she also came with a willingness to fully enter into the Process to allow change to happen within her, even though she couldn’t understand how it would happen.

In moments of silence in nature, time with a Buddha, and places where Julie knew she had to go deeper, the “magic” of transformation happened. She gained new insights and saw a deeply rooted pattern. In one moment that allowed her Process to go deeper, Julie realized she had to use the childhood nickname her father had given her on her name tag rather than her given name. She knew that, even though her nickname, Bubba, triggered her, using it would be important. And it turned out to be. As Julie shares, using Bubba “was the real way to connect with my childhood, connect with my parent relationship, work through some things that I may not have had the opportunity to do before he died, and just really connect with him.“ Connecting with her childhood unlocked something deeper within. Hearing fellow students call her Bubba began to bring her joy.

Beautiful, ineffable things can happen when you surrender to the Process, as Julie did. We hope you enjoy this heartfelt conversation with Julie and Sadie.

Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to change about yourself — but felt unable actually to make the change?

It was at that crossroads that Julie Shapiro signed up for the Hoffman Process. At 42, she felt that certain milestones, like marriage and starting a family, were out of reach. A lifelong New Yorker, she’d recently moved to Los Angeles and unexpectedly lost her dad within weeks of moving. A Stanford graduate, she set impossibly high standards for herself, both personally and professionally.

Julie had spent years in therapy, taken meditation courses, and tried other modalities to reduce anxiety. She was self-aware and could name her patterns. But awareness alone wasn’t moving the needle to evoke the changes she wanted.

The Hoffman Process was not something she ever would have considered. She expected it to be “woo woo” and couldn’t imagine that a one-week retreat had any long-term benefits. But despite her skepticism, she attended the Process in 2024, hoping it might unlock something within her.

The Process did just that. Through the Cycle of Transformation, Julie was able to move beyond her lawyer-trained intellect and tap into her emotional and spiritual selves. She discovered a deeply rooted pattern of living in survival mode — pushing through things that made her unhappy just to achieve the end goal. As the Process week unfolded, she began to believe that a spirit-led life, focused on “being” rather than “having,” was not only possible, but available to her.

Hoffman’s Q2 is a three-day program for Process graduates.

Early-onset Alzheimers

Drew Horning:

The Crossword

Awareness Hell:

The Cycle of Transformation:

Be-Do-Have vs. Do-Have-Be:

Recycling/pre-cycling is a tool and a practice for receiving wisdom from your own Spiritual Self, which gives you qualities that lead you directly to new behavior, authenticity, and the freedom to respond rather than react to patterns. You replace a pattern with an authentic quality of your Spiritual Self and embody that quality. You create new behavior from this embodiment.

Your Spiritual Self ultimately guides you on how to BE so that you DO what supports your being and HAVE what you need to support your living.

Read about Dark Side work in the Hoffman Q2.