How can I just be in the sensing of my life and the experiences that I have,

We are thrilled to have beloved Hoffman teacher and coach, Cindy Murray, as our guest today. Cindy responds to Drew’s question – Why the Process? – sharing a few reasons. Cindy had been very successful in her career as a psychotherapist and educator. After suffering a traumatic brain injury, Cindy was shaken. She’d relied heavily on her intellect in her career for success. How would she move forward now with this brain injury?

Cindy also found herself “in a conundrum within.” She’d grown up in a loving home with all her needs met. Her parents didn’t discuss feelings, but they were a beautiful, loving couple. Their marriage was Cindy’s role model for relationships, one that lasted more than 50 years. Then, Cindy fell deeply in love with a woman after being married to a man for about 10 years. Suddenly, she realized she had been living the model her parents taught her, but deep within, she understood this wasn’t who she truly is. 

During her time at the Process, Cindy reclaimed her true self. Post-Process, Cindy integrated what she learned and began to trust this new relationship with her Spiritual Self. Now, through her work as a Hoffman Process teacher, she holds space for her students to do the same. Listen in to hear Cindy’s journey to learn how to stop wrestling and fighting so she could come to meet her life as it unfolds.

This episode references child sexual abuse and may not be suitable for all audiences. Please use your discretion.

https://youtu.be/-tG6xa3SMos

Hoffman Process teacher, Cindy Murray, earned a Master of Clinical Social Work from Western Michigan University and is a graduate of the clinical training program in Analytical Psychotherapy from the CG Jung Institute of Chicago.

Cindy’s own Process was pivotal in her personal growth, leading her on the path of connection and presence. As a Hoffman Process teacher, she believes in helping students to further their own deep connection with themselves and to hold presence within themselves and in the world for those they love.

Cindy also teaches in the Social Work Department at Western Michigan University and volunteers for the LoveYourBrain Foundation, which empowers people with brain injury and caregivers to feel more resilient, connected, and able to lead fulfilling lives.

Originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Cindy currently lives in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada, near the Hoffman Canadian retreat site. She enjoys hiking and skiing in the mountains and swimming in the glacial lakes as often as she can.

Love Your Brain Foundation

“The relationship I have with my girls now is just remarkable. It’s remarkable. I’m so blessed.”

Husband, father, avid skier, and fly-fisher, Steve Cieciuch is living, in his words, a remarkable life. Steve begins his story recounting the 2004 horrific avalanche in British Columbia that he survived, but which took the life of his skiing partner and friend. Steve has lost five friends. Concurrently, Steve and his wife were trying to start a family. Over the years, they experienced five miscarriages. Eventually, they gave birth to two beautiful daughters.

In 2019, fifteen years after the avalanche and years of grief and depression, Steve came to the Hoffman Process. His children were under ten. Steve shares how clearly he saw how he was passing down these patterns of depression, worry, and stress to his daughters. Upon his return home from the Process, his daughters greeted him and told him that he’d “lost his stress face.”

One of the deeper threads that runs through this conversation is that of spirit, the afterlife, and other planes of existence. Steve recounts an experience of the ‘other side’ during the avalanche. And he shares his profound experience during the Process when he went outside after an intense experience. “I’m just seeing things like I’ve never seen them before. … I was seeing, the color in the trees, and I go on this hike, and I mean, it was just like mind-blowing, how visual and how in tune and how present I was. It was one of the greatest moments I’ve ever had.” 

Steve is now writing a memoir. He says he hopes “his daughters will see that their dad’s vulnerable, that he’s being authentic, that he’s had a lot of difficulty in his life, but he’s got back up, and he’s been resilient. He’s marched forward in the face of a lot of loss and still has a lot of joy. He’s trying to put his right foot forward all the time and lead a good life.”  

We hope you enjoy this remarkable conversation with Steve and Drew.

Please be aware that this episode includes details of traumatic events, reproductive grief, and substance abuse, and might not be suitable for all audiences. Please use your discretion.

Steve Cieciuch moved to Aspen in 1979 at age 18, drawn by a love of skiing, freedom, and the Rocky Mountain lifestyle. After deciding to make the mountains his permanent home, he began his real estate career in Telluride in 1987.

Over the past four decades, Steve has built a distinguished career in the San Juan Mountains, helping clients discover exceptional properties while developing and selling custom homes and ranches, building seven homes of his own—ranging from a historic renovation to a striking modern residence perched off a mountainside.

In 2019, Steve attended the Hoffman Process. This pivotal experience helped him process the anguish from the loss of five close friends, recognize lifelong patterns, and reshape how he relates to his family, work, and himself.

A husband and father of two daughters, Steve lives in Telluride with his wife, Kendall. He is an avalanche survivor, lifelong skier, fly fisherman, and pastel artist currently writing a memoir—a metaphorical journey through the eyes of a fly fisherman exploring deep friendship, tragic loss, and transformational renewal with the help of the Hoffman Process.

Steve has served as managing broker of Telluride Properties, consistently ranking among the region’s top producers. He contributes to his community through nonprofit leadership, including serving as Chairman of Mountainfilm.

Today, Steve views life as an ongoing process of growth, awareness, and deeper connection.

To find out more about Steve and Telluride Properties, follow him on Instagram and YouTube.

Free Ride, Big Mountain

British Columbia avalanche, 2004

Kevin Eyres, Hoffman teacher and coach

Jud Wiebe Trail, Telluride, CO

Karma

Fly fishing

Hoffman Process tools and practices

Morning Quad Checks and Evening Appreciation and Gratitude:

“I wanted to live my very best life. I wanted to know who I really am.” – Jan Docherty

Do you ever wonder who you really are? Today’s guest, Jan Docherty, did. She wanted to know who she really is and what she could accomplish living as her true self. Jan came to the Hoffman Process to find the answers to these questions. She left knowing herself and loving herself, too.

Jan joined Sadie for this forthright conversation about self-knowledge, passion, and healing. Jan is passionate about life. Adopted early on, life was unconventional in many ways. Now, as she looks ahead to her later years (she’s just become a senior citizen), Jan is fully focused on her business, Merridale Cidery and Distillery. For her, business is personal. It’s where she gets to bring her true self and full-on passion she discovered at the Hoffman Process. It’s where she gets to support and build community in meaningful ways.

With hard-earned wisdom, Jan shares what she’s learned about facing the painful moments in life. In a candid moment, she touches on one of the most painful moments in her Process. A mother of three, Jan speaks of the estrangement she’s experiencing with one of her children and how she’s navigating that since graduating from the Process. During her Process, Jan realized that, by living out her patterns, she harmed others, including her children, due to Negative Love. She learned that it is critically important to hold herself with both honesty and grace. She learned to be honest with herself and take responsibility for the harm, but also not to derail from her own healing. Jan knows that she did the best she could with what she had at the time. It is in this that she finds the grace to move forward.

Be aware that this conversation contains mentions of sexual abuse and child sexual abuse. Please use your discretion.

Jan Docherty is a Vancouver-born entrepreneur. Unconventional beginnings and a deep commitment to growth, resilience, and community have shaped her life. Adopted into a small, compassionate family, she was raised with strong values while navigating early life challenges that would later inform her perspective and strength. Jan’s childhood followed an unconventional path when she successfully auditioned for a CBC television series. She spent several years singing and dancing. As a result, much of her learning took place beyond the traditional classroom. Despite this unconventional path, Jan went on to earn a business degree from UBC. This grounded her in practical skills and a strong understanding of financial stewardship – lessons first instilled by her adoptive father. In her 30s, she connected with her birth parents, expanding her sense of identity with roots in both Toronto and Mexico.

Jan’s professional journey spans multiple chapters, from building residential homes alongside her partner to leading a thriving for-profit social enterprise in the food, beverage, and tourism industry for over 25 years. Today, she is the driving force behind Merridale Cidery and Distillery. Merridale is a values-based business set in an apple orchard, where a cidery, distillery, and eatery come together to create space for people to slow down and connect. Jan’s work is guided by a belief in integrity, both in the products she creates and the culture she fosters for her team, guests, and broader community. A mother of three and grandmother of two, Jan considers family, connection, and purpose to be her greatest achievements. Now at 65, she embraces this stage of life as her most meaningful yet: an ongoing adventure rooted in authenticity, contribution, and joy.

Vertical Integration (Vertically Integrated Business)

Hoffman Quadrinity Check-In

“I’ve just started to tap into that, trusting a little bit faster over time. Because I see that when I make these decisions that feel aligned with what I want, and I believe is right for me, that on the other side, I haven’t regretted one of those decisions.” Allison Kahler

Allison Kahler attended the Hoffman Process in 2024 after experiencing multiple big life changes. The Process helped her integrate these changes. One year later, Allison returned for the graduate Q2 in search of the catalyst that would move her forward into her new life.

Before coming to the Process, Allison, who grew up in an “idyllic, loving, Catholic family,” felt tremendous guilt. Having had a ‘perfect childhood,’ she wondered if, instead of doing self-reflection work, she should just be grateful. But she found that even in a ‘perfect’ childhood, we still adopt patterns. Allison had adopted messages of perfection and proving worth through achievement. She had internalized the external pressure she felt as a child, with work being her number one focus in life.

During her Process, Allison began to set the stage for her new life, realizing she is allowed to have dreams and desires. She started asking and listening to the quiet voice within. She started to develop a deeper trust in this voice. And she began to look for the spark that would launch her into her new life.

A year post-Process, Allison came to Hoffman’s graduate retreat, the Q2. There, she found the catalyst she was looking for through an experience of self-compassion. Finding self-forgiveness lit the catalytic spark. By listening to the quiet voice within and developing her trust muscle through sustained action, Allison is now living into her new life. We hope you enjoy this uplifting conversation with Allison and Sadie.

Allison Kahler is an executive coach and the host of The D. Tales with Allison Kahler. A recovering perfectionist and lifelong insecure overachiever, Allison spent nearly two decades in management consulting before realizing that much of her drive was fueled by fear, self-doubt, and deeply ingrained patterns formed early in life. After going through a divorce at 33, an experience that left her carrying years of guilt and shame, she made a series of life-altering changes: leaving a nearly 20-year consulting career, moving cross-country from Chicago to Santa Monica, and questioning not just her marriage and career, but who she was and who she wanted to become.

Allison’s experience at The Process marked a profound turning point. Through a deep commitment to the daily tools and practices, she began to shed limiting beliefs, transform long-held patterns, and learn to meet herself with greater self-compassion. Today, Allison supports leaders and individuals navigating transition, working with organizations as an executive coach and advisor. She works with individuals through The D. Tales, her podcast. There, she shares real divorce stories and grounded conversations with experts about identity, healing, and rewriting the next chapter of their lives. At the heart of her work is a belief shaped by lived experience: that even our most painful life transitions can become powerful invitations to reconnect with who we truly are and move forward with greater clarity, courage, and self-trust.

Discover more at AllisonKahler.com. Follow Allison on Instagram. Follow The D. Tales on Instagram and TikTok.

The D. Tales with Allison Kahler — available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms.

The Hoffman Q2 Intensive Dates and Registration

Kevin Eyres, Hoffman teacher – Listen to Kevin on the Hoffman Podcast: Beyond the Intellect

Self-compassion:

Listen to Kristin Neff on the Hoffman Podcast: Goodwill & Intention, the Magic Ingredients

Hoffman Tools:

“It’s huge to find out that who you are is really not who you’re afraid you are,

Beloved Hoffman teacher, Andy Milberg, has been teaching the Process since August 1991. Bob Hoffman, founder of the Hoffman Process, trained Andy to become a teacher. One thing Andy is known for is his articulate, nuanced ability to explain the foundational theory of the Process – Negative Love.

Drew and Andy dive deep into the Negative Love Syndrome and how it plays out in our lives. Showing how nuanced this syndrome is, he shares that he is still discovering more subtle ways this plays out in his life, even these many years later.

Andy shares a fair amount of Hoffman history. He explains that Bob Hoffman was concerned with the pain human beings seem to experience and sought a way to be free of it. Bob asked two very important questions. The first was, “Why do seemingly rational adults continue to act out, automatically, compulsively, in self-defeating ways?” The second question was, Why is it so hard to change that behavior? Bob Hoffman discovered this fundamental theory by asking this second question.

When Andy did the Process in his early forties, his attitude toward himself was that this was how he’d always been. But at the Process he was quite happy to discover that how he was is not how he always has to be. He found, post-Process, that there was much more available to him after he broke free of the power his patterns had on him. There was space for new possibilities in his life. Andy explains that this is the kind of change Hoffman means in our tagline When you’re serious about change. You don’t become somebody different. Rather, you reclaim your potential and all you can be.

We hope you take away a deeper understanding of the poignancy of human nature and the possibility of reconnecting with your essential nature. You’ll want to bookmark this one so you can return to it.

Andy did the Hoffman Process in July of 1990. He was immediately inspired to become a teacher, completing his training in August of 1991.

“Although I had done a lot of personal growth work before”, he says, “the Process went deeper in so many ways, showing me my blind spots and then teaching me how to move beyond them into my authenticity. It was an amazing gift I wanted to share with others, and still do, 35 years later.”

Andy spends most of the year in Ajijic, Mexico, with his wife and dog. He commutes to teach, while also coaching. In his spare time, he likes to play music and table tennis.

Bob Hoffman, Founder of the Hoffman Process

Listen to Andy’s previous episode on The Hoffman Podcast: Reflections on Teaching the Process.

The Negative Love Syndrome and The Path to Personal Freedom and Love:

John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame That Binds Us

Brenè Brown

The Negative Love Syndrome and the Negative Love Syndrome map are integral to the Hoffman Process.**

At 24:49, Andy shares:

“Then there’s another circle, which is who we’re afraid we are, which, in Process terms, is that shame statement.” (This is the next circle out. It’s gray and labeled shame.)

“And because of that, there’s a bigger circle, which is who we want the world to think we are, so they don’t know that we’re the shameful person that we think we are.” (This bigger circle is comprised of the four yellow/gold rings. This is the false self they refer to.)

The good news is that we are neither our shame statement nor our patterns. We are Essence, our Spiritual Self.

22:22 Talking about the arrows:

**The Hoffman Process®, including the Negative Love Syndrome®, is protected worldwide as intellectual property, encompassing trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. The Hoffman Institute International owns the rights to all materials, concepts, and methodologies, and it is strictly prohibited to reuse or sell these materials, concepts, and methodologies.

“I have all these learned behaviors, and … was seeing them play out in my own family, with my own children, and thinking about the generational transference of hurt and wounds and wanting to do what I could to minimize that.” – Carrie Levine

Certified nurse-midwife and functional medicine practitioner Carrie Levine has had a lifelong interest in deep exploration. She completed the Hoffman Process in 2024, having learned about patterns years earlier from reading Bob Hoffman’s book, No One Is to Blame. She truly understood Bob Hoffman’s realization that “No one is to blame.”

Self-described as weird when young, Carrie explored a variety of unusual passions as a teen, including challenging activities in nature. In early adulthood, Carrie led women through outdoor experiential educational adventures, guiding them to become skilled and empowered in a variety of settings. Later, as she embarked on a new career in medicine, Carrie drew parallels between supporting women in nature and supporting them in the labor room. She found the skills and presence she’d gained earlier also empowered women during childbirth.

Sharing her journey, Carrie highlights how she came to learn about herself. She is clear that she must be aligned with her Spiritual Self and reflects on how she doesn’t do well when she isn’t aligned. She now counsels her patients that optimal health can only come when we are aligned with our core self. Carrie refers many women to the Hoffman Process. She sees that women, especially parents, need to step away from their everyday lives to do deep healing work. Her experience now helps others realize the importance of aligning mind, body, and spirit for optimal wellness.

This episode mentions the death of a child and suicide. Please use your discretion. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK, or 800-273-8255. Or message the Crisis Text Line at 741 741.

Carrie E. Levine, CNM, FMCP-M, is the founder of the Whole Woman Health Clinic and author of Whole Woman Health: A Guide to Creating Wellness for Any Age and Stage. A certified nurse midwife and Institute for Functional Medicine certified practitioner, she evaluates and treats most common women’s health concerns by integrating gynecology and functional medicine. For more than two decades, Carrie has worked to help women find wholeness, connecting physical symptoms and test results with lifestyle choices and daily practices.

Previously, Carrie practiced gynecology and functional medicine at the renowned Women to Women clinic in Maine (2006–2014), and earlier provided full-scope midwifery at Miles Memorial Hospital (now Maine Health Lincoln) in Damariscotta, Maine. She’s known for deeply listening, “connecting the dots” among seemingly unrelated symptoms and emotions, and breaking personal health goals into attainable steps so clients can thrive emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Carrie earned a BS from Syracuse University, an RN and MSN from Case Western Reserve University, and a Nurse-Midwifery certificate from what is now the Frontier Nursing University.  She is a member of ACNM (national and Maine chapters), the Maine Nurse Practitioners Association, and the Institute for Functional Medicine.

Learn more about Carrie and sign up for her free weekly newsletters featuring recipes, podcasts, articles, and more. Follow Carre on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

The Medical Panel episode on The Hoffman Podcast:

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson

Biking in Nova Scotia – cycling tours

Johari’s Window

Macrobiotics

Women to Women Healthcare Center

Taos Pueblo, New Mexico

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, by John Gray

Ruth Lockhart, Founder of  Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, Bangor, Maine

Health in Our Hands

Doula Training

The Community Nurse Midwifery Education Program, Frontier Nursing University, Kentucky

Midwifery

MaineHealth, Lincoln, Maine

Sympathetic Nervous System

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, by Judith Warner

Marcelle Pick

No One Is to Blame, by Bob Hoffman

Hand on Heart

Recycling Patterns

“Oddly enough, it’s the vulnerability that connects us.

Mike Depatie, Founding Partner of KHP Capital Partners, attended the Hoffman Process in 2005. At the Process, Mike looked around the room and felt like he didn’t belong. He wasn’t even sure it was right for him because he felt he had a kind of Leave-it-to-Beaver childhood. Mike stayed through that discomfort and came to understand that even though he felt he had nothing in common with those he was with, he had come to love them. He realized that everyone is lovable if you really get to know them, including himself.

Mike came to the Process through his role as President and CEO of Kimpton Hotels. Kimpton leadership encouraged employees to connect with themselves, so they would ultimately connect at a deeper and more effective level with their teammates and customers. To that end, employees were given the chance to do the Hoffman Process. Mike agreed to come. After attending, he says the Process helps people discover the best version of themselves. The business advice he offers is to “figure out who the hell you are, and then fully step into that.”

Mike is the informal leader of Qfish, an annual fishing trip whose members are all Hoffman Process grads, including Raz Ingrasci, a long-time participant. They called themselves Qfish, like the Hoffman Q2 retreat. For the past 20 years, they’ve fished together and processed things like they’d learned to do at their Process. Both Raz and Drew Horning have attended these Qfish gatherings.

We hope you enjoy this engaging conversation with Mike and Drew.

Mike Depatie is a seasoned hospitality and investment leader best known for serving as President and CEO of Kimpton Hotels, which he led for over a decade before its sale to IHG in 2015. Under his leadership, Kimpton became the world’s largest boutique hotel company with over 60 hotels and a celebrated workplace and brand. Kimpton was named one of Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Places to Work multiple times.

Mike is now a Founding Partner of KHP Capital Partners, an active investor in hospitality real estate. With a Harvard MBA, he has held senior roles across hospitality, real estate, and technology. He’s served on multiple boards. Mike lives in Napa with his wife, Holly, and their 16-year-old yellow lab, Cabo.

Raz Ingrasci:

David Bork

Fly-fishing

Hoffman Q2, graduate intensive

Zen (as an adjective)

The Enneagram

Leave it to Beaver

Joseph Campbell

Davos ‘takeaways’ on YouTube

The All In Podcast

Peter Diamandas

Watch Raz on The Oprah Podcast

Zig Ziglar

“Welcome your enemy, welcome the darkness. Let everybody come and sit with you at the table.

Before discovering the Hoffman Process, Tamsyn Strydom shares that her life had “quietly begun to shut down.” She felt overwhelmed, facing unexplained health challenges and struggling to get out of bed after relocating to a new country.

Coming to the Process with a Hoffman scholarship and a quiet, desperate urgency to heal, Tamsyn felt hope. She knew that doing the Process would mark a profound turning point in her life.

At the Process, Tamsyn gave it her all. She met all parts of herself, the light and the dark. She faced everything with a willingness to change. Tamsyn left feeling incredible. Yet it only took a week back home for her to fall back into the darker patterns that had brought her to Hoffman in the first place.

Once home, Tamsyn had shared with others how good she felt. Now, she felt shame that the patterns had returned. Rather than saying anything to anyone, she began to isolate. This is when she found a profound willingness within. With nowhere to run to, nowhere else to go, she had to surrender again as she’d done at the Process. Now, she had to do it on her own. It was time to sit with the darkness, time to come to know and love herself deeply.

Listen in to hear how Tamsyn made her way through this challenge and into her new life. She credits the Hoffman Process as a pivotal catalyst that helped her reclaim her capacity, deepen her self-trust, and step fully into this next chapter of her life.

Content Warning: This episode references disordered eating.

Tamsyn is the founder of Radiant Growth and Khanyisa Institute, and the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Lo Sono Integrative Health. All three are dedicated to functional medicine, well-being, longevity science, and leadership evolution. Through her work in clinical and integrative health environments, she has supported thousands of patients. She brings a rare blend of medical insight and performance-driven leadership. Drawing on her background in integrative health and experience within clinical environments, her work bridges the realities of business demands, health, and human performance. She partners with physicians and clinical teams, serving as the bridge between patients and providers to integrate the often-missing “healing from within” dimension alongside medical care.

A keynote speaker and leadership performance expert, Tamsyn Strydom helps high-performing founders and leaders elevate business results, performance, and health. Most leaders try to think their way through burnout, culture issues, and performance gaps. But real change starts on the inside. Tamsyn works with those who appear successful on the outside but feel disconnected, reactive, or stretched thin behind the scenes. She equips them to rebuild self-trust, emotional resilience, and clarity so they can lead more effectively and create real impact without burning out. Personally trained and certified within Dr. Joe Dispenza’s authorized practitioner network, this is one of several dimensions that inform her approach.

Originally from South Africa, Tamsyn is building a life in the U.S. that feels like a story worth telling. A story of new countries, getting intentionally lost in new cities, and deep talks at 1 AM about purpose, passion, and why we’re really here.

Learn more at TamsynStrydom.com. Follow Tamsyn on Facebook and Instagram.

Willingness: 

Self-compassion:

“I used to believe that I needed to transcend being human to be enough,

Beloved Hoffman Process teacher and coach, Alyssia Sheikh, is our guest today. When she did the Process eight years ago, Alyssia’s sense of self, her sense of ‘me,’ changed dramatically from her time there. Out of this new sense of self, profound change and transformation came to both Alyssia and her post-Process life. Now, with a master’s degree in Mindfulness Studies, she is also a certified life coach, speaker, and trauma-sensitive meditation teacher. As Alyssia states, “Who I am today is really thanks to my Process experience.”

On the first day of her Process, Alyssia entered brand new territory when she was handed the ‘Hoffman feelings list.’ Feelings weren’t a part of her childhood. She’d been “living, waiting to feel, and not knowing how to do it.” But now, immersed in awareness of this deeper part of herself, Alyssia sensed a “rich intelligence” new to her. Before her eyes, life went from grayscale to full color. She was shocked, intrigued, and profoundly curious about these deeper capacities of being human. Alyssia awakened to what it means to be a human being rather than a human doing, now fully aware that being human is messy – and that isn’t a problem.

Exploring shame in her Process was pivotal and held a profound lesson. Now, as a Hoffman teacher, shame is Alyssia’s favorite part of the Process to teach. Shame’s lessons have brought Alyssia liberation. In moving toward it, she realized that shame is not her and she is not shame. She would never have become a Hoffman Process teacher if she hadn’t learned shame’s lessons.

We hope you enjoy this conversation with Alyssia and Sadie.

Alyssia Sheikh holds a master’s degree in Mindfulness Studies and is a certified life coach, speaker, and trauma-sensitive meditation teacher. Her work centers on presence, emotional awareness, and helping people move out of autopilot and into a more connected, alive experience of being human.

Drawing from mindfulness, neuroscience, and embodied practice, Alyssia supports individuals in relating to themselves with greater clarity, curiosity, and self-trust.

Alyssia is also the host of the Relish podcast, where she explores joy, presence, and meaningful living beyond self-improvement and fixing. Through personal storytelling and practical insight, her work invites people to savor life as it is and reconnect with the inherent wholeness of being human. She is a Hoffman Process teacher and continues to be deeply shaped by the work—both personally and in how she guides others.

Find out more about Alyssia and follow her on Instagram. Follow the Relish Podcast on Instagram.

The Relish Podcast, with Alyssia Sheikh

Hoffman Process Feelings and Sensations List

The Quadrinity – body, intellect, emotional self, and Spiritual Self.

Watch the video Alyssia references on our website.

“We teach what we need to learn.” – Gloria Steinem

“Trust in your inner knowing. Absolutely. And know that your angels do have your back.” – Nicole Olivier

Screenwriter and Hoffman Process graduate Nicole Olivier has a profound ancestral history. As a daughter of families active in France and Norway’s WWII Resistance, she grew up hearing family stories of moral courage and being of service. Nicole has woven these ancestral stories into her life’s work and art.

Nicole is mindful of her ancestral patterns and epigenetics; how trauma was passed down and lives inside of her. During her childhood, she witnessed what was going on and attuned to the power dynamics playing out amid her parents’ divorce. As we all do, she developed patterns to get her through these early years. What’s beautiful about Nicole’s story is how she has worked and studied to understand the origins of those dynamics. The Hoffman Process, understanding somatics, and knowing the lineage of ancestral history supported her in releasing the power of those patterns. Transforming them and realizing they are not who she is supported a deeper capacity to witness and honor her ancestors’ profound courage and strength.

Through her dedicated drive to understand how the unconscious is shaped in our early years and foster tools to cultivate compassion, Nicole now brings her wisdom more fully to the current focus of her art, screenwriting. Most recently, Nicole attended the Hoffman Q2 after the loss of her mother. Caring for her mother after a stroke until her peaceful passing was a deep act of service for Nicole. Now an ancestor, her mother is inspiring Nicole’s next screenplay. Her wish is to honor her mother and her mother’s life.

Photo credit: Jonathan Condit

We hope you find this conversation with Nicole and Sadie insightful and inspiring. Please be aware that this episode mentions and includes stories of genocide, World War II, and the devastating events of these times. It describes the experience of a young child participating in France’s WWII Resistance. Please use your discretion.

Fascinated by human behavior and how the subconscious is shaped in formative years, Nicole Olivier majored in psychology at Mills College, studied at the Sorbonne, spoke about maintaining morale at the Western Psychology Association’s Convention, and participated in Stanford University’s inaugural Compassion Cultivation program.

After a brief but award-winning career as an advertising copywriter in Manhattan and San Francisco, inspired by childhood influences from international cinema to sitcoms, Nicole wrote her first feature script in seven days – a spontaneous creative outpouring that launched her screenwriting path. She then reached the second round of the Sundance Screenwriting Competition twice and was selected as one of twelve writers for the Olympic Valley Community of Writers Screenwriters Workshop. Her mentor there was the gracious, Oscar-nominated Tom Rickman, founding Creative Advisor of the Workshop and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.

The daughter of families active in France and Norway’s WWII Resistance, Nicole developed a keen sensitivity to power dynamics and hypervigilance amid shifts sparked by her parents’ divorce. She channeled insights into her screenwriting, weaving in Thomas Hübl‘s epigenetic work, Peter Levine‘s somatics, EMDR, and tapping.

Learning meditation in the early ’90s from spiritual mentor Jack Kornfield offered Nicole a model of benevolent leadership. In the film world, this was echoed by dear friend and mentor, Tom Luddy, founder of the Telluride Film Festival. Working alongside Christine Aylward, CEO of the former filmmakers’ forum, MakingOf, co-founded by Natalie Portman, underlined the importance of connecting with positive, values-based people.

Caring for her wise, vibrant mother after a stroke in San Francisco until her peaceful passing nearly four years later inspired Nicole’s next screenplay, honoring the life of this heroic, service-oriented dynamo.

Nicole welcomes new connections with creative allies and benefactors drawn to champion female filmmakers writing with levity about love, courage, and intergenerational healing.

You can connect with Nicole on Facebook and LinkedIn, or by writing to her at writenicoleolivier {at} gmail {dot} com.

The Hoffman Q2 Intensive

White Sulphur Springs, Hoffman retreat site, lost in the Glass fire.

WW2 Resistance

The Bolshevik Revolution

“Your issues are in your tissues.”

A definition of Epigenetics

Somatics

Scarlet Fever

Nice, France

Palo Alto, California

Fight, Flight, Freeze

YouTube videos of fainting’ goats.

Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974

Airline policy for unaccompanied minors

“Everything is either love or a call for love.” A Course in Miracles

Have recommended the Hoffman Process:

Expression:

The Hoffman Centering Practice

Hoffman Coaching

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Coit Tower, San Francisco