The Mike Mantell Podcast

Jason Suran is a New York based mentalist and performance artist. His unique blend of psychological illusions and immersive storytelling has led him to perform around the world from Haiti to Dubai and on various networks including NBC ESPN, and FOX. Originally from Chicago, Jason first moved east to attend New York University where his interest in non-traditional storytelling steered him towards magic and more specifically … the history and methods of modern psychics. His most recent theatrical project (The Other Side: A Psychological Séance) is an exploration of death, faith and the rise of spiritualism in 19th century America.

In this episode we unpack what mentalism is, talk about persevering through low-points, and explore what happens after death.

Find Jason’s work at www.jasonsuran.com

Here’s his IG: https://www.instagram.com/jasonsuran/

Highlights:
-Mentalism as a sub-genre of magic
-Mentalism as ‘magic designed to simulate psychic phenomena’
-The 4 components of mentalism
-The origin and history of mentalism
-How Jason decided to bring back Seances from the history of mentalism
-Integrity in mentalism
-The temptation for a mentalist to pretend to be magical
-How to take a dishonest endeavor and extract an emotionally honest experience
-Going all the way with his seance – simulating communicating with the dead
-What emotions people experience during a seance
-The experience of longing
-Every ghost story starts with a love story’
-When we love someone and then they die, what do we do with all that energy?
-It doesn’t matter if ghosts are real, but why do we care if they are?
-How Jason got interested in the seance aesthetic
-How experiencing several deaths in a year shifted Jason’s seance
-The unpredictability of grief
-What DOES happen after death?
-How meditation changed Jason’s life
-Why mentalists are materialists
-How Jason has dealt with self-doubt and impostor-syndrome on his artistic journey
-‘You have to need it versus want it”
-The importance of realizing you love practicing something
-What would happen if a mentalist never turned it off
-The reveal of Uri Geller
-The two types of psychic performers
-Does Jason ever wonder if he’s actually communicating with spirits?
-Jason’s unwillingness to reveal his trick to me!
-How Jason feels about people revealing mentalism on youtube
-How Disneyland uses mystique
-Art includes some degree of deception to get at human truth
-When to take a leap of faith in belief
-Gambling for entertainment, not for high stakes

Here’s the video of Uri Geller we discuss:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqCJDpNnHNI

And the phony tai-chi master:
http:// https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I

ENJOY!!! Much love <3

The post MMP #22 Mentalism and The Séance with Jason Suran appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Alexandra Stockwell, MD is a Physician turned Relationship and Intimacy Expert who is known as The Relationship Catalyst. As a wife of 23 years and a mother of four, she believes the key to passion, fulfillment, intimacy and success in a couple’s relationship isn’t compromise–it’s being unwilling to compromise–because when both people feel free to be themselves, and know how to love and be loved for exactly who they are, the relationship is juicy, nourishing, and deeply satisfying.

For over 20 years, she has shown men and women how to bring pleasure and purpose into all aspects of life–from the daily grind of running a household, to successfully growing a business, to creating ecstatic experiences in the bedroom!  Alexandra helps build connected and happy families through facilitating healing and transformation for couples.

Check her out and subscribe to her newsletter at https://www.alexandrastockwell.com/
Find the 6 qualities of a conscious partnership that she mentions in our convo here: https://www.alexandrastockwell.com/6Q/

In this episode we talk about her spiritual journey, growth, the different types of relationship, and the most common cause to a dormant sex-life in partnership.

Highlights
-Creating emotional intimacy and sensual passion in a committed relationship
-Alexandra’s spirituality has been private, and for her
-Her upbringing, living with parents who lived unconventionally in pursuit of meaning
-The fear that men witnessing childbirths would have heart-attacks
-Alexandra sleeping over at her friend’s ashram in 9th grade
-Why she’s kept her spirituality to herself
-Her allergy to people losing themselves in community
-Alexandra’s favorite personal-growth saying
-Her focus is learning resonant, authentic connection
-Using everything that arises in relationship to create more connection
-How Alexandra found her way into intimacy work
-How coaching let Alexandra draw on all of herself while still being professional
-The lack of “conventional” lifestyles in the personal-growth world
-What transformed Alexandra’s life was maintaining radiance while serving food to a grumpy kid
-Alexandra’s 3 secrets for showing up radiant to all aspects of life
-Her commitment to her husband’s personal growth and vice versa
-The beauty of observing another human grow up and evolve
-The balance between growth and fulfillment
-What IS growth?
-The 4 types of partnerships: toxic, termination, toleration, conscious
-25% of couples with children fully intend to split once the children leave home
-Relationships that are conflict-free and passion-free
-What is a conscious partnership
-Using whatever arises in relationship to create more connection
-How conflict can lead to connection
-The trap of relationship compromise
-Sex as a microcosm to the rest of the relationship
-Showing up unapologetically who they are in communication outside the bedroom is the best aphrodisiac
-The importance of a win-win dynamic in a relationship

Please enjoy the intellectual and heartellectual stimulation within.

<3

The post MMP #21 Partnership as a Vehicle for Transformation with Alexandra Stockwell appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Danielle Caners is the pilot of a magnificent space shuttle bringing you on a journey to the depths of the earth, far into the cosmos and back to the core of your being. Her art is the synthesis of an untameable thirst to learn, create, and grow. Her paintings are tapestries of visual codes that reward viewers with new discoveries every time they are revisited – each one embedded with ancestral wisdom, wonder of nature and practical observations of what it is to live a fulfilled life. As an artist, healer, teacher and wild woman, Danielle brings together her many gifts to guide us to self-actualization.

Check her out here:
https://artistherbalist.com/
https://www.instagram.com/artist.herbalist/
https://www.facebook.com/danielle.caners

In this episode we talk about going through dark times, how to find inspiration, visualization practices, and Cosmologia – Danielle’s massive project of investigating the astrological frameworks across ancient cultures.

Highlights from this episode:
-How she uses her artwork to teach, heal, and bring out the best in others
-Danielle identifies as a student of life, first and foremost!
-How Life tends to lead Danielle, and not the other way around
-How Danielle knows what her intuition is pointing her towards
-How synchronicities fit into Danielle’s worldview
-Life is one big synchronicity
-How Danielle found herself pursuing a purpose-driven life
-Loin-cloth life periods
-The questions guiding Danielle’s life
-The human experience is all about evolution
-Stagnancy sucks!
-Danielle’s retreat in her cabin
-Danielle’s visualization practice
-Using visualization to find inspiration
-Inspiration boosting us to take risks
-How Burning Man gives inspiration of what’s possible
-Qualities that make Danielle a beast: relentlessness, impeccability with one’s word, love for intensity, doing the uncomfortable
-High or lows can become peak experiences that use intensity to teach us about who we are
-Cultivating relentlessness like training a muscle
-Danielle’s journey into astrological symbols and ancient civilizations
-Using astrological signs as archetypes
-Danielle’s new announcement on a macroscopic mandala!
-Common threads that run through different cultures’ astrological signs
-How Danielle marries modern science and ancient magic into her worldview
-Dispelling watered-down, cheeses astrology
-Business as an extension of art
-Danielle’s intention with her art
-“Master the art of saying no, so you can create space to receive your hell yes”

Please allow this hour-long string of symbolically-coded noises to enter through your earholes into your brain and be magically translated into insights in your mindscape.

<3

The post MMP #20 The Wisdom of the Stars with Danielle Caners appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers have dedicated their lives to the study and exploration of the human psyche and its relationship with the non-material world, through spirituality, psychology, personal development, sexuality, and BDSM. They founded the Light Dark Institute out of a passion for sharing the ways that exploring our dark sides can radically awaken and liberate us from the old patterns that have held us back and kept us in judgement of ourselves and the world around us. Their work has been featured in publications and programs including The Atlantic and MTV, and their teachings are sought after nationally and internationally by those with a desire to awaken their ability to be a full “yes” to everything that is, no matter what it looks like.

The Light Dark Institute is dedicated to expanding and enriching the range of human experience through helping people fall in love with the aspects of themselves and the world around them which they have previously disapproved of or rejected. They work with thought leaders, conscious communities, and anyone who has a burning desire to know themselves fully with nothing held back. Their work teaches people to engage the darker, unknown aspects of themselves and their world with play and curiosity, so that they can step into a life of living and loving with full power, full surrender, and deep fulfillment.

In this episode we talk about their wild journey into partnership, Leslie’s dark awakening, Tani’s swearing off and eventual return to darkness, and the difference between conscious and unconscious expression of your darkness.

Highlights
-The story of how Tani and Leslie met
-Tani’s quest for a 24/7 dominant partner
-Leslie’s Dark Awakening
-How they went from not knowing each other, to more than married in a night
-Leslie’s practice of getting out of his shell was slow and gradual, but the Dark Lust night broke it all open
-Leslie accessing a Dark God owning a Talisman (Tani), and seeing himself as fearless in this state
-Them seeing their impact, creating a field of permission on their community
-How Tani had always been drawn to the extremes of light and darkness in her life
-Tani’s wondering how to balance her wholesome spirituality with dark-kinky-sexual-fantasies earlier in her life
-Tani’s confusion earlier in her life about how to balance being an empowered woman with the desire to being humiliated by a man
-How Tani didn’t resonate with the kink community, but used to try to bring kinkiness out of her partners
-How Tani swore off kink, darkness, and sex for 3 years to exclusively pursue purity
-How this path dried Tani out from the inside
-How a single thought broke the darkness-blocking dam for Tani
-Going so deep into fantasy, popping out into a deeper reality
-Channeling creatures and finding new perspectives therein
-From the perspective of his Creature, God does not exist
-How Leslie’s creature wouldn’t allow Tani to be any smaller than he saw her to be
-How Leslie’s coaching practice changed after the Darkness Awakening
-Using kink not just for pleasure, but for transformation
-Opening the dark places can be the fastest route to personal growth
-Unpacking what darkness means
-Distinguishing between lightwork and darkwork
-“Everything is about sex. Except for sex, and that’s about power” – Oscar Wilde
-Civilization is created by drawing the line between sexual and non-sexual
-How Tani and Leslie’s archetypal dynamic has evolved over time into her coming into power and him into softness
-When dark parts come up, instead of stopping, they lean into it
-How to work through shame of expressing archetypes
-When you feel shame, it’s some part of you shaming another part of you
-Light work is taking responsibility for projection, darkwork is leaning into your projections
-Going into our darkest places with consciousness and approval leads to deep care
-Our darkness will come out no matter what. It’s just a matter of if we give permission or not
-The map of dark archetypes

I hope your listening experience is a WILD ride!

<3

The post MMP #19 The Journey Into Darkness with Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Kara-Leah is an internationally-renowned teacher, writer and retreat leader. Millions of people have been impacted by the articles, books and videos she has published over the last ten years. Her passion is liberation in this lifetime through an every day path of dissolving layers of the conditioned mind into deeper and deeper presence.

Her work, through her teaching, writing and retreats, focuses on using the process of inquiry to reveal conditioned mind and so help people to drop down into beingness and presence. Kara-Leah is the founder of New Zealand’s most popular yoga website The Yoga Lunchbox and the creator of the Forty Day Process – a method to change or install habits into your daily life.

Here’s her website, FB, and her most recent book, Sex, Drugs (and mostly) Yoga

In this conversation we talk about her life journey since her first spiritual awakening, her relationship with ambition and personal growth, and the distinction between intimacy and romance.

Conversational Highlights
-Her history with partying and doing ecstasy in London
-Her first spiritual awakening from a past life regression
-How she started questioning societal norms at 11
-The dangers of combining psychedelics with spiritual practice without knowing what you’re doing
-Her going into psychosis
-Her deep rebellious energy that moved her through hard times
-Famous people who died around their Saturn Returns
-The pressures of fame
-The daily work to get back to ultimate truth
-Her 1,000 day practice
-Writing as a way to claim experiences and dissolve shame
-The awareness that perceives is non local
-How people are co-opting spiritual tools for consumer pursuits
-Creative projects have their won dharma
-Working with fantasy, presumption, and expectation in relationship
-Intimacy and romance
-Interacting with a person vs our projection of a person

Books mentioned in this conversation:
The Celestine Prophecy
The Play of Awakening

Boom shockalocka! I hope this conversation lights a fire under your bum as it did to my own.

<3 Mike

The post MMP #18 Hardcore Spiritual Dedication with Kara-Leah Grant appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Lauren Searles is a Tantric Love and Sex Coach for evolutionary men and women who desire to Thrive in Love. She empowers change-makers to embody their True Heart Radiance by transmuting their deepest pain into their greatest gift. By knowing your True Worth as a Sovereign Soul, one can connect to their inherent Divinity through Sacred Sex and Romantic Love.

By weaving together both ancient Tantric ideology, as well as modern psychology, her approach in her coaching work is infused with compassion as a super power as she helps people rewire their nervous system to their optimal state.

Check out her website here: https://www.loveangelcoaching.com/

In this episode we talk about the distinction between neo-Tantra and classical-Tantra, tips to connect more to your sexuality, consensual kinky sex-magic, and heartbreak as initiation.

Conversational Highlights:
-Defining Tantra
-How Tantra is re-emerging in modern times
-Balancing Tantra with healing the inner child
-Heart-mind-body
-Integrating different energy centers in the body
-The cultural importance of liberating sex
-Orgasm as a connection to divinity
-Yoga on psychedelics
-Ujjayi breathing and connected breathing
-Ancient Tantrics as the original consciousness hackers
-Using self-pleasure to rewire your brain
-Using self-pleasure to visualize and manifest
-Consensual kinky sex magic
-Using BDSM to empower her Goddess
-Bringing intentionality into lovemaking
-Heartbreak as an initiation
-Using divine love to heal human love
-Impermanence as the fundamental spiritual principle

Have a blast, get trippy, expand yo’ mind, enjoy the listen <3

The post MMP #17 Unpacking Tantra with Lauren Searles appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Dante Garcia is a strategist and a co-founder at Story 2 Designs — a design cooperative dedicated to working with progressive projects to make transformation irresistible. Born in Seattle, he grew up being politically active and an artist. In 2015 he was part of the organizing core of Seattle’s resistance to Arctic drilling in the ShellNo campaign.

Today he is a trainer-practitioner at the Center for Story-based Strategy. He values justice, creative self-expression, paradox, historical context, the long game, and joy. You can find him biking across Seattle hills from meeting to meeting and geeking out about a post-capitalist world.

In this episode we talk about the paradigm of viewing life as a story, the battle against addictive entertainment, the grueling path of self-actualization, and what makes for a good story to collectively stave off global warming.

Highlights from this conversation
-How Dante’s company helps people tell better stories about themselves
-Humans can’t help but to create narrative
-Reframing interpretations of reality
-Walking through the darkness to the other side
-Society’s obsession with dystopic plots
-What’s a healthy apocalypse look like
-Holding paradox
-Creating a story around climate change to enroll everyone
-Entertainment is stealing our attention
-Connecting with oneself to find purpose
-Purpose takes time!
-When will humans go extinct?
-Our humanity is withering with the Earth
-The psychology of colonizing Mars
-Study the greats
-Create space to practice new identities
-Capitalism created technology which is eating capitalism
-Self-actualizing is exhausting
-We can create anything, but it takes time
-Thought-partnership

Boom! There ya have it. I hope this episode propels your human plot in a desirable direction.

<3

The post MMP #16 Life As A Meaningful Story with Dante Garcia appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Joshua Hathaway, M.A., is a father, lover and Transformational Trickster devoted building a more beautiful, equitable, and consensual world, one conversation at a time. Through training and coaching individuals, couples, and organizations in exquisite communication and collaboration at MasterYourBullshit.com, he has been championing authentic connection in the bedroom and the boardroom for over a decade.

After leading almost 12 years of men’s work, Joshua is committed to walking men back to their full humanity, connecting them to their deep sensitivity and primal potency, and growing their capacity for intimate relationships through his work at the BrotherhoodCommunity.com

Hit him up directly at: [email protected]

I had a god-dang plumped-with-wisdom blast of a conversation with Joshua. We talked about relationships as a closed loop where all shit must come up, the importance of self-compassion in relating to fear, male intimacy, and poop-positivity.

Conversational Highlights
-There are no toilets in a relationship
-In early stages of relationships were taught to impress and hide our shit
-Sharing niggling thoughts in partnership
-A baseline for a healthy relationship is when both people will take responsibility when they take a shit no the living room floor
-When Joshua crossed a line on FB and how he handled it
-How we turn off our conscious mind and let a script run
-The negative feedback loop that comes when we lack self-compassion
-The more we can meet ourselves with mercy, the faster well wake up
-Fear-based decision making
-“Pain pushes us until vision pulls us” (Reverend Deborah Johnson)
-Hurrying on the journey makes it suck
-A Mind in fear will create what it fears
-Fear as a virus
-It’s impossible to be afraid of whats actually happening
-Unpacking Men’s Work
-The Men’s Leadership Intensive
-Creating healthier partnerships by men opening up to men
-The intimacy of pooping

I hope this episode knocks your socks off your feet and blasts them into orbit!

The post MMP #15 Awakening Through Intimacy, Brotherhood, and De-Shaming Poop with Joshua Hathaway appeared first on mikemantell.com.

East Forest has been the leader of underground ‘sound healing’ ceremonies around the world since 2008. Using music as a tool, he has trailblazed the field of organic tech, building bridges between the digital and natural world. Being fully independent and playing in the private shadows allowed the sound of East Forest to emerge: an emotional and spacious musical lexicon with a sound that took shape out of a practical need to play solo for five to six hours while guiding a room full of listeners in deep meditation.

Word organically spread and a devoted community shared East Forest’s early albums, many of which were live recordings captured directly from his sound healing performances.

Moving into festivals, theaters, and clubs, electronic beats and diverse live instrumentation eventually joined in, from strings and analogue synthesizers to african kora. East Forest’s electro-acoustic ethereal sound continued to evolve and he found himself performing in a diverse range of settings from SXSW, Google, Mysteryland, to Grace Cathedral, Summit at Sea, as well as his own TEDx talk.

More than a dozen albums later, East Forest continues to explore a path of emotionally driven music that pulls from ambient, classical, electronic and indie-pop genres.

In this episode we talk about his new project with Ram Dass, his ‘Music for Mushrooms’ soundtrack designed to act as a ‘digital shaman’, his creative process, and death.

Show Highlights:
-Who is East Forest?
-Different ways to open the doorway into the soul
-Maybe the Mayan 2012 prediction is happening now
-His journey of using music to feed his own soul into using music to feed others’ souls
-Mushrooms and his first spiritual opening
-How his soul tricked his ego into creating beauty
-Creating a sonic journey for a mushrooms trip
-How Western healing meets plant medicine, and where there’s room for improvement
-Confidence as a factor of age and experience
-Ageism and obsession with the new
-Death-positivity
-Mushrooms and death anxiety
-The process for his collaboration with Ram Dass
-His creative process of making daily material
-The War of Art
-How his German nature helps him face Resistance
-Sound as the fundamental soup of the universe

I hope this episode laces your drink-of-life with a heavy dose of inspiration.

Find him at
http://www.eastforest.org

<3

The post MMP #14 The Many Doorways Into Truth with East Forest appeared first on mikemantell.com.

Joshua Falcon-Grey is a role playing expert, assisting people in awakening to deeper realities through Immersive Theater Stories. He is also a New Earth teacher, clarity consultant, filmmaker, author, and speaker.

He assists thought-leaders in deepening their skill-sets and self-knowledge. After many years dissociating from chronic numbness, he moved in full steam into reclaiming his disowned power. In doing so, he awakened masterful communication skills, profound courage, and many other spontaneously activated special abilities.

Joshua is the founder of The Quantum Theater which offers immersive story experiences. His 1 on 1 DaoPlay Personal Theater sessions activate deep change in others, providing a safe yet potent mirror for self-love to unfold naturally.

More info at www.quantum.theater
Or find Joshua on Facebook

In this episode we talk about the relationship between healing, paradox, and chakras; Joshua’s predictions on the future of gender; and how to construct a role-play to heal wounds.

Show Highlights:
-Paradox as a pointer to spiritual awakening
-The different value systems of our different moods
-Using role-play to heal parts of ourselves we don’t accept
-Exploring archetypal authority figures
-Everything is sex
-The desire for pleasure stemming from the desire to heal a wound
-Different types of pleasure relate to different types of healing
-Why spiritual masters contradict themselves
-Pain/pleasure, fear/desire, phobia/fetish
-How to create a role-play to heal our wounds
-Consciously playing the victim to break the cycle
-Is humanity merging into a single gender?
-Joshua’s predictions of 5,000 years in the future
-How technology and nature are merging
-The nature of masculine and feminine energies

If you want your mind to stretch like gak in the hands of a curious child, I’d recommend givin’ this a listen.

<3

The post MMP #13 Healing Through Shadow Theater with Joshua Falcon-Grey appeared first on mikemantell.com.