This week, we’re in conversation with therapist and longtime Focusing teacher Serge Prengel about the transformative power of slowing down and listening from the body.

Serge is one of those rare people who seem to live from a deeper layer of presence. His work blends Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, Core Energetics, and Polyvagal Theory to support real, embodied change.

What stood out for us was how relational this practice is. It brought us into a slower, softer place of deep listening, where we could fully meet each other’s nervous systems.

We explore:

* What Focusing actually is (and isn’t)

* How to feel into what’s “not fully formed yet”

* The role of safety and vulnerability in a therapeutic or relational container

* Why this is a two-way street: the listener is as active as the talker

* How to turn everyday conversations into profound practices of connection

We also talk about what it means to be in right relationship: with yourself, with others, and with the felt sense of a moment that’s still unfolding.

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Wanna watch this as a video pod? Check us out at www.mindbodpod.com

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* Learn more about Serge and his work

* Check out the Active Pause Podcast

* Explore the Proactive Twelve Steps

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This one’s relational, tender, and surprisingly intimate. Drop in and tell us what moved in you:

Thanks for tuning in. Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

This week on the Mind Bod Adventure Pod, we get our somatic groove on with tapping wizard and trauma therapist Mirjam Paninski. Miriam guides us into the world of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)—a deceptively simple practice where tapping acupressure points while speaking truth can open up big shifts in the body, mind, and heart.

It’s part therapy, part ritual, part emotional plumbing.

In this episode, we explore:

* Why EFT is becoming a popular trauma modality (and how it stacks up to EMDR)

* How tapping calms the nervous system and gives stored emotion somewhere to go

* Ancestral trauma (your body might be carrying Grandma’s fears!)

* What happens when you stop bracing and start releasing

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We make this show with love, laughter, and absolutely no corporate overlords. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription!

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Also: find out why EFT works so well with kids, how it can be used in war zones and post-shooting trauma support, and why tapping might be the pre-meditation dimmer switch you didn’t know you needed.

🎯 Practice highlight: Miriam guides us through a powerful tapping sequence that opens into inner child healing. The result is some surprising nervous system release in real time (spoiler: Tasha’s jaw melts, Jeff yawns like a lion).

Check out Mirjam’s Group Work: The Conscious Tapping Tribe- For $100 off 6-month membership: use code MINDBOD100- For 20% off yearly membership: use code MINDBOD20

This one’s playful, poignant, and weirdly effective. Tap along with us and let us know how it lands in your nervous system!

Thanks for tuning in. Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

This week on the Mind Bod Adventure Pod, we sit down with Dr. Joel Schwartz, a psychologist and one of the early architects of the Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy movement.

Joel is known for speaking truth to systems that pathologize difference — and for offering a way of working with our minds that’s healing, joyful, and radically humane.

In this episode, we explore:

* Why the “pathology model” of ADHD and autism misses the point

* The emotional toll of masking and code-switching to survive

* What actually helps when someone is overstimulated (spoiler: not deep breathing)

* Reclaiming movement, joy, and the right to stim without shame

* An unexpected practice that ends in synchronized swaying and yodel-singing!

Joel brings brilliance, humor, and zero tolerance for the rigid norms that ask neurodivergent folks to contort themselves into “acceptable” versions of humanity.

Along the way, Tasha reflects on late-diagnosed spectrum-y traits, Jeff gets real about rejection sensitivity, and we all momentarily dissolve into giggles about somatic intelligence and… mosh pits.

✨This episode is both a call to arms and a warm hug — a guide to seeing difference not as deficit, but as creative, embodied, meaningful expression.

We make this show with love, laughter, and absolutely no corporate overlords. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription! ❤️

Connect with Joel’s Practice: Total Spectrum Counseling

Now it’s your turn! Let us know what this episode and practice shook loose for you:

That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

This week, we sit down with relational facilitator James-Olivia Chu Hillman, whose teachings on radical responsibility, integrity, and unconditional positive regard are already shifting how Jeff shows up in relationship… and how Tasha tries not to ghost people who annoy her. 😅

Together, we explore:

* The four core skills of relating well

* why being “right” isn’t the same as being relational

* Why saying “I agree” can be the most disorienting move in a conversation

* What it really means to take responsibility—without shame, and without blame

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The Mind Bod Adventure Pod is a community-supported project. If you like these adventures, consider helping us keep the lights on with a paid subscription! ❤️

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And we wrestle with the tension between compassion and boundaries, support and self-abandonment, and the paradox of allowing versus control in both meditation and relationships.

✨ “Integrity has a cost,” James-Olivia reminds us. “But so does losing it.”

Whether you’re conflict-avoidant, righteousness-prone, or deeply tired of your own relational fuckery—this episode offers a compassionate (and funny) mirror.

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The Afterparty (watch at www.mindbodpod.com)

Jeff breaks and Tasha explores why setting boundaries and advocating for oneself can be both challenging and powerful.

Let us know in the comments what this episode shook loose for you.

K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

What if happiness wasn’t just a feeling but something you could train and reinforce?

This week on MindBod AdventurePod, we sit down with Dr. Axel Bouchon, a neuroscientist and biotech entrepreneur who spent 20 years searching for a cure for depression—only to realize he’d been asking the wrong question. Instead of curing sadness, he discovered the source code for happiness—a set of six neurotransmitters that shape our emotional landscape.

In this episode, Axel takes us on a guided tour of our own brains, revealing:

* Why depression can’t be erased—but happiness can be cultivated

* The six neurotransmitters behind different flavors of happiness (it’s not just dopamine!)

* How to “train” yourself for more joy, resilience, and long-term well-being

* Why laughter, nature, music, and even bass drops all play a role in happiness

* How our best memories act as anchors—and why taking photos might actually make us happier

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The Mind Bod Adventure Pod is a community-supported project. If you like these adventures, consider helping us keep the lights on with a paid subscription! ❤️

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We also dive into Matter, Axel’s innovative app that helps reinforce positive neural pathways by engaging with your own peak memories—those moments that spark deep joy, connection, and meaning. It’s a fascinating look at how we can actively shape our emotional landscape for greater balance and well-being.

This episode is part neuroscience, part meditation, and part mind-expanding happiness experiment—so get ready to light up your brain in real time.

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LINKS

* Learn more at: Matter.xyz

* Download the Matter app: matter.xyz/app

What’s your most happiness-inducing memory? Let us know in the comments!

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The Afterparty

The Pod is about to get way weirder… we’re turning these Afterparty sessions into full bi-weekly episodes! We’ll talk, unpack, guide short practices, sing, dance—who knows what else—all in the spirit of bringing you deeper into our weird worlds as practitioners, teachers, and friends. Coming in APRIL! 🎉

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K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

What if the secret sauce to navigating the world isn’t hustling harder, fixing yourself, or achieving inner peace like it’s an item on your to-do list—but something way simpler and right under your nose?

This week on the Mind Bod Pod, we sit down with Oren Jay Sofer, a meditation teacher, communication wizard, and all-around wise human, to talk about his book, Your Heart Was Made for This.

We dig into the deep but wildly practical ways we can meet life’s chaos with more presence—and fewer panic spirals:

* Why patience and courage might actually be magic powers

* The giant, thorny question—should we even have kids?? (Yup, we go there)

* Why the “I don’t have time for practice” excuse is a lie (and what to do instead)

* How self-care, spirituality, and social action are actually the same weird beast

--------The Mind Bod Adventure Pod is a community-supported project. If you like these adventures, consider helping us keep the lights on with a paid subscription! ❤️--------

This episode isn’t about adding more stuff to do—it’s about seeing that your life, exactly as it is, is already the practice.

Oren has a way of making wisdom feel like a quiet ‘of course!” you forgot you knew—the kind that lands gently, like a deep breath or a long walk in the park.

Let us know in the comments what thoughts, feels & practice revelations wiggled loose for you during this episode!

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The Afterparty

PS… Big Afterparty Upgrade Incoming! 🚀

The Pod is about to get way weirder… Instead of just lil Afterparty snippets tacked onto episodes, we’re turning these sessions into full bi-weekly episodes.

That means just the two of us, showing up candidly—diving into the questions, quandaries, and delightful existential messes arising in our own lives.

We’ll talk, unpack, guide short practices, sing, dance—who knows what else—all in the spirit of bringing you deeper into our weird worlds as practitioners, teachers, and friends. Coming very soon - Stay tuned! 🎉

K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

In this episode, we remix therapy and healing with Angela Ai, a syncretic teacher practitioner of Core Energetics, Radical Aliveness, and Human Design.

What the heck are these modalities? Good question!

In a nutshell: they’re different ways to get insight into — and intuitive contact with— the human experience. Into our internal patterns, our relationships, and the ways we meet the world.

This is an adventure for the taxonomy nerds among us. Enjoy!

The Mind Bod Pod is a community-supported project. If you like these adventures, consider helping us keep the lights on with a paid subscription! ❤️

Watch The Afterparty (available at www.mindbodpod.com):

In this here After Party, Tasha and Jeff talk about how they are in relationship with each other, cause it’s fun to talk about friendship and our patterns and all that. Then they blab more generally about “maps of consciousness” like the Enneagram, the Zodiac, Tarot, Human Design and so on, whether they are objectively “true,” or more like subjective psychological tools, or some mystical combo of all that.

Let us know what you think in the comments!

K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

This week, we go deep into the spiritual heart of psychedelics with Celina de Leon, founder of the Circle of Sacred Nature Church, and adjunct faculty at the Graduate Theological Union. Celina has spent 20 years working with ayahuasca – or yagé, as it’s known in the Kamentsa indigenous community of Colombia, her root lineage.

We talk about the contemplative practice of yagé, its unique characteristics, and how it opens us up to benefits beyond individual mental health. So much goodness!

The main thing is we go into ceremony – we experience how the deliberateness and care of ceremony takes us into the sacred present.

In Celina’s guided practice, we feel into the mystery of this and try to articulate the remembering that happens… although, of course, no words can ever be adequate.

So friends, come experience it with us :)

The Afterparty (watch at mindbodpod.com)

Tasha and Jeff get personal about some of the benefits of exploring psychedelics over the long-term, but also some of the ways they can be destabilizing. No one needs to do psychedelics, but if you do, be responsible: Find an experienced community that understands how to hold a safe container, and …. pace yourself!

We also get into a great discussion about how to think about teachers and communities of practice at a time when there are not enough deeply experienced teachers to go around.

Let us know in the comments how this practice was for you!

K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Cara Lai is awesome. That’s the first thing to say. She is humble and real and willing to explore a heated topic without having any easy prepared answers. Backtrack! Cara is a dharma teacher, artist, Mom and former therapist. These days she mostly teaches meditation retreats and a fun online drop-in class called “Meditate Your Face Off!” (Jeff: Be still my heart.)

Our subject is the shitstorm happening on planet earth – in the Middle East, the Ukraine, the US, and other hot spots – and whether everyone should be speaking out. We recorded the episode back in May 2024; things are no less urgent today, seven months later. People have very strong opinions on these issues, and very strong opinions both about what should be said, and who should be saying it.

We talk about things like:

* How we can approach polarizing conversations

* What role anger and shame play in how we relate to each other

* How mindfulness and compassion might move us in a different direction

Cara’s guided mindfulness practice comes late in the episode, at 34 minutes. It’s a compassionate inquiry into what’s happening for us – in this moment – that we feel we can’t bear. “It’s hard to have a heart,” she says. In learning to stay present with our own experience, we also learn to stay present with others, even those we disagree with. The episode ends with a conversation about belonging, trust, and sharing our unique gifts with the world.

Thank you Cara!

LINKS

* Cara’s website: caralai.org

* Cara’s Podcast: adventuresinmeditating.com

The Afterparty

Where Tasha and Jeff chat about global culture, neurodiversity, and the privilege of living in this time. What new creative responses to the world’s challenges are waiting to emerge? That, friends, is the true promise, which Jeff immediately degrades in the final two minutes, when he curses and asks for money and then gargle-chokes on some grapefruit LaCroix bubbly water. The whole denouement is exceedingly stupid and immature and should have been cut – but! –well, it made Tasha laugh very hard. And that’s what matters.

AND NOW: SOME EXCITING NEWS!

We’re stoked to announce our first Mind Bod Adventure Squad Retreat. It’s an opportunity to get wild and embodied and very present with us.

It’s going down at the Omega Institute, June 8-13, 2025. We love our community and want to practice with you IN PERSON. Come explore!

REGISTER HERE

K, That’s all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

In this episode we welcome Caverly Morgan, former Zen monk and author of The Heart of Who We Are. Caverly is also the founder of Peace in Schools, a teen-centered mindfulness curriculum for teens.

We jump right into it with a discussion of how teens very naturally want to challenge many of the culture’s bogus assumptions – in her words, teens “are on fire with wanting to dismantle what’s not real.”

We start with a beautiful breath practice that Caverly uses in high school classrooms. “Dental-mental floss”: back and forth through the center, expanding and grounding.

From there, we discuss goodies like:

* the primacy of subjective experience* letting go of the need to find the “right way”* shifting towards what works for your situation and what helps you suffer less* the role of lineages and teachers* the joys of many practices … and how none of them may even be going anywhere!

The Afterparty (Watch at www.mindbodbpod.com)

In this week’s party time, we wax excitedly about concerns that are close to our hearts, which is to say WEIRD SPIRITUAL S**T. We discuss whether there is a universal direction in the contemplative path, one true in all cultures (if so, what might that be?). We talk about how different practices are designed to address different problems or needs, and how these change from culture to culture, person to person, and even - within each person - week to week and moment to moment!

NB: there’s a lot of thumbs up emojis in this… Tasha’s macbook was going berserk and apparently fervently agreeing with everythign we said 👍🎉 Enjoy!

*The Afterparty will move behind the paywall in January! For real this time! Become a paid subscriber to continue being privy to these strange discussions…

Let us know in the comments how these practices landed for you!

K, That’s all for now. Thanks for tuning in!

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️