This week we’re hanging with Ivan Bercholz, co-owner of Shambhala Publications, publisher of Bala Kids, and co-author (with illustrator Lasha Mutual) of My Friend Tara, a children’s book that introduces kids to Tara, the Buddhist archetype of compassion.

Ivan set out to create a book that gets straight to the heart of practice: how can kids actually relate to an archetypal quality? How do you help them imagine compassion as something fun, alive, and embodied? How do you make an ancient practice feel natural for modern kiddos?

When Jeff’s rambunctious six-year-old Eden stumbled on the book, he flipped through, chose his favorite of the colorful Taras and, while playing with the visualization, had a profound, whole-body shift.

Jeff describes it as a “rainbow-candy version of internal regulation” that honors children’s natural inclination towards imagination. Kids are naturals at this stuff. Ask them to picture beams of warmth radiating from the heart and they just do it, while adults tie themselves in knots worrying about doing it “right”.

That might be the core thread of our conversation: practice is really about getting open enough to let what’s naturally here come through. Kids, wild lil portals that they are, let that wisdom stream through all the time. Books like this can give them language for what they already know.

We talk about:

* Visualization as a practice playground for kids and adults

* The 5 Taras and their different archetypal qualities (white for calm, green for protection, blue for difficult emotions...)

* Why mantra might be our oldest human practice

* How books can become spiritual oases when teachers aren’t accessible

-------------

We make this show with love, lols, and a lot of curiosity. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription 🌿

-------------

The Adventure:

Ivan walks us through a Green Tara visualization and mantra practice.

We breathe, settle, imagine Tara’s smile and the rays of warmth coming toward us, and repeat her mantra: Om Tare Tu Tare Ture Soha. Then we let those qualities dissolve into us and send them back out to others.

Ivan calls it the workout before the Savasana: the color, sound, imagery build up the energy… and then you release and relax, held in the felt sense of deep meaning.

This is medicine for all of us - not just the kiddos!

Let us know in the comments how the practice lands - is it your first time doing mantra or visualization?

Till next time,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

-------------

Know a parent (or a kid at heart) who might dig this? Pass it along 💫

-------------

Ivan’s Links:

* Book: My Friend Tara: And Her Rainbow of Compassion

* Shambhala Publications: shambhala.com

* Bala Kids: shambhala.com/balakids

This week we're hanging with wandering Celtic teacher John Philip Newell and Earth & Soul Director Cami Twilling to talk about what it means to connect to the sacred when you're living outside the bounds of formal religious tradition.

John Philip is an ordained-minister-turned-spiritual-exile who spent years with one foot in the church and one foot out in the wilderness, before finally giving back his ordination. He couldn’t reconcile his experience of the sacredness of humans and nature with Christianity’s history of getting “into bed with empire.”

His book The Great Search asks: What are millions of spiritual seekers actually searching for? And how can we nurture those yearnings?

John Philip talks about philosopher Simone Weil's idea of 'the efficacy of desire': that getting in touch with our deepest longings actually helps bring about what we're yearning for. When we name our hungers with clarity, we become better able to serve them.

We talk about:

* Why the wilderness and the temple need each other

* The 8 yearnings at the heart of spiritual searching

* What happens when you "pray until the tears come" and tap into primal flow

* Why regular retreat matters more than occasional long stints

------------------------------------

We make this show with love, lols, and a lot of curiosity. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription 🌿

------------------------------------

The Adventure:

This one’s subtle and luminous. Cami and John Philip drop us into a contemplative space where the main practice is reconnecting with the light that exists at the heart of all things. We watch how the light moves, and in this simplicity, let our awareness touch eternity.

------------------------------------

Let us know in the comments: what does your “great search” look like right now?

Till next time!

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Happy New Year!

One week into 2026 and we’re already firing on all cylinders. So let’s kick it off with some destress tools to keep us all cool as cucumbers when things get spicy. 🥒😅🌶️

This week we sit down with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, physician, Harvard Medical School faculty member, and author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain for Less Stress and More Resilience. We talk about what stress actually is, why it gets so dismissed in medicine, and what to do when your diamond finally cracks.

Dr. Aditi knows stress from both sides. As a medical resident working 80-hour weeks in the cardiac ICU, she was taught that "pressure makes diamonds." Then she experienced a stampede of wild horses across her chest that turned out to be... stress! Not a heart attack or low blood sugar. It was her nervous system completely losing it.

When her doctor said "just relax," she realized there was a massive gap between how common stress is (60-80% of doctor visits) and how little support exists for it (only 3% of doctors counsel for stress). So she became the doctor she needed.

We talk about:

* Why calling it “just” stress is medical gaslighting

* How doomscrolling is the modern way to scan for danger

* The “popcorn brain” effect of having too much screen time

* Why breathing is one of the few things you can control (and how to use it)

--------

We make this show with love, lols, and a lot of curiosity. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription 🫶 --> www.mindbodpod.com

--------

The adventure:

Dr. Aditi walks us through three of her Five Resets, including “Stop, Breathe, Be”, a simple practice she did 30-40 times a day as a resident.

It’s a pause and reset you can use every time you turn a doorknob, before Zoom calls, picking up your kids, or brushing your teeth. Any moment works.

Know someone who would appreciate a few new destress tools in their kit? Pass it on!

Let us know how these practices work for you!

Till next time,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

This week we’re hanging with our friend Chela Davison — facilitator, sacred mischief maker, former master coach, and writer of the Substack, Wisdotainment.

She brings her trademark mix of depth and irreverence to the question of what it means to live a “regenerative calling”, a purposeful life that actually feeds you instead of wringing you dry.

Chela walks us through 4 dimensions of personal calling:

1. Interiority – the pulse of what’s meaningful inside you.

2. Aptitude – the weird mix of things you’re naturally good at and the skills you might still need.

3. Contribution – how your doing lands in the world and loops back as feedback.

4. Regeneration – how you stay resourced, supported, and non-crispy while doing all that.

It’s a conversation about vocation, yes, but also about capacity, cycles, and what it means to build a life that keeps you sparkly and invigorated.

-------------

We talk about:

* Why “purpose” culture leaves so many of us exhausted

* How to work with your capacities instead of against them

* The difference between extraction and regeneration

* How to know when your calling needs composting

-------------

We make this show with love, lols, and a lot of curiosity. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription 🌿

-------------

The Adventure:

Chela invites us to feel into our own calling through these four lenses: what’s pulsing with meaning, what capacities are growing, where your gifts want to land, and what actually keeps you resourced. A full-body check-in with your life!

Know someone rethinking their “calling”? Pass this episode along 💫

Till next time,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

We chase healing in all directions: therapy, breathwork, cold plunges, maybe a lil microdosing… but what if all your nervous system is asking for is a safe place to land?

This week, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. David Rabin joins us to talk about how safety is the foundation of healing. His research explores how vibration, touch, and rhythm can retrain the body for calm. He’s the creator of Apollo Neuro, a wearable (and app) that uses subtle vibrations to signal safety to the nervous system and help the body unlearn chronic stress.

We talk about:

* How trauma is the body’s stress response that never shuts off

* Why safety (not control) is the real foundation of healing

* Why top-down thinking can’t fix bottom-up stress

* How tech can help retrain the body

----------

We make this show with love, lols, and a lot of curiosity. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription 🌿

----------

The adventure

Dr. David guides us through a two-minute vibration meditation. A body-based practice for retraining your nervous system toward calm. If you want to try it, download the free app, set your phone on your chest, and feel what some good vibes can do!

Let us know how it goes!

Till next time,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

----------

Dr. David’s Links

* Wearable tech: Apollo Neuroscience

* Apollo App: IPhone App | Android App

* Instagram: @drdavidrabin

* Website: drdave.io

How do we stay aware in a world designed to steal our attention?

This week, we sit down with Jay Vidyarthi — designer, tech founder, meditation teacher, and author of Reclaim Your Mind: Seven Strategies to Enjoy Tech Mindfully — to explore what it means to live mindfully with technology instead of fighting against it.

We look at how our phones, apps, and algorithms are constantly training our nervous systems, and how awareness itself can change the relationship. Jay calls this attention activism: a way of reclaiming choice and joy in a tech-infused world.

----------------------------

“Freedom of attention is a fundamental right. It’s a natural resource… and it’s being exploited.”- Jay Vidyarthi

----------------------------

In this Episode, We talk about:

* The invisible pull of notifications and how to stay present in real time

* How to turn tech boundaries into rituals of pleasure

* What false urgency does to our nervous systems and how to step out of it

* How our conversations with AI can become mirrors for awareness

* Why we need mindful, creative people shaping the future of technology!

The Adventure:

Jay guides us through a real-time experiment to feel the physical and psychological pull of our devices. Then transform that into presence!

This episode is an invitation to stay grounded, curious, and capable of wonder in the midst of the digital age.

----------------------------

Know someone who loves tech but wants their mind back?! 🤪 Share this episode!

----------------------------

Thanks for hanging with us. See you next time.

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

We make this show with love, lols, and sweat. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription: www.mindbodpod.com

----------------------------

When it comes to “getting to know ourselves,” we talk about mindfulness, creativity, career… basically everything except sex. But as Dr. Juliana Hauser argues, sexuality might be the most direct doorway into who we really are. In this episode, she takes us past the performance of “being sexy” into the raw territory of authenticity, agency, and connection.

Dr. Juliana has spent over two decades helping people claim their own sexual agency. She’s a counselor and family therapist with a PhD in Counseling Education, a TEDx speaker on agency, and creator of the Revealed course on holistic sexuality. Her work shows up in therapy rooms, media outlets, and classrooms… and as of today (🥳) in her brand new book: A New Position on Sex: A Guide to Greater Sexual Confidence, Pleasure, and Authenticity

In this Episode, We talk about:

* Why so many of us are trapped in “performative sexy” mode

* How to tell the difference between a “yuck” and a “yum” in your body

* How sexuality is central to self-awareness, agency, and connection

* How shame and culture block authentic sexual expression and what it takes to unlearn them

The adventure

Dr. Juliana guides us through a simple touch practice: four different kinds of touch on your own forearm. With each one, notice: does your body say yuck or yum? It’s a playful way to start tuning in to your own signals of agency and authenticity.

We make this show with love, lols, and sweat. If it lights you up, help us keep it going with a paid subscription!

Talking about sex can feel taboo, but Dr. Juliana makes it curious, light, and doable. This episode is an invitation to stop performing, start listening, and discover that your body already knows more than you think.

Let us know in the comments how this practice goes :)

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Dr Juliana’s Links

* The Nine Pillars: dr-juliana.com/holistic-sexuality/

* Revealed Course: therevealedlife.com

* Book: A New Position on Sex

* Personal Website: dr-juliana.com

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a creative? Chelene Knight answers without hesitation: “I think the biggest mistake was just not being me.”

This week, we sit down with acclaimed poet, novelist, memoirist, and Tasha’s own writing mentor, Chelene Knight, to talk about what it means to build a creative life. Not the tidy, “professionalized” version, but the messy, alive, human one that actually feels good.

Chelene’s most recent book, Safekeeping: A Writer's Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love, is part guided journal, part treasure map through the writing life. It also, as she puts it, “contains all of my mistakes as a writer and all the things that I’ve learned.” Listening to her is like being handed a permission slip to go slower, trust yourself, reread the same book forever, throw out the pressure to finish, snack on a single poem and call it a meal.

We talk about:

* Why “there is no reading, only rereading”

* The mistake of ignoring your instincts and how to recover.

* Poetry as the foundation for all writing.

* What happens when writers trust the reader enough to leave space.

* How slowing down turns reading into a kind of prayer.

The adventure

Chelene guides us through two delicious reading practices: one with Julia Bouwsma’s Dear Ghosts, I Pick the List, and another from Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler. They’re haunting and beautiful.

The exercise is simple but radical: Hear a poem once, notice the phrase that hooks you, then hear it again. The second time through, the text has changed… and so have you.

----------

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!

----------

What stayed with us most from this practice is how a poem can feel like a hurricane one moment and a whisper the next, depending on how you let it in.

Reading, in Chelene’s hands, is more than consumption. It’s a meditation, a prayer, a slow fire that lights us from within.

Let us know in the comments how this practice goes :)

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Chelene’s Links:

* The Say No with Love Letters

* Safekeeping: A Writer's Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love

* Cheleneknight.com

This is an exciting one, friends!

Stephen Porges is the visionary scientist who gave us polyvagal theory—a framework that’s reshaped how the world understands trauma, safety, and human connection. His work has influenced everyone from therapists to meditation teachers to parents trying to soothe a colicky baby. And now he’s here with us, alongside his brilliant co-author Karen Onderko, to talk about their new book and the Safe and Sound Protocol.

This episode is part science, part storytelling, and part live experiment.

In this conversation, we talk about:

* The origins of polyvagal theory and why it changed the trauma world forever

* How the Safe and Sound Protocol helps bodies shift out of defense and into connection

* Wild stories of teens, adults, and even toddlers in a sound cube discovering safety for the first time

* Why “safety” can sometimes feel scary (and what to do about it)

* The nervous system’s three favorite things: context, choice, and connection

And then, because we’re all about real-time practice over here, Jeff guides Stephen and Karen in a short meditation. Afterwards, Stephen deconstructs it through a polyvagal lens, showing us how context, choice, and connection are the nervous system’s love language.

-------

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!

-------

This is one of those conversations we’ll be talking about for a long time. It’s science, but it’s also about how to be human together. How to tune our bodies toward safety and open the doors to connection.

✨ Know someone who’s been geeking out on the nervous system, or just trying to figure out how to feel safe in their own skin? Share this episode with them!

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Links

* Stephen Porges

* Karen Onderko @ The Polyvagal Institute

* Book: Safe and Sound: A Polyvagal Approach for Connection, Change, and Healing

This week on the Pod, we’re joined by the luminous Sherri Mitchell: Indigenous rights attorney, activist, ceremonial leader, and the author of Sacred Instructions.

We dive into the birth canal of this moment — a world in transition, contracting and expanding as it labors to bring something new into being. Sherri doesn’t shy away from the pain, confusion, or cultural clusterf*ck of our times and she also doesn’t wallow. Instead, she offers radical clarity, vision, and a deeply embodied path forward.

Together, we explore:

* What it means to live through a species-wide rite of passage* The vibrational power of oral traditions and why sound is sacred science* Why “triggered” might just be the most misused word of our generation* How to move beyond naming the water we’re drowning in, and start swimming toward land* The 80/10/10 rule for building the world we actually want

And then Sherri guides us in a practice of remembering, of dreaming the world we want into being, and dreaming ourselves into the kind of people who can live there.

As Jeff put it: “You can dream a better world. But you have to dream yourself into it too.”

This conversation is a balm, a fire, and a wake-up call. If you’ve been overwhelmed, heartbroken, or teetering on the edge of despair, listen in. It’s about metabolizing this moment into wisdom, vision, and action.

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 at mindbodpod.com

Know someone who’s been thinking hard about how to show up in these strange times? Share this with them too!

Thanks for practicing with us,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️