The Mind Change Podcast

What if healing isn’t only about fixing what feels wrong, but discovering how good life can get?

Heather McKean sits down with Katie Van Hooser to explore her journey from anxiety, perfectionism, and fear to a growing sense of self-trust that ultimately helped her take on something extraordinary: a 50-mile ultramarathon.

Katie shares why doing all the “right” things wasn’t enough, what happened when a deeper layer of fear surfaced, and how learning to listen to herself and her body changed the way she approaches challenges, healing, and life itself.

It’s a powerful reminder that transformation doesn’t have to happen all at once. Sometimes it begins with one baby step.

EPISODE TOPICS:

🎙️ Meet Katie Van Hoosier and her Mind Change journey (00:02:08)

😰 Living with anxiety, fear, and feeling “not good enough” (00:04:29)

📝 When doing all the “right things” still wasn’t enough (00:09:26)

🧠 The deeper pattern behind needing to get it right (00:13:31)

🌿 Finding peace, presence, and a new layer of healing (00:16:23)

❤️ Moving through deep fear instead of giving up (00:19:34)

✨ Learning to trust herself through self-work (00:23:13)

🏃 From fear to the decision to run an ultramarathon (00:29:36)

🌲 Using Mind Change to pursue a goal, not fix a problem (00:36:11)

🏁 Finishing the 50-mile ultramarathon (00:37:36)

🤝 Building trust between mind and body (00:43:12)

🌳 The “tree” metaphor for healing one part of life at a time (00:50:21)

🚀 What if healing becomes “How good can it get?” (00:55:08)

👣 Why one baby step can change your life (01:00:15)

MENTIONED RESOURCES:

The Ellen Fisher Podcast – “How Your Mind Can Change Everything” with Kent & Heather McKean: https://www.ellenfisher.com/podcasts/how-your-mind-can-change-everything 

Inside Out 2 – Official Pixar page: https://www.pixar.com/inside-out-2/ 

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

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What if sciatica is about more than physical pain?

In this episode of The Mind Change Podcast, Heather McKean revisits a topic she has covered before, taking a fresh look at the emotional drivers that may be associated with sciatica. , including violated boundaries, scapegoating, suppressed anger, fear of moving forward, fierce independence, and family loyalty.

Discover how the conflict between choosing your own direction and maintaining safety, support, or belonging can keep old patterns alive, and how identifying and rewiring those associations can help you move forward differently.

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

EPISODE TOPICS:

🎙️ Understanding sciatica and why treatment results vary (00:01:34)

🧭 The emotional connection between sciatica, territory, and movement (00:04:16)

⚖️ The conflict between belonging and choosing your own direction (00:06:01)

👤 Daniel's story: when moving forward feels like betrayal (00:08:15)

🚧 Boundaries, invasion, and the right to occupy your own space (00:11:27)

🗣️ Scapegoating, unspoken words, and suppressed anger (00:13:06)

🎨 Creativity, fear of the future, and choosing a path that feels alive (00:15:55)

🤝 Fierce independence and learning to receive support (00:18:04)

🌳 Family loyalty and inherited rules about speaking up (00:19:14)

💭 Five questions to uncover your deeper patterns (00:20:18)

➡️ Reclaiming your direction and moving forward as yourself (00:22:01) 

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You’ve talked about the pattern. You understand where it came from. You’ve learned how to regulate, cope, and feel better. So why does it keep coming back?

In this episode of The Mind Change Podcast, Heather and Kent McKean explore how Mind Change differs from therapy, EMDR, nervous system regulation, somatic approaches, and brain retraining. They unpack the difference between understanding, processing, regulating, and transforming the subconscious patterns that may be shaping your health, relationships, identity, and life.

The question isn’t which approach is best. It’s what level of change are you actually looking for?

EPISODE TOPICS:

🧠 Why Mind Change is different (00:02:14)

💬 Talk therapy: awareness vs. transformation (00:05:17)

👁️ EMDR and how traumatic memories are processed (00:11:23)

🧩 How the brain stores and retrieves experiences (00:16:01)

🌿 Nervous system regulation and the deeper question of safety (00:31:12)

🔥  Regulating the alarm vs. finding the fire (00:36:18)

🎒 Building capacity vs. carrying old patterns (00:41:56)

⚡ Anxiety, panic attacks, and underlying patterns (00:43:59)

🫁   Somatic approaches and the mind-body connection (00:48:27)

🔄 DNRS, neuroplasticity, and brain retraining (00:52:56)

🔍 What does it really mean to work with the subconscious? (01:01:49)

📱  Your subconscious as an operating system (01:08:54)

✨ Why choose Mind Change? (01:13:38)

🌱 Management vs. lasting transformation (01:20:01)

💭 The question to ask yourself (01:27:04) 

MENTIONED RESOURCES:

Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS) by Annie Hopper: https://retrainingthebrain.com/ 

Carrie Michael: “A Licensed Therapist’s Shock At How Effective Mind Change Is”: https://www.mindchange.com/blog/how-effective-mind-change-is-with-carrie-michael? 

Michelle Muench: “Breaking Through Traditional Self-Care: Michelle Muench’s Mind Change Experience”: https://www.mindchange.com/blog/breaking-through-traditional-self-care-michelle-muenchs-mind-change-experience? 

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

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What if pneumonia invites us to look at where life has begun to feel suffocating?

In this Emotional Driver episode, Heather McKean explores the patterns that may surround pneumonia, from overwhelm and unresolved grief to crossed boundaries, helplessness, and carrying everyone else's emotional weight. Discover how becoming the strong one can turn into self-abandonment, and what it can mean to finally create room for your own needs.

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

EPISODE TOPICS:

🫁 Pneumonia and the mind-body connection (00:01:44)

🌬️ What breath represents emotionally (00:07:30)

🧱 Feeling suffocated and having no room for yourself (00:09:45)

🚪 Boundaries and the experience of feeling invaded (00:11:30)

🌊 Overwhelm, helplessness, and the need to stop (00:14:42)

💔 Grief and the emotional symbolism of the lungs (00:17:59)

🧒 When children carry the emotional atmosphere of the home (00:20:45)

🤲 When care and control become intertwined (00:23:43)

⚓ Becoming everyone's emotional foundation (00:25:26)

🌱 Anna's story: learning to receive without apologizing (00:27:54)

❄️ Why pneumonia may appear after stressful periods (00:34:17)

🔍 Questions for uncovering your own emotional patterns (00:36:54)

✨ Caring for others without abandoning yourself (00:37:57) 

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Toby Adler’s struggle with POTS began during pregnancy and intensified after giving birth, eventually leaving her life shaped by dizziness, fatigue, heart palpitations, brain fog, and fear.

After years of searching for answers, Toby discovered a different way of looking at her symptoms: what if her body wasn’t working against her, but responding for a reason?

In this episode, Heather and Toby explore the deeper patterns connected to her symptoms, including perfectionism, hypervigilance, control, motherhood, and childhood experiences. Toby shares how learning to approach her body with curiosity rather than fear changed not only her physical experience, but also the way she parents, works, connects with family, and moves through life.

A conversation about moving beyond symptom management, building safety from within, and discovering how far change can ripple when you begin at the root.

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

EPISODE TOPICS:

🤰 POTS symptoms beginning during pregnancy (00:04:10)

🛏️ When chronic illness took over everyday life (00:08:45)

🔎 Searching beyond symptom management (00:11:26)

💡 The question that changed Toby’s perspective on her body (00:14:57)

🌱 From fear of symptoms to curiosity (00:17:22)

🧠 Pregnancy, dizziness, perfectionism, and hypervigilance (00:20:00)

🕊️ Experiencing safety and trust at the Self Empowered Retreat (00:24:46)

⚡ Learning to shift patterns more quickly (00:27:05)

👩‍👦 How Toby’s inner change transformed her parenting (00:29:46)

✈️ Becoming symptom-free and creating new experiences (00:34:49)

🧬 Childhood, family illness, and hypervigilance (00:37:45)

🌊 How healing began rippling into work and relationships (00:39:49)

🔄 Getting to the root instead of repeatedly regulating triggers (00:43:42)

🌻 Turning Mind Change into a way of living (00:45:57)

❤️ Toby’s message for anyone struggling with chronic illness (00:49:09)

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In this Q&R episode, Heather and Kent McKean explore what it takes to move beyond awareness into deeper transformation. They answer questions about breaking generational patterns as a parent, distinguishing intuition from trauma responses, healing without reliving painful experiences, and navigating a relationship when one person is changing and the other isn’t.

They also explore a deeper question: if our personalities have been shaped by subconscious programming and survival strategies, who are we underneath those patterns?

This episode is an invitation to move beyond simply understanding why you are the way you are and begin intentionally choosing who you want to become.

EPISODE TOPICS:

👨‍👩‍👧 Breaking generational patterns in parenting (00:04:09)

🧭 Intuition vs. trauma responses (00:10:21)

💡 Why awareness alone doesn’t create transformation (00:16:31)

🌿 Healing trauma without reliving every painful experience (00:20:56)

❤️ Growing when your partner isn’t changing (00:24:56)

🪞 Personality, survival strategies, and subconscious programming (00:35:25)

✨ Discovering who you want to become (00:41:45)

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

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What happens when being dependable, strong, and responsible becomes the only way you know how to exist?

In this episode, Heather explores ALS through a psychosomatic lens, looking at research around personality traits, the mind-body connection, learned helplessness, suppressed self-expression, and lifelong patterns of putting others first.

Through a powerful client story, she examines how childhood survival strategies can become adult identities and why our worth was never meant to depend on how much we carry for everyone else.

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

EPISODE TOPICS:

🧠 Understanding ALS and motor neurons (00:01:45)

🧬 The mind-body connection and psychoneuroimmunology (00:06:19)

🚶 Movement, agency, and the psychosomatic lens (00:09:23)

🪫 Learned helplessness and the expectation of defeat (00:14:48)

🤝 Personality traits observed in people with ALS (00:15:54)

👧 When responsibility becomes identity (00:17:45)

🎖️ Military service, sacrifice, and reinforced patterns (00:19:28)

🤐 The internal conflict around self-expression (00:22:50)

⚖️ Authenticity versus protecting everyone else (00:24:44)

👤 Michael’s story: always being the strong one (00:27:34)

🔗 When dependability defines your worth (00:31:29)

❤️ Discovering your inherent worth (00:35:09) 

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Why are so many men quietly feeling lost, disconnected, purposeless, or like they’re failing?

In this episode of The Mind Change Podcast, Heather and Kent McKean explore how childhood experiences, cultural messages, and subconscious survival patterns can shape a man’s identity and disconnect him from healthy masculinity. They unpack why presence, purpose, strength, and authenticity can’t simply be performed, and how rewiring the deeper patterns underneath our behavior creates the capacity for lasting change.

This conversation offers a different path forward: not becoming someone else, but returning to who you were before survival taught you who you had to be.

CORE starts January 2027.

CORE is an 8-week transformational experience for men combining Mind Change, masculine embodiment, and brotherhood. It is designed to help men uncover the subconscious patterns holding them back, build greater presence and purpose, and show up more fully in their relationships, leadership, and lives.

Pre-register now:

https://www.mindchange.com/men

EPISODE TOPICS:

🎙️ The quiet unmaking of men (00:01:57)

🧭 Why men feel lost, lonely, and purposeless (00:06:45)

🤐 Why men struggle to admit they need help (00:12:15)

💔 The hidden wounds behind masculine disconnection (00:20:30)

👦 How childhood shapes the masculine identity (00:34:31)

🛡️ Protection, fear, and survival patterns (00:38:14)

🧱 How subconscious beliefs become identity (00:45:28)

📱 Culture’s conflicting messages about masculinity (00:56:28)

🎭 Losing authenticity to stay connected (01:00:06)

❤️ How survival patterns affect relationships (01:01:40)

🔎 The search for identity, direction, and belonging (01:10:12)

🔥 What healthy masculinity actually looks like (01:15:10)

🌿 Presence over performance (01:17:19)

⛓️ Why training on top of trauma doesn’t work (01:21:16)

✨ Rewiring the subconscious for lasting change (01:24:05)

🧔 Returning to the man you were created to be (01:28:58) 

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In this episode, Heather explores the potential emotional drivers behind chronic bad breath, including suppressed anger, unresolved conflict, hidden resentment, and conversations we continue replaying long after they’ve ended.

Discover how the subconscious may hold on to unfinished experiences, why silence can become associated with safety, and what can happen when we begin resolving the patterns we’ve been carrying inside.

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

EPISODE TOPICS:

🦷 Chronic bad breath beyond oral hygiene (00:02:03)

🌬️ Breath, expression, and what remains unresolved (00:03:07)

🤐 Suppressed emotions and unspoken truth (00:04:17)

🫥 Hiding the parts of ourselves we fear others will reject (00:06:13)

🍽️ Unfinished emotional digestion (00:06:44)

⚡ Why conflict can feel unsafe (00:07:23)

🔁 Replaying conversations and unresolved conflict (00:08:36)

🧠 When the nervous system learns safety through silence (00:09:03)

🛡️ How symptoms may subconsciously create distance (00:09:34)

🚧 When emotional closeness feels dangerous (00:10:34)

💭 Rumination and the ongoing stress response (00:11:03)

💬 What might your breath be expressing? (00:12:13)

👤 David’s story: learning to swallow conflict (00:12:46)

🔓 Rewiring the belief that honesty leads to rejection (00:14:13)

❤️ Allowing connection without fear (00:14:48)

🌱 What changed when the subconscious patterns changed (00:15:37)

🪞 Becoming honest with ourselves (00:16:12)

❓ Questions to uncover what may still be unresolved (00:16:53) 

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Heather McKean is joined by Mind Change intern Cece Almazan to share her remarkable healing journey from chronic illness, anxiety, PTSD, and autoimmune disease to discovering true inner safety. Together they explore how trauma shapes the nervous system, why healing happens in layers, and how learning to trust ourselves transforms our health, relationships, and lives.

👉 Full resources, courses & community: mindchange.com

EPISODE TOPICS:

🧠 Welcome & introducing Cece Almazan (00:01:07)

🌿 Cece's long journey with chronic illness (00:03:07)

💊 Why nothing seemed to work (00:06:28)

📖 Discovering Mind Change (00:09:05)

💔 Trauma, abuse, and the body (00:09:55)

🔄 Why chronic illness mirrors childhood patterns (00:11:04)

🌱 The first signs of healing (00:15:16)

⚠️ Growing up in hypervigilance (00:18:40)

🛡️ What safety really meant before healing (00:25:19)

❤️ Learning true inner safety (00:29:48)

💑 How healing transformed marriage (00:31:11)

🔄 Why changing yourself changes relationships (00:37:46)

🌍 Is the world really unsafe? (00:50:16)

✨ Becoming your authentic self (00:55:12)

🌸 Masculine and feminine energy in healing (00:57:12)

💙 A message for anyone still struggling (01:06:24)

🌅 What Cece would tell her younger self (01:09:53)

🙏 Final reflections (01:12:22)

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