Undimmed with Cecily Mak

What if your body knows a commitment is costing you before you do? In this episode, Cecily Mak sits down with Sara Szal MD, a Harvard-trained physician and dear friend, for an honest, practical conversation about self-abandonment, relationships, and what it takes to set down what we carry.

Together they explore the Fifth Awareness: Freedom. The Fifth Awareness invites us to forgive, take ownership, and let go as part of the path to freedom. Dr. Szal shares how she was shamed out of being a truth-teller as a girl. She describes how difficult relationships can impact your biomarkers. She explains why a nightly glass of wine works against the cortisol it’s meant to calm, beliefs that allowed her to tolerate an erosion of self, and how a clean yes and a clean no protect our biology.

Cecily also shares a healer’s “relief test” for deciding which plans to cancel. The two discuss self-stewardship versus self-care, how to calm the nervous system without a dimmer, and why no woman should accept “you’re just getting older” as an answer.

Dr. Sara Szal, is a writer, board-certified physician, entrepreneur, researcher, and educator. She graduated from Harvard Medical School and MIT. She is the Director of Precision Medicine and Longevity at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University where she offers next gen executive care. She has written four New York Times bestsellers, and her next book, The Female Edge, comes out March 30, 2027.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saraszalmd/
Webpage: https://saraszalmd.com/
Substack: http://saraszalmd.substack.com
Female Edge book presale link
Know your ACE score (Adverse Childhood Experiences) 

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

What if the habit you're trying to quit was only ever trying to protect you? In this episode, Cecily Mak sits down with Dr. Richard Schwartz — the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS) — for a tender, practical conversation about trauma, addiction, and what real healing actually asks of us.

Together they explore the Fourth Awareness: Healing. The Fourth Awareness invites us to seek to understand our trauma without making it our identity. Dr. Schwartz shares the story that sparked IFS more than 40 years ago, why "there are no bad parts," and how the behaviors we use to numb, dim, or self-soothe — alcohol, overwork, perfectionism, and more — are often young, protective parts stuck in the past. Rather than fighting them with willpower or shame, IFS offers a gentler path rooted in curiosity, compassion, and self-leadership.

Cecily also opens up to a live piece of parts work on the mic, and the two discuss recovery, grief, psychedelic-assisted healing with ketamine, and how to relate to the parts of us we'd rather not see.

Dr. Richard "Dick" Schwartz is also the Founder of the IFS Institute that offers training for professionals. He is currently a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry, at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate. Richard has authored or co-authored more than ten books on Internal Family Systems and related topics, including No Bad Parts and Internal Family Systems Therapy.

Where you can follow Dr. Schwartz's work:
Instagram

Website

YouTube

Dr. Schwartz's newsletter

Where you can learn more about Internal Family Systems:

IFS Institute Website

Leading From Self: Applying Internal Family Systems to Leadership

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

Libby Stockstill built the life she was supposed to want: law degree, leadership roles at companies like Vans, Billabong, and Vuori, the "perfect-looking" family. Then a suspected thyroid cancer diagnosis, and a surgeon's careless line about her voice, forced a question she'd been avoiding: are you using your voice the way you always felt called to? The answer was no.

In this episode that dives into the Awareness of Intuition, Libby and Cecily talk about writing in secret under a pseudonym, the sign on the trail that finally made Libby’s decision clear, and why following your intuition is rarely tidy. It's messy, it's inconvenient, and as Libby puts it, there's nothing more empowering than deciding you're worth the cost.

Libby is the Founder & CEO of Some Days, where she blends life and leadership coaching, writing, speaking, and retreats to help people move past what's in the way and live the life they long for. She is also writing her first novel; a midlife coming of age, exploring the idea of what success means and the central question – What if having it all means losing it all? Additionally, her poem, “Under” was just selected for publication in the upcoming 2026-27 San Diego Poetry Annual anthology

Connect with Libby:

@libby.stockstill Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/libby.stockstill/

@create.some.days Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/create.some.days/

@soliloquyonimperfectionism Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soliloquyonimperfectionism/

Work with Libby:
Coaching: https://createsomedays.com/some-days-clarity-compass/

Retreat: https://createsomedays.com/some-days-autumn-abundance-fall-retreat-interest-list/

Read Libby's Writing:

https://createsomedays.com/2022/10/07/some-days-i-go-against-the-grain-or-grape/

https://createsomedays.com/2021/12/26/some-days-i-find-athena/

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

Seed Health co-founder Ara Katz had to learn that even discernment, taken to an extreme, can quietly become its own dimmer. In this episode, she and Cecily explore how real choice works: not a strategy or a cognitive matrix, but an inner compass that's always recalibrating. On discernment as a survival instinct, the grace of doing nothing, standing in the middle of the tornado instead of fleeing it, and why how you do anything is how you do everything.

Ara's new book, Your Vagina is a Universe, will be released March 9, 2027 and you can follow her on Instagram.

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

Episode Description

Cory Muscara left an economics track and a Wall Street internship at 21 after a single meeting made him "feel his soul leave his body." He was ordained as a monk, spent six months in silence in Burma and only years later realized his prized meditation practice had become a sophisticated way to avoid himself. In this episode, Cory and Cecily Mak go deep on the First of the Eight Awarenesses — Clarity: my life is better clear. They explore the surprising truth that a "clear-looking" habit like meditation can be its own dimmer. They talk about spiritual bypassing, the difference between observing an emotion and being in "full contact" with it, the road to a fulfilling life partnership, and fatherhood as a devotional stripping-away. It's an honest look at how clarity really works: as the empowered choice to stop numbing and finally hear your own intuition again.

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

What are you afraid would happen if you were fully engaged with your life?

Season 2 of the Undimmed Podcast explores this question through the framework of The Eight Awarenesses: Clarity. Choice. Intuition. Healing. Freedom. Respect. Time. Service.

The First Awareness is Clarity: my life is better clear. We start there, September 4th. 

🎧 Undimmed with Cecily Mak — wherever you listen.

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

In this bonus episode of Undimmed, Cecily shares a short excerpt from the audiobook version of her new book, Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits — shared here exclusively with podcast listeners.

The passage focuses on the Second Awareness, I choose what I consume, and reflects on a period when Cecily was beginning to question long-held assumptions about alcohol, social life, and choice. It’s a quiet, honest moment from early on in the work, offered with openness and care.

Cecily Mak’s new book, Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits, is available wherever books, ebooks, and audiobooks are sold.
For more details and to purchase, follow this link.

Season Two of Undimmed will begin rolling out this spring.

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

Cecily returns to Undimmed after a pause that grew into a deeper and more meaningful season of work than she expected. With new conversations set to arrive in your podcast feed next spring, Cecily shares a personal update.

She talks about what this period has held: family transitions, continued healing, and the long, thoughtful process of completing her book, Undimmed: The Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits, which will be released in January 2026. 

She also shares a moment that moved her deeply. Her son wrote a school speech about alcohol and families and asked her to read it. His honesty reminded her why this work matters and why she continues to offer these conversation

If this episode speaks to you, please rate, subscribe, review, and share Undimmed. You can follow Cecily on Instagram @clearlifejourney, join her Substack community, or visit her website at cecilymak.com for more.

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

 On today’s episode of 'Undimmed' Cecily talks with Sunnyside co-founder, Nick Allen, about both of their personal and professional journeys with alcohol. Nick grew up in a household with two parents who struggled with alcoholism before ultimately finding sobriety. While Nick has had his ups and downs with drinking, up until this point has not felt the need to cut alcohol out of his life completely. Disappointed with the exclusively sobriety-focused, all-or-nothing options available, he built Sunnyside as an alternative for those looking to change their relationship with alcohol but not necessarily quit entirely. Nick is on a mission to make managing alcohol consumption as common (and socially accepted) as managing diet and exercise as components of our proactive wellness routines. 

Together, Cecily and Nick highlight the importance of making informed choices about alcohol and maintaining open, honest dialogues within families and communities about drinking habits. They both emphasize the value of understanding one's relationship with alcohol and making conscious decisions to improve life quality without necessarily adhering to black-and-white sobriety perspectives.

Check out Sunnyside or follow them on Instagram @joinsunnyside

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden

Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.

Credits:

Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden