Wisdom Talks Podcast

Our guest today is Jim Carson, Ph.D., author, researcher, father, and husband. He is the co-founder and senior teacher with his wife Kimberly Carson of the paradigm-shifting program, Mindful Yoga. He is a former yogic monk who has been practicing and teaching meditation and yoga philosophy worldwide for over 45 years. 

Jim is currently a clinical health psychologist and Associate Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry, at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. 

Along with his wife Kimberly, he has applied his decades of expertise to the development and evaluation of yoga and meditation-based clinical treatments, including the first mindfulness program for couples, the first loving-kindness meditation program for medical patients, and the highly acclaimed Mindful Yoga program. 

Dr. Carson has an ongoing clinical practice where he works extensively with patients suffering from chronic pain, including those with fibromyalgia, low back pain, and cancer pain. 

Jim, in collaboration with his wife Kimberly, co-directs national professional trainings for yoga teachers and allied health professionals at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Duke Integrative Medicine, and VA Centers. Jim and Kimberly also lead annual meditation retreats at the Art of Living Retreat Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, and a very special invitation-only annual retreat on Kauai, Hawaii. 

His decades of teaching, clinical work, research, and program development are reflected in his upcoming book, Relax into Yoga for Chronic Pain: An Eight-Week Mindful Yoga Workbook for Finding Relief and Resilience, which he authored together with Kimberly Carson, and Carol Krucoff. The book is due to be released in January of 2020 and is available now for pre-order on Amazon. 

Our conversation today covers the complete trajectory of his path and awakening to Simple Being, the state of choiceless awareness established in each present moment. 

We discuss his uncanny early experiences with an all-knowing and ever-present Consciousness, his early yearnings to know the Divine Presence, and his dramatic awakening through Shaktipat from the great master Swami Muktananda. 

Our discussion chronicles his transition from a yogic monk to a clinical psychologist pioneering the cutting edge of chronic pain research. We discuss in great detail the program he and his wife Kimberly Carson developed over two decades at Duke Integrative Medicine. The results of their research and successful implementation that detailed in their upcoming book to be released in January 2020. 

Jim’s remarkable story is one of intentional resolve and a rich life of focused and disciplined execution. It provides deep insights into the way and experience of the Divine Presence in a very active family and professional life. 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net/ - Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services. 

My guest today is Eric Siegel, a software developer, and Consciousness explorer who had a spontaneous Kundalini awakening before he even knew what the word Kundalini meant. He’s part of the millennial generation and has only been meditating for about 15 years. Apart from being a very intelligent, normal and well-adapted young man, he maintains a very serious and well-disciplined spiritual life while working in the world and holding a regular job. My interest in interviewing him emerged from extensive conversations we have had over the years about his meditation and specifically his experience integrating an active Kundalini into his otherwise very normal life. 

While I don’t normally interview people this young, meditators with varying levels of expertise from beginners to advanced will find our conversation interesting, edifying and I believe very uplifting. 

The early part of the conversation is just a warmup for the deeper and more detailed discussion in the later parts of the episode. We talk about the subtle energies of breath and mantra, the Sufi tradition and parallels with Judaism and the mystical teachings in the Old Testament. He shares his early discovery of Kundalini after being unwittingly and unexpectedly awakened and how he dealt with it on a daily basis for months until finally finding some answers to what was happening to him in a detailed book by a well-known Kundalini master, Baba Muktananda. 

In our far-ranging conversation, we cover the importance of diet and lifestyle including sleep in the nurturing and efficient development of Kundalini’s potential. 

The whole conversation is practice-oriented and most will find it very informative and enlightening. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Eric that was recorded at my dining room table. 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net/ - Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services. 

Our guest today is Janine Sagert – intrepid consciousness explorer, film producer, a corporate consultant for some of the largest and most influential companies in America, and a life-long social justice and military veterans advocate. 

Our conversation today covers a wide spectrum of cutting edge, paradigm-shifting issues. We discuss her long history living and working with military veterans, the use of psychedelics to successfully treat mental illness and PTSD, the future of mental health in America, her early adoption of meditative practices and yogic techniques in the corporate consulting she pioneered in the mid-1970s, to her favorite ashram in India where she retreats every year.

Her distinctive life has uniquely equipped her to tell the story of combat veterans suffering from suicidal PTSD and their transformative healing journeys with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and medical marijuana. This is the story which is told in the highly acclaimed documentary film, From Shock to Awe which she co-produced with the award-winning cinematographer, Luc Cote, and Kevin Krause. Her remarkable life and cutting-edge achievements embody an uncommon blend of academic and professional education, research, training, and personal on the ground experience with deep spirituality — as well as a huge heart and indomitable spirit.

Commenting on what prompted her to take on a project of this magnitude she said, "It broke my heart to learn that so many of our veterans are experiencing PTSD and that most of them are not getting relief from their suffering. Twenty-two veteran suicides a day! This is truly a national disgrace. I had to do something to help, especially knowing that in the course of my life I had accumulated the skills, experience, and knowledge to do so."

Janine is a modern-day polymath and a polyglot who speaks five languages, (Spanish, Marathi, Hindi, German, and English) and world traveler, her own backstory provides many points of connection and empathy with military veterans. Janine is a self-described “army brat” who grew up on military bases around the world. She's a psychologist whose extensive academic career focused on clinical psychology and anthropology and how various elements of culture influence mental health. Her profoundly transformative experiences with psychedelics, lead her to a lifelong dedication to exploring and expanding her own consciousness through spiritual practices such as self-inquiry and meditation. Going where precious few Western women have gone, she traveled more times than she can remember to India and remote areas in the Himalayas to live and study with a variety of yogis and mystics, further deepening her direct experience of higher states of consciousness.

Academically, Dr. Sagert earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in “Culture and Mental Health” with a specialty in Altered States of Consciousness and Psychological Resilience. She also spent two years as part of a Harvard University School of Public Health research team investigating stress factors around the world. 

Professionally, she founded Time Out, Inc. in 1976 and subsequently provided pioneering consulting and coaching services to a wide spectrum of organizations in the areas of stress management, leadership, and optimal performance. She conducted more than 1,000 seminars and coached more than 500 executives in companies throughout the U. S., Europe, and Asia. 

This is a remarkably candid conversation with an incredibly down-to-earth and compassionate person who has a life-long career of pioneering consciousness work that has changed the way we look at ourselves and how we live and work with each other in the world. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net/ - S

Our guest today is Dr. Michael Chance, Board Certified Chiropractor, a Phi Beta Kappa member, an energy worker, meditator of over 40 years, and a compassionate and sensitive educator of the next generation. He is the third generation of a four-generation chiropractic lineage. 

He’s my chiropractor but when I refer to him and tell people about what he does I inevitably refer to him as a healer, because that’s what he really is. That’s what my experience has been working with him over the years. He doesn’t like to be called a healer, he says in his typical self-effacing way, “I never healed anyone”. He says I just get stuff out of the way so the body can heal itself. What he knows and means is that only God heals. 

He has been on the Board of Directors of Palmer College of Chiropractic for a number of years. In addition to his Chiropractic Board Certification, he is also a master of Applied Kinesiology developed by George Goodhart as well as the Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) developed by Scott Walker. It is through these modalities that he applies his deep insights and wisdom crystallized and clarified from over 40 years of clinical practice.  The results are what his patients will tell you are both remarkable and often unbelievable, overcoming conditions that have stumped and thwarted the medical establishment, in many cases for decades.  It is, for this reason, many of his patients travel across the US and the world just to have a few minutes with him. The never been told stories are the subject of his upcoming book. It will chronicle his journey of evolving the therapeutic knowledge he has gleaned from his many years of clinical practice.

A few of those stories he reveals for us in this candid tell-all interview. Be sure and listen to the end where he reveals the source of his insights and his daily practice of meditation. 

Additional notes of what we discussed in the conversation:

·        Life changing benefits of chiropractic treatment of children, only hours or days after birth. 

·        Multi-generational effects of chiropractic

·        Impact of toxic stress via chemicals in the environment and pharmaceuticals

·        Correlation of energy channels (meridians), muscles and organs systems

·        The remarkable power of a single NET treatment for conditions that are often chronic, sometimes for decades. 

·        The power of dreams and the amazing treatments that have been initiated by his dreams.

·        How he uses meditation in his daily life and his clinical practice.

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net/ - Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services. 

Our guest today is Australian author, cross-cultural anthropologist, researcher, and wisdom holder, Greg Campbell.  In his tradition, a wisdom holder is a storyteller and Greg is an exemplary example of the ancient Australian storytelling tradition. I’m referring to the 65,000-year ancient Aboriginal culture he has made an integral part of his life and writings. 

In this interview, Greg will unpack his interesting and colorful life lived with intensity and the belief, ‘Anything is possible’. He tracks the arch of his fascinating life with humility and candor, with an engaging and captivating style all his own. This is not a mere fantasy; this is a real-life story of achievement at the highest levels of human performance. He covers his transition from civil servant to entrepreneur, his consulting company’s startup that began with a service contract with the largest telecom company in Australia, while his little company employed only one person, himself. 

He shares the inside story of his role in Australia’s 1983 historical capturing of the America’s Cup trophy from the esteemed American sailors who had held the Cup for 132 years, the longest winning streak in sporting history. 

The underlying thread which runs through his story is his belief in the infinite potential of the Life Force, and the power that manifests from an abiding awareness of this Power. This Life Force he refers to as Consciousness, or what Aboriginal wisdom holders refer to as ‘The Dreaming’. It is a story of the intersection of ancient wisdom from two continents and cultures. 

“I believed in the voice of my inner heart, I simply had enough faith and belief in it to follow its guidance.” 

The story begins in his native Australia in 1974 where he shares the impact his first wisdom teacher, his Guru, Baba Muktananda had on his life. His meeting with Baba Muktananda, affectionately referred to as simply, Baba, inspired the insights and awareness with which he approached the rest of his life. 

He also shares the deep insights and wisdom he received from his decades-long intimate relationship with the Aboriginal wisdom holders of the Kimberly region in Northwestern Australia. He reveals rare access into the consciousness that underlies the 65,000-year-old unbroken Aboriginal cultural succession; one of peace and cooperative prosperity that he has so well documented in his writings. 

These are just a few of the many pearls of wisdom Greg shares in this conversation and that are further detailed in his forthcoming book, Total Reset. 

For those interested in the interconnectedness of life, cultures, consciousness and human evolution, this conversation will be a welcome delight. 

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net/ - Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services. 

Our guest today is Don Daniels, an intrepid consciousness explorer, and veteran meditator of almost 50 years.  His experience with Kundalini and the wisdom he shares is both powerful and transformational and a paradigm shift in deep states of meditation and human consciousness development. 

After several years of studying martial arts as a young boy and ultimately achieving Black Belt level, he began developing a strong interest in the contemplative aspects of the martial arts training as opposed to the physical contact aspects of the art form. This led to a spontaneous and dramatic awakening of the Kundalini energy while still in high school. This experience changed the course of his life. 

During this conversation, he shares with great candor and details the inner experiences he had and how they affected the trajectory of his life. The experiences he had in meditation as the Kundalini began to unfold became so overwhelming that he decided to drop his full academic scholarship from the University of Florida in his senior year, just one semester away from completing his degree. He was determined to meet the spiritual force behind his internal experiences. Soon thereafter he packed his bags with only the clothes in his suitcase and the cash he had from the sale of his once cherished Pontiac Firebird, to go to India to find his Guru, Swami Muktananda. When he arrived on the other side of the world, he found immediate and definitive resonance with the Master.

That meeting intensified what was to become a life-long pursuit of deep meditation and spiritual unfoldment which had begun just a few years before when he was 16 years old. He eventually became a Vedic monk of the Saraswati Order and was named Swami Jnanananda, which means the bliss of supreme knowledge. 

After almost 10 years of dedicated service to his Guru and training in the esoteric sciences of Tantra, Vedanta, Yoga and other mystical practices, he decided in 1985, to lovingly put away the monk's robes and went back to college to complete his academic studies. 

After graduating with a BA in psychology and a master's degree in educational technology he began a 30-year career in academia, teaching at the high school and college levels. 

In addition to his academic career he has practiced, studied and taught yoga philosophy, meditation science, and the psychology of personal achievement for over 40 years. His human performance seminars and workshops have included stress management, motivational seminars, biofeedback, neuro-linguistic programming, and infrared light therapy. 

If you are serious about meditation, interested in understanding the subtle inner processes associated with deep spiritual work or want to know more about Kundalini from a knowledgeable expert, this interview will certainly be memorable.

To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:

https://www.meditatenow.net/ - Show Notes, Links and Resources, including Glossary of Terms for all Episodes and to contact Marc directly. 

https://larryholmespracticalwisdom.com/ - For All Episodes and to contact Larry directly and review his consulting and coaching services.