Podcast Episodes

November 14, 2024

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In this episode, Wendy speaks with psychiatrist and mental health researcher Chuck Raison. Chuck’s work centers on understanding how ancient practices can change our conscious experience. He’s a leader in studying the links between inflammation, stress, and depression, and how meditation and other practices can influence those dynamics. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• ancient practices and conscious experience;
• Tibetan tummo practice;
• the role of inflammation in depression;
• sickness behavior;
• links between stress and inflammation;
• the placebo response;
• psychedelics as a novel treatment for depression;
• investigating the role of memory in transcendent experiences;
• body temperature and emotions;
• and the precious gift of awareness.

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October 17, 2024

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In this episode, Wendy speaks with contemplative researcher Quinn Conklin. Quinn’s research examines the interconnection of mind and body, and the effects of stress and meditation training on biomarkers of health and well-being. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• her interest in mind-body connection and how that led her into meditation research;
• understanding meditation retreats;
• advantages and challenges of studying meditation in a retreat context;
• how personality can influence the effects of meditation;
• telomeres and cell aging, and impacts of stress and meditation;
• creating safety and support for practice (on retreat);
• oxytocin and various theories of its function in social connection;
• effects of meditation retreat on oxytocin;
• allostasis and prediction;
• studying community responses to COVID and how meditation provides support;
• increasing diversity in contemplative science;
• and making research findings accessible.

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September 19, 2024

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In this episode, Wendy speaks with psychiatrist and contemplative researcher Zev Schuman-Olivier. Zev has been working for more than a decade to integrate mindfulness and compassion into health care, with a focus on addiction, depression, and chronic illness. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• weaving mindfulness and compassion into clinical settings;
• lessons from his own experience of chronic illness;
• the key role of behavior change in health;
• balancing individual responsibility for health with systemic factors;
• mindfulness and addiction;
• making interventions trauma-informed, inclusive, and broadly accessible programs;
• how signals from the body help motivate action and emotion;
• how mindfulness enhances trust in the body and changes the brain in depression;
• Internal Family Systems and the critical role of acceptance;
• and next steps for integrating mindfulness and compassion into complex healthcare systems.

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June 13, 2024

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In this episode, Wendy speaks with social scientist and meditation teacher Eve Ekman. Eve’s work integrates contemplative practice and modern psychology to help people learn about and work with their emotions. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• her early exposure to Tibetan culture and Buddhism;
• emotion regulation vs. awareness;
• reappraisal and self-compassion;
• labeling feelings & being seen;
• handshake meditation practice;
• mapping an emotion: trigger, experience, and response;
• the complexity of what shapes each moment;
• becoming more sensitive through meditation;
• constructive vs. destructive emotions, and the complexities of anger;
• understanding equanimity;
• leveraging technology to help awareness and tracking of emotions;
• helping Apple incorporate well-being practices into its platforms;
• teaching meditation through the Cultivating Emotional Balance program;
• the Atlas of Emotion (free online resource);
• and life lessons from surfing.

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June 3, 2024

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In this episode, Wendy speaks with contemplative neuroscientist Dave Vago. Dave has been studying the brain, meditation, and the self for over two decades, and has developed several models of how mindfulness might work from cognitive and neurobiological perspectives. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• his intertwined interests in brain, mind, self, philosophy, and religion;
• the temporal nature of memory;
• mindfulness for fibromyalgia and chronic pain;
• unconscious attentional bias;
• sticky thoughts and how they change with meditation;
• the role of the self in contemplative practice (S-ART model);
• meta-awareness and decentering;
• the centrality of inhibitory control in contemplative practice;
• dissolving the self/other divide;
• integrating wisdom to create meaning;
• how meditation can shift attentional bias at very early levels of processing;
• the deeply interconnected nature of brain function;
• self-pattern theory and (in)flexibility in the mind;
• mindfulness and the glymphatic system, and implications for sleep and neurodegenerative disorders;
• and the new academic society for contemplative research (ISCR).

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