New Dimensions

Andreotti has noticed that there is way more kindness happening on a day-to-day basis than there is drama, negativity, and darkness. She shares with us ways we can expand our awareness and be a vessel of kindness and suggests that one of the strongest forms of kindness is to be a good listener. She is the founder of several companies and has held leadership positions in small and large organizations, including government, nonprofit and Fortune 500 companies. For many years she served as an organizational development coach, business transformation consultant, and executive coach. She believes that when you are authentic and in your brilliance, you can achieve anything. And she's the founder and host of The Kindness Club. She's the author (with co-author, Brian Hilgendorf) of Sex, Intimacy and Business: A Revolution Has Begun And It's Time To Get Undressed (Brilliance Press 2005)Interview Date: 9/5/2022     Tags: Lindsay Andreotti, kindness, self-criticism, Michael Singer, Surrender Experiment, caterpillar process, imaginal ventures, One of a Kindness™, intention, listening, curiosity, Personal Transformation, Social Change/Politics

Listening is a skill that we have to learn. It takes effort, attention, patience, and practice. It’s a process that requires us to use different parts of our brain. Effective listening can improve our relationships and our jobs, as well as enhance our intelligence. Leslie Shore explains what it takes and what gets in the way. Leslie Shore has worked in the retail industry and personal management fields, as well as being a professor and instructional designer, where she has gained much wisdom in what it takes to be an effective listener. She is the owner of Listen to Succeed, a consultancy that focuses on using listening analytics to help personal and professional clients achieve their highest level of effective communication. She is the author of Listen to Succeed: How to Identify and Overcome Barriers to Effective Listening (self-published 2012). Her book is currently being used as a textbook in several universities.Interview Date: 4/15/2016.      Tags: Leslie Shore, listening, deep listening, effective listening, hearing, life skills, deepening friendships, multitasking, cell phones, communication, external barriers, internal barriers, interrupting, intruding, mind reading, body language, mind map, rehearse, advertising, technology, internet, television, politics, law of least effort, Personal Transformation, Self Help

This deep dialogue explores the embodied spiritual path and what it means to live more consciously in a human body. He says, “The body is 3 billion years of evolution and there's a tremendous wisdom and intelligence in it that moves us towards wisdom, connection, mutuality, and interdependence.Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Ph.D. is a coach and consultant on embodied leadership and mastery and has spent more than five decades researching, developing, and teaching Somatics and embodiment practices to organizations in such fields as education, healthcare, leadership team development, military, technology and international peace work, including the United States Marine Corps.He holds a Shihan 7th -degree black belt in aikido and has founded and cofounded several Aikido schools and projects including the Mideast Aikido Project and Training across Borders, organizations that bring citizens from warring countries together to practice aikido. He was advisor to General Jim Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe from 2003 to 2006 in Afghanistan. He is the founder of the Strozzi Institute, where he teaches courses on somatic coaching and leadership in action. He is the author of many books including In Search of the Warrior Spirit, Fourth Edition: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets (Blue Snake Books 2007), Embodying The Mystery The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skillful Action, Wisdom, and Compassion (North Atlantic Books 2014) and Somatic Wisdom for Emotional, Energetic, and Spiritual Awakening (Inner Traditions 2022)Interview Date: 8/26/2022    Tags: Richard Strozzi-Heckler, aikido, Sensei Hirata, Morihei Ueshiba, Nisargadatta Maharaj, attention, certainty, vulnerability, wisdom, knowledge, Odysseus, anger, Personal Transformation, Meditation, Spirituality

As our population ages with its emphasis on hyper-cognitive power and productivity, we must begin to acknowledge the equal moral status of people with physical and cognitive disabilities as someone not less significant than that of someone who is more lucid of mind. And, we must better support those who support this growing population.Stephen G. Post, Ph.D. is among a handful of individuals awarded the National Distinguished Service Award from the National Alzheimer’s Association. Post is a leader in research on the benefits of giving and on compassionate care in relation to improved patient outcomes and clinician well-being. In 2001 he founded The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, which researches and distributes knowledge on kindness, giving and spirituality. Post served as a co-chair of the United Nations Population Fund Conference on Spirituality and Global Transformation. He’s a professor in the Department of Preventative Medicine at Stony Brook University and founder and director of the Stony Brook Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics. He is the author of: Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving (Broadway Books 2008), The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2nd edition 2000), God and Love on Route 80: The Hidden Mystery of Human Connectedness (Mango 2019) and Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer’s Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press 2022)Interview Date: 8/19/2022    Tags: Stephen G. Post, caregiving, dementia, Alzheimer’s, assisted oral feeding, tube feeding, Willem de Kooning, Oliver Sacks, Health & Healing, Philosophy, Science, Death & Dying

If our future is one of limitation, how may we face it with courage to do the best job with what is possible? Even though easy solutions may not be apparent it does not make asking hard questions irrelevant. According to our guests, what are the four hard questions we must be asking at this time.Robert W Jensen, Ph.D. is professor emeritus in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of many books including Plain Radical: Living, Loving and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully (2015 Skull Press), The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (Spinifex Press 2017) and The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability (University Press of Kansas 2021)Wes Jackson, Ph.D.is recognized as a leader in the international sustainable agriculture movement and earned his Ph.D. in genetics. He is cofounder and president emeritus of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and a 1992 MacArthur Fellow. He is the author and co-author of numerous books, including Hogs Are Up: Stories of The Land, With Digressions and New Routes for Agriculture. (University Press of Kansas 2021) and Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture (Counterpoint 2011)Jensen and Jackson are coauthors of An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, And the Fate Of Humanity. (University of Notre Dame Press 2022)Interview Date: 8/12/2022     Tags: MP3, Wes Jackson, Robert W Jensen, agriculture, population limits, cascading crises, carrying capacity, technological fundamentalism, techno-optimism, ecosphere, Marty Bender, Sunshine Farm study, William McDonough, Abe Osherhoff, Leland Lorenzen, Jim Koplin, human population, electric cars, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Philosophy, Social Change/Politics, technology

Sound is medicine, according to the research of David Gibson. Every person, emotion, and ailment has a tone. Sound and frequency can be used to influence mental states, enhance human experience, and heal disease. He explains how music therapy is being applied in healthcare. “It’s unbelievable what’s been happening with people just by using sound and music.”David Gibson is a leader in the field of sound healing and therapy. He’s the founder and director of the Globe Sound and Consciousness Institute in San Francisco which offers an Associates degree in sound healing therapy. He is also the producer of sound healing music and runs the sound therapy center at the Institute offering different types of sound healing treatments. He is a founder of the sound healing research Association designed to help bring sound healing into the mainstream. He is the author of The Complete Guide To Sound Healing (Sound Healing Center 2013) Interview Date: 3/8/2016    Tags: David Gibson, music therapy, sound therapy, music, sound, vibration, frequency, tone, ultra sound, brain waves, entrainment, depression, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, pain medication, sound medicine cabinet, disease, illness, sound chairs, sound tables

Our brain forms many automatic neural circuits including those that support our breathing, heartbeat, and digestion. Here we explore how to create new neural circuits that put us in touch with the larger energetic field of infinite intelligence. Joseph Selbie, a dedicated meditator for nearly 50 years, has taught meditation and yoga throughout Europe and the United States. He is a founding member of Ananda, a meditation-based community and spiritual movement inspired by Paramahansa Yogananda. He resides with his wife at the long-standing Ananda Village near Nevada City, California. He is the author of The Yugas: Keys to Understanding, The Physics of God: How the Deepest Theories of Science Explain Religion and How the Deepest Truths of Religion Explain Science (New Page Books 2021) and Break Through the Limits of the Brain: Neuroscience, Inspiration, and Practices to Transform Your Life (New Page Books 2022)Interview Date: 7/29/2022    Tags: Joseph Selbie, brain science, neural circuits, The Gorilla Experiment, psychedelics, meditation, nonlocality, M-theory, near death experience, Max Planck, Hans-Peter Dürr, introspection, affirmations, hong-sau meditation, Spirituality, Science

As a man born of a Nigerian father and a white mother, Jawando is our guide for the essential gift of mentorship and how staggeringly transformative it can be for an entire community. It’s a reminder of how even a brief encounter of positive mentoring can make all the difference for all our children, most especially those at risk. Will Jawando is an attorney, an activist, a community leader, and a councilmember in Montgomery County Maryland, a diverse community of more than 1 million residents. Called “the progressive leader we need” by the late Congressman John Lewis, Jawando has worked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Sherrod Brown, and Pres. Barack Obama. HE is the author of My Seven Black Fathers: A Young Activist’s Memoir of Race, Family, and the Mentors Who Made Him Whole (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2022).Interview Date: 7/8/2022    Tags: Will Jawando, Kalfani, Joseph Jacob, Deen Sanwoola, Nigeria, grandmothers, Dean Hoge, NAACP, Barack Obama, affordable housing, low-income housing, mentors, mentoring, mentorship, Social change/politics, Personal Transformation, Men’s studies, Community

Inner and outer storms can be transformational agents. Nepo advises us that we must not skip over pain, breakage, and loss. He goes on to say, “And, we must not drown in it or make a permanent residence of it. We have to find the corridor of aliveness that allows us to process our experience and land in the opening the storm has made in us and around us.” Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher and a most eloquent spiritual teacher. In 2015, he was given a Life-Achievement Award by AgeNation and in 2016 was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the Most Spiritually Influential Living People. He was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014 and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. He is the author of many audio learning projects and over 20 books including Reduced To Joy (Cleis Press 2013), Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close To What Is Sacred (Free Press 2012), he One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your heart (Atria Books 2016), Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression (Sounds True 2019), The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters (St. Martin’s Essentials 2020) and Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity (St. Martin's Essentials 2022)Interview Date: 7/20/2022    Tags: Mark Nepo, Japanese Haiku poet, Masahide, geological storms, lightning strikes, Tempestarii, ethnic diversity, brokenness, spiritual diversity, dissociation, mass shootings, Roman Colosseum gladiatorial shows, Facebook algorithms, fear, denial, Tang Dynasty Tu Fu poet, love, victimhood, betrayal, empathy, George Floyd, Sheena Malhotra, 9-1/2 minutes of collective silence, soul, Personal Transformation, Social Change/Politics

Despite our being connected 24/7 with others, post-modern life is replete with loneliness. Loneliness is not the same as aloneness. Loneliness is when you lack the feeling of being connected with another. Explore how to build fulfilling and deep connections with others and make closeness flourish. Kira Asatryan is a certified relationship coach who provides individual life coaching, relationship coaching, conflict mediation, and couples coaching. Before becoming a relationship coach, she was director of performance marketing for prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups and cofounded an online marketing consultancy. She lives in San Francisco. Kira Asatryan is the author of Stop Being Lonely: Three Simple Steps to Developing Close Friendships and Deep Relationships (New World Library 2016)Interview Date: 4/3/2016     Tags: Kira Asatryan, introverted, closeness, caring, intimacy, families, caretaking, loneliness, empathy, inflammation, efficiency, effectiveness, social media, incidental contact, open-ended questions, Arthur Aron, efficiency, effectiveness, Relationships, Psychology, Personal Transformation, Self Help, Health & Healing, Technology