LaidOPEN Podcast
Charna Cassell
Welcome to the LaidOPEN Podcast hosted by Charna Cassell. Charna is a Trauma-Trained Psychotherapist and Sexuality Coach with over 20 years of experience. Every day, Charna helps clients heal from trauma and access more bodily joy, emotional regulation, vitality, and hope.
Now she’s bringing her expertise to podcasting with interviews from post-trauma thrivers who share creative resources to support living an authentic, passionate, mindful existence.
Together they explore how to have a more pleasure-filled, peaceful life while reducing self-sabotaging behaviors and gaining control over reactive behaviors. Charna’s mission is to help people like you understand the impact of trauma on their nervous system and therefore their relationships with an emphasis on ways to heal.
In every episode, Charna explores how to build our physical and emotional capacity to be with all that moves through us and around us to ultimately feel more liberated on the other side. Join our community as we embark on this transformative journey by reaccessing our connection to aliveness.
Now she’s bringing her expertise to podcasting with interviews from post-trauma thrivers who share creative resources to support living an authentic, passionate, mindful existence.
Together they explore how to have a more pleasure-filled, peaceful life while reducing self-sabotaging behaviors and gaining control over reactive behaviors. Charna’s mission is to help people like you understand the impact of trauma on their nervous system and therefore their relationships with an emphasis on ways to heal.
In every episode, Charna explores how to build our physical and emotional capacity to be with all that moves through us and around us to ultimately feel more liberated on the other side. Join our community as we embark on this transformative journey by reaccessing our connection to aliveness.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jan 25, 2022 • 51min
14. Our Capacity to Bounce Back feat. Amy MacClain Part 2
This is part 2 of Amy and Charna’s conversation from last week. They left off discussing the value of compassion to transform abuses of power and navigate parental relationships. While exploring how essential denial and dissociation can be, Charna shares how her mom’s addiction, birth trauma, and mentally revisiting abuse impacts the physical body long-term. She also answers the question “What does expansive sex as well as empath sex feel like?” Charna guides a meditation on how to be with your whole self. This episode features royalty-free music from https://www.fesliyanstudios.com
Jan 18, 2022 • 57min
13. Our Capacity to Bounce Back featuring Amy MacClain Part 1
Amy and Charna talk about #Metoo, gender equity, and power dynamics in the workplace. Charna explains the window of capacity to be with, the difference between self and coregulation in relationships, and how learning to track yourself and others benefits your relationships. They dig into what resilience is and how it might be hard to understand, feel or identify with as a trauma survivor. There is also an exercise to help bring the unconscious material behind triggers into consciousness.
Jan 11, 2022 • 59min
12. Living an UnRepressed Life featuring Tara Nicholle-Kirke
In today’s episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, Charna welcomes a powerhouse guest, Tara Nicholle-Kirke, a globally recognized unrepression expert and former CMO of MyFitnessPal. Together they explore mindful parenting, befriending criticism, and spiritual dating. Plus, they tackle some very big topics including defining trauma, how productivity is rooted in slavery, as well as, Marie Kondoing your whole life. Charna explains her concept “Asshole Angels” and Tara prescribes an exercise for dating with freedom.
Jan 5, 2022 • 53min
11. Skin Starved During Covid featuring Amy MacClain
Happy New Year! This week Charna reunites with Amy MacClain to talk about dating during covid and how it’s left so many of us starved for physical contact. This includes the fleeting nature of intimacy when you haven’t been touched in a really long time, empty nest syndrome, moving through transitions, and ambivalent attachment. Also included is an exercise on attuning to self, the challenge of receiving and learning to cope with the changes around connection while in isolation.
Dec 28, 2021 • 1h 1min
10. Using Mindfulness, Magic, and Creativity to Flow Through Fear featuring Andrea Scher
Andrea Scher and Charna swam in the same circles for years but never met, and LaidOPEN podcast finally brought them together. The two connect on a variety of topics including, Andrea’s new book, “Wonder Seeker: 52 Ways To Wake Up Your Creativity And Find Your Joy.” They discuss the use of creativity to manage anxiety and access more of what you want. Andrea also shares about her process of embracing being a woman, getting in touch with her sexuality, and embodied ways to pick dates on tinder.
Dec 21, 2021 • 1h 4min
9. The Role Curiosity Plays in Releasing Sexual Shame featuring Amy MacClain
This week’s episode starts with a listener question that leads Amy & Charna to dive into the somatic shape of shame and how to unwind it. They explore the impact of family conditioning, trauma, and religion. The discussion guides them to sexual abuse, the function of shame, being with shame versus turning away from it, and how remaining curious plays an essential role in overcoming fear-based modes. Plus, Charna assigns a simple practice for shame you can do daily, within minutes.
Dec 15, 2021 • 54min
8. Running Away To Discover Yourself featuring Farid Yusof
Farid Yusof is a student of the world. They speak with Charna about the way culture impacts our freedom of self-expression and how they use their art as a resource to find healing. Farid’s travels were a mechanism for finding themselves and they use social media as a tool for coming out as gender nonbinary while quarantining with their conservative family. This conversation highlights how developing rituals around self-care can help anyone thrive, even in isolation, during the pandemic.
Dec 8, 2021 • 1h 16min
7. Breaking Your Heart Open aka Stockpiling Grief Versus Allowing It To Move Through You
This episode was recorded before the pandemic. Charna opens this episode talking about grief on the somatic level--regardless if it’s the loss of a relationship, a death, a friendship or a pet--the physical sensations of grieving are the same. Charna offers some practices that can be useful in being with loss.
Nov 30, 2021 • 1h 2min
6. Mothers, Daughters and the Evolution of Healing From Trauma featuring Laura Davis
On today’s episode, we welcome Laura Davis bestselling author of “The Courage To Heal,” her seminal book about healing from sexual trauma. She waxes philosophical on a variety of topics, including her new memoir, “The Burning Light Of Two Stars,” (which I cannot recommend enough). We talk about the relationship between reader and author, how life experience changes our perception of the past, and what it's like when you have a parent who refuses your reality. We end with an exercise on forgiveness.
Nov 23, 2021 • 53min
5. The Art of Dearmoring the Cervix and Transcendent Sex featuring Olivia Bryant
This week on LaidOPEN Podcast, Charna speaks with Olivia Bryant, the founder of Self:Cervix. Self:Cervix is a movement dedicated to educating and experiencing the orgasmic cervix. Olivia’s mission is to share this information with cervix owners, their partners and people worldwide to aid in shifting and expanding the conversation around female sexuality. They discuss the value of practice, the connection between spirituality and sexuality, how to heal, surrender and have more connected sex with self and other. Olivia guides us through an exercise in discovering your cervix and gaining pelvic presence.
