Gateways to Awakening

Today’s episode is with Ethan Kross, one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. An award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. Ethan has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed about his research on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ What it means to have an inner critic ✅ Why we have an inner critic, and how you would guide people to deal with their inner critic ✅ How he came up with this concept of dealing with the inner critic ✅ What he has learned about self-control ✅ Why some people benefit from turning inwards to understand their feelings, while others are apt to fall apart when they engage in precisely the same behavior? ✅ Why some people have louder inner critics than others? https://www.ethankross.com/ Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

Today’s episode is with David Bingham, a leading voice in the world of consciousness. His interview on Consciousness TV was a major inspiration for Rhonda Byrne’s creation of The Secret, which she publicly talks about, and is how I first heard about David. After interviewing David, I felt a wave of peace wash over me, as he has a profound way of speaking about our true nature in a way that changed my entire perspective on reality. David was a spiritual seeker for nearly thirty years, before realizing his True nature in 2005, while listening to a podcast of the American non-duality teacher, John Wheeler. Gradually, following Realization, he started speaking one to one with people seeking to realize their True nature. Effortless Being is the core aspect of his approach. He has assisted over two thousand people to become Self realized. We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ What it means to “wake up” and what the experience was like for David ✅ What it means to be a human and what it mean to be consciousness ✅ What it means to be “awareness” ✅ The difference between self-realization and consciousness ✅ How he defines the concept of “self realized” ✅ How he deals with conflict and suffering ✅ The role that love plays in our reality ✅ How we can change our self-concept Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

In today’s episode, I sit down with Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., a psychologist, writer, speaker, and Jungian analyst who has published 19 books including, The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance and Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path. She hosts the popular podcast ENEMIES: From War to Wisdom that provides a fresh look at human hostilities and what to do about them. She is a lifelong Buddhist practitioner and a Mindfulness teacher. I learned about Polly through a past guest, Katherine Woodward Thomas, who spoke so highly of her work, and I’m excited to dive in. We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ What does ”love between equals” mean? ✅ What is projective identification and why does it feel like such a terrible offense? ✅ Why does it recreate the conditions that we so often want to escape? ✅ Why we often get stuck in loops in our relationships - it seems like we often get to the same impasse. Why does this happen? ✅ Why we are so unprepared to be in equal relationships? And what she has seen in her workshops on how we can become equipped to become equal. ✅ What the self-esteem trap is ✅ How we free ourselves of self-importance? Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

In today’s episode, I speak with Barbara Huson (previously known as Barbara Stanny), who is the leading authority on women, wealth and power. As a bestselling author, financial therapist, teacher & wealth coach, Barbara has helped millions take charge of their finances and their lives. Barbara's background in business, her years as a journalist, her Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology, her extensive research, and her personal experience with money give her a unique perspective and makes her the foremost expert on empowering women to live up to their financial and personal potential. Barbara is the author of 7 books including, Prince Charming Isn’t Coming: How Women Get Smart About Money, Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to up Your Earnings and Change Your Life, Overcoming Underearning: A Five-Step Plan to a Richer Life, Finding a Financial Advisor You Can Trust: A Guide for Investors and Those Who Want To Be, We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ Why is wealth a topic so many women do not talk about? ✅ What does it mean to be “wealthy”? ✅ Why so many women have so much difficulty making or managing money ✅ The three levels of financial development ✅ Why she said “problems with money are never about money”. ✅ Why so many women are underearners Barbara Huson has been featured on Good Morning America, The View, Extra, The O'Reilly Report, and many times on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, PBS and NPR, as well as the New York Times, and USA Today. Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

Enmeshment and healthy boundaries are a topic of interest for many of us, as our family dynamics often contribute to our inability to show up in our romantic relationships. In today’s episode, I speak with Dr. Kenneth M. Adams who began his professional career in 1981 treating children, adolescents, and their families. Dr. Adams created and facilitates the Enmeshment Workshops: From Guilt and Ambivalence to Passion and Purpose to help those struggling to break free from enmeshment. In 1985 he began a private practice with the Children of Alcoholic Parents program, an outpatient program for the treatment of adults who had grown up in alcoholic families. It was there that he began to notice that many of these clients had addictions and enmeshment issues, two of his primary specialties today. We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ What is enmeshment? ✅ Why does it happen, and how often does it happen? ✅ When does it start? ✅ How enmeshment is different between parents and children v romantic partners ✅ The difference between enmeshment and codependency ✅ Some ranges of healthy enmeshment v unhealthy enmeshment ✅ How he works with people who need to create boundaries and step out of their enmeshment patterns ✅ Guidance for parents as well as children who are in enmeshed relationships Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

Today’s episode is with Deepak Chopra, founder of The Chopra Foundation, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Deepak made a major impact on my life when I was in my 20’s in NYC and started listening to many of his recordings, which transformed my life. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. For the last thirty years, Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution and has written over 92 books on success, fulfillment, wholeness, and plenty, offering practical advice on how to cultivate a sense of abundance in times of fear and insecurity. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” www.deepakchopra.com We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ What it means to be a human and what it means to be pure consciousness? ✅ What the words “pure potentiality” mean. ✅ What it mean to be “aware” ✅ Why he thinks we are here ✅ How he deals with conflict or suffering ✅ The nature of reality ✅ What our biology has to do with our spirituality and how they function together ✅ The meaning of “naive realism” Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

In today’s episode, I speak with ​​Karla Mclaren, M.Ed. an award-winning author, educator, social science researcher, empathy expert, and workplace consultant. Her work revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. Her applied work, Dynamic Emotional Integration®, is a groundbreaking process that reveals the genius and healing power within the emotional realm. She is the author of many books, including The Power of Emotions at Work, Embracing Anxiety, and The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, and she’s the developer of the online learning site EmpathyAcademy.org. We dive into the following and so much more: ✅ Why understanding our emotions is so important ✅ Why so many people do not understand their emotions ✅ Why “Restoring the intellect to it’s rightful position” ✅ In her book “The Language of Emotions”, we talk about the need for a balanced psyche, and incorporating the elements of air, earth, water and fire. ✅ Some of the dominant emotions she speaks about in her work, specifically, anger, guilt & shame, fear and then boredom - and how to move through them. ✅ What happens when someone represses their anger? And why she says that dealing with your emotions (like anger) should be a restorative act. It was a pure delight to connect with Karla and I think you’ll enjoy this conversation tremendously. Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

I am so excited about today’s conversation! Today’s episode is about exploring the magical world of mushrooms and fungi with Giuliana Furci. Giuliana is foundress and executive director of the Fungi Foundation. She is a Harvard University Associate, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, Co-Chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee, and author of several titles including a series of field guides to Chilean fungi and chapters in publications such as Fantastic Fungi. Giuliana has worked in the non-profit sector for the last 17 years and has held consulting positions in U.S. philanthropic foundations as well as full-time positions in international marine conservation NGOs, and Chilean environmental NGOs. We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ How her path from childhood to undergrad to adulthood brought her to the world of fungi ✅ What mushrooms are and why they are called fungi ✅ The dominant types of mushrooms ✅ Why mushrooms are so important to our ecosystem ✅ Why mushrooms, which have so many benefits, have been so understudied and why there is such a renewed interest in mushrooms today ✅ How mushrooms affect us from a health perspective ✅ Her experience with other types of mushrooms that have gained popularity and some of her discoveries in this space It was a pure delight to connect with Guliana and I think you’ll enjoy this conversation tremendously. Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

In today’s episode, I speak with both Dr. Christopher Germer and Dr. Kristin Neff. Christopher Germer, PhD is a clinical psychologist and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He co-developed the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program with Kristin Neff in 2010 and they wrote two books, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. MSC has been taught to over 200,000 people worldwide. Kristin Neff is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion nearly twenty years ago. She is author of the bestselling book Self-Compassion, and her newest book is Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. We dive into the following and so much more: ✅ What self-compassion is in their words ✅ How self-compassion is different from self-esteem ✅ The steps to connect with yourself through the lens of self-compassion ✅ Why the idea of a “shared or common humanity” is so important in the work of self-compassion ✅ How they teach people this process Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.

On today’s episode, I interview Patricia Albere, the founder of the Evolutionary Collective, internationally known contemporary spiritual teacher, visionary, bestselling author of Evolutionary Relationships: Unleashing the Transformative Power of Mutual Awakening and recognized leader in the emerging field of post-personal development. Her unique experience of a sustained dual awakening over 20 years ago led to the discovery of the essential components that create an awakened ‘we space’ that is transforming our understanding of what is possible in the space between us. Patricia has a free, self-paced Introduction to Mutual Awakening e-Course available at www.evolutionarycollective.come/intro-course-yt We talk about the following and so much more: ✅ The new evolutionary dimension of embodiment and what it means to be in an evolutionary relationship ✅ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how she applies it to the world of relationships ✅ How the need for connection has changed in the last ten years and especially in the last year of the pandemic ✅ The Mutual Awakening Practice and why its important Please tag us and tell us what you loved! You can follow @Gateways_To_Awakening on Instagram or Facebook if you’d like to stay connected.