Sounds True Logo
     

Diana Winston: The Big Bang of Natural Awareness

    —
February 27, 2019
Mindfulness Parenting & Children

Diana Winston: The Big Bang of Natural Awareness

Diana Winston — February 27, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Diana Winston is is the director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and a pioneer in mindfulness education for children. With Sounds True, she has released The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Diana about “natural awareness”—an always-available, foundational flow state distinguishable from deliberate mindfulness practice. They share “glimpse practices” designed to open up perception and embodiment of natural awareness, commenting on how each can be practiced in day-to-day life. Diana and Tami discuss the value of going on retreat, the spectrum of different awareness practices, and common misconceptions about what it takes to become a mindfulness teacher. Finally, Diana explains why it’s important not to become a “bliss-ninny” as well as the difference between natural awareness and spacing out. (64 minutes)

Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Semel Institute’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) and the coauthor, with Dr. Susan Smalley, of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness (DaCapo, 2010). She is a well‑known teacher and speaker who brings mindful awareness practices to the general public to promote health and well‑being. Called by the LA Times “one of the nation’s best‑known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulness since 1993 in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, schools in the US and Asia, and online. She developed the evidence‑based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide.

Posted February 27, 2019
[ss_social_share]

900 Episodes and Counting…

Subscribe to Insights at the Edge to hear all of Tami’s interviews (transcripts available too!), featuring Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Adyashanti, and many more.

Apple Podcasts
YouTube
Spotify
RSS

Meet Your Host: Tami Simon

Each week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon interviews leading voices in the Mind/Body/Spirit space about a vast spectrum of fascinating ideas. Since 2009, Tami and her guests have been exploring the edge of understanding, nearly 1,000 episodes on the honest work of change, including spiritual discovery, awakening, intuition, purpose, trauma, and grief.

Photo © Jason Elias

Products By Author

Glimpses of Being

Glimpses of Being

Audio

Starting at: $44.09

Also By Author

See All
podcast
Post Views: 10,732
Meditation Mindfulness

The Full Spectrum of Awareness

Diana Winston — July 13, 2021

Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, where she developed the Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum. With Sounds True, Diana is the author of a new book, The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness, and the creator of a new audio teaching series called Glimpses of Being: A Training Course in Expanding Mindful Awareness. In this experiential episode of Insights at the Edge, Diana introduces us to what she calls the “spectrum of awareness” through a series of guided practices. She talks to Tami Simon about the various ways we can access and experience awareness, from narrow and focused to effortless and spacious—states we are constantly moving between. They touch on ways to deepen and explore awareness through “glimpse practices” and discuss how we can work toward making natural awareness our default state. Finally, Diana explains why tapping into the full range of awareness can act as a good antidote for those feeling stuck or restless in their meditation practice.

podcast
0
Post Views: 1,924
Mindfulness Parenting & Children

Diana Winston: The Big Bang of Natural Awareness

Diana Winston — February 27, 2019

Diana Winston is is the director of mindfulness education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and a pioneer in mindfulness education for children. With Sounds True, she has released The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Diana about “natural awareness”—an always-available, foundational flow state distinguishable from deliberate mindfulness practice. They share “glimpse practices” designed to open up perception and embodiment of natural awareness, commenting on how each can be practiced in day-to-day life. Diana and Tami discuss the value of going on retreat, the spectrum of different awareness practices, and common misconceptions about what it takes to become a mindfulness teacher. Finally, Diana explains why it’s important not to become a “bliss-ninny” as well as the difference between natural awareness and spacing out. (64 minutes)

You Might Also Enjoy

podcast
Post Views: 7,180
Mindfulness

Tara Brach: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times

Tara Brach — June 23, 2026


What if the bravest thing you can do right now is refusing to close your heart?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach—beloved meditation teacher, clinical psychologist, and bestselling author of Radical Acceptance and Trusting the Gold—about her new inner workbook with Sounds True, The Courageous Heart: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times. At a moment when so many people feel pulled between despair and action, Tara offers a grounded path through both.

Join Tami and Tara to explore:

  • How to stay spiritually engaged—without burning out or spiritually bypassing the reality of suffering
  • The bodhisattva path as a living practice: what it means to be an “awakening being” in ordinary, everyday life
  • Why grief is often covered over by anger—and how moving through grief unlocks the capacity for love and action
  • The RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) for working with armoring, fear, and excruciating pain in the heart
  • The shift from head space to heart space—and a brief guided meditation to experience it directly
  • How aspiration becomes the fuel for the spiritual path—and why Tara “sandwiches” her day with it
  • The practice of seeing basic goodness in others—including stories of Father Gregory Boyle and John Lewis that illuminate how this changes everything
  • What to do when you feel alone, disconnected, and uncertain where to start

Whether you’re overwhelmed by current events or searching for a more engaged and openhearted way to meet this moment, Tara Brach offers both the courage and the practical tools to begin.

Listen now and choose to love. →

This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.

Enter for a chance to win the Monthly Magic Subscription Journey. It includes 12 months of tea, a loose leaf starter kit, monthly virtual classes, and free shipping worth $673. Learn more at ClubMagicHour.com/TRUE (no purchase required). Get 20% off your first order of Magic Hour tea at ClubMagicHour.com with the code TRUE.

podcast
Post Views: 550
Mindfulness

Just One Question | Thích Nhất Hạnh: What Is the ...

Thich Nhat Hanh — June 18, 2026


What if the root cause of every social problem — starvation, ecological destruction, violence — wasn’t a broken system or a corrupt institution, but a collective state of unawareness? And what if the most powerful act of social change available to you today happened in your own mind?

That’s the territory Tami Simon explores in this remarkable exchange with Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master who founded Plum Village, pioneered engaged Buddhism, and became one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Recorded more than two decades ago beneath a willow tree, this conversation feels astonishingly present.

Thích Nhất Hạnh’s answer to Tami’s question doesn’t point outward to policy or protest — it points inward, then ripples out. Individual awakening, he says, is collective awakening. Your practice is social action. Your light is contagious.

What you’ll hear in this exchange:

  • Why individual mindfulness practice is inseparable from social transformation
  • How collective enlightenment spreads — and how it already has, in ways we don’t always recognize
  • The role artists, teachers, economists, and politicians all play in the work of awakening
  • How to stay rooted in hope — and action — without being swallowed by despair

This is a short clip, but it carries the full weight of a lifetime of practice and teaching. It may change how you think about what you’re doing every time you sit down to meditate.

This clip is taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Thích Nhất Hạnh. Find the complete interview in this feed or at soundstrue.com.

This episode is sponsored by Omega Institute, a global gathering hub for lifelong learning and spiritual exploration. Omega offers weekend workshops, special events, rest and rejuvenation retreats, professional training, online learning, and more. Discover what calls to you at eomega.org/true.

podcast
Post Views: 8,502
Parenting & Children Relationships

Geneen Roth: It’s Not About Your Mother—Finding Lo...

— May 7, 2026


What if the relationship you’ve been trying to fix your whole life isn’t actually broken in the way you think?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Geneen Roth—author of 11 books including the New York Times bestseller Women, Food, and God—about her newest and most personal book yet: Love Finally: Untangling the Knot Between Mothers, Daughters, and Food. After 70 years of carrying wounds she believed came directly from her mother, Roth stumbled into a teaching that cracked everything open: the pain isn’t about your mother. It’s about what you concluded about yourself.

Join Tami and Geneen to explore:

  • Why the most painful legacy of childhood wounds isn’t what was done to us—but the lies we decided were true about ourselves
  • The six steps to freedom that Geneen learned from her mentor Coco, and how to begin working with them
  • How self-rejection—not the original wound—is what keeps us trapped, and how awareness dissolves it
  • Why affirmations and forgiveness meditations don’t work—and what actually does
  • The surprising transformation of Geneen’s relationship with her 97-year-old mother, and what it reveals about how we change
  • A candid revisiting of Geneen’s foundational teachings on intuitive eating—and what she’s learned to say differently now
  • What it means to be “the one you’ve been waiting for”—and why that’s not a platitude but a practice

Whether your relationship with your mother is tender, complicated, estranged, or something in between, this conversation offers a genuinely new way to understand where the real work lives—and why it might finally be possible to do it.

Listen now. →

This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sounds True Logo

Sounds True is a multimedia publishing company founded in 1985 by Tami Simon, with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. The company is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

Menu

Listen to Sounds True playlists on

Spotify Logo

Connect With Us

Facebook Youtube Instagram Pinterest

© 2024 Sounds True. All rights reserved.

Accessibility  | Privacy Policy  | Terms & Conditions