Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach, an author, clinical pychologist, and founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (District of Columbia). She’s the author of the Sounds True audio learning program Radical Self-Acceptance: A Buddhist Guide to Freeing Yourself from Shame and Meditations for Emotional Healing. Tami and Tara discuss radical acceptance in the face of difficult emotions. (54 minutes)
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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
Could psychedelics cure a panic disorder? Matt Gutman went looking for an honest answer, and he brought a reporter’s notebook with him. This one crossed our desk and we couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Matt is an award-winning journalist who has served as a chief correspondent at both CBS News and ABC News, reporting from war zones and disaster sites for more than two decades. In 2023 he published No Time to Panic, an investigation into the recurring panic attacks he’d been carrying in secret — including the ones that hit him on live television.
When Tami asks which of the substances mattered most, Matt draws a line before he answers: this was not recreation. Every session happened legally, on a couch or a mat, with psychiatrists, psychologists, or trained guides beside him. Then he describes what happened in the Sacred Valley — and what he can still reach for years later, in meditation, with nothing in his system at all.
In this episode:
If you’ve ever wondered what these experiences actually feel like from the inside — not the headline version — Matt is an unusually careful narrator of his own nervous system.
Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Matt Gutman. Find the complete interview here: “Conquering a Lifetime of Panic Attacks.”
Something shifts when you encounter Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work. The food in your bowl starts to look different. The tree at the corner of your block becomes something more than scenery. The world, quite suddenly, feels alive with relationship.
This is how her writing impacted Tami, and this week Tami and Robin—botanist, MacArthur Fellow, National Humanities Medal recipient, enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and author of the beloved Braiding Sweetgrass—talk about what it means to move through the world not as a consumer of natural resources, but as a participant in a web of living gifts.
Join Tami and Robin to explore:
In a time when the relationship between humans and the earth feels broken, Robin Wall Kimmerer offers something rare: a vision of healing rooted in science, indigenous wisdom, and the simple, radical act of giving your gifts back to the world.
Learn more about Robin Wall Kimmerer:
robinwallkimmerer.com
https://www.instagram.com/robinwallkimmerer/
plantbabyplant.com
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.
We all carry grief in one form or another. Whether it’s unhealed wounds from our past or a heart that’s breaking over the suffering in our world, so many of us are desperately seeking solace and hope. In their new book, Vibration of Grace, vocalist and traditional sound healer, gina Breedlove, brings us a toolbox of rituals and practices to invoke the power of sound as a vehicle of love and liberation—for ourselves, our loved ones, and everyone around us.
In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with gina about their life and work, sharing insights on: using your voice as a healing technology; how humming soothes a dysregulated nervous system; the communal practice of grief-letting; the “pulling” ritual to release negative energy; processing our “all of a sudden” times; offering love to our bodies; gina’s unique technique for letting go of anger; how intention and inner boundaries help us navigate health challenges; why any practice must be rigorous to be effective; finding sovereignty within our body and discerning what belongs to us; soul retrieval; shifting our narratives around “burden”; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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