Pedram Shojai is a former Taoist monk, Qi Gong master, physician, and bestselling author known as The Urban Monk. Renowned for his diverse and direct teachings, Pedram has teamed with Sounds True to release The Urban Monk Inner Stillness Training Program: How to Open Up and Awaken to the Infinite River of Life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Pedram about the awakening that led him to Eastern esoteric practices and why he decided to bring those practices out of the monastery and into the world at large. Pedram and Tami talk about the practices of Taoist inner alchemy and how these can initiate profound personal change on many levels. They also discuss Pedram’s experiences with documentary filmmaking and how they have informed his view that conscious capitalism needs to take a more active, focused role in helping the world in these turbulent times. Finally, Pedram leads listeners in a breathing exercise intended to settle the body and bring a glimpse of timelessness. (64 minutes)
Dr. Joel Kahn is a holistic cardiologist, clinical professor of medicine, and author who is known as “America’s Healthy Heart Doc.” With Sounds True, he has published The Plant-Based Solution: America’s Healthy Heart Doc’s Plan to Power Your Health. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Joel and Tami Simon discuss why making the switch to a whole-food, vegan diet is the best decision you can make for your long-term heart health—as well as for diabetes prevention, sexual energy, and overall longevity. They compare a plant-based diet to other contemporary methods such as the keto and paleo diets, and Joel explains how to address what’s missing in purely vegan foods. Finally, Tami and Joel talk about how the switch to a vegan diet is especially important for contemporary environmental crises and why a plant-based lifestyle will soon be a social standard. (58 minutes)
Tip #1: Claiming your discomfort allows you to show up and be present. From the griever’s perspective, it’s a huge relief to be around those who are willing to be uncomfortable and show up anyway.
If you aren’t sure you should say something—ask. Err on the side of being present. Your effort really is noticed and appreciated.
Tip #2: Don’t be a cheerleader. When things are dark, it’s OK to be dark. Not every corner needs the bright light of encouragement. In a similar vein, don’t encourage someone to have gratitude for the good things that still exist. Good things and horrible things occupy the same space; they don’t cancel each other out.
Do mirror their reality back to them. When they say, “This entirely sucks,” say, “Yes, it does.” It’s amazing how much that helps.
Tip #3: Don’t talk about “later.” When someone you love is in pain, it’s tempting to talk about how great things are going to be for them in the future. Right now, that future is irrelevant. Stay in the present moment, or if the person is talking about the past, join them there. Allow them to choose.
Tip #4: In all things, not just in grief, it’s important to get consent before giving advice or offering strategies. Ask the person whom you’re supporting, “Are you wanting empathy or a strategy right now?” Respect their answer.
Tip #5: Lean in and hang back. Respond to your friend, be curious and responsive to their needs. At the same time, don’t ask the grieving person to do more work. Observe how things are landing for them, but in those early days, please don’t expect—or demand—that they show up with their normal emotional-relational skills. They do not have them. Asking the grieving person to educate you on how best to help is simply not something they can do.
Megan Devine is a writer, speaker, and advocate for emotional change on a cultural level. She holds a master’s in counseling psychology. Since the tragic loss of her partner in 2009, Megan has emerged as a bold new voice in the world of grief support. Her contributions via her site Refuge in Grief have helped create sanctuary for those in pain and encouragement for those who want to help. For more, visit refugeingrief.com.
Buy your copy of It’s OK That You’re Not OK at your favorite bookseller!
Most of us come from secularized backgrounds from which spiritual forms, practices, and rituals have been scrubbed away, and we tend to have an aversion toward things like altars. However, most members of the world’s religious population keep a personal altar or shrine in their home, where they connect with and perform rituals to ancestors, saints, and the Divine, even amid modern, urban lives. In Western secular culture, altars have morphed into man caves, home theaters, or packed closets where we worship the gods of fame, beauty, and success. Consider how much time, energy, and prioritization we give these. Sound judgmental? Would it be judgmental for me to say a crisp, fresh kale salad is healthier than a bucket of fried chicken, or a run in the park more vitalizing than a television binge? We’ve been trained to abandon discernment—some things are better for us than others. It’s not all good.
If you can see an altar as psychological or emotional equipment—a bench press for the mind, augmentation for the heart—it might change your opinion. One of my teachers once said, “Clean your house as if the Dalai Lama was coming to visit for tea.” Now imagine sitting down at your altar with the Dalai Lama. It makes for an incredibly different experience if you picture an inspiring person right there with you. This may change your mind, not because of anything magical or special that is out there, but because the visualization shifts the quality of your experience. This altar is not for anybody else. Whose mind improves if you look at your altar and see a real Buddha instead of a bronze statue of a Buddha? Yours.
When Tibetan Buddhists set up altars, they put many objects on them, but three are central:
Buddha statue (symbolizing awakened body)
Scripture or other text (symbolizing awakened speech)
Stupa or other shrine (symbolizing awakened mind)
So when you sit facing an altar, you become familiar with transforming your own body, speech, and mind.
The body or form of a Buddha (rupakaya), particularly the aspects of compassion and engagement, is represented by a statue placed in the middle of the altar. Your Buddha might be a Tibetan thangka painting or a simple stone. It might be a photograph of the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis, an image of Pema Chödrön or Martin Luther King, Jr. No matter who or what it is, imagine it’s the embodiment of a real, living Buddha inviting you to practice, inspiring you to evolve.
Here is how I set up my Buddhist altar, but you can always arrange things and add or take away things as it works for you:
MILES NEALE, PSYD, is among the leading voices of the current generation of Buddhist teachers and a forerunner in the emerging field of contemplative psychotherapy. He is a Buddhist psychotherapist in private practice, assistant director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, and faculty at Tibet House US and Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Neale is co-editor of and contributor to the groundbreaking volume Advances inContemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerated Healing and Transformation and author of Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human. For more visit milesneale.com.
Buy your copy of Gradual Awakening at your favorite bookseller!
Newcomers to tarot often feel a measure of trepidation or uncertainty. A reading might show you things you’re not eager to see—which is exactly why the cards can serve as one of our greatest tools on the journey of self-discovery and healing. With her new book, The Inner Tarot, Kate Van Horn offers a gentle, practical handbook for any level of experience to help demystify the tarot and work with the cards as a trustworthy companion on your life’s path.
Give a listen to this illuminating podcast with Tami Simon and Kate Van Horn as they discuss: overcoming the wounds of generational trauma; alchemizing your shadow; the tarot as a living object; channeled writing and spirit connections; numerology as a foundation for reading tarot; understanding the four elements: earth, fire, water, and air; the grace and gift of self-compassion; reading tips for beginners; the minor and major arcana; a tarot reading for today’s times; knowing how to course correct; restoring our fragmented energy; avoiding the habit of “panic pulling” cards; discernment in working with intuitives; reading physical spaces; 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.
Human communication, even on a good day, is really terrible. It really is. We misunderstand each other much of the time.
Do you really know whether your partner understands what you are saying? Does your partner get the nuances or understand the purpose of the words you are using? Do you think they know exactly how you feel about your words or the meaning of the words? When you’re listening to someone, do you think you really understand them? Do you understand their mind? Their context? More often than not, you are approximating each other. You’re getting close.
Most of our communication is implicit, nonverbal. Our verbal communication, which we all love and adore and depend on, is really the culprit. It gets us into a lot of trouble.
When you were dating, I’m sure you were much more careful about the words you used. How careful are you now? Many couples grow sloppy with each other in terms of their verbal communication. They take shortcuts because they think they know each other.
You’re probably taking a lot of shortcuts, assuming your partner understands the meaning of your words, and you’re getting into trouble. Do you even have each other’s attention when you are communicating? Many times, you don’t. You both are busy, you are moving, and your lives are only getting busier. And then you find yourselves saying, as many couples do, “Oh, it’s my partner’s problem. They’re not listening.” Right?
When it comes to communication, you both must take responsibility for making sure that your speech is clear and understood by the other person. As you will read in this section, just because you say something, doesn’t mean your partner is translating it as you intend.
Here’s an example:
Partner A: I want more intimacy in our relationship.
Partner B: I want that, too!
The problem here is that to Partner A intimacy means “more sex.” Partner B, on the other hand, thinks that agreeing to intimacy will mean more interpersonal talk. What is more is that sex actually means “only intercourse,” and interpersonal talk specifically means “more questions about how I’m doing.” That is how we talk to each other—as if the other person knows exactly what we mean. Much of the time, we don’t even know exactly what we mean.
Remember the good old days (of course you don’t) when speech was simpler? We would just say, “Duck!” or “Eat!” or “Sleep!” or “Run!” or “Lion!” Fast forward to today’s linguistic complexities and consider for a moment all the nuances in our talk, all the lingo, all the changing meanings for regular words. Take the word sick, for example. Today it could mean physically ill, mentally ill, disgusting, or amazing. And the language couples use with each other can seem even more confusing. “I want to know you deeply” could mean many different things. “I want you to show me your soul” could make a person’s head spin. “I want you to say what you really feel” can, for some, seem like a trick or an insurmountable task. We use a great many words and phrases that mean a great many things, none of which partners clarify with each other. This is a terrific error.
The human brain is always trying to conserve energy; it does as little as possible until it must. Most people, particularly partners, will treat clarification as unnecessary and, in fact, frustrating. “You should know what I mean,” a partner might say. “My meaning is obvious.” Or, “Everyone knows what that means.” Both speaker and listener feel persecuted by the chasm between meaning and understanding. Minds misattune, which leads to heightened arousal (faster heartbeat, higher blood pressure), which leads to threat perception, which leads to fight, flight, or freeze.
Rinse and repeat.
Check and Recheck This common and frankly annoying error is easily avoidable by returning to the formality likely present at the beginning of the relationship. Check in with simple, nonthreatening questions or requests:
“Are you saying . . . ?”
“I want your eyes because this is important . . .”
“Let me make sure I understand . . .”
“Say back what you heard . . .”
“Let me repeat that.”
“What do you think I meant by . . . ?”
“We may not be talking about the same thing. Are you saying . . . ?”
Checking and rechecking is vital to daily governance and the proper running of a two-person system. If you were two astronauts communicating out in space while tethered to the mothership, would you be incredibly careful with your communication? You bet you would. Your lives would be at stake. If you were two generals deciding a war plan, would you talk in shorthand or assume you were on the same page? If you did, people would die. You are no different. If you and your partner continue to use shoddy communication to share information, your relationship will suffer badly.
These errors, if repeated again and again, go right into your respective personal narratives about what’s wrong with the other partner and why you’re unhappy. Remember, our personal narratives form to protect our interests only and are almost always based on faulty data—like errors in communication!
Be orderly. Be precise. Be responsible. Be a two-person system.
This excerpt is adapted from In Each Other’s Care: A Guide to the Most Common Relationship Conflicts and How to Work Through Them by Stan Taktin, PsyD, MFT.
Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy® (PACT). He has a clinical practice in Calabasas, California, and with his wife, Dr. Tracey Tatkin, cofounded the PACT Institute for the purpose of training other psychotherapists to use this method in their clinical practices. For more information, visit thepactinstitute.com.
