Acharya Shunya is a renowned expert in Ayurvedic lifestyle medicine and the founder of Vedika Global, a school of Ayurvedic study based in California. With Sounds True, she has released the new book Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks to Shunya about the Ayurvedic legacy she teaches and embodies—including its baseline concepts, history, and modern attitudes. Tami and Shunya also talk about Ayurveda’s repudiation of the concept of health as a commodity. Finally, Shunya discusses the universality of Vedic teachings and how an “infinity mindset” is a necessary cure for the foundational problem of hopelessness. (69 minutes)
Acharya Shunya is an internationally renowned mystic and a classically trained master of nondual Advaita, Ayurveda, and Yoga. The first female head of her 2,000-year-old Vedic-Hindu spiritual lineage from India, Shunya facilitates authenticity, self-remembrance, and divine feminine pathways to awakening. She is founder of The Awakened Self Foundation with its international headquarters in California, and is the author of Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, Sovereign Self, and Roar Like a Goddess.
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Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.
In the second half of Acharya Shunya’s talk, she shares her personal journey from tradition to transformation, offering practical tools and Vedic insights to help us embrace our greater purpose here.
Through her personal experiences, practical guidance, and teachings from her lineage, Acharya Shunya offers us a roadmap to awakening and living a more meaningful, empowered life.
Note: This interview 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.
Acharya Shunya joins Tami Simon to explore Vedic perspectives on reincarnation, the journey of the soul, and the deeper meaning behind life, death, and rebirth.
Are you curious about what happens after we die? This week’s episode continues our series of talks on reincarnation. Here, Tami Simon joins Acharya Shunya, a trailblazing Vedic teacher and author, to explore ancient wisdom about the soul’s journey beyond this life, as well as her own direct insights gained in service of her own lineage’s evolution.
Acharya Shunya shares her step-by-step guide to what happens after death, revealing a compassionate, non-judgmental process focused on growth and remembrance—not punishment for the misconceived concept of “bad karma.”
Note: This interview 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.
In this podcast we join Sounds True founder, Tami Simon, in conversation with Acharya Shunya, a master of Ayurveda and an internationally renowned spiritual teacher and scholar of Advaita (nondual wisdom). Give a listen to this informative dialogue to hear about Acharya Shunya’s book, Roar Like a Goddess, and her empowering insights into : Awakening the inner goddesses of the Vedic tradition; the progressive revelation of Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati; “ugly power” based on ignorance, and the devas (or light bearers) who cultivate power ethically; how symbolism helps you discover your power; healthy rage and “correctional, super-conscious anger”; the divine, ultimate truth of nonduality at the core of Vedic wisdom; the river of light that flows within all of us; and more.
What if the problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough—it’s that you’re doing too much, too fast, and on borrowed time?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Zabie Yamasaki—founder of Transcending Trauma through Yoga, whose yoga-as-healing curriculum is now taught at over 50 universities including Stanford, Yale, and Johns Hopkins—about her new Sounds True book, Protect Your Energy: A Gentle Guide to Nurture Your Nervous System, Cultivate Rest, and Honor Your Needs.
Drawing from her own journey through hypervigilance, burnout, and a rolling series of panic attacks that landed her in the emergency room, Zabi offers both the science and the soul of nervous system healing.
Join Tami and Zabi to explore:
Why burnout is so sneaky—and how we’re constantly borrowing from tomorrow to get through today
The difference between managing your energy and managing your time—and why that distinction changes everything
What it means to “hold the default nervous system in the room”—and the hidden toll it takes on parents, teachers, healers, and leaders
How boundary work is nervous system work—and why lack of boundaries shows up in your body long before you recognize it as a boundary problem
“Shapes of rest”—simple body-based practices that offer genuine restoration, not just collapse
Somatic self-consent: the embodied check-in practice that helps you navigate the gray zone between yes and no
Why, especially right now, protecting your energy isn’t selfishness—it’s resistance
This is a conversation for everyone who keeps going even when their body is begging them to stop—and who needs permission, finally, to rest.
Listen now and start protecting your energy. →
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.
There are 200 questions in Michael Singer’s new book. But according to Singer, life is ultimately asking you only one: Are you willing to let go?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Singer—beloved author of The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered—alongside transformational teachers Tony Robbins and Sage Robbins for a special interview celebrating the release of Wisdom Untethered: The Time for Questions. What unfolds is more than a book launch. It’s a masterclass in the interior life, led by three of the most profound voices on spiritual freedom alive today.
Join Tami, Michael, Tony, and Sage to explore:
Why letting go is not passive resignation but a lifelong practice of relaxation, release, and inner freedom
The difference between intuition and mental projection—and how to quiet the mind enough to hear the deeper knowing
The highest form of prayer—and why “thy will be done” points to something far more powerful than asking for what you want
Working with fear compassionately: how to stop suppressing it and start raising it up
Michael’s invitation to “lay down and let it wash over you”—a radical approach to emotions too intense to transcend
Why every single moment is literally unique in the universe—and how that recognition changes everything
Whether you’ve read The Untethered Soul a dozen times or are encountering Michael Singer’s teachings for the first time, this interview offers both the breadth and the intimacy of a teaching that can only come from someone who has fully lived it.
Listen now and discover what becomes possible when you finally let go. →
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.
The world’s mental health crisis is real, but so is your capacity to meet it. What if the skills that lead to genuine flourishing are already built into you, waiting to be activated?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Richard Davidson—one of the most highly cited scientists in the world and a pioneer in the neuroscience of emotion and meditation—and Cortland Dahl, contemplative scientist, Buddhist translator, and co-founder of Tergar International, about their new book, Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving. Drawing on decades of research with long-term meditators, guidance from the Dalai Lama, and the world’s wisdom traditions, they offer a science-backed framework for wellbeing that is both profound and surprisingly accessible.
Join Tami, Richard, and Cortland to explore:
Why flourishing is a skill—not a personality trait or a stroke of luck—and how we know this from hard scientific data
The four pillars of wellbeing: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose—and why two of them have been largely ignored by Western science
What it means to be “born to flourish” and the research on infants that proves it
How just five minutes a day of intentional practice—piggybacked onto everyday activities—can produce measurable changes in behavior and biology
Why flourishing doesn’t mean happiness: you can grieve, rage, or struggle and still be flourishing
The role of neuroplasticity in reshaping our relationship to anxiety, reactivity, and negative narrative
Why flourishing is contagious—and why that matters more than ever right now
If the world feels like it’s falling apart, Richard and Cortland make a compelling, evidence-based case that the path forward is not as hard as you think.
Listen now and discover what you were born to do. →
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.
