Compassion As A Superpower

Michelle Maldonado is founder and CEO of Lucenscia, a firm dedicated to human flourishing and mindful business transformation. She is a graduate of Barnard College at Columbia University and The George Washington University Law School, as well as an internationally certified mindfulness teacher and founding faculty for Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence Coaching Certification Program. With Sounds True, she’s on the faculty of our Inner MBA program. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon talks to Michelle about how a brush with mindfulness at a very young age instilled her with a sense of presence that has guided her personal and professional path. They discuss why nurturing authentic connection and deep, intuitive care in the workplace leads to better human and organizational outcomes, and some of the challenges businesses face in making sustained change. She explains how unconscious bias seeps into our perceptions “like melted butter into nooks and crannies” and offers insights for addressing bias from a place of healing. They also discuss treating others as “human beings rather than human doings,” the journey of discovering our own power, embracing “compassion projects” as a means of public service and emotional release, and how we can best bring our care and attention to matters that affect us all.

Just One Question | Shamini Jain: How Can You Heal Fro...

Shamini Jain — August 20, 2026

There’s an elephant in the room anytime someone talks about energy healing, an elephant named Placebo.

For most of us, placebo means you got the sugar pill. It means whatever’s happening is all in your mind, not in your body. That’s even what Tami thought when she sat down to talk with award-winning researcher in psychoneuroimmunology and trained clinical psychologist Shamini Jain, PhD, in 2023.

But here’s the thing—placebo isn’t the thing science needs to control for and throw out. It’s the measurable evidence of what our bodies do on their own, and Shamini makes the case with research most of us have never heard about.

In this episode:

The open-label placebo studies where patients are told outright they’re receiving a placebo—and improve anyway
The four elements Shamini says show up in every healing encounter: expectation, conditioning, relationship, and meaning and ritual
Why placebo-controlled surgery trials should make all of us ask harder questions
What the antidepressant data actually says—and why “we work” may be the better takeaway than “the drugs don’t”

Mallory and Chris have spent the past year and a half working on a podcast about energy healing (Phenomena) and Sounds True is offering—right now—an immersion course on energy healing featuring Shamini Jain as well as Robert Peng and Laurie Nealon…so now felt like the perfect time to bring this conversation back. And maybe rename that elephant for good.

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Shamini Jain.

Laurie Nealon: “Energy Healing with Help From the Ot...

Laurie Nealon — August 11, 2026

What if you were never working alone—and neither was anyone you were trying to help?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Laurie Nealon, an intuitive energy healer, medium, and educator whose work is profiled on the Sounds True podcast Phenomena: The Science and Stories of Energy Healing. Seventeen years ago, Laurie began seeing and hearing those who had passed—not in dreams, but in the middle of her waking life. She resisted it. Then she built a practice around it.

Join Tami and Laurie to explore:

What Laurie actually perceives when someone who has died “appears”—and how she learned to filter it
Integrated Energy Therapy (IET), attunement, and why she calls the practitioner a facilitator rather than a healer
The “spiritual support group”: angels, guides, ascended masters, and loved ones she says fill the room during a session
A guided practice—rolling the energy—you can do in two minutes before you get out of bed
The screen technique: how to stay open to love without carrying everyone else’s journey
Why “lightening someone’s load” may actually dishonor their path
Entity energy, imprints, and what clearing a block really means
Tami’s hardest question: what about the people who did everything right and still died?
A closing prayer Laurie offers for every listener

Laurie’s conviction is that none of this is exotic. Everyone, she says, should be trained in energy healing the way everyone is trained in CPR—and everyone has the capacity to open to their own gifts.

Listen now, and find out who else is in the room. →

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, and originally aired on Sounds True One.

Michelle Wadleigh: “I Demand to Be Me”

— August 4, 2026

“You have to want the freedom more than you want to be right about it.”

That’s what Reverend Dr. Michelle Wadleigh offers to anyone who has tried forgiveness and found that it didn’t take. Not a technique. A decision.

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Wadleigh—ordained minister in Centers for Spiritual Living, retreat facilitator, co-founder of the Planned Happiness Institute, and author of Forgiveness, Shadow Work, and the new Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: The Soul’s Journey to Courage, Authenticity, and Self-Love—about what it actually takes to stop living at the mercy of our own stories.

Join Tami and Michelle to explore:

Why forgiveness practices fail when they skip the body and the subconscious—and what to do instead
How shadow work and forgiveness depend on each other, and why projection drives so much of the divisiveness we see
“Functioning on top of dysfunction”: our addictions to being nice and being liked, and how they train us to dumb ourselves down
The 15 to 20 minutes before sleep, when the mind turns porous—and how Michelle guards that window
Fire walking, cold plunges, and the discovery that fear is a choice rather than an automatic
What it means to demand to be me without excuses—and who, exactly, that demand is addressed to
Why a book about bold self-expression closes with instructions for a solo silent retreat
Presence as a practice, learned while walking beside a dying husband

Michelle speaks throughout from the middle of her own hardest passage, which gives everything she says about buoyancy, beauty, and determination a weight it would not otherwise carry.

Listen now. →

Insights at the Edge is supported by Omega Institute, a global gathering hub for lifelong learning and spiritual exploration. Located in upstate New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley, Omega offers weekend workshops, special events, rest and rejuvenation retreats, professional trainings, online learning, and more.

Special Offer – Sounds True community members enjoy 10% off any workshop registration at Omega Institute. Discover what calls to you at eomega.org/true. Use code TRUE at checkout.

Insights at the Edge is supported by Magic Hour, whose ceremonial teas carry more presence, beauty, and ritual into ordinary days. Magic Hour draws its leaves and botanicals from regenerative small farms around the world, in blends made to nourish the body and open the mind.

Explore their teas, matchas, and herbal rituals at clubmagichour.com. Get 20% off your first order with the code TRUE.

Compassion as a Superpower

June 29, 2021

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