The Mindful Living

What does home mean when everything has been taken apart? If you are carrying pain, shame or the weight of past choices, this conversation offers a gentle place to rest and begin again.

Sana and author Angel Willard speak about living with chronic pain and disability, the difference between accountability and shame, and holding onto love for your children.

About the Guest:

Angel Willard is the author of the memoir Fighting to Come Home, an honest account of survival, motherhood, accountability and healing. She speaks from lived experience, including life with chronic pain.<...

Your life may look impressive on paper, yet something quieter runs underneath. This episode is for high achievers driven by fear, self-doubt, guilt, or shame.

Sana and Steve Barton explore the Game Often Played, the reactive loop of conditioning, and the Game of Ten, a path back to awareness. You will leave with gentle ways to forgive yourself and ease overthinking.

About the Guest:

Steve Barton is a high-performance executive coach, author, and creator of the Game of Ten, a US-registered coaching process. He grew his family floral business from $200,000 to $2 million.

Think of the last time you felt low. Did you open an app, add something to a cart, or buy a beautiful journal? This one is for anyone who has tried to shop their way to calm.

Sana and Dr. Tejvir Sekhon explore mindful consumption, the hedonic treadmill, and how algorithms shape our idea of a good life. You will leave with gentle questions to pause before buying, and a clearer sense of your own good life.

About the Guest:

Dr. Tejvir Sekhon is a marketing professor and researcher who uses consumption as...

When everything feels loud at once, how do you make a decision you can trust? This episode is for anyone carrying pressure at work, at home, or inside their own head.

Sana and Silvia Rizzo explore leadership under pressure and decision making in uncertainty. You will leave with a gentler way to untangle overwhelm and keep moving without waiting for fear to leave.

About the Guest:

Silvia Rizzo is an International Grand Prix dressage rider, entrepreneur, and certified life coach. Elite sport taught her composure under pressure, and she now guides others through...

The news can leave the chest tight and the mind restless. This episode is for anyone who wants to stay engaged with the world without being owned by outrage.

Pastor and author Brian Drinkwine shares how switching off the news and returning to his faith tradition changed the way he sees people. It is a gentle invitation to notice what shapes you, not to pick a side.

About the Guest:

Brian Drinkwine is a pastor at Clarity Church in Southern California and a former political partisan raised in Nashville. He is the author...

You followed the map. You achieved the goals on your vision board. So why does something still feel incomplete?

Diane Van Buren, an award winning architect who walked away from a celebrated career, joins The Mindful Living to talk about honoring the quiet signal that something is missing, even when success looks complete from the outside. She shares how she learned to listen to her heart instead of her head, and what patience and daily appreciation have to do with reclaiming a deferred dream.

About the Guest:

Diane Van Buren is an award...

Why do you react before you even decide? This episode explores the answer.

Neurophilosopher Alan Bodnar spent ten years studying five hundred books on neuroscience and mindfulness to explain why we live on autopilot, and how deliberate attention can rewire automatic fear into responses that serve you.

About the Guest:

Alan Bodnar is a neurophilosopher and researcher who spent the past decade studying over five hundred books on neuroscience, behavior, AI, and mindfulness. He is the founder of The Self-Driving You, a framework and book exploring the automatic mind versus the conscious driver...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, Sana talks with Bradley Gabbert, author of the memoir The Agreeable Child, about how a near-fatal accident at thirty months old shaped a lifetime of people pleasing, passivity, and fear of conflict. Bradley traces his story from a childhood coma and the family dynamics that followed, through decades of staying quiet to stay safe, to the moment in therapy, breathwork, and yoga that finally helped him tell the difference between surviving and truly healing. He shares the practical, engineer-minded process he used to trace his passivity back to its root cause, what...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, Sana sits down with Christian author Marcia McFarland to talk about her book Perfect Glory, a collection of short reflections on identity, purpose, grace, and perseverance. Marcia shares the story behind the book, a prophetic directive she received to "get busy writing," and explains the three sections that structure it: Believe, Receive, and Achieve. The conversation moves through what it means to reconcile suffering with the idea of a loving God, how glory shows up in small everyday moments rather than only the extraordinary ones, and the concept of a "Godwink," a...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, host Avik sits down with certified transformational life coach and NLP practitioner Liz Coleman to explore what really keeps us stuck in cycles of overwhelm. Liz explains that the real block is rarely the to-do list itself, it is the inner story running underneath it, the belief that we have to earn love, prove our worth, or stay busy to be enough. She walks through her Mind Life Reset process, a method that pairs mindset work with nervous system regulation so the body and mind heal together instead of fighting each other...

Christy Thiel, master nutrition therapist and founder of Soulfull Bloom, joins Sana to explore why healing is never meant to happen in isolation. Drawing on two decades of work at the intersection of nutrition science and spirituality, she talks about the roots of self-destructive thoughts, the role of community in recovery, and how her entheogenic church approaches psilocybin with education, safety, and intention.

About the Guest:

Christy Thiel is a master nutrition therapist and the founder of Soulfull Bloom, an entheogenic church, with over two decades of experience working with people on health and healing...

Dr. Maria Van Der Maaten joins Avik to challenge the myth that self-care has to be a solo act. A sociologist and community development practitioner, she shares the research behind her upcoming book Even Monks Meditate Together, and why the wellness habits that actually stick are the ones we build alongside other people.

About the Guest:

Dr. Maria Van Der Maaten is a sociologist and community development practitioner, and the author of the upcoming book Even Monks Meditate Together. Her work looks at how healthy lifestyle habits such as nutrient richness, frequent movement, sound sleep...

Our relationship with money is rarely about the numbers. It's about a story, one inherited from family, written during hard seasons, and rarely ever questioned.

Sana talks with CPA and holistic financial coach Estelle Gibson about the four levels of belief that shape how we handle money, and why financial dependency is common even among high earners.

About the Guest:

Estelle Gibson is a CPA, TEDx speaker, and holistic financial coach with over twenty years of experience. Her TEDx talk on financial dependency has over 2.3 million views. She wrote Poor by Choice? and...

For many women, the relationship with their own body has been adversarial for decades, something to manage or apologize for. Underneath that managing, the body has been trying to say something the whole time.

Sana talks with life success coach Carolyn Hatton about women in their forties, fifties, and sixties who've absorbed the belief that aging limits them, and what changes when you stop fighting your body and start listening.

About the Guest:

Carolyn Hatton is a life success coach and author who works with women navigating midlife and beyond. She created Reclaim...

Most of us try to fix an emotional issue by working directly on it, talking it through, analyzing it, managing it. But what if the real shift happens underneath the emotion?

Sana talks with Tamara Andreas, co-author of Core Transformation, about accessing the deep state beneath a feeling instead of just managing the feeling, and why that makes change actually last.

About the Guest:

Tamara Andreas is an international seminar leader and co-author of Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within, a widely taught personal change method in the NLP world, published in fourteen...

Millions of thoughts run through our heads every day, and most of us never question whether they're true. We just assume they are, because they're ours.

Sana talks with coach and podcast host Anthony Johnson about telling the difference between what's happening now and an old wound resurfacing, and which one is actually running the show.

About the Guest:

Anthony Johnson is a coach, speaker, and host of the podcast Living Your Spirit with Anthony. His work explores how thoughts and emotions shape how we experience ourselves.

Key Takeaways:

There's a version of mindfulness we're sold: calm, still, figured out. But nobody shows the laundry pile growing while you're trying to find five minutes to breathe.

Sana talks with author and life coach Kirana Sidin about the comment from her youngest son that changed everything, and why mindful living is less about calm and more about honest, conscious participation.

About the Guest:

Kirana Sidin is an Indonesian author, life coach, and speaker based in Jakarta. Her book, Cheers for a Good Life, became an Amazon #1 bestseller in Interpersonal Relations.

Key...

Most of us reach for our phones before our eyes are even open, and by the time we're out of bed, we're already carrying a weight that wasn't there when we woke.

Sana talks with Sam Brooks, founder of the good-news platform Rally, about the gap between the world's reality and the version of it we're shown, and how to build a gentler relationship with the news.

About the Guest:

Sam Brooks left a career in screenwriting and digital publishing in Los Angeles to found Rally, a platform surfacing underreported stories of progress...

For anyone who's ever fought their pain harder than the pain itself, this episode asks a slower question: what if healing isn't something you chase, but something you stop resisting?

Zach Rehder returns for a third, unscripted conversation on The Mindful Living, exploring boredom as a doorway, the difference between feeling something and owning it, and why every trigger might be an invitation toward more presence.

About the Guest:

Zach Rehder is a spiritual teacher, speaker, and breathwork facilitator with two decades of experience helping people break free from unconscious patterns.

...

What does it look like when two people in one home face cancer, one after the other, and still find their way back to joy?

Jonathan Brandt returns to share how he and his late wife Kristie became chemo buddies, and how Go Out Living still helps others hold onto hope.

About the Guest:

Jonathan Brandt is a Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor and helicopter pilot whose wife, Kristie, faced cervical cancer a year before his own diagnosis. Together they became chemo buddies, living out a philosophy called Go Out Living, now carried forward through...

This episode is for the woman who has been told that if she just breathed deeper, thought more positively, or organized better, the overwhelm would finally lift. Sana sits down with high performance productivity coach Sandi Glandt to ask a harder question: what if burnout in working moms was never a mindset problem at all, but a missing system.

Sandi walks through her S3 Framework, Systems, Strategy and Support, and shows what it actually looks like to trade a reactive calendar for a proactive one, without losing softness, gratitude, or presence with the people who matter most.<...

Trauma doesn't just live in memory, it writes code, a program running quietly in the background of your mind, deciding what feels safe long after the danger is gone. Sana sits down with returning guest Fadi Sarieddine, a spiritual healer and author, to talk about what it actually takes to rewrite that program and reconnect with hope.

Fadi breaks down the real difference between in-the-moment fear and trauma-anchored fear, how fear can become a shared experience across a whole community, and why he believes connecting inward doesn't require adopting any particular belief system first.

About...

It's one thing to green a building, it's a very different thing to green your own life. Sana welcomes back returning guest David Gottfried, widely known as the father of the global green building movement, for a deeply personal conversation that goes well past his environmental work into the personal life balance sheet framework he built for himself.

David shares the backstory behind his 2009 memoir Greening My Life, the mirror moment in a Seville hotel room that made him confront the gap between his public success and his private health and relationships, and why he adapted the...

A note for listeners: This episode features the inventor of a commercial product and includes his own claims about its health benefits, including specific figures about oxygen, hydration, and long-term health effects. These are the guest's marketing claims, not medical facts verified by Healthy Mind by Avik™. Please consult a doctor for any concerns about neck or back pain, sleep apnea, or related conditions before changing your sleep setup.

There's a question about sleep most of us never actually ask, not how many hours we got, but what our body is asking us for, and whether we're li...

What if the imbalance so many of us feel isn't between work and life at all, what if it's something quieter, happening inside a person no matter how well their calendar is arranged? Sana sits down with Chris Vasiliadis, a former systems engineer and director of performance improvement who became a burnout-prevention coach after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, to talk about why she deliberately avoids the term "work-life balance" altogether.

Chris breaks down what inner balance actually means day to day, why success doesn't require chronic exhaustion, and practical ways to build breathing room into a calendar...

So many mothers carry an image of balance that looks like a perfectly divided pie chart, equal time and energy for everything. Sana sits down with Beth Wilson, intuitive guide, energy healer, and bestselling author, to talk about what balance actually looks like in practice: quieter, messier, and much more about what you're willing to let go of than what you're managing to hold onto.

Beth shares why she gave herself permission to skip small routines in her son's early months, how trusting her own read on her child's temperament changed everything, and why building in small...

There's a specific exhaustion that comes from living everywhere except right here, replaying yesterday, rehearsing tomorrow, and somehow missing the only moment actually available. Sana sits down with Billy Mandarino, author of The Now-ist and self-described "Nowist," to talk about present-moment living as a genuine way of life rather than just a nice idea.

Billy shares the intense personal moment on a golf course that became his own turning point, why he believes the mind itself is the biggest obstacle to presence, and a simple daily practice for catching yourself when you've drifted out of the now.<...

What if the life you're longing for isn't somewhere in the future, but quietly waiting on the other side of one courageous decision? Sreemedha sits down with Joy-Yafit Pascal, who has rebuilt her life across different countries and chapters, to talk about what it actually looks like to recover from burnout, depression, and a toxic relationship, and choose to live differently.

Joy shares the story of a 14-year marketing career that looked perfect from the outside, a paragliding jump in New Zealand that changed everything, and the ongoing practice of asking better questions instead of asking why...

A note for listeners: This episode includes the guest's personal stories involving physical stunts (such as alligator wrestling and cliff-edge activities) as well as his individual faith perspectives. These reflect his own experiences and beliefs, not verified facts, and are not advice or an endorsement from Healthy Mind by Avik™. Please do not attempt any of the physical activities described.

What happens when you become an independent thinker, refusing to settle into the usual extremes of always agreeing or always opposing? Sana sits down with Tom Cladis, writer, speaker, and lifelong student of possibility, to ex...

Twenty years in banking, long hours masking unhappiness nobody was naming, and a slow slide toward a breaking point that didn't feel dramatic until Matt Davies looked back.

A performance coach who signed up for a full Ironman without knowing how to ride a clip-in bike, Matt talks with Sana about his five stages of identity, why external accountability can be a powerful force, and why the finish line is actually the starting point for what comes next.

About the Guest:

Matt Davies spent more than two decades in banking and finance before...

Everything is always working out for me, a mantra Terry Bean has lived by for the better part of two decades, earned across sixty two years of living, losing, and reinventing herself.

The author of the children's book Abracadabra and founder of the Inner Magic Club joins Sana to talk about family mantras, why presence matters more than approval, and what a childhood spent listening for arguments in an elevator taught her about laughter as medicine.

About the Guest:

Terry Bean is an author, speaker, certified life and executive coach, and the founder...

How many times have you talked about food at work as fuel for focus, mood, and pressure, not just as a diet trend? Adam Kingl trained as a chef before he ever stood in a boardroom.

Returning to The Mindful Living, Adam talks with Sana about why cooking itself is a mindfulness practice, which foods actually support mood and focus, and how nutrition might explain thirty to forty percent of workplace performance.

About the Guest:

Adam Kingl is an author, speaker, and educator who teaches at London Business School, Imperial College, and the...

Our bodies and minds were never built for the pace of change we're living through right now. Tom Meyers knows that mismatch personally, it once took him to the edge of a suicidal depression.

An osteopath in Brussels and founder of The Reaset Approach, Tom talks with Sana about finding what he calls your DNA, the part of you that does not alter, and why the body has to feel safe before the mind can actually think clearly about the future.

About the Guest

Tom Meyers is an osteopath specializing in stress-related conditions...

Two decades flying fighter jets, fifteen more years at NORAD, and then a completely different chapter: eleven books blending science fiction, fantasy, and faith. Terrence Rotering never planned on becoming a writer.

On this episode of The Mindful Living, Terrence talks with Sana about what military discipline taught him about storytelling, why imagination matters at any age, and what he'd say to anyone who feels it's too late to begin something meaningful.

About the Guest:

Terrence L. Rotering spent twenty years in the United States Air Force flying F-111 and F-15E fighter...

In this episode of The Mindful Living, Sana sits with Dr. Lauren Fine, a physician turned medical educator turned coach, to slow down and look at something most of us never question, the stories we quietly tell ourselves about our own worth and our own choices. If you have ever assumed a silence, a look, or a rejection meant more than it actually did, this conversation is for you.

Lauren walks through her simple four step framework, fact, story, cost, rewrite, and a gentle practice called the camera test, a way of asking what actually happened before...

ome of us have been taught to pick a side, either the world of medicine that measures and treats, or the world of energy that feels and holds. Dr. Noushin Hart spent thirty years living inside that divide, first as a radiation oncologist trained entirely in evidence, then as a woman quietly unraveling from childhood trauma that no medication or therapy session could reach.

In this conversation, Dr. Hart walks us through what it actually took to become well again, from three decades on antidepressants to discovering Kundalini Activation Process and the Make Anything Possible method. It's...

You worked hard, did everything right, and the results still did not come. Or you finally got what you wanted, and instead of relief, the same old pressure stayed.

Physician scientist Dr. Siobhán Ewert joins Sana to explain why our nervous system sometimes protects us from the very success we are chasing, and what it takes to finally let good results land in the body, not just on paper.

About the Guest:

Dr. Siobhán Ewert is a physician scientist and creator of a money and business mapping method, with a background sp...

Some lives accumulate so much that the only honest response is to write it down. A gambling addiction, both parents lost to cancer, then a rare cancer of his own.

Michael Grayson, a nurse and cancer survivor, joins host Sana to talk about what the writing revealed. Not a tidy lesson, but an honest reckoning with surviving, grieving, and beginning again.

About the Guest:

Michael Grayson is a nurse and rare cancer survivor who writes on trauma recovery and shadow work at Lightning Shadow Crossroads. Blades of Resurrection is his forthcoming memoir.

This episode is for anyone who has looked up at 50, 60, or 70 and realized they built a full life without ever asking whether it actually brought them joy. Ted Kopecko, architect, real estate broker, and author of Finding JOY, The Journey of You, joins The Mindful Living Show to talk about the difference between a life-led life and a joy-led one.

Ted shares how three decades in business, architecture, and real estate, including his own burnout from building a company he didn't actually love, taught him that busy is not the same as fulfilled, and why finding a...

In this episode of The Mindful Living Show, Sana talks with ultra runner and author Marc Hopkins about what happens when the grit that built your career or your body quietly starts costing you something else. If you have ever been praised for your strength and felt strangely lonely inside the compliment, this one is for you.

Marc, who completed the two hundred mile Bigfoot ultramarathon and eight Ironman distance triathlons, shares the difference between enduring to survive and endurance with a purpose, why he spent years running from anxiety rather than toward anything, and how one...