The Mindful Living

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.

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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...

In this episode of The Mindful Living Show, Sana sits with consciousness teacher Brad Johnson to name a strange, quiet exhaustion many of us carry, the feeling of manifesting so hard that we end up further from ourselves. If vision boards and affirmations have started to feel like a performance rather than a practice, this conversation is for you.

Brad shares eighteen years of work across Kriya Yoga, Taoism, and practical metaphysics, and offers a simple distinction, the actor versus the character, along with breathwork and journaling practices for noticing what you are unconsciously creating before you...

What if neurodiversity isn't a disorder to overcome, but a different way of experiencing the world?

In this inspiring episode of The Mindful Living Show, storyteller, educator, and neurodiversity advocate Thomas R. Wilson challenges the outdated belief that neurodivergent people need to be "fixed." Instead, he invites us to see neurodiversity as a natural part of human diversity, filled with creativity, resilience, and unique strengths.

Drawing from his own lived experience, Thomas reflects on growing up misunderstood, learning to separate his identity from other people's judgments, and discovering how storytelling became a powerful tool for...

What if the strongest relationships aren't built during life's easiest moments, but through the way couples protect each other during the hardest ones?

In Part 2 of this heartfelt conversation, Gaylen Wilson expands on the Sanctuary Bond, a relationship framework designed to help couples create emotional safety, deepen intimacy, and become a place of refuge for one another.

Drawing from a lifetime of personal challenges, including financial hardship, addiction recovery, heart failure, and a life-saving heart transplant, Gaylen explains how every experience shaped his mission to help couples build stronger marriages.

The conversation also...

Can a marriage truly recover after years of emotional distance, conflict, or even sexual disconnection?

In this first part of an inspiring conversation, Gaylen Wilson shares his deeply personal journey and the life experiences that led him to develop the Monument Method and the concept of the Sanctuary Bond.

Rather than focusing solely on communication techniques or relationship advice, Gaylen explains why emotional safety is the true foundation of intimacy. He explores how trust, vulnerability, and genuine connection allow couples to move beyond survival mode and rediscover romance, even after decades together.

This...

This episode includes a brief, retrospective mention of depression and past suicide attempts, shared as part of the guest's healing story. It is not graphic and not the focus of the conversation, but it may be tender for some listeners. Please be gentle with yourself, and step away if you need to. If you are struggling, in the US you can call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline), in India you can reach Tele-MANAS at 14416, and in an emergency please contact your local emergency services. You deserve support, and you do not have to navigate hard moments alone.

Some conversations ask us to slow down. This is one of them. It is about trauma, about the body that remembers what the mind tries to forget, and about the slow, unglamorous work of coming back to yourself through mindfulness, breath, and connection.

Anu Verma walks alongside people moving from survival into peace, and she speaks with lived honesty. With host Sana, she opens up about hopelessness and the difference between not wanting to live and simply wanting the pain to stop, why isolation deepens suffering while connection heals, and how she found her own way back...

Most of us live by committee. Parents, partners, mentors, algorithms, and one old voice that still sounds like a teacher we had at twelve. Somewhere in the noise, we stopped hearing ourselves.

Julie Hutton has spent 39 years watching people arrive at that threshold. With Sana, she offers a slower definition of self-love, a different way to think about longevity, and permission to go your own way.

About the Guest:

Julie Hutton is a master teacher and success coach with 39 years of experience, based in Northern California. Her work centres on helping people experience...

Most of us go looking for purpose out there, in the next role, the next achievement, the next version of ourselves. But what if it was never out there at all?

Suneet Bhatt, who teaches purpose at Rutgers University and wrote Making Sense of Purpose, joins Sana to make a quiet but radical case: before you can make sense of your purpose, you have to make sense of yourself. No gurus, no five-step checklist, just a steady light for the path.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Suneet Bhatt teaches purpose at Rutgers University and is...

There is a kind of grief that does not arrive as sadness alone. It comes mixed with relief, with guilt, with feelings we are not taught to admit out loud. This episode is for anyone quietly carrying a loss they have never quite named.

Actor, writer, and producer Niki J Borger sits with host Sana to talk about losing her mother, the years of stillness the pandemic forced on her, and how she found her way back to herself through writing. Together they slow down around grief as something to be met, not managed, and what it...

This episode is for women who've done years of talk therapy and still feel like the trauma is somehow still there. Anissa Hudak, founder of Phoenix Women Healing and a trauma-informed practitioner blending neurosomatic therapy, hypnotherapy, and yoga, joins host Sana on The Mindful Living to explain her core belief: you don't have to relive trauma to heal it.

Anissa breaks down why trauma lives in the body and the unconscious mind before it ever reaches conscious memory, why repeating your story in talk therapy can sometimes reinforce it rather than release it, and what moving trauma...

This episode is for anyone whose sense of self has quietly depended on something they never thought to question, until it started slipping away. At 28, Alexa Denaburg was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological voice disorder. She joins host Sana on The Mindful Living to talk about what it took to rebuild her identity from the inside out.

Alexa explains what spasmodic dysphonia actually is, why she chose a holistic healing path over the more common Botox route, and how nervous system work, community, and radical self-advocacy helped her find her voice again, literally and otherwise.<...

This episode is for anyone who has had to rebuild themselves from nothing at all. At 31, Jessica Taylor survived a traumatic brain injury that erased everything she knew. Twenty years later, she joins host Sana on The Mindful Living to share how she rebuilt her mind, and found an unexpected spiritual awakening along the way.

Jessica describes what she calls a headquake, the near-total loss of memory and skill, and how choosing to study rather than give up became both her recovery and her spiritual education.

About the Guest:

Jessica E. Taylor is...

-This episode is for anyone who feels like the world is falling apart and wonders if there's any hope left. Psychologist and author Christina Samycia joins host Sana on The Mindful Living to make sense of the chaos, not as collapse, but as a collective awakening.

Christina unpacks what she calls the dysfunctional matrix, why so much of our behavior is driven by unhealed inner-child patterns, and why the Age of Aquarius asks us to become self-reliant rather than looking outside ourselves for answers.

About the Guest:

Christina Samycia, PsyD, is a holistic...

This episode is for anyone moving through life on autopilot, answering messages, meeting expectations, and quietly wondering why. Recovery coach Adam Vohra joins host Sana to talk honestly about addiction, identity, and coming back to yourself.

Adam shares what real surrender looks like, why he redefined spirituality outside religion, and how small daily choices quietly shape who we become.

About the Guest:

Adam Vohra is a recovery coach, speaker, and host of the Finding Purpose Podcast. He works with people seeking meaningful transformation, drawing from his own journey through addiction, identity, and recovery.<...

Most of us talk to ourselves in a tone we would never use with someone we love. In the bathroom mirror, in a moment of comparison, in a quiet second before sleep. The words come fast and they go unexamined, and over a lifetime, they quietly shape who we believe we are.

Tobi Ojekunle, host of Mirror Talk: Soulful Conversations, joins Sana on The Mindful Living to explore the practice of positive mirror talk: why it feels awkward at first, what it slowly changes inside us, and why the kindest thing many of us have never tried...

Note: the guest is a licensed clinical psychologist, and her comments reflect her professional perspective and general education, not individualized clinical, medical, or psychological advice or a treatment recommendation for any specific child or family. Her comparison of screen-based dopamine to gambling is presented as her professional framing. The episode references childhood trauma and child development in a general, non-graphic, supportive way.

You're sitting with your child as they tell you about their day, and your mind drifts to a notification, a missed meeting, the laundry. You nod and say the right thing. Later, a small ac...

When was the last time you sat in a room with nothing playing, nothing scrolling, and just listened to your own breathing? If you can't remember, you're not alone. We've quietly normalized a level of noise the nervous system was never meant to hold.

Robin Harris joins Sana on The Mindful Living to explore what constant scrolling and stimulation cost us, what we lose access to inside ourselves, and the small, free steps back toward stillness.

About the Guest:

Robin Harris is a deep thinker, lifelong seeker, and guide who helps people break...

There's a kind of connection modern life keeps offering us. The late-night messages, the closeness that feels real in the moment, even when neither person is fully in it. This conversation slows down to look at it honestly.

Catherine Crestani, an intuitive and inner authority guide, joins Sana to explore the difference between what feels real and what is, and what it takes to come home to ourselves inside the noise.

About the Guest:

Catherine Crestani is an Australian author and intuitive guide whose work sits at the intersection of human behavior, emotional...