Practice You With Elena Brower

On hospicing modernity, an invitation to hold many paradoxical layers of complexity, to stretch your heart, to know vulnerability as your strength. (1:00) - Colonialism, identity, and family history. (7:10) - Modernity, its definition, and its impact on society, culture, and the environment. (16:53) - Modernity, colonialism, and their impact on humanity's mental health and well-being. (26:20) - Education, storytelling, and connection to nature. (32:50) - Indigenous perspectives on psychology, including the concept of the "bus" representing the multiplicity within the self. (39:08) - Modern society's disconnection from nature and self, with a focus on indigenous knowledge and practices for healing and growth. Dr. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti has served as a Latinx professor at the University of British Columbia, now Dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Victoria.  Dr. Andreotti is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in

On activating compassion through our simplest offerings of forgiveness, care, gratitude and respect. (0:30) - Japanese rituals for beauty, harmony, and love. (10:00) - Cleaning and its connection to healing and mindfulness. (16:36) - Organizing and decluttering, with a focus on the importance of forgiveness and creating more space in life. (24:49) - Healing, self-care, and relationships. (31:48) - Buddhist teachings, suffering, and healing through interconnectedness and self-reflection. Paula Ara was raised in Detroit by a Japanese mother, and did Zen training in Japan. She obtained her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University in 1993 and is now the Eshinni & Kakushinni Professor of Women and Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. She is the author of Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals, Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns, and Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra. Her work has been a tremendous

On the duality of resilience, the vitality in softening, the shifting landscape within a diagnosis and finding deep, lasting peace. (5:32) - Cancer treatment, body connection, and self-love.  (11:35) - Resilience, grief, and legacy after cancer diagnosis.  (18:07) - Starting a foundation and creating a membership community for personal growth. (24:59) - Spirituality, self-forgiveness, and patience with a guest speaker.  Alicia Mathlin is the founder of Meditation Pusher, a unique meditation, mindfulness and mindset training company. Alicia has been teaching dynamic teams, professional athletes, entertainers and young people for almost a decade. She teaches in a warm, funny and relatable manner. Alicia is also a yoga teacher, holistic nutritionist and the founder of Theine Foundation. Her background is in international business (London, Paris), and her favourite food is a proper pain au chocolat.    The Practice is a membership community rooted in friendship, not mentorship. It is a quiet and elegant place o

On steady practices of self-awareness to redefine yourself as often as you wish, and trusting yourself in any situation to make strong choices that serve.

On the importance of self-trust, repression v. suppression, the vitality of solitude for development of our intuition, and the prioritization of feeling over discursive thinking. (1:00) – Intuitive healing and spiritual gifts with Ebony Banks. (4:49) – Nonprofit work, plant-based eating, and community service. (11:32) – Plant-based diets, spirituality, and entrepreneurship. (15:43) – Trauma, healing, and self-trust. (22:24) – Healing from trauma and rape through self-awareness and spiritual practices. (28:33) – Forgiveness and healing after trauma. (37:04) – Intuition, self-trust, and body awareness. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, Eboni Banks is an Intuitive Healer and Author who has been aware of her intuition since childhood. She is from a lineage of healers and wellness practitioners on both sides of her family. Eboni’s maternal great-grandmother read palms for a living in the 1940s. Her late father was a social worker and hypnotherapist who owned and operated a private

On presence, living on a prayer, devotion and what it means to pause. (1:00) – Meditation, mindfulness, and personal growth with a meditation teacher. (10:01) – Mindfulness, meditation, and prayer with a focus on personal growth and self-care. (20:34) – Simplifying life, death, and spirituality. Originally from Lima, Peru, Cynthia is a first-generation Latina immigrant to the States, currently living in Texas. As a meditation and mindfulness teacher, mentor, and lifetime student, her two greatest passions are creating and teaching. Cynthia’s deepest joy is to see her students and clients befriend all aspects of themselves to live a more present and compassionate life, one breath at a time. Cynthia has been teaching in-person and online since 2018. For her, teaching is not only sharing the practices and wisdom she’s learned from her teachers, but also being of service to her students and clients to teach/mentor for her own experience. Cynthia’s meditation classes may include Sound Healing, Kirtan, Mantra me

On prioritizing our connections with our ancestors as a way to elevate our work and the quality of our present relations.

On empowering women in business, prioritizing integrity and creating a global movement. As Founding Executive and Chair of the Board of doTERRA, Emily Wright has been fully immersed in the global essential oils market since the mid-90s. Empowering people on both sides of the bottle, she loves creating intentional connections and unifying teams for a common cause. She is a champion of doTERRA’s business model, focusing on providing tools to help nurture physical and emotional wellbeing while helping people reach their personal goals. Emily's relentless desire to source the world’s most pure and potent essential oils continues to lift communities in sourcing regions as she places her whole heart into doTERRA’s purpose: helping the world heal.  Emily and her husband Korey are the parents of four beautiful children and three adorable grandchildren, her pride and joy. (4:06) - Using essential oils for health and wellness.  (9:10) - Gender inequality in the workplace, personal growth, and leadership development. 

On the causes of, and possible solutions for, autoimmune struggles. On resolving the trauma signature so many of us carry.

On resilience, via the wisdom of our ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Seeing our character reflected in our opinions of the world. Shifting our lens to acknowledge our uniqueness, practicing surmounting our subjectivity in order to steep ourselves in reality as it is with empathy, equanimity and insight. (1:00) – Stoicism and Self-Reliance with Mark Tuzik. (4:56) – Emerson’s philosophy and its impact on Thoreau’s work. (13:12) – Emerson’s philosophy of self-awareness and perception. (19:07) – Solitude, loneliness, and self-discovery. (25:02) – Writing, self-doubt, and emotional reactivity. (31:14) – Emerson’s philosophy and its application to relationships. Mark Matousek is a bestselling author, teacher, and speaker whose work focuses on personal awakening and creative excellence through transformational writing and self-inquiry. His books include Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story, The Boy He Left Behind, When You’re Falling, Dive, Ethical Wisdom: The Search for a Moral Life, Ethical Wisdom for Friends,

From the wild edge of intuition, women's health, inner presence and full embodiment, a peek inside the hearts of wise, engaged women.   (2:48) – Women’s health and intuition with a holistic approach. (8:50) – Rituals and inner terrain mastery for personal growth. (16:43) – Women’s cycle, herbal medicine, and personal growth. (23:53) – Women’s empowerment and healing. (32:02) – Women’s leadership and herbal medicine course. (36:32) – Meditation and inner wisdom for personal growth. Seraphina Capranos is a clinical herbalist, homeopath, and initiated priestess with a practice spanning over two decades. As well as being a deeply engaging teacher and speaker, she has a clinical practice on Salt Spring Island. Her unique blend of gifts straddle the vast worlds of plant medicine, homeopathy, and ritual and ceremonial magic. She is a sought after international teacher who has taught thousands of students since 2008. She is the CEO and founder of The Center for Sacred Arts. From The Wild Edge is a ground-breaking

On redefining power, living and leading without apology, spacious parenting and the perceptions holding us back. (2:24) – Self-awareness, identity, and heritage. (7:32) – Identity, belonging, and cultural heritage. (11:38) – Heritage, identity, and systemic racism. (16:35) – Privilege and allyship in a 20-year marriage. (20:50) – Parenting, values, and personal growth. (27:01) – Parenting teenagers and respecting their identity choices. (31:40) – Privilege and its various forms. (36:23) – Privilege and leadership with a focus on neurodiversity and accessibility. One of Australia's leading credentialed coaches for female executives and entrepreneurs, Kemi Nekvapil is an author and a highly sought-after international speaker, a flower farmer, a wife and mother, and a solid friend. She's studied leadership and purpose at The Gross National Happiness Centre in Bhutan and trained with Dr Brené Brown to become a Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator, working with teams and organisations to create daring leaders and

On the unexpected places of practice in our lives, the freedom of rigor, and the wisdom of closing the chasm between our values and our actions.  (2:06)- Zen Buddhism’s Eightfold Path and personal growth. (6:47) – Buddhism, compassion, and social justice. (14:43) – Buddhist ceremony and personal growth. (20:43) – Meditation, mindfulness, and personal growth. (27:06) – Zen Buddhism and practice in Japan. (36:21) – Meditation, routines, and finding peace. (40:38) – Finding freedom through rigor and discipline. Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMIN, is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and Certified Chaplaincy Educator. After many years as a chaplain and psychotherapist, Koshin co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which offers contemplative approaches to care through education, personal caregiving, and Zen practice. Today, New York Zen Center’s methodologies are internationally recognized—and have touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. Koshin is a w

 On shifting the way we perceive our capacities as humans and as parents, focusing on relational connection and possibility. (4:14) – Mindset shift for work-parent conflict. (13:28) – Work-parenting challenges and unhelpful labels. (18:50) – Embracing challenges and finding opportunities in life. (26:50) – Managing stress and finding resilience through self-compassion. (33:18) – Nonviolent communication and parenting. In Work, Parent, Thrive, Yael shares practical strategies from clinical psychology and social science to better manage the conflict and enhance enrichment in work, parenting, and the balance of these meaningful roles. While these strategies won’t create more hours in the day, they can shift how we label our experiences, revise the stories we tell ourselves about working and parenting, and recognize the value we get from each role on its own, and in combination with one another. Yael Schonbrun, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, assistant professor at Brown University, co-host of Psychologists

On the Way of Tea, the practice of service, the meaning of presence and the medicine of silence. (1:46) – Tea, presence, and mindfulness. (5:48) – Tea, meditation, and prison reform. (11:52) – Buddhist chaplaincy training and tea practices. (16:26) – Acting, producing, and healing. (22:37) – Meditation, mindfulness, and Zen Buddhism. (32:14) – Music, prison reform, and personal growth. Mia Maestro most recently wrapped Oscar-nominee Jose Rivera’s Castro’s Daughter, directed by Miguel Bardem. She appears in the Apple+ Scott Z. Burns’ climate change anthology Extrapolations starring opposite Ed Norton. Mia is a citizen of the world, traveling, surfing, scuba diving, and warming her spirit through the practice of Cha Dao, The Way of Tea. She’s passionate about prison reform and serves tea to the incarcerated through Healing Dialogue and Action in the state of California. https://miamaestro.com

On the ecological, mythical and cultural understandings that shape our history of extraction and exploitation, and how one conversation can truly make a difference in our future. (1:42) – Reconnecting with nature and protecting forests. (11:41) – Feminism, patriarchy, and earth-centered traditions. (17:11) – Regenerative farming and indigenous knowledge. (22:40) – Indigenous worldviews and language revitalization. Founder and executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), Osprey Orielle Lake works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty. Osprey’s writing about climate justice, relationships with nature, women in leadership, and other topics

On death, grieving, service, and releasing our fixation on redemption.

On fostering spiritual kinship and community, a plea to stay in the fold of love and civility, and recipes to fortify the truth of our interbeing. (3:40) - Facing grief and loss as a chaplain. (10:21) -Buddhist retreats for intergenerational healing. (18:55) -Narcissism and the Buddhist Path to Authenticity. (25:11) - Intergenerational wisdom and mindfulness. (31:25) - Buddhist teachings and meditation practice. (37:03) -Ethics, gratitude, and relationships. Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde is a pastoral counselor, writer, instructor and speaker. She did her post-doctoral work at Harvard Divinity School, earned a Doctor of Theology in Pastoral Counseling from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA, earned her M.A. in Culture and Spirituality from Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, and her law degree from Indiana University of Law. She is a Community Dharma Leader certified by Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. Her articles appear in Buddhadharma, Lion's Roar, Journal of Buddhist-Christian Stud

On the signals transmitted across generations, the evolution of secrets, and the resonances felt through timelines and dimensions.