This week, we welcome the multi-talented Ofosu Jones-Quartey, a meditation teacher, author, and hip-hop artist. This discussion is so fun! It starts with how to share meditation and mindfulness with young people – how to stay real and relatable. Then gets into the role of the artist, creativity, and what it means to connect to your actual voice.

We do 2 practices: the first is a self-compassion practice that ends with Ofosu singing! And that leads to a second practice: an actual song - a beautiful (it made Jeff cry) hip-hop track called “Avalo” that features the voices of Ofosu’s wife and daughter. Ofosu plays the full music video for us. Definitely worth checking out the whole video episode!

How do we make being kind to ourselves an accessible practice, while also acknowledging (in Ofosu’s own words) “how stupid it can sometimes feel”?! Good to figure this out, since we’re talking to ourselves all the time anyway.

Relatedly, how can you integrate meditation into your art practice without it coming off as corny or performative? We explore the challenges and rewards of being both a meditation teacher and an artist and how both Ofosu and Tasha negotiate these roles in public.

Then join us for the Afterparty over on www.Mindbodpod.com!

In this Afterparty your hosts, Tasha the Amazon and Jeff the Non-Amazonian, continue to discuss navigating being both an artist and a meditation practitioner. We talk high-brow/low-brow, spiritual materialism, and authentic artistic expression. Then we say these phrases, not in this order: “You don’t talk about Tantra - you do it!” “Take your demon and stick it in someone else’s nut sack!” and “Tank-top, nice shirt, put in the work!”

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Welcome Mudita Nisker and Dan Clurman, authors of Let's Talk, An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication. Mudita and Dan have been teaching people how to communicate effectively for over 40 years, so there is serious wisdom in this episode. As Mudita points out, changing how you communicate can change your entire way of perceiving and relating to others. It is a profound practice, and it’s one each of us is already involved in, so we may as well get better at it!

With that in mind, the entire episode is really one long practice of communication, with Mudita and Dan reflecting back our own questions and habits. They skillfully unpack these key principles:

* how to give feedback

* loop communication and the art of becoming more aware of how we affect the other person

* how to avoid “flooding” other people, and instead “chunk” your delivery

* the life-changing skill of reflective listening as a way to understand another’s perspective and foster connection

* positive intentions and the way this brings caring into the mix

* the importance of “provisionality,” ie, using language that acknowledges the possibility of change

* the skill of framing and how to work with emotionally triggering subjects

* understanding whether to talk or listen in the first place!

Communication shapes how we get along with others, how we achieve our goals, and ultimately is core way to add more peace and compassion into the world.

Such a fun and bouncy conversation, like improvising with two jazz pianists.

Thank you Mudita and Dan!

-----------------------------

Then join us at www.mindbodpod.com for The Afterparty:

Communication is what we do, and it’s something many of us also do very poorly! In this Afterparty, we talk about the various unconscious crutches we use while hanging out with others and what it might look like to connect in a more open-ended way. We also riff on the way good conversation is a kind of agreement, a world we construct that we then get to play inside! This is very different than seeing language as a route to discovering what is objectively true.

*In an effort to sustain our antics and continue paying our producer Timmy, the Afterparty will move behind ye old paywall…soon. Please join us if you can!

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

We’re joined by Jamie Pabst, founder and CEO of Spiritune, a music therapy app that supports people’s mental health. Spiritune makes explicit what most of us know implicitly: music can shift our emotional and cognitive state.

What does “clinical-grade music” sound like? We listen to two 3-minute tracks, the first designed to move us from anxious to peaceful and the second from lethargic to victorious.

Along the way, Jamie points out the different music therapy principles at work:

* the “iso-principle” of meeting people where they are

* rhythm and neural entrainment

* the power of tone to create connection

A true exploration of consciousness! We talk about emotional literacy, how music can help both shift and evoke emotions, what it means to be “genre-agnostic,” the potential role of generative AI in shaping the technology, and much more.

The Afterparty (Watch the Video at www.mindbodpod.com

In this here Afterparty, Tasha puts on her music producer hat, which leads to a fascinating discussion on the cultural specificity of musical preferences, the true nature of musical complexity and human preferences, and various other tasty morsels.

Also! Tasha’s Substack & practice community, Bodhisavage, kicks off this Thursday! Monthly live Zoom sessions start June 21, with the good vibes of the Full Moon.

Subscribe at: Bodhisavage.com

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Last summer, we interviewed Ross Ellenhorn and Dimitri Mugianis, founders of Cardea, a psychedelic-assisted care organization based in NYC. This week, we’re finally posting that conversation! Made up of therapists, space holders, artists, and musicians, Cardea focuses on cultivating what they call “aliveness”: the sense that you are vital, fully engaged in your life, and connected to the world around you.

Something we find refreshing about the Cardea crew is their playful approach to psychedelics. A lot of people are so serious about psychedelics lately, obsessing over how they might use them to “fix” what’s “wrong” with themselves. It’s a view that risks turning psychedelics into just another cog in the Western medical model. But psychedelics have always been far more interesting than that. They are, by nature, creative, and have the potential to plunge us into a direct and dynamic relationship with life. This is what we get into with Ross and Dimitri!

In this conversation, we talk about Cardea’s unique model of practice, where they engage practitioners in a specific kind of dialogue before each session. We also talk about:

* set and setting,

* the club scene

* and what a “modern” – even poetic – use of psychedelics could look like, where the practitioner doesn’t give their power away.

The conversation continues in the Q&A, so please check out our Afterparty video at https://www.mindbodpod.com. In the Q&A, we chat with the audience about:

* The use of mushrooms in palliative and supportive care.

* How to support someone who is freaking out.

* The role of intention setting before a psychedelic experience

* “Radical hospitality”

* Experiences with iboga and other psychedelics, including their effects on cravings, life review, and spiritual exploration.

* Practical considerations for individuals interested in this work, including the availability of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and the importance of support afterwards.And much more!

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

PS - Tasha and Jeff recently partook in a totally mind-blowing ketamine ceremony at Cardea’s beautiful New York space and - for posterity - recorded the whole damn thing! Stay tuned for some extra audio and visual treats coming soon ;)

CARDEA LINKS:

* Cardea.net

* Ross's essay in Time magazine, “What Psychedelics Can Teach Us About Play”

You don’t want to miss this one! A deep dive into “the heart of healing,” as we explore how medicines like cannabis and ketamine can amplify trauma therapy. Our guest is Saj Razvi, Director of Education at the Psychedelic Somatic Institute, and one of the original MAPS researchers and clinicians responsible for bringing MDMA-assisted therapy into the world.

According to Saj, there’s a self-corrective homeostatic healing mechanism available in the body that gets amplified during altered states. The key intervention he uses with clients is called “selective inhibition.” Normally, when stressed, we calm ourselves with coping strategies like deep breathing, moving, rationalizing, dissociating, and more. These tools give us short-term relief, but the downside is they inhibit the long-term healing of trauma, which Saj says our biology “is organically trying to achieve.”

In his 10-minute guided practice, we do something different: we find a mildly stressful memory, and instead of avoiding it, we slow the whole thing down to move through the discomfort into something else.

What’s this like? We experience the full spectrum - Tasha’s pretty accustomed to emotionally triggering practices like this, while Jeff feels like a homunculus riding the bucking bronco of his nervous system! Meditation vs therapy vs psychedelics – we get right into it!

Saj also talks about:

- the amazing ability of cannabis and ketamine to heal dissociative tendencies

- how human relational wounding requires human relational healing,

- the role of the therapist as “a player in the psychedelic reality of the person.”

- A thrilling exploration into the cutting-edge of mental health – join us!

Then join us at www.mindbodpod.com for This week's Afterparty: The world premiere of our new chart-topping single, “Trauma Song”, which we unveil at the end of the video and which has already secured us a 3-album deal and is set to eclipse the entirety of Tasha’s career as a recording artist in one fell swoop.

Plus: a fun discussion on the perils of meditative dissociation and the unique power of meditation to create more permanent states of extraordinary mental health. We talk about the spiritual preferences of male-identified vs female-identified practitioners, about sitting meditation vs body-focused disciplines like yoga, and other weird noises.

Leave us a comment and let us know how you much you like our new song :)

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Welcome Lama Liz Monson, spiritual co-director of the Natural Dharma Fellowship, and author of a new book on “crazy wisdom,” Tales of a Mad Yogi. Contrary to its controversial reputation, crazy wisdom is more than a spiritual shock technique – of, say, covering oneself in feces (to use a classic example), or staggering drunkenly around the Tibetan countryside. It is, in fact, a powerful and time-tested way to cut through our habitual patterns and engage with how reality actually is, as opposed to how we want it to be.

How do we practice this? By starting simple!

Liz guides us in a 10-minute meditation on the breath, the body, and the larger bandwidth of awareness. Can we allow our experience to be exactly what it is, without trying to control it? Yes, maybe, no, yes… we do our best! This doesn’t seem crazy, although it can seem impossible. And yet, the implications are radical.

Such a fun and provocative conversation on:

* the nature of trust and spontaneity

* the neutrality of things

* our own “basic goodness” (Liz tells a wonderful story about 9/11 and New Yorkers’ initial response of compassion and care)

* the free-flow of creativity

* and much more!

Let us know in the comments how this practice went for you!

Watch the Afterparty video at: https://www.mindbodpod.com

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Welcome JF Martel, filmmaker, writer, and cohost of the superb podcast, Weird Studies. Sometimes, we have a guest who really gets the spirit of what we’re up to here at the Mind Bod Pod… JF is one such guest. He full-on designed a practice for us based on his love of old-school, Dungeons-and-Dragons-style role-playing games… the kind that (in JF’s words) “usually happen in dank basements.”

That’s right, in this week’s episode, JF is our Dungeon Master!

**Watch this podcast and our fun-filled afterparty in VIDEO over at www.mindbodpod.com where you can comment and let us know how the practice landed for you!

As we follow JF’s guidance, our inner vision opens, and we trek into the dark underbelly of our imaginations.

* What is the practice of surrendering to a story, especially in speculative fiction like fantasy, horror, and science fiction?

* What exactly IS imagination, anyway?

* Is there a reality here beyond our own subconscious?

* …and what happens when we take it seriously?

Join us for a discussion of dream yoga, Jungian archetypes, shadow selves, disaster scenarios, and the imagination as a sense organ. Bwwhahahahahahahahahahaha!!

The Afterparty Video (visit www.mindbodpod.com)

This week, we discuss surrendering to a story as a kind of meditation, what happens when we move towards the scary and the uncomfortable, and how we can use our existential ambition to elevate Dungeons and Dragons into a transformative spiritual practice.

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in & see you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

www.mindbodpod.com

Welcome Sah D'Simone - a former “condescending spiritual c**t” (his words not ours!) who’s since grown into one of the best humans we’ve ever met. Sah is hilarious, fresh, wise and so loveable! You’ll feel all of that immediately, as we explore themes from his new book, Spiritually, We.

**Watch this podcast and our fun-filled afterparty in VIDEO over at www.mindbodpod.com where you can comment and let us know how the practice landed for you!

What themes you ask? Juicy goodies like:

* What makes a great teacher

* Understanding past traumas (Sah says: “if it’s hysterical, its historical”)

* Integrating your “darkness”* Fearlessly celebrating your own imperfections

What’s the practice? Sah guides us in an exploration of how the past might be living in our bodies right now, and helps us welcome it in (“hello old friend!”) to be loved, cared for, and seen with fresh eyes.

And it works! Jeff cries, Tasha sees her head from her heart as a weird wooden mask (yup, that happened), Sah says more delightful stuff, and twenty minutes later we’re all BFFs for life. WEEEEEEEE! 😍🥳

The Afterparty

In this week's Afterparty video (www.mindbodpod.com), we reflect with great maturity on the next generation of spiritual practitioners, make mouth sounds, and then sing a very beautiful song about becoming a low-level superhero of love and saving the s**t out of all beings. Kapow!

If this episode tickled your adventure-loving fancy, consider sharing it with a friend.

Thanks for tuning in! See you next week.

Love always,

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

Find Sah Online:

* Web: practice.sahdsimone.com* IG: @sahdsimone* TikTok: @sahdsimone