• E13: The Mind: Prison or Liberator?

    Michael Singer — October 2, 2024

    The mind can act as either a prison or a liberator, depending on how we use it. By holding on to uncomfortable past experiences, we trap ourselves in suffering....

  • Insights At The Edge

    Tami Simon’s in-depth audio podcast interviews with leading spiritual teachers and luminaries. Listen in as they explore their latest challenges and breakthroughs - the leading edge of their work.

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Meet Your Host: Tami Simon

Founded Sounds True in 1985 as a multimedia publishing house with a mission to disseminate spiritual wisdom. She hosts a popular weekly podcast called Insights at the Edge, where she has interviewed many of today's leading teachers. Tami lives with her wife, Julie M. Kramer, and their two spoodles, Rasberry and Bula, in Boulder, Colorado.

Photo © Jason Elias

Most Recent

Valarie Kaur: Sage Warrior

Through the eyes of the sage, all of humanity is kin. And all of our ancestors are available to support us if we relate to them with integrity and respect. So teaches social activist and author Valarie Kaur in her new book, Sage Warrior. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Valarie about how we can navigate the time of cultural transition that we find ourselves in by “reclaiming love as a force for justice, healing, and transformation.”

Give a listen to this conversation that is at once highly informative and deeply inspiring, as Tami and Valarie discuss: bringing together the heart of devotion and the fist held high in the name of liberation; taking our saints and sages off of the pedestal; a brief history of the Sikh tradition; the city of Punjab in the 15th century; the warrior-mystic; dismantling hierarchies; walking the path of love without following a leader; the legendary female sage warrior, Mai Bhago; acts of love that change everything; the power of story; sustaining one’s energy throughout long labor; releasing that which does not serve you; the Revolutionary Love Bus Tour—and how you can get involved in this work; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Pānquetzani: Tune in to the Womb: Thriving Postpartum

Pānquetzani is a traditional herbalist, healer, and birthkeeper from a matriarchal family of folk healers from the valley of Mexico, La Comarca Lagunera, and Zacatecas. At a time when countless women in BIPOC communities are facing a maternal mortality crisis, Pānquetzani is working to bring back the nearly lost Indigenous approaches to childbirth and the postpartum journey. In her new book, Thriving Postpartum, she shares the sacred ritual of la cuarentena (or quarantine) that honors, nurtures, and empowers a birthing person’s transition into their new life.

Enjoy Tami Simon’s conversation with Pānquetzani exploring the philosophy of “use what you have,” sacred foods and using ritual in your approach to nutrition, sacrifice and reciprocity, community care and creating a collective framework for postpartum healing, maintaining your sovereignty (and sanity) within the Western medical system, the “postpartum doorstep drop off” and other simple ways to support new moms, postpartum depression from the perspective of traditional Mexican medicine, honoring the placenta, healing intergenerational trauma, the practice of tuning in to your womb, and more.

Elizabeth Earnshaw: ‘Til Stress Do Us Part

What if the problem in your relationship isn’t you or your partner but the mountain of stress you’re both dealing with? It’s a no-brainer to say that too much stress kills intimacy, but what do we really mean when we say “stress”? And what can we actually do about it? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with couples therapist and author Elizabeth Earnshaw about her new book, ’Til Stress Do Us Part: How to Heal the #1 Issue in Our Relationships

Give a listen for a wealth of actionable insights and wise approaches to navigate and manage the stressors in your relationship, including how to comfort a partner under stress; the art of nervous system co-regulation; awareness: the prerequisite for change; learning the signs of dysregulation and how to self-soothe; Gottman’s “Four Horsemen”: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt; stress as a physiological cycle; step one: identify your own stressors; the narrative of a gap between who you are and who you want to be; intentional sacrifice; making structural changes that make life less stressful; discernment around what we can and cannot control; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Customer Favorites

Melissa Brown: Nourishing Your Nervous System

When was the last time you felt truly relaxed, present, and at peace with everything going on in your life and in our world? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Melissa Brown about her new audio learning program, Nourishing Your Nervous System, and how we can begin to empower ourselves to choose the state of regulation over dysregulation. Give a listen to this practical and inspiring discussion of the ventral vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system—and how we can access it for calm, joy, and vitality; co-regulation with others as a means to move out of dorsal depression; productive thinking versus rumination and other forms of unhealthy thinking; the elongated breath as a tool for shifting out of sympathetic arousal (or the “fight, flight, freeze” response); improving your “vagal tone”; doom-scrolling, binge-watching, and other ways we distract ourselves from what we don’t want to feel—and how we can learn to hold a state of vitality and a state of tension at the same time; the psoas muscles and their connection to nervous system activation; the benefits of “constructive rest pose”; “fixed action patterns” and how the psoas muscles store trauma; attuning to your heart; and more.

Joanna Macy: We Belong: Hope, Choice, and Our Relation...

Dr. Joanna Macy is an ecophilosopher, activist, and Buddhist scholar who has been at the forefront of movements for social justice and environmentalism for more than five decades. She founded the Work That Reconnects Network and has written many books, including World as Lover, World as Self. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Joanna about hope in times of chaos and dissolution, as well as how hope is something we do rather than just feel. Joanna and Tami discuss apathy as a refusal to face the inevitability of suffering and why the state of the environment can be especially heartbreaking. Finally, Tami and Joanna talk about our relationship with the earth as a natural birthright—one that is actually the source of all our energy and joy.

Elizabeth Stanley: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

Elizabeth Stanley is a Georgetown University professor and the creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, an approach taught to thousands in civilian and military high stress environments. A U.S. Army veteran with service in Asia and Europe, she holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, and MIT. She is the author of the book, Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Elizabeth Stanley about her 8-session online course, Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training: A Trauma-Sensitive Online Course to Build Resilience and Thrive During Stress. They also discuss why MMFT is a practice we can all benefit from; the value of expanding our “window of tolerance”; the relationship between personal agency and trauma; the “thinking” brain versus the “survival” brain; when stress becomes trauma; the importance of recovery from stressful situations; and more.

Timeless Classics

Lance Allred: The New Alpha Male

Lance Allred is a former NBA player (who was the first legally deaf player in the league), public speaker, and author. With Sounds True, he has published The New Alpha Male: How to Win the Game When the Rules Are Changing. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Lance about the experiences he had in professional sports that led him to reevaluate what it means to be a man in contemporary society. Lance explains how his upbringing in a rural, polygamous commune informed his original ideas about masculinity, highlighting the subconscious assumptions about money and power that affect American men’s self-worth. Tami and Lance also discuss the roles of emotional vulnerability and surrender in the lives of modern men. Finally, they talk about the principle of perseverance and the increasingly urgent need for all cultures to reexamine their assumptions and core values.(63 minutes)

Micah Mortali: Rewilding

Micah Mortali is the director of the Kripalu School, a certified yoga teacher, and a longtime wilderness guide. With Sounds True, he has published Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Micah about humanity’s growing disconnection from the earth and how “rewilding” can help slow that trend. They talk about rewilding both as individuals and as part of whole ecosystems. Micah also shares the story of an intense, revelatory trail encounter with a bear and comments on the “species loneliness” of urban environments. Mulling the sense of grief they have for humankind’s effects on the environment, Tami and Micah consider how modern people can grapple with being in exile from the natural world. Finally, they discuss the barriers many have to reentering nature, as well as ways to initiate your own rewilding experience no matter where you are.(64 minutes)

Christian Conte: Healing Conflict: Listen, Validate, a...

Christian Conte, PhD, is a mental health specialist and leading authority on anger management. With Sounds True, Christian has published Walking Through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon talks with Christian about his Yield Theory of emotional management, focusing on the process of “listen, validate, explore options.” Christian explains the events that led to his interest in anger management, as well as the origins of Yield Theory. He emphasizes the importance of meeting others where they are, giving them the opportunity to drain anger’s charge from their limbic system. Christian and Tami discuss why it’s necessary to cultivate humility and how Yield Theory might be applied to our currently divisive culture. Finally, they speak on “the cartoon world” that angry responses often create, as well as the importance of watching what we add to our minds.(63 minutes)

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