Podcast 60: Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression with Dr. James Gordon

James Gordon M.D.I was introduced to Dr. James Gordon through my good friend Dr. Joan Borysenko.  Both Jim and Joan are highly respected physicians who have devoted their lives to helping individuals help heal through integrating the practices of conventional medicine, and alternative practices.  These alternative practices can be anything from meditation to Chinese movement exercises.  Over the years it has proven that the combination of integrating the western and eastern practices is quite effective in treating everything from depression to heart disease and cancer.

When Dr. Gordon is not in Washington D.C attending to patients and overseeing the Mind Body Institute, he is traveling training others in the art and delivery of integrative medicine practice.  Twice per year he put on a Mind Body Medicine Professional Training program that attracts physicians, clinicians and social workers from all over the world.

In my interview we discuss his new book entitled “Unstuck-Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression.”  Dr. Gordon states that “Depression is not a disease.”  He challenges the perceived wisdom on how depression is viewed and treated. He goes on to explain that depression can be treated without the use of antidepressants and outlines the practical steps we can take to exert control over our own lives.

It is obvious that antidepressants are the first choice of treatment for depression in the country and hugely profitable business. Each year, American doctors write 189 million prescriptions for people suffering from depression, as well as others who are inhibited, shy, anxious or unhappy.

Dr. Gordon argues that there is surprisingly little evidence that they are more effective than a variety of other approaches.  In our interview we explore Dr. Gordon’s seven-stage journey out of depression.

In Unstuck, Dr. Gordon has taken forty years of experience treating patients suffering from depression and distilled it down to an easy to follow guide to understanding the causes of depression and the ways to address theses causes, as well as helpful suggestions for relieving depression’s symptoms.  In the seven-stage program, Dr. Gordon explains the useful, mood-healing benefits of: food and nutritional supplements; movement, exercise, and dance; psychotherapy, meditation and guided imagery; spiritual practice and prayer.  Each chapter concludes with a carefully designed Prescription for Self-Care.

I know you will enjoy my interview with Dr. Gordon.  If you are experience a little depression as a result of our world economic crisis or just daily living, then this interview and Dr. Gordon’s book are a must read.

If you would like to learn more about the Mind Body Institute and Dr. James Gordon, just click here.  You can also obtain his book by clicking on the book cover in this post.  Happy listening, and enjoy the podcast.

Podcast 59: Pink Lemonade-Freshly Squeezed Insights to Stir Your Faith by Gayle Zinda

Gayle ZindaI had the pleasure of making a connection with Gayle Zinda through one of our supporting charity affiliates called Lung Cancer Alliance.  Gayle has a fascinating story of triumph over adversity for she is a survivor of lung cancer herself, and she beat the odds.

Gayle’s journey in the cancer community started long before she received her diagnosis of lung cancer. You see Gayle was an OBGYN nurse, and through a chance encounter met a woman who came into her office providing her with information about prosthetic devices for women who had undergone mastectomies.  This encounter lead to the woman giving her information about a lady by the name of Rita in Cincinnati, Ohio who owned a shop called “The Lemonade Stand-A Place to Come and Be Refreshed” which catered to women who were undergoing cancer treatments and need to get wigs, prosthetic devices, and just come to a safe place for renewal.

When Gayle met Rita, she knew something was wrong. This beautiful woman who was not to old, was walking with a cane and did not look to be in good health.  As a matter of fact when Gayle entered the door Rita said” I’ve been waiting for you. God said that if I held on long enough that my replacement would show up, and here you are.”  Well Gayle kind of thought that Rita was a little crazy.  But this encounter ended up changing Gayle’s life forever.

Gayle is now a two year survivor of the deadliest cancer! She began to travel and talk about her experiences, realizing that she had a lot to offer those whose lives have been touched by cancer. In November 2007 Gayle was asked by the Lung Cancer Alliance out of Washington D.C. to redesign her RV and do a 10 city tour on their behalf. Gayle travelled the country with her son Adam telling her story as a means of inspiring cancer patients everywhere. Gayle and Adam traveled over 5,000 miles in 30 days to bring awareness to Lung Cancer.

Today Gayle travels the country with her oldest son Adam in a 31′ Pink RV called the “Motorvator”, raising cancer awareness and “refreshing” groups around the country.

In 2008 Gayle received the Professional Business Woman of the Year Award in Madison, WI.

When she is not traveling Gayle, lives on a sparkling lake in Wisconsin with her husband, Dr. Michael Zinda, who is a Radiation Oncologist and the Medical Director of a cancer center. Dr. Zinda provides yet another perspective to add to Gayle’s arsenal on cancer.

I invite you to listen to my interview with Gayle and learn of the spiritual journey she has taken, and the adversity she has overcome.  She is funny, witty and truly a joyful person who has an inspiring story.

I hope you enjoy my interview with Gayle, and if you want to find out more about her appearances or purchase her book please click here. Gayle Zinda Home Page

Podcast 58: Discovering Your Quintessential Self – Eradicating Your Thought Viruses with Stuart Goodship

Stuart Goodship I first met Stuart Goodship during a three day workshop in Florida that Larry Wilson was hosting.   Stuart had come over from London England to attend the event for he had been trained by Larry Wilson to deliver his Great Game of Life training series.

I was immediately drawn to this gentleman because of his warmth, friendly smile and just an amazing outgoing personality.  That evening we broke bread together, and that was the start of a very long friendship.

Last summer I took a trip to Europe for a wedding for one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I decided to spend some quality time with Stuart in his hometown near London on my way to the wedding in Goteborg Sweden.

What I learned quickly was that Stuart has an amazing background in training, but that this was not his original vocation. He had started out as an engineer, then went on to work in IT sales. He then spent three years in the development of leaders and sales people with such companies as Advanced Training, Integrated Training and Career Track.

From these early experiences with traditional change techniques, Stuart had already realized that nearly all conventional training and personal development fails. This is because the root of all of our problems associated with lack of achievement and fulfillment is skillfully avoided, ignored or denied, which is the wrong functioning of thought.

Stuart spent years reading and studying the wonderful author David Bohm.  Some of Bohm’s works helped Stuart to formulate the principals he now teaches in “Discovering your Quintessential Self – Eradicating Your Thought Viruses.”

I had a wonderful time interviewing this thoroughly fascinating man and learning about the trappings of our personal thought viruses.  During this interview you will learn about the barriers that are preventing you from discovering your quintessential self as Stuart states.

If you want to achieve personal mastery and improve your performance please play close attention to what Stuart has to say, he has really done his research.

Thought Viruses are units of information (like computer viruses). The information they contain is destructive because we assume the thoughts represent accurately what’s going on in the outside world. They prevent you from engaging in thinking, causing you to act inappropriately.

I encourage you to download Stuart’s e-book from his website and learn more about discovering your quintessential self and eradicating thought viruses.

You can learn more about Stuart Goodship by clicking here, and if you are interested in purchasing his e-book just click here. I hope you enjoy this enriching and enlightening interview with Stuart.

Podcast 57: Running Home – 35 Moving Meditations for Runners with Toby Estler

Toby EstlerI had the wonderful opportunity to meet and get to know Toby Estler as a result of our mutual connection through the University of Santa Monica.  Toby was one of the assistants at the University during my second year.  I always knew that he possessed a special energy, and was a very loving and gentle soul from the first day I met him.

I received a call from Toby about two years after my graduation as a result of our connection to Team in Training an organization affiliated with Leukemia and Lymphoma Society that helps budding athletes get prepared for a 100 mile bike rides or a 26.2 mile marathons.  Toby had learned about Compassionate Communications, (a patient outreach program I founded), through some mutual friends and wanted to find out how he could help. He did help by becoming one of our initial “compassionate communicators” in our pilot program.  Toby has since gone on to become my personal coach and a very good friend.  He does writing for our organization, and is also involved in helping design and deliver an upcoming workshop that we are facilitating called “Facing Change: From Breakdown to Breakthrough.

I don’t know how many of you are runners, but Toby’s love for running and his 35 moving meditations for runners is the topic of this podcast. I use to be an avid runner some years ago, but due to an injury, I shifted to cycling.  I remember the long hours pounding the pavement, and just how meditative running can be.  Toby’s book entitled, “Running Home,” is more than a how to manual or motivational on sports and fitness. It is a book about focus. The book is made up of thirty-five meditations based on character qualities, core values, and affirmations. These stories are captivating and grab the reader’s attention. They are designed to encourage runners to carry the satisfying experience of running into an enriching and deepening growth in their personal and professional life. These short inspirational chapters are equally appropriate for any chosen sport. Toby writes from his heart with a rare combination of the sportscaster, a poet, and a spiritual sports chaplain. Toby relates the joy of running to accessing the inner essence of man’s spirit.

Toby Estler is a remarkable communicator. He masterfully articulates how running has transformed his life, empowering him to overcome his past. As he shares these experiences and his new freedom, it is his hope that others will turn their lives around and move toward bigger goals and more rewarding behavior.

I encourage anyone who is into running to read, “Running Home“. It is a powerfully transforming and you will never look at running the same once you have implemented some of Toby’s meditative practices.  You can also visit his personal website by clicking here. Enjoy this great podcast!!!!

Podcast 56: The Essential Laws of Fearless Living with Guy Finley

Guy FinleyI had the pleasure of being able to meet Guy Finley at a recent conference in Irvine, CA called the, “Inside Edge“.  His speech entitled, “The Essential Laws of Fearless Living: Find the Power to Never Feel Powerless Again“, (which is also the title of his newly release book), was fantastic.  I have been to literally 100’s of seminars, workshops and retreats over the last 35 years and this hour long speech was among the best that I have heard.

Guy Finley’s message is simple, yet harder to integrate into your life.  It is one thing to hear something, but another to live it.  It requires that you read and re-read his book to really start to understand the wisdom that he teaches.  In this podcast you will just begin to understand the depth of his message and wisdom.  Guy will discuss how fear compromises your life and what action you can take to eliminate fear by transforming your thoughts and thinking.  He discusses how everything that happens to you happens for you to be able to transcend fear, and for each of  us to look at the lessons.  As Guy articulates “the fear is real, but the why is a lie.”

No fear exists other than our negative imagination. Our mind extrapolates what could happen, then creates a picture in our mind, then we spend our time resisting the picture we have created in our mind. If you really look at that statement and understand the wisdom within it you will begin to understand just a small portion of how our mind operates, and why we spend so much energy battling with ourselves.  It is a little insane wouldn’t you agree?  There is a great price for the stress we live with, but the reason that it is happening is to help us grow.  It is a marvelous moment when we don’t have to play the game with ourselves.

In my interview with Guy he will discuss The Essential Laws of Fearless Living: Find the Power to Never Feel Powerless Again, and I know that this podcast will provide you with much food for thought and contemplation.  I have not met an author with as much insight, wisdom and understanding about how fear controls our life.  He gives us practical advice and practices to follow to help reduce and eliminate the fear that often controls us.

Guy is the best-selling author of, “The Secret of Letting Go”, and more than 36 other books and audio albums that have sold over a million copies in 16 languages worldwide. In addition, he has presented over 4,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 400 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, Wisdom Network, and many others. His radio program, “Guy Finley Live,” is a live chat that airs monthly on HealthyLife.net as part of the network’s “Visionary Celebrity Host Series.” His syndicated weekly radio program is aired on several international networks including, Healthylife Radio Network, WorldTalkRadio Network, and Contact Talk Radio International. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations.

Guy’s career reached this point through a circuitous path. Born into a successful show business family, he is the son of Late-Night TV and radio pioneer Larry Finley. His childhood friends were the sons and daughters of the most famous celebrities in the world. As a young man Guy enjoyed success in a number of areas including composing award-winning music for many popular recording artists including Diana Ross, Debbie Boone, The Jackson 5, Billy Preston, The Four Seasons, as well as writing the scores for several motion pictures and TV shows. From 1970-1979 he wrote and recorded his own albums under the Motown and RCA recording labels.

Throughout his youth, Guy suspected there was more to life than the type of worldly success that led to the emptiness and frustration he saw among his own “successful” friends and colleagues. In 1979, after travels throughout North America, India and the Far East in search of Truth and Higher Wisdom, Guy voluntarily retired from his flourishing music career in order to simplify his life and to concentrate on deeper self-studies.

In addition to his writing and appearance schedule, Guy presents four inner-life classes each week at his non-profit, “Life of Learning Foundation” headquarters in Merlin, Oregon. These classes are ongoing and open to the public.
I encourage my listeners to visit his website, attend his workshops and begin to understand more about the gems of wisdom he has to offer.  You can learn more about his non-profit foundation, Life of Learning and his retreat center by clicking this link to his website.  I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed producing it.

 

Podcast 55: Top Performer a Bold Approach to Sales and Service with Carr Hagerman

Carr Hagerman I had the wonderful pleasure of being introduced to Carr Hagerman through a good friend of mine by the name of Cathy Paper.  I completed a podcast last August with Cathy, and you can link to it by clicking here. I was intrigued by Carr’s approach to becoming a top performer in selling.  You see Carr’s background is that of a street performer for over 30 years. Carr Hagerman didn’t follow the path of the MBA into the corporate world; he came up from the streets – literally.   The character he created was unlike anything the festival patrons had ever seen before.   Gritty, funny, smart and totally irreverent, his character instantly engaged his audiences and captured their imaginations – and loyalty. His character is still a favorite among patrons. Carr found opportunities to bring his uncommon performance and business philosophy to a number of ventures, each one providing a fresh set of challenges that expanded his knowledge and honed his ability to apply what he’d learned.

In 1998 Carr was introduced to The FISH! Philosophy based on the film, FISH!, by Charthouse Learning. The philosophy incorporated much of what he’d been preaching for years.   Carr quickly became a master FISH! Philosopher and traveled to speak with companies and organizations all over the world about how to use FISH! to help them create more engaged workplaces. We all sell something for a living — whether it’s a brand, a vision, an education, a direction, or a service. We might even be selling a set of numbers to a board meeting, learning to a student, or cereal to an infant. This eye-opening parable is about harnessing natural energy — yours and that of those around you — in order to take your sales, and your satisfaction to the next level of success.  In Top Performer, you’ll meet Jim, a disciplined but uninspired sales manager. In London on vacation — his first in years — he meets a gentleman named Top Hat. In an engrossing conversation, Top Hat tells him about a legendary Dublin busker/street performer called the Rat Catcher, who engages his audience and effortlessly charms them into parting easily with their change. Top Hat then gives Jim an envelope to bring to the Rat Catcher as a form of introduction. Jim is incredulous, and even a bit suspicious. But after a trip back home, he’s willing to do anything to break out of his rut of good-to-average sales and dogged but unfulfilling perseverance. Jim travels to Dublin, where the Rat Catcher tells — and shows — him some surprising secrets of his work ethic and his selling style. Jim ultimately realizes that he needs to Claim the Pitch, Mine the Mess, Choose the Close, and, most importantly, Juice the Jam. When Jim returns home, he’s re-energized, having learned how to Build a Circle and Pass the Hat where it really counts — in his life, his relationships, and his workplace. Full of action-packed and sometimes hilarious descriptions of the real like adventures of street performer, this engaging metaphor will appeal to anyone in any position — and in any field, from banking to baking to busking. In the tradition of the bestselling Fish! series this is a deceptively simple story that contains profound advice — advice that will help make readers into Top Performer themselves.

Carr’s approach to sales and selling is quite unique, but the message is so important.  If you want to become a Top Performer in selling you have to engage your customer, ask questions and listen.    This is a wonderfully entertaining book and my interview with Carr helps to bring the concepts of a street performer to life and integrate them into your sales practice.  I encourage sales people and anyone working with in customer services to listen to this podcast and read Carr’s book. You can learn more about Carr Hagerman his workshops and seminars by clicking here to visit his website.

Podcast 54: Pursuit of Light – An Extraordinary Journey with Sandy Brewer

Sandy BrewerI was recently introduced to Sandy Brewer through a friend in Los Angeles.  She mentioned that I needed to contact Sandy to do a podcast for she felt that her book and story about her life were nothing less than amazing.  I contacted Sandy and we spoke for awhile about her book and upbringing and I was convinced that I needed to let more people know about this amazing woman.  I received her book “Pursuit of Light” and was in awe by the strength and courage she must have had to manifest as a child growing up to cope with an amazingly horrific childhood.

In my this podcast with Sandy we discuss the trauma, triumph and the spiritual awakening necessary to live with such dysfunctional parents.  The abuse Brewer endured as a child was so horrific a reader may be forgiven for wondering why she didn’t go insane or commit suicide. Remarkably, Brewer not only overcame the handicaps of her own past but has also gone on to become an extremely effective therapist and inspirational speaker. Now, she has published a gripping and cathartic memoir that shares the profound lessons of her personal story.

Pursuit of Light has a double focus: It narrates the tragic story of Brewer’s childhood and also expounds the mature philosophical and spiritual perspective she has developed, which has allowed her to get beyond seeing herself as a victim. A reader quickly discovers the enormous gulf between what happened to her and what she has chosen to make of her life. The flashbacks into the nightmare world of her youth, in which mental, physical, and sexual abuse were the norm, are italicized and narrated in present tense, setting them off from the rest of the text and helping to lend them a startling immediacy no reader will soon forget.

As Brewer writes, “Choice impacts every area of our lives. Being a victim is a choice. Living life in the constant melodrama of a tedious soap opera…is a choice. Happiness is a choice.”

Sandy Brewer developed seminal techniques that allowed her to conquer the crippling legacy of her past. Enlightened and empowered by her journey of self-discovery, she is now committed to helping others make the same transition out of the darkness and into the light. This empowering narrative is a centerpiece of that work. Pursuit of Light provides an inspiring roadmap for how to follow the path Sandy Brewer has herself followed “through suffering to the stars.”

I thoroughly enjoyed my interview with Sandy and I highly recommend her book “Pursuit of Light-An Extraordinary Journey” I caution the readers, this book is not for the faint of heart for it depicts a a tragic upbringing, but the lessons learned and articulated in the book are so important to one’s spiritual growth.  Please visit Sandy’s website for more information about her coaching, and workshops.

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