Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“ I was raised in a culture that says it’s cooler and it's smarter to say this is just a material, senseless, random world where atoms are bouncing off of each other, and there's no meaning or order or divine wink to any of it,” says psychiatrist Ellen Vora, MD. “I was missing that charm and that joy of, mmm, feels like something's happening here. I don't know what, but it feels like something is—and that gives me an immense amount of meaning and intrigue.” Today I’m talking to Ellen about her new book Season of the Witch, and how she came to think about the rational and intuitive parts of herself, our understanding of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and where our skepticism often comes from. Ellen shares how, now, she’s helping people to reconnect to their own intuition, and to stay intact and open up to what—personally—brings them great joy and meaning.  For the show notes, head to eliseloehnen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The alchemy pathway brings back synchronicity, unity, harmony to all of these different parts of self,” says psychic medium Carissa Schumacher. Her book—The Alchemy Transmissions: A Pathway to Miracles—is out this week, and it’s a series of transmissions she channeled from Yeshua (Jesus)! Today, we’re talking about what else this pathway might offer us, how to navigate the new era that we’re in, how to become more consciously mature, and how to step more deeply into your own unique essence. For the show notes (including a link to Carissa’s 92nd Street Y event on October 3, which you can stream), head to eliseloehnen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Feeling is really the core of consciousness,” says Antonio Damasio, MD, PhD. “And it's giving you information about what it is like to be alive, and how your life is going, and what you need to do about it.” Damasio is the director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California and the author of several books including, his latest, Natural Intelligence & the Logic of Consciousness. Today, he shares his beautiful explanation of this kind of feeling, along with his reflections on spirituality and the sublime.  For the show notes, head to eliseloehnen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Claude Steele is a social psychologist, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, and the author of Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It. Churn refers to the stress we often feel in diverse settings in everyday life; it’s the psychological reaction to being under identity threat—which is something we can all experience based on any myriad number of identity factors. Steele explains how churn can be an insidious and debilitating force in our personal lives, and he explains why the most effective way to approach churn is by building trust in a given situation. (While obviously Steele isn’t in support of prejudices of any kind, he doesn’t think the antidote here is to eliminate prejudice—and I think you’ll find his reasoning interesting.) For the show notes, head to eliseloehnen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices