In this episode I speak to Norma Stevens, LCPC, the Director of Therapy Operations at Sunstone Therapies in Rockville, Maryland. Sunstone partners with companies like Beckley PsyTech, COMPASS Pathways, MindMed, MAPS (Lykos Theraputics), Reunion Neuroscience, and Usona to run studies that aim to establish the gold standard for psychedelic treatments of complex mental health challenges.

Sunstone offers research trials in a unique partnership with the Acquilino Cancer Center, a research program within Adventist HealthCare. Sunstone works with psilocybin, MDMA, 5-MeO-DMT, and LSD in conjunction with psychotherapy. We discuss the role of psychological integration after a psychedelic journey and the importance of a therapeutic set and setting.

You're in for a treat! Kathryn DeYoung and Zach Berman are two friends and colleagues who are also therapists that got roped into joining one of Calliope's ketamine-therapy retreats. Actually they both volunteered, each for interesting personal reasons. Each of the several ketamine experiences I facilitated for them were always equally profound, hilarious, and eye-opening. You'll get to hear what The Universe told Zack, once he reached its edge, and why Kathryn got "Money! Love! Power!" tattooed on her brain after one journey. Both informative and entertaining, these two had fun along the way.

In this episode I interview the brainchild behind an increasingly influential online wiki for psychological healing, The Integral Guide to Well-Being. Levi, who prefers to stay behind-the-scenes and doesn't publicize his identity, created an interactive, graphic notebook that has around 1,300 pages, and has tens of thousands of unique readers each month.

The Integral Guide is a choose-your-own-adventure field guide that Levi began writing to aid his personal trauma recovery and self-development and to feel empowered and better-equipped to lead an enriched life. He explains that when he was debilitated by symptoms of Complex PTSD, Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and OCD he wanted clear and useful help, and especially disliked people trying to "sell healing" to him.

You can find The Integral Guide at www.integralguide.com

This episode features Paula Marie Scatoloni, a psychotherapist that uses sound vibrations to reset hyper- or hypo-active nervous systems after trauma. This method is called psychoacoustics, and Paula uses a tool called the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) to stimulate the tiny muscles of the inner ear, "massaging" the polyvagal nerve, and activating the body's safety, belonging, and relaxation system. SSP has been shown to relieve symptoms of dissociative depression, and anxiety.

SSP was originally designed to treat Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) but has been widely used to treat a range of mental health and health symptoms. The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) is a creative intervention based on the polyvagal theory (Steven Porges) for improving social communication impairments by reducing auditory hypersensitivity and improving human speech processing.

The SSP rehabilitates the middle ear muscle function using filtered music that is tuned to the specific frequency of human speech. Previous studies of children with ASD using an early version of SSP reported significant improvements in their sensory problems, including auditory processing, listening, and hearing sensitivities.

From the rhythmic beats of indigenous drums to the delicate tones of Tibetan bowls, sound therapy has evolved and translated across cultural boundaries for centuries. Ancient Wisdom traditions know the benefits of using sound medicinally to supersede the mind and influence the body and nervous system. In yogic traditions that use chanting and manta, sound is vibration and vibration is the essence of all things.

Paula Marie Scatoloni holds a Master’s in Social Work and is a certified Healing Arts Practitioner in NC. She is trained in many cutting-edge perspectives on trauma and the nervous system including Somatic Experiencing. Paula serves as a mentor and consultant for the Safe and Sound Protocol. She is a co-developer of the Embodied Recovery Institute and has been at the leading edge of her field for decades developing treatment programs, teaching, and leading teams at institutions such as Duke University. Paula seamlessly blends science and spirituality together in her unique programs that integrate psychology, neuroscience, and somatics with sound and bioenergetic approaches such as Reiki. Her unique programs and services can be deeply transformative for practitioners who are interested in blending Eastern and Western perspectives. Paula's website is https://paulascatoloni.com/

I believe that therapists, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who recommend ketamine--and more and more are doing just that--should have a firsthand experience of ketamine themselves. 

Today I speak with Maria Hernandez, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia, who did just that. Maria was a participant at our Bethesda, Maryland ketamine assisted psychotherapy clinic, Calliope Health. 

We talk about the personal reasons each of us was attracted to ketamine for our own mental health and the overlap between the disassociative effects of ketamine and the hypnotic technique of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. I talk about my depression and how ketamine helped me get over my horrible fear of a divorce that needed to happen and Maria shares about how her ketamine and psychedelic journeys have helped her connect in healing ways to her son Andrew, who took his own life a few years ago. 

I speak with Dr. Kristin Neff, the person perhaps most responsible for researching the effects of self-compassion.

She is the author of the 2011 bestselling book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and her newest book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.

Kristin and I talk about what she calls fierce self-compassion and how anger can be compassionate, and other questions like:

• Why are men better at self-compassion than women?
• What we do find is there’s a small but consistent gender difference that actually favors men.
• Does the fact that women tend to score lower than men on self-compassion has an impact on the salary gap between men and women.
• Is there a link between so-called “compulsive caretaking of others” and autoimmune disorders and some kinds of cancer?

Kristin leads us in a self-compassion meditation, and I ask her about the infectious positivity and compassion of the television series character, Ted Lasso, played by Jason Sudeikis.

Check out my Mini-Course for couples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHjcz6Ly2y9gr2mtMHIxu-fXXl8rE_PYJ

Learn more about my 7-week, live, online basic mindfulness and IFS course for couples: https://souloflifeshow.com/mindful-marriage

My Book, Love Under Repair: How to Save Your Marriage and Survive Couples Therapy https://amzn.to/2X3kPBL

My Counseling Practice: https://keithmillercounseling.com

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Dr. John Mather is a Senior Astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Laboratory located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.* He is also the Senior Project Scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space. It will fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe.

Mather was winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics with George Smoot for their work in the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission in the mid 1970s to measure the heat radiation from the Big Bang. Mather and his team measured the cosmic microwave background radiation—basically very faint radio noise astronomers had theorized could only come from the most distant events at the beginning of time as we know it—and their measurements confirmed the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large infrared telescope will be the premier space observatory of the next decade, and Mather has been the Senior Scientist on this project from it's origin in 1995. The James Webb is scheduled to launch in 2021 and will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

We discuss Mather's long career at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, his work on COBE and JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the planning of the Nancy Roman Grace Space Telescope.

*This episode was origionally published in February 2021.

* Replay from S2 * Dr. Tammy Nelson is a sex and relationship expert, and author of many books on sex including Getting the Sex You Want: Shed Your Inhibitions and Reach New Heights of Passion Together.

She's a psychotherapist, Director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, university teacher, TEDx speaker and is the host of the podcast The Trouble with Sex. Tammy is also a Board Certified Sexologist, an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Certified Imago Relationship therapist, and a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor.

Today on The Soul of Life I speak with Dr. Nelson about what it takes to have a vibrant sex life with a monogamous partner and how cheating during COVID has taken on new proportions.

We talk about the mindset that’s required to prevent or recover from infidelity and why it can be an opportunity.

We discuss several myths about infidelity, sex, and eroticism:

"Women actually do cheat for sex. Men tend to cheat for emotional reasons."

- Do all affairs happen because of sexual problems?

- Does communication and empathy have the power to fix sexual frustration?

- Why does emotional closeness sometimes seem to kill erotic passion?

- And perhaps the million dollar question: Why does Oprah call it her "vajayjay?"

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Want to book Keith as a guest on your podcast? Contact him at keith@souloflifeshow.com.