In Episode 21 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, we get into the world of mindfulness, meditation and the capacity of these practices, to relieve suffering and promote flourishing with founder of the Long Island Center for Mindfulness, Cory Muscara. To put it simply, Cory is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met. While we are all unique, yet paradoxically all of one collective whole, Cory’s background and experiences are quite astonishing. Cory Muscara is the founder of the Long Island Center for Mindfulness, where he utilizes his extensive professional training in Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, and Integrative Health Coaching to facilitate a client’s creation of, and movement toward, their optimal vision of health and wellbeing. Cory has undergone professional training to integrate mindfulness within healthcare, schools, and businesses, through teacher training programs in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at UMass Medical School with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindful Schools, Search Inside Yourself, and Breathworks Chronic Pain. He has completed his Integrative Health Coach training at Duke Integrative Medicine, is a 200-Hour Certified Yoga Instructor, and holds a Masters degree in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2012, Cory spent six months in silence practicing mindfulness meditation 14+ hours a day as a Buddhist Monk in Southeast Asia. The experience taught him how powerful mindfulness can be as a transformative practice for cultivating greater peace, clarity, wisdom, and wellbeing in one’s life, and became the inspiring force behind his mission to share this work with others. Cory currently serves as faculty at Columbia Teachers College where he teaches mindfulness to school leaders and principals, and is an assistant instructor for the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his graduate work. Cory has presented mindfulness to organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, Travelers, Prudential Insurance; universities such as NYU, Wharton Business School, and Dartmouth; a number of hospitals and healthcare systems in the New York area; and he regularly appears on the Dr. Oz show as a guest expert in the topic of mindfulness meditation. Cory’s teachings and work with students stem from a deep passion for helping others, and personal experience with the transformative power of mindfulness, coaching, and positive psychology. He looks forward to helping you realize the same benefits he and his students have come to experience through this work. Formally speaking, Cory has undergone professional training to integrate mindfulness within healthcare, schools, and businesses, through teacher training programs in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at UMass Medical School with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindful Schools, Search Inside Yourself, and Breathworks Chronic Pain. He has completed his Integrative Health Coach training at Duke Integrative Medicine, is a 200-Hour Certified Yoga Instructor, and holds a Masters degree in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania. Positive Yoga Coaching anyone? And just to make things interesting, in 2012, Cory spent six months in silence practicing mindfulness meditation 14+ hours a day as a Buddhist Monk in Southeast Asia. The experience taught him how powerful mindfulness can be as a transformative practice for cultivating greater peace, clarity, wisdom, and wellbeing in one’s life, and became the inspiring force behind his mission to share this work with others.
In our show, Cory and I have a curious discussion about mindfulness and meditation. What in the world do we mean when we say mindfulness anyway?
Cory reflects on his background and rather remarkable course to get to his current work with the Long Island Center for Mindfulness. As part of the discussion, Cory lays out in exquisite detail, some of his approaches to cultivating a meditative practice with others, providing one of the most insightful practical examples I have ever heard when it comes to describing the meditative experience. Digging deeper, I push Cory to explore the word spirituality and ask him to draw upon his unique experiences to share his views of the world “spirituality” and perhaps what we should adopt as a more unifying collective perspective. Not wanting to forget the medical applications, Cory shares some of his knowledge having trained as a health coach incorporating principles of mindfulness and positive psychology into his work. In the end, we conclude the discussion exploring Cory’s work expanding the practices of mindfulness and meditation with youth and the family environment. Cory even closes the show with one of the best endings we have had to date, perhaps only second to the hauntingly beautiful story told by my mentor Dr. Greg Gelburd at the end of Episode 010. I am so excited to share this conversation with you and incredibly grateful to have connected with Cory, thanks again to the thoughtfulness of another previous podcast guest, our resident positive Mapster Grace Cormier. And don’t worry, Cory and Grace will certainly be back for more discussions and we further unpack the power of positive psychology coupled with a dedicated mindfulness practice. If you enjoy the show, please don’t forget to share your thoughts as part of a review in I-Tunes. I struggle enough trying to figure out Facebook and the best ways to grow our community, so from all of us at A Medicinal Mind, we would be grateful for your kind words as part of a review in I-Tunes. And as always, we encourage you to share the show and all the offerings on our main page to others in your life that you believe would benefit, all in the effort furthering this joyful conversation. Thank you as always and we hope you enjoy the show! To learn more about Cory’s current work with the Long Island Center for Mindfulness click on the link below: http://www.mindfulnessmeditationnyc.com/mbsr-nyc-teachers/cory-muscara To learn more about Cory’s exciting and powerful work use the link below to access his website: http://www.corymuscara.com You are able to contact Cory at his Facebook and Instagram pages using the links below: Facebook: www.facebook.com/corymuscara Instagram: www.instagram.com/corymuscara
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In episode 20 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I have a conversation with my new close friend, and pioneering nurse Shawna Curry. I recently met Shawna just a few weeks back at 2017 The Ancestral Health Symposium in Seattle, Washington where she presented some rather fascinating insights into the application of the Western Medicine acute triage process as part of her practice of lifestyle medicine and the reversal of chronic diseases.
Shawna’s background is incredibly unique, currently working as a nurse on an acute neurology unit, she has training in both kinesiology and personal training, but currently spends much of her time practicing as part of her company Your Lifestyle Strategy, helping numerous clients engage in the process of cultivating optimal well-being. As an Amazon bestselling author, Shawna is committed to helping people become the happiest and healthiest versions of themselves. Over nearly two decades, she has made her mark in the health and wellness space with live speaking engagements, published health articles, podcast appearances and personalized health coaching. This variety of experience has built a community of clients who benefit from her special form of intimate and inspiring health and wellness information. In 2014, Shawna launched her company, Your Lifestyle Strategy. Over the past three years, this company has been dedicated to total-health solutions and all of the aspects of healthy living including fitness, sleep, nutrition, self-help and overall lifestyle strategies. You can be part of her movement by taking charge of your own health today.
In today’s podcast Shawna and I discuss the foundations of this triage process and her overall clinical approach, exploring the complex intersection between lifestyle habits within the areas of sleep, stress management, diet, and exercise with a person’s digestive and gastrointestinal health, all in the context of the patient’s current circumstances, known medical conditions and familial or genetic predispositions.
Shawna continue and shares her amazing visual description of this lifestyle matrix, and the practical and flexible tools she uses with her patients to personalized their “prescriptions” for wellness. Are you a new mother, taking care of a newborn with little to no regularity in your sleep pattern, perhaps your focus and foundation should be on the other three areas of Shawna’s lifestyle table, recognizing that if another leg in the four is significantly compromised, it may result in a spiral of suffering and emerging illness. Shawna’s passion is evident in her voice as well as her writing, most notably so in her recently released book: Healthy By Choice: Your Blueprint for Vital Living. While we discuss in the podcast many of the ideas and frameworks presented in Shawna’ book, I strongly encourage you to seek out your own copy and uncover some of its simple, yet remarkably relevant tools for helping you optimize the areas of your life for which you actually have realistic control. I am so grateful to have met Shawna, bonding over our shared passion for reversing chronic disease, and currently doing so in the environment of traditional, Western medicine. Shawna as a nurse and pioneering lifestyle coach, and myself as a young doctor just trying to figure out what allows people to truly flourish, we are collectively dedicated to remaining curious and challenging the things we think we know. We encourage you to check out the notes on the podcast page for links to follow Shawna and check out her new book. And from everyone at the medicinal mind team, we say thank you for your presence in this curious exploration, for it is your encouragement and unconditional gratitude that gives us the energy to continue holding a space for all to flourish and for suffering to finally cease. We hope you enjoy the show. To reach Shawna, you can access her website, twitter, and instagram pages using the links below This link to my website will take you directly to my Amazon best selling book! Facebook: Shawna Curry: Your Lifestyle Strategy Twitter: @takechargeyyc Instagram: yourlifestylestrategy
In Episode 019 of A Medicinal Mind I share a conversation with integrative psychiatrist Will Van Derveer MD. As you will hear in the podcast, I first came across Will as part of his joint presentation with Dr. Janet Settle on the February 2017 edition of the Evolution of Medicine’s Functional Forum: the Evolution of Integrative Psychiatry. Serendipitously, before I had a chance to reach out to Will to thank him for his inspiring presentation, he contacted me following the release of my E-Book on Integrative and Functional Medicine Education, and a friendship was born.
Will Van Derveer, MD is the founder and medical director of the Integrative Psychiatric Healing Center in Boulder, CO, where he has practiced integrative psychiatry for 15 years. Dr. Van Derveer is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine (ABoIHM) since 2013, and he was board certified in the first wave of diplomates of the new American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABIM) in 2016. He is course director for the University of Colorado psychiatry residents’ course on integrative psychiatry, and is a co-founder and core faculty of the in-depth integrative psychiatry training program, The Psychiatry Masterclass. Dr. Van Derveer regards emotional trauma as a significant root cause of psychiatric symptoms in integrative psychiatry practice, along with gut issues, hormone imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and other functional medicine problems. He provides to most of his patients somatic psychotherapy for trauma recovery. Trained as a meditation instructor, he teaches mindfulness to his patients. In addition to his clinical work and teaching, he was co-investigator in 2016 a Phase II randomized clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the protocol of which has recently been approved by FDA for an upcoming phase III clinical trial. In our conversation, we dig in deep as Will shares his revolutionary framework for approaching mental illness, one where Will recognizes a trinity of interconnected and primary contributions to a patient’s present illness including psychospiritual disturbance, physiologic imbalances and a patient’s specific presenting symptoms. Will provides us with some practical methods for using lifestyle approaches to address chronic mental illness and outlines how he incorporates both medications and lifestyle medicine in his practice. We explore some of the fascinating science behind the bidirectional gut brain axis and the influence of various dietary and environmental factors such as gluten and glyphosate to disrupt one’s optimal functioning. Seeking to revise or perhaps dispel the currently espoused neurotransmitter imbalance theory of mental illness, Will walks us through the inflammatory cytokine or the inflammatory brain hypothesis and its power, in combination with the exploration of adverse and traumatic experiences to explain much of our current mental health crisis.
IMPORTANT LINKS
Follow Will and his work www.willvanderveer.com To take part in the revolutionary Psychiatry Masterclass www.psychiatrymasterclass.com To watch Will and Janet's Presentation at the February 2017 Functional Forum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqQdkyYzXgU Will offers up some of his personal research as well, working with psychedelics in combination with various forms of cognitive therapy in order to help those suffering with PTSD and others negatively impacted by adverse childhood experiences. We even dabble in exploring the emerging field of genetics, pharmacogenomics and the role of genetic testing to inform treatment in mental illness. There was so much to cover in this podcast, and we will certainly have Will back for more of his insights and wisdom. If you enjoy the show, please leave comments on our podcast page, follow us on Facebook and consider leaving a review in I-Tunes. We are always inspired to hear your thoughts and recommendations for future podcasts or articles! I am grateful as always to have such passionate speakers on the show and look forward to bringing you more episodes as we continue this amazing journey called life. Enjoy the show!
In Episode 018 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well Being I share an amazing conversation with my new friend, mindful mom, and meditation pioneer, Anna Gannon. Anna is a mom, the Community and Editorial Lead at Expectful, a Writer and a Yoga & Meditation Teacher. Her work has been featured on The Huffington Post, MindBodyGreen, Yoga Today and The Expectful Blog. Anna is passionate about the importance of the mind, body, and sometimes baby connection. Her mission is to improve women's emotional health during their fertility, pregnancy and new motherhood experience by sharing open and honest stories, educating them on the benefits of meditation and movement and most importantly, letting them know they are never alone.
As you will hear in the podcast, Anna’s story is beyond remarkable and one that speaks to the beautiful randomness of this life when we finally surrender to the entirely unexplainable. In our conversation Anna opens up about her journey as the Community and Editorial Lead with Expectful, a web and mobile based app designed to support mothers and mothers-to-be in developing and maintaining a meditation practice, supporting the health of their child to be as well as their own.
In the podcast, Anna describes the fascinating creative process behind each of Expectful’s meditation and the vision for the group going forward as they seek to support women at all stages of life
Digging deeper, Anna and I explore how exactly we can best support mothers months before conception and for months after the birth of a child. Should meditation and support for mind-body practices be as routine as prenatal vitamins? We then discuss some of the barriers faced by mothers and families throughout a pregnancy and the benefits of engaging in a meditation practice, carrying mindfulness into all aspects of one’s life. Anna’s authentic story is touching beyond measure and left me on more than one occasion with chills and joyful disbelief. I encourage you to check out the show notes for links to connect with Anna and try out Expectful for yourself. As you will hear from my own mouth, being male or not pregnant is certainly not an excuse to explore some of Expectful’s meditations. Whether you are a clinician looking to help your patients or a supporting partner trying to grow your connection with your loved ones, I truly believe you will find peace and presence with Expectful and it’s thoughtful meditations. I am so thankful for Anna’s pioneering work, and beyond grateful to have connected over our shared mission to support the flourishing of mothers, father and babies to be! We really hope you enjoy the show! Learn more through guided meditation for your fertility, pregnancy, and motherhood journey with Expectful, find us on the app store, and follow our podcast conversations by typing in "Expectful".
In Episode 017 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well Being, I engage in a practical conversation with my close friend and fellow functional medicine advocate Mike Etlinger. Mike is a Full Stack Web Developer living in Brooklyn, NY. When he's not coding, he enjoys cooking, hiking, and riding his bike all around the boroughs. He believes that the best way to manage your health is to empower yourself with the knowledge and skills to make healthy choices. Mike is on a mission to help others, armed with his experience managing his Psoriasis and all the health woes that come with it. Mike and I first crossed paths after a synchronous email following my guest podcast appearance with functional medicine practitioner Dr. Michael Ruscio.
As you will hear in the podcast, Mike’s background is quite unique, however, his personal story of losing his health as result of an overall unsustainable and less than optimal lifestyle during his college years is one that is becoming much too common in today’s world. In our conversation, Mike opens up about his personal journey as a young man seeking to recover his health, searching for answers outside of traditional medical structures, eventually beginning a path to restoring his wellness working alongside Dr. Ruscio and his progressive functional medicine practice. In the podcast, Mike outlines some of the most important lessons he has learned from being a patient seeking to educate himself and find the right functional medicine clinician to meet his needs.
Asking such questions as:
Is the practitioner compatible with my needs in this moment? Do I need some encouragement or a stern source of external accountability? Will I have freedom to experiment or will things be more protocol driven? And what about my emotional needs? Will these be met or just my nutritional deficiencies? What is my potential doctor’s specific area of expertise? Does is match my primary concerns? And of course money. What can I expect in terms testing and treatment? Will everything fit within my budget? Mike also offers some incredible insights on how to best prepare for your visit, making sure to honor and prioritize your needs as well as the time of the practitioner. Some suggestions from Mike include:
We also discuss some of the often overlooked areas of the healing process, focusing on growth and the many positives that can come from an illness or suffering. Some of the opportunities we discuss include Building awareness into what nourishes your body, And revealing what hinders its flourishing. Beginning to cultivate gratitude for your symptoms, seeing them as information and the body’s attempt at solving an area of dysfunction and not something to simply suppress And lastly we close discussing Mike’s dynamic career change as he now pursues a career in health technology following his personal dive into functional and ancestral health. Mike shares his recent work developing a food diary app that seeks to aid in one’s documentation of overall food quality, allowing an individual to build his or her awareness around food, potentially elucidating a specific food, emotional state or eating environment that is actually negatively impacting one’s health. I was so excited to share this conversation with Mike, and I really hope you enjoy the episode, seeing the real, authentic and practical side of restoring health and promoting one’s flourishing. I am incredibly grateful to Mike for reaching out in the first place many months back, and encourage you to contact Mike from the information in our show notes to hear more about his path and perhaps how you can begin your own journey to restoring your health. Please reach out to mk.etlinger@gmail.com with any questions or comments. I hope you enjoy the show!
In Episode 16 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well Being we share a conversation with Board Certified Family Medicine Physician, avid runner and community health visionary Dr. Josh Emdur.
While Josh is certainly passionate about exercise and sharing his joy for running with his patients, his calling and compassionate service to others is most profoundly embedded in his unrelenting desire to improve the patient doctor relationship and ultimately improve communities most in need. As you will hear in the podcast, Josh comes from a background and family deeply rooted in medicine, but his unique passions have brought him to pursue an alternative approach to engaging and empowering patients. Josh is one of the newest generation of practitioners practicing telemedicine based Direct Primary Care, as previously outlined in Episode 7 of our podcast with Dr. Spencer Nadolsky DO. Both Josh and Spencer have partnered with SteadyMD, an organization and platform dedicated to direct primary care and engagement of patients beyond what is possible in a traditional face-to-face medical encounter. In our conversation today Josh shares much of his background entering the field of family medicine and later pursuing work as a hospitalist in Boulder, Colorado. Josh shares some of his most insightful wisdom regarding the urgent need to transform healthcare delivery and revitalize the doctor patient relationship.
Together, we explore topics such as:
1. What does it mean to be in the profession of medicine? What is a profession in the first place? 2. What are the most unsustainable aspects of our current medical model and how are Josh and other physicians seeking to change the course of healthcare delivery. Getting personal we discuss 3. What does a typical day looks like for Josh when seeing patients as part of SteadyMD? 4. What can patients expect as part of their partnership in working with Josh? What are the expected benefits as well as the potential downsides? Do you lose anything when seeing patients over telemedicine? And what are emerging communication modalities and health education resources that Josh is using to communicate and encourage patients to make sustainable lifestyle changes. And lastly, we dig into our desperate need to find space and value in a cramped and overburden healthcare system. 5. Why is time to reflect, think, and further explore the personal needs of each patient so critical, yet remarkably lacking in current, traditional medical models. 6. How can patients add incredible value to their healthcare and decrease total cost by partnering with a Direct Primary Care doctor through membership based practices. I’m incredibly grateful to Josh and all the visionary physicians and leaders at SteadyMD. As we share in the podcast, healthcare is changing and perhaps the only choice now is to decide whether you will be swimming with the flow or against it. Please seek out Josh via the contact information on our podcast page, and begin to explore the avenues that perhaps you can pursue in partnering with a direct primary care physician, seeking to improve your health and the health of your community. Please, if you enjoy this podcast, we would really appreciate it if you could leave a review in iTunes or Apple Podcasts so that more listeners can engage with our mindful message. Thank you as always for your support and we hope you enjoy the show! To access more information on SteadyMD use this link: https://www.steadymd.com/ And to access specific information for runners from Josh on SteadyMD you may use this link: https://www.steadymd.com/running Learn more about how Josh is revolutionizing the Doctor Patient Relationship with SteadyMD by using this link: https://www.boulderdoc.com/ Episode 015: Jim Martin PhD, Revelation Through Science, Organic Chemistry Makes Space for a Creator8/15/2017
In Episode 015 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well Being, we explore the interface between science and spirituality, evolution and creationism, faith and the experimental method. I have a wonderful conversation with a dear friend and honorary family member, former governor of North Carolina and nurturing grandfather Jim Martin.
Jim is a Princeton PhD organic chemist who initially taught at his alma mater Davidson College During that time, he played principal tuba in the Charlotte Symphony and officiated high school football. Drawn to politics as a precinct worker, he was then elected three times as county commissioner, six times to the U.S. Congress, and twice as Governor of North Carolina. After twenty-six years of public service, he returned to his scientific roots in private life to serve as vice president of medical research at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. He and his wife Dottie have three children and five grandchildren in addition to being amazing family friends to my grandparents and all the Abbott’s in my loving family. In our conversation Jim shares some amazing insights regarding the complexities of biology, organic chemistry, and physics as they relate to the current existence of humanity and our universe as a whole. In distilling down some of the major ideas in his groundbreaking book: Revelation Through Science Jim provides us with a small glimpse into some foundational scientific principles that perhaps, do not and WILL NEVER PROVE the existence of a God, but do indeed provide evidence POINTING TO the existence of a larger Creator.
Introducing the concepts of irreducible complexities, the remarkable relational geometry of DNA, RNA, sugars, and amino acids, we explore that miraculous machinery that allows for the storage and interpretation of genetic code and the eventual creation of an incredible array of proteins and biologic tissues.
Getting a little geeky, we, as two chemists explore the concepts of chirality or handedness of molecules. Why should we care if something is left handed or right handed? What does it mean to be left handed in the first place? And what the heck is a enantiomer? Changing gears, James and I explore Scripture and the biblical text Can we treat the Bible as a scientific textbook or as a book of relational and interpretive wisdom? Is it fair to judge the biblical text against our current understanding of the scientific method? Dancing into the beautiful trinity of sugars, RNA/DNA, and amino acids, Jim creates the wonderful three way chicken, egg and creator conundrum, what came first nucleic acids, or ribose and deoxyribose, or amino acids or perhaps something we don’t even currently understand? I am so grateful to Jim for sharing this space with me and engaging in a thoughtful discussion seeking to bring peace to the supposed dichotomy between science and spirituality, providing a middle ground for individuals to recognize that you can both believe in God and evolution, use the scientific method and rely on faith for understanding. And please check out Jim’s book: Revelation Through Science, it really is a fascinating collection of thoughtful scientific inquiry accessible to both the rigorous scientist and curious layperson. You can find links to Jim’s page and his book in our show notes, as well as slides describing some of the concepts we discuss in the podcast, for those, like myself, who are rather visually inclined. I really hope you enjoy the show! Use this link to access Jim’s website: http://www.beatenpathbooks.com/ Use this link to access Jim’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Through-Science-James-Martin/dp/1524536083
In Episode 014 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well-Being, I welcome student doctor and my new partner in all things well-being and resilience: Jordyn Feingold.
Jordyn, is now a second-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) where she is actively working toward her combined MD/ Master’s in Clinical and Translational Research. Before medical school, she attended undergrad and received a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. As you will hear in the show Jordyn is a founding member of the student-trainee division of CHARM (the Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine), a national network of medical students and residents working together with physicians to identify best practices around physician well-being and promote the resilience of medical practitioners. She is currently the co-chair of the student wellness committee at ISMMS and is working within her own school and with the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center to develop resilience trainings for medical students, trainees, and practicing physicians. Most importantly Jordyn rejuvenates by singing, exercising, cooking, and nurturing her relationships with family and friends. Jordyn and I met as a result of the thoughtful connection from my previous guest in Episode 12: Grace Cormier. Following a short introduction, Jordyn and I were off to the races sharing stories of medical education, positive psychology and how we came to discover what exactly it was we were both called to do. Following our initial smiles and tears of disbelief, our passions for supporting fellow medical trainees has only continued to grow. As you heard in Jordyn’s introductory bio, we have recently collaborated to build a new social network of passionate medical trainees dedicated to supporting each other’s well being and changing the way medicine is practiced. We are so excited to share this collaborative group with you and as we discuss in the show, please reach out via email and explore the current database of students via the notes on the podcast past to join and share in our collective mission for wellness in medicine. Besides sharing our excitement over this new network, our conversation today explores much of Jordyn’s fascinating background bridging early undergraduate coursework in positive psychology with her calling to pursue medicine. Jordyn shares her views on “Positive Medicine,” and details her unique wellness program REVAMP. In the discussion she describes the creation of this unique, six faceted program and her active pursuits to help medical students, residents and physicians successfully focus on all the aspects necessary for living a fulfilled and meaningful life. From physical vitality and relationships, to accomplishment and positive emotions, Jordyn provides us with an amazing introduction to her multifaceted and revolutionary approach and shares her own experience in living it each and every day.
Jordyn is perhaps one of the most passionate and visionary individuals I have ever met, and I am beyond grateful for the connection that made our friendship possible. Jordyn will no doubt become a regular guest and contributor on the show and I genuinely believe you will resonate with her passionate mind and creative endeavors.
And please, if you enjoy the show, we would greatly appreciate if you could leave a positive review in I-Tunes/Apple Podcasts as this is the single best best way beyond word of mouth for others to find our work. I have been smiling from the beginning of this podcast, astonished by the increasing numbers of listeners with each and every show. I am so thankful for your support and couldn’t imagine finding the time or energy to write and record each week while navigate the 70-80 hour work weeks of my family medicine residency program. Your words and support make it all possible and never fail to keep a smile on my face and joy in my heart every step of the way. I hope you enjoy the show! Read more about Jordyn's work on Mount Sinai's MacroMD Blog, or check out her facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/jordynhfeingold/. To access more on CHARM: http://www.im.org/page/charm To see CHARM's Student Network Agreement: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3W0wxKftwW4dUhyYzY4YmdlWVU And below is the contact information for Charm Student Network jordyn.feingold@gmail.com amedicinalmind@gmail.com
My guest today is Max Mishkin. I met Max on our first day of college at the College of William of Mary, almost a decade ago. Together in 2009, we hiked over 300 miles of the Appalachian trail, coursing our way through several southern states including Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Since that time, Max has followed his passion for nature and re-dedicated his life to preserving and protecting the outdoor spaces that he loves.
He was worked with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy based in Harper’s Ferry WVA and has been a caretaker for the Maryland section of the Appalachian Trail. As part of his work in our natural spaces, Max has documented its beauty through photography and uses it to tell stories of places and the people that love them. On his site: http://www.mishkinphoto.com Max contributes to the ongoing story of conservation. For as he sees it, photography is a means to connect the essential human experience with the imagery of our most cherished natural wonders, all in an effort to better understand our relationship with nature and the stakes of its preservation. Whether he is managing his conservation photography company, working as a park ranger or thru hiking the Appalachian Trail, Max's story is all about following your dreams in the face of conventional wisdom.
In our conversation today, Max shares a piece of his life’s journey, navigating his way through societal norms to eventually discover that his passion for nature, his spiritual purpose and his practical talents all overlapped as part of his work IN THESE NATURAL SPACES THEMSELVES. Breaking down the walls of work and play, recreation and livelihood, Max offers us a poetic yet realistic portrayal of what can truly happen when you follow your dreams and do what you love. I hope you enjoy this heartwarming conversation from two close friends.
For all those who have struggled with attentional deficit or hyperactivity issues, various learning disabilities and otherwise challenging school and working environments, I believe this episode with Max will touch your spirit, giving you more fire to know what is truly possible when you disregard those who say you cannot, and live in the empowered spirit that says of course you can. Where to Find and Follow Him http://www.mishkinphoto.com
In Episode 012 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well Being, we enter into the world of Positive Psychology with my new friend and visionary researcher Grace Cormier. While Grace’s bio may appear linear, straightforward, and precisely planned, the actual story, as you will hear in the podcast, is much more circuitous, and blessed by courageous leaps of faith.
Grace graduated from Carleton College with a B.A. in Psychology and from the University of Pennsylvania with a Master of Applied Positive Psychology. She has extensive experience implementing positive psychology and resilience programs in a wide variety of organizations including the military, public safety, universities, and a professional basketball team. Her academic work focuses on how to foster affective commitment through building cultures that support autonomy, competence, and relatedness. She has a passion for applying positive psychology in organizations to transform cultures, build effective teams, and encourage prosocial behavior. She currently does research with Wharton People Analytics at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the episode, Grace and I hold a joyful conversation, sharing aspects of our life stories and how we both came to study and practice in the field of Positive Psychology in the first place. To get things started, Grace shares with us:
A Short History of Positive Psychology
Digging back into the personal we explore: The Many Ways in which Grace has incorporated positive practices into her daily life
Building from these practices Graces shares some amazing insights on"
Following our journey into the practices of Positive Psychology we then transition to a fascinating discussion about: The Importance of Gratitude and The Concept of Resilience
And lastly we close with some final insights and a beautiful piece of wisdom from Grace as she faithfully lives out the practices she most rigorously studies. I was so grateful to have shared this conversation with Grace and so thankful for the nourishing friendship that emerged from our synchronous connection. I am already looking forward to bringing Grace back on the show to share more of her insights, wisdom and passion for connecting communities by holding a space for happiness to flourish. To learn more about the Positive Psychology Center UPenn you may access their website using this link: http://ppc.sas.upenn.edu To access more information about Wharton People Analytics use this link: https://wpa.wharton.upenn.edu And, to get in touch with Grace you can contact her at: cormierg@wharton.upenn.edu Enjoy the show! |
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