Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 002 – Doing Things Differently with Joshua Haynes
Joshua Haynes - How growing up in a world of constant change inspired an innovative business and commitment to equality.
Rachel Jane Liebert: Decolonizing Early Psychosis
Do early psychosis programs serve healing – or function as surveillance and control? Are treatments for paranoia actually themselves forms of paranoia, based on scientific racism and white supremacy?
Elisabeth: Ayahuasca Psychosis and Spiritual Awakening
After taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, Elisabeth went into an extended altered state diagnosed as psychotic. Her terrifying ordeal ignited a spiritual initiation that eventually brought gifts of awakening, insight, and compassion.
Fritjof Capra: Systems View of Life
What does healthcare become when science is limited by a mechanistic, machine view of reality? How does a mechanistic view shape concepts of mental health and illness – and deny the fundamental aliveness of human beings? What does the study of living systems teach us for creating a different, more holistic vision?
Gogo Ekhaya Esima: Traditional South African Healing
How can seeing visions and hearing voices be transformed into a spiritual gift for healing? What does the initiation ordeal into becoming a shaman involve? Gogo Ekhaya Esima was diagnosed with psychosis and confined in psychiatric hospitals before she became an initiated Sangoma healer in the Zulu tradition of South Africa.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – Introduction
What do depression, loss, frustration, and conflict have to do with global transformation? You can find the answers in this introduction episode to the Break Down. Wake Up podcast
Sean Blackwell: Breathwork for Bipolar and Psychosis
Do bipolar and psychosis have a healing potential blocked by suppression, medications, and avoidance? What if we could help people safely and intentionally explore, express, and understand these frightening states? Can breathwork ceremonies open the doors of perception like psychedelics — but without the drugs or risks?
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 006 – Creating the Context for Self Healing...
How a surprising solution to surgical complications helped a business director process her grief and embrace a new calling to help others heal themselves.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 009 – Integrating an Epiphany Through Daily Practice...
How a ski accident gave a practical philosopher the insight to liberate his own self worth from the judgments of others and to discover his own career path.
Michael Guy Thompson: The Legacy Of RD Laing
An interview with Michael Guy Thompson, a psychoanalyst and founder of the Gnosis Retreat Center, who worked with R.D. Laing in London and has created hospital alternative sanctuaries for people struggling with experiences called psychosis.
Nina Packebush: Girls Like Me
What’s it like to be a teenager in a psychiatric hospital? What is it like to be a queer pregnant teenager? Is it true that friends do make the best medicine? Nina Packebush explores these questions and more in her groundbreaking debut young adult novel: Girls Like Me.
The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs
Based on more than 10 years work in the peer support movement,The Icarus Project and Freedom Center’s 52-page guide is used internationally by individuals, families, professionals, and organizations to support reducing and coming off psychiatric drugs.
Caroline Mazel-Carlton: Judaism Madness and Spirit
Voice hearers, mystics, visionaries, and mad people are found throughout the scriptures of Judaism. What does Jewish theology have to teach us about madness and psychiatric diagnosis?
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 010 – SOLO EPISODE! Sharing Insights from the...
I recap the major themes that arise in the guest interviews and share my perspective on how these themes can help us solve personal, professional, and broader collective challenges.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 012 – Listening to her Whole Self…Even the...
How coming to terms with her own relationship doubt and a part of herself she did not want to see brought an executive coach deep compassion for herself and others.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 011 – Discovering Safety and Wisdom Within the...
In this episode, we explore how the tendency to attach our personal value to our businesses or professions can push us to overwork ourselves, the body's incredible creative ways to bring itself back into a state of balance and safety, and how trauma works itself both through the body and through our relationships.
Lisa Forestell: Hearing Voices Movement and the Western Massachusetts Learning Community
What is it like to hear voices — and are all voices harmful or can they also be helpers? What does voice hearing say about the human mind – and the society we live in?
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 008 – Embodying a Message for the Community...
How his own madness inspired Matt Ball, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, to cultivate human connection, community and meaning in the mental healthcare system.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 007 – Questioning Primary Beliefs to Reconnect with...
How an unexpected business rejection launched a quest for a successful entrepreneur to understand his personal pain and protective strategies.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 001 – Practicing Inner Truth in a Polarized...
How experiencing both an abortion and motherhood inspired an approach to activism that transcends ideological divisions.
Phil Borges: Is Madness a Breakdown or Initiation into a Spiritual Calling?
Is madness breakdown or initiation into a spiritual calling? Crazywise is a new documentary film that explores the meaning of psychosis from the perspective of traditional cultures and shamanism, following the stories of people struggling with extreme ...
George Mecouch: Jungian Therapy for Psychosis
Has modern psychiatry lost its soul? How can dreams, storytelling, and imagination help people in emotional crisis – including psychosis and madness? What lessons can we learn from shamanism, the placebo effect, and the importance of the doctor’s “bedside manner’? George Mecouch MD, psychiatrist, Jungian therapist, and author of While Psychiatry Slept: Reawakening the Imagination in Therapy, discusses how to recover the lost art of healing in an era dominated by technology.
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 004 – Embracing the Unknown…not Alone With Robert...
How a period of chaos and blackouts brought an international trainer to his own vulnerability and nudged him to stop doing everything on his own.
Jyl Ion: Awakening as a Medium
Jyl Ion hears voices, but she refuses to view these non-ordinary experiences as a sign of mental illness. Instead Jyl came off 16 years of multiple toxic medications, talks to her ancestor spirits and has reclaimed access to unsanctioned knowledge.
Life After Psych Meds: Laura Delano
How can people come off psychiatric medications in the safest way? What are the key lessons and vital ingredients for leaving psychiatric care? Is there life after meds? Laura Delano spent 14 years as a psychiatric patient before she left behind her psychiatric diagnoses and reclaimed herself. Today she is Director of the Inner Compass Initiative and The Withdrawal Project, working to support drug withdrawal and build community beyond the mental health system.