Explore Spirituality

Podcast: Rev. Michael Curry

September 25, 2020 22:41 - 36 minutes

In this electrifying conversation, Rabbi Rami talks with the Most Rev. Michael Curry. He is the presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church. They discuss his new book, Love is the Way, and how Jesus has over the millennia been turned into a meeker and milder version than the radical figure he may have actually been at the time. He was founding a nonviolent movement, true, but he was challenging the status quo. “I think it would have been lovingly unsettling to be around Jesus,” says ...

Podcast: Jaimal Yogis

August 28, 2020 21:27 - 27 minutes

Rabbi Rami’s guest this week is Jaimal Yogis. Yogis is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker, and we are delighted to have him gracing our September/October 2020 cover, along with his insanely cute son. A graduate of Columbia Journalism school, Yogis is featured in our annual Books We Love feature. He has an impressive body of work, including three coming-of-age/journalistic memoirs: Saltwater Buddha, The Fear Project, and All Our Waves Are Water. His latest is a children’s picture bo...

Podcast: Sue Stuart-Smith, on the Well-Gardened Mind

August 14, 2020 22:00 - 25 minutes

This week, Rabbi Rami puts on his wellies and garden gloves to interview celebrated gardener Sue Stuart-Smith. She is also a prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and the author of the book The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature. It weaves together stories about neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and how gardening can heal us mentally and physically. The book is especially timely in the time of COVID-19, she and Rabbi Rami discuss, as planting seeds and caring for living thi...

Podcast: Psychologist Rick Hanson

July 31, 2020 21:55 - 32 minutes

Did you know we can reverse-engineer happiness and contentment by warming up our body’s own neural circuitry? That is the essence of the new book, Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness, by Rick Hanson, PhD. In this episode of the podcast, he and Rabbi Rami have a very deep conversation about Buddhism, the Buddha (who Hanson likes to see kind of as a coach), and Reality with a capital R. But there is practical, actionable advice here, too. Liste...

Podcast: Dr. Josefa Rangel, Innate Medicine Specialist

July 17, 2020 20:21 - 25 minutes

“Our birthright is innate resilience,” Dr. Rangel says. The question is how to build that up, and nurture it. This week, Rabbi Rami is talking with one of Spirituality and Health’s newest contributors, Dr. Josefa Rangel. Dr. Rangel is a board-certified internist and integrative medicine specialist who trained at Stanford University School of Medicine, the University of California San Francisco, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and The Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine...

Podcast: Sarah Bowen

June 26, 2020 22:49 - 30 minutes

This week’s guest is Sarah Bowen. Bowen is an award-winning author, multifaith spiritual educator, animal chaplain, and is completing postgraduate work at Chicago Theological Seminary on the intersection of human spiritual values and animal welfare. She and Rabbi Rami discuss how we humans tend to categorize animals into groups, such as the ones we love, the ones we eat, the ones we wear... Bowen says, “Those of us who are interested in theo-ethics are really keen on trying to have conversati...

Podcast: David Hanscom, MD

June 12, 2020 21:21 - 25 minutes

“We were doing spine surgeries on anxiety, and it doesn’t work,” David Hanscom, M.D. tells Rabbi Rami. Hanscom is former spinal surgeon. His most recent book is Do You Really Need Spine Surgery? Take Control with a Surgeon’s Advice. After more than 32 years of surgical practice (and 15 years of suffering through chronic pain himself) he quit in 2018 to focus on teaching people how to break through cycles of chronic mental and physical pain, without undergoing surgery. Hanscom teaches pain-suf...

Podcast: Spirituality in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 4

May 26, 2020 16:50 - 13 minutes

This is the final episode in Rabbi Rami’s special four-part series on how to stay healthy from social, psychological, and spiritual perspectives during the COVID-19 crisis. This week, Rabbi Rami focuses on the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, which fosters compassion. This practice encourages us to wish others well, and allows us to be free from fear. Rabbi Rami bases some of the conversation on the work of Sharon Salzberg, and her seminal book, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary...

Kyle Chayka on Minimalism

May 21, 2020 20:55 - 30 minutes

Rabbi Rami’s guest this episode is Kyle Chayka. He is a weekly columnist for Pacific Standard. As a writer and critic, his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among many others. He began his career as an art critic, and his new book, The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, is more in that vein than offering methods for organizing your spice rack. Cultivating a deep sense of self is possible through minimalism, and Chayka and Rabbi Rami...

David Kessler, grief expert

May 07, 2020 17:10 - 26 minutes

“Your loss is not a test, it is not a blessing, it is not a plan. Loss it what happens in life. Meaning is what we make after,” says David Kessler. Kessler is one of the world’s foremost experts on grief. He coauthored On Grief and Grieving and Life Lessons with famed psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who pioneered the concept of the five stages of grief. He and Rabbi Rami discuss his new book, Finding Meaning. Kessler wrote the book while processing the grief over his own son’s death. Le...

Jeana Naluai, Native Hawaiian healer

April 23, 2020 21:23 - 31 minutes

Based on Maui, Jeana Naluai is a trained physical and massage therapist who shares her Native Hawaiian cultural healing practices with students through retreats and trainings, and at her spa in the town of Makawao. For the past 10 years, she has taught lomilomi, a Hawaiian traditional massage and healing tradition. She and Rabbi Rami discuss how lomilomi was used for medical treatment such as tissue massage and bone setting, but also had a spiritual and holistic purpose. Together, they explo...

Podcast: Spirituality in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 3

April 10, 2020 19:52 - 16 minutes

This is the third episode in a four-part podcast series on maintaining spiritual and emotional wellness during the COVID-19 crisis. Rabbi Rami’s guest today is his friend and colleague at the One River Foundation, Frank Levy. Based in Alabama, Levy is the retired Bureau Chief of Public Health Preparedness for the Houston Department of Health and Human Services, and former Director of Interfaith Relations at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. He frequently lectures on public health pre...

Podcast: Spirituality in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 2

March 31, 2020 18:24 - 18 minutes

This is the second of our four-part series of short Essential Conversations podcasts. Today’s guest is Rev. Dr. Gordon Peerman. Dr. Peerman is an Episcopal priest and a psychotherapist in private practice in Nashville, TN, and the author of two books, The Body Knows the Way: Coming Home Through the Dark Night and Blessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhists about Suffering. He and Rabbi Rami discuss how to best listen to our friends and loved ones in this time, and how we can use ...

Podcast: Spirituality in the Time of Coronavirus, Part 1

March 27, 2020 20:15 - 11 minutes

In this special four-part series, Rabbi Rami gives counsel on how to stay healthy from social, psychological, and spiritual perspectives during the COVID-19 crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Expert Shauna Shapiro, Ph.D.

March 13, 2020 20:49 - 28 minutes

This week Rabbi Rami interviews Shauna Shapiro, Ph.D. She is a professor and clinical psychologist who is one of the leading scientists studying the effects of mindfulness and self-compassion on wellbeing. Her new book is Good Morning, I Love You: Mindfulness + Self-Compassion Practices to Rewire Your Brain for Calm, Clarity + Joy. One of the most hopeful and exciting developments in science has been the discovery of neuroplasticity—that is, our brain continues to change throughout our lives....

Teacher, healer, and author Spring Washam

February 27, 2020 22:23 - 32 minutes

This week, Rabbi Rami interviews Spring Washam. Spring is a well-known meditation teacher and author based in California and Peru. One of the founders and core teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center in downtown Oakland, Calif., Spring has been a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based healing practices to diverse communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rosary Experts Perdita Finn and Clark Strand

February 14, 2020 14:53 - 27 minutes

This week, Rabbi Rami speaks with Clark Strand and Perdita Finn. They are the co-founders of The Way of the Rose, an inclusive fellowship of rosary friends dedicated to the Earth and to the Lady, “by any name we wish to call Her.” Strand is the author of numerous articles and books on spiritual practices, including Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey and Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age. Finn is a children’s book author and former high sch...

Dr. Will Cole, functional medicine specialist

January 31, 2020 14:42 - 31 minutes

This week, Rabbi Rami speaks with Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner based in Pittsburgh. He is the author of The Inflammation Spectrum: Find Your Food Triggers and Reset Your System. Despite how much Americans spend on health care, we don’t rate high in health, happiness or longevity. Functional medicine, a newer approach that can complement traditional Western medicine, may be able to boost those ratings. In addition to spending a lot more time with patients than traditional ...

Christian Conte, Ph.D., expert in anger management

January 17, 2020 19:45 - 31 minutes

You may recognize Dr. Christian Conte from the TV show Coaching Bad, or the daily Emotional Management Minutes that air on more than 300 radio stations across the country, or his TEDx talk, “Why I Chose to Go to Prison.” He is hard to miss: a six-foot-tall, muscled, bearded, and tattooed mental health specialist. His latest book is Walking Through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World. He and Rabbi Rami discuss Conte’s Yield Theory, which he created as a...

Kelly McGonigal on the Joy of Movement

January 03, 2020 17:35 - 33 minutes

Rabbi Rami speaks with Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, about her latest book, The Joy of Movement. It looks at how physically moving the body is not only a way to treat depression, anxiety, and loneliness, but also a powerful way to connect and promote cooperation with other humans. It literally builds joy in the body via specific receptors and hormones, she discovered in her research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seane Corn, acclaimed yoga teacher and activist

December 20, 2019 11:00 - 29 minutes

Seane Corn is an internationally acclaimed yoga teacher and public speaker known for her social activism, impassioned style of teaching, and raw, honest and inspired self-expression. She's been teaching for more than 25 years, and speaks with Rabbi Rami about her very first book, which was published in the fall of 2019. "Yoga is about cracking you open," Rabbi Rami notes. "Expanding your heart." Seane and Rabbi Rami speak about this emotional shift and how yoga takes you to a whole new level ...

Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams

December 06, 2019 19:22 - 26 minutes

Rabbi Rami speaks with the husband-and-wife team of Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel Primack. Primack is a distinguished professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz and a world-renowned cosmologist; Abrams is an author and speaker. Together, they explore issues about the cultural and social implications of the modern scientific understanding of the universe. The two have co-authored two books together: The New Universe and the Human Future and The View from the Center of the Universe, and Abrams wrote A...

Talking with Zen Teacher Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison

November 15, 2019 21:16 - 26 minutes

In this episode, Rabbi Rami speaks with Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison. Paley Ellison is the co-founder the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the first Zen-based organization to offer clinical chaplaincy training in America. Koshin is also the author of the new book Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up. Many of us are in what Ellison calls Zombieland. Walking down the street, staring at screens, afraid to talk with one another or to make eye contact. Intimacy, he says, is taking ...

Scott Shay on the value of monotheism

November 01, 2019 16:09 - 28 minutes

“What does it mean to believe in a monotheistic god?” asks Scott Shay, author of the new book In Good Faith: Questioning Religion and Atheism. It in, one of his main goals is to show that it is as rational to be a monotheist as an atheist. Rabbi Rami and Scott discuss the book and Shay's views. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rabbi Rami talks with Sarah Hurwitz

October 18, 2019 12:30 - 29 minutes

From 2009 to 2017, Sarah Hurwitz worked in the White House, serving as head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama and as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama. Her new book explores her deeper exploration of her Jewish faith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Barbara Brown Taylor

October 04, 2019 10:30 - 25 minutes

In this podcast, Barbara and Rabbi Rami have a wide-ranging discussion, including talking about some of the Christian traditions that have gotten lost in Protestantism—such as early contemplative practices, and Mary/the divine feminine archetype—that are now being re-discovered and embraced. Support for this show comes from the International Yoga Festival located at Parmarth Niketan, uniting yogis of every culture, color, and creed together in a one-world yogic family. Come be a part of an ex...

Rabbi Rami interviews Ken Honda on Happy Money

September 30, 2019 10:50 - 22 minutes

Rabbi Rami interviews bestselling author, podcaster and all-around happy guy, Ken Honda. Ken is helping people transform their relationships with money, and has written a new book "Happy Money: The Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices