Peter Levine talks with Serge Prengel about his personal journey through trauma. He describes how the development of Somatic Experiencing was deeply grounded in science as well as his intuitive connection to the ineffable dimension of life. Peter A Levine, Ph.D., is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma. He holds doctorates in both Biophysics and Psychology. He is the Founder and President of the Ergos...

There are many ways to meditate. One of them is to think of meditation as an active pause. That is, a moment when we are not doing something in the conventional sense of doing something, but we are not passive either. Our intention is to be mindfully aware of our experience, moment by moment. Specifically, our bodily experience, such as our breathing and our posture. It does not mean that there are no thoughts, feelings, or other distractions. Of course, there are plenty of those. It...

In this conversation, photographer Pablo Márquez talks about his meditative approach to photography. He describes how his art emerges from his being present. I hope this will inspire you to experiment with photography as a mindful practice. Pablo Márquez is a Mexican photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally. His photography reflects his committed to the human spirit in connection with Nature. See website.

In this conversation, we talk about a gentle, inspiring approach to meditation practice and self-discovery. Linda Modaro and Nelly Kaufer are the authors of: Reflective Meditation: Cultivating Kindness and Curiosity in the Buddha’s Company. Linda Modaro is spiritual director and lead teacher of Sati Sangha, an online meditation community. She also mentors teachers and offers ethical reflecting for Buddhist teachers. Formerly an Acupuncturist and master of Qi...

In conversation with Raja Selvam, we explore the practice of developing the capacity for emotions by making more room for them in the body. Dr. Raja Selvam, PhD, who has taught in over twenty five  countries on six continents, is a licensed clinical psychologist from California, a senior trainer in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE) professional trauma training programs, and the developer of Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP), a science-backed, body-based, and...

In this conversation with Seth Zuihō Segall about his new book, The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism, Seth talks about his journey, making sense of life through the practice of psychology, Buddhism, and philosophy. We talk about values, and the importance of pluralism in modern liberal democratic societies. Seth Zuihō Segall, Ph.D. is a Zen Buddhist priest at Pamsula Zen of Westchester and a guest teacher at the New York Insight Meditation Center. He...

Maia Szalavitz blends personal experience and years of investigative research into an inspiring perspective on addiction. She eloquently makes the case that addicted people need to be understood on their own terms, instead of being further marginalized by constructs that reflect society’s biases. Maia Szalavitz is the author, most recently, of Undoing Drugs:  The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, which is the first history of the movement...

We do our best to avoid anxiety, and in so doing, risk missing out on the best of the depth and mystery of existence. We also risk compounding the very anxiety we hoped to avoid and becoming destructive as a result. This conversation with Kirk J. Schneider, Ph.D.,, touches on a topic of great relevance to us as therapists, therapy clients, and human beings: Anxiety can be life-enhancing; how can we make it so?  Kirk J. Schneider, Ph.D., is the author of the new book...

How does the Polyvagal Theory affect our understanding of mindfulness? Blake O’Connor interviews Serge Prengel. This conversation expands on the article on Polyvagal-informed mindfulness. Serge Prengel is a therapist, a co-founder of the Integrative Focusing Therapy training program, and the editor of Active Pause. Blake O’Connor is the Education Director of the Polyvagal Institute. Published February 2023

The topic of this conversation is different from usual. We discuss how the past of Sing Sing prison gives us perspective on building a fairer society. Brent Glass is the Executive Director of the Sing Sing Prison Museum. Brent D. Glass is Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the world’s largest museum devoted to telling the story of America. A national leader in the preservation, interpretation, and promotion of history, Glass is a...

In this conversation, we talk about freeing meditation from the pressures of what we believe it should be and welcoming every aspect of our inner experience. Dr. Elizabeth English began meditating as a student in 1983. Three decades later, she was appointed as Cambridge University’s first ever Mindfulness Practitioner. Her courses are the subject of research published in The Lancet showing significant benefit to students, and are now also offered more widely online. Elizabeth...

Antonio Damasio described Nora Arikha as “a poet and a painter with the soul of a scientist.” Our conversation is informed by psychology and neuroscience. It is grounded in the firm intention to pay attention to the embodied quality of our experience and the context in which it emerges. Noga Arikha is a philosopher and historian of ideas. Her The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind, was published by Basic Books (UK & US) in Spring 2022....

Lawrence Berger and Serge Prengel discuss how we make sense of the world and our place in it, i.e. what is usually called philosophy or spirituality. We approach this from somewhat different perspectives:– One emphasizes a connection with a sense of something greater than ourselves in which we can find meaning and purpose (“there’s nothing more important than why we’re here”). – The other emphasizes the moment-by-moment process of finding meaning and purpose as we live (“I get in...

We explore a concept that is very important to Bruce Gibbs, finding the right distance from our experience. We talk about how the right distance varies with the context, for instance how it is different in meditation and in Focusing. And we talk about what finding that distance entails. Bruce Gibbs, Ph.D., has explored consciousness, both academically and experientially, for many decades. He has practiced Yoga, Vipassana, and Zen meditation. He is a long-time meditator and Focusing...

The Relational Implicit podcast is now located on the Active Pause website. Our focus is on redefining mindfulness based on trauma-informed therapy and the Polyvagal theory. This change reflects the experiential and intersubjective nature of what we do as therapists. We are not providing impersonal “treatment” to people we are observing as detached observers. We are engaged in a deep process whose effectiveness is related to our ability to engage. The moment-by-moment dance between...

The following conversation with Ken Benau serves as an introduction to shame and pride-informed psychotherapy with adult survivors of relational trauma, the theme of his book, Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma: Concepts and Psychotherapy. Ken Benau, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in clinical psychology with a subspecialty in adult psychotherapy at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, in 1988.  He has been a California licensed clinical psychologist since 1990.  Dr. Benau maintains a...

In this conversation, our intention is to share with you what we like about the notion of “inquiry,” and to do so by giving you a flavor of what we mean by it. Dr. Marjorie Schuman is a clinical psychologist who teaches, writes about, and practices mindful psychodynamic psychotherapy. Serge Prengel is the editor of Active Pause. Published February 2022.

We start this conversation from the perspective that human beings are self-interpreting animals, and go on to explore what gives us a sense of meaning. Lawrence Berger has been practicing mindfulness for many years while developing a philosophy of attention in his academic pursuits. He was formerly a business school professor at the universities of Iowa and Pennsylvania, after which he decided to engage in philosophy full time, teaching philosophy at Marist College and Montclair State...

We talk about bringing a quality of fierce love to our life, as a person and as an agent of change. The Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D. is Senior Minister for Public Theology and Transformation at Middle Church in New York City. She uses her gifts as author, activist, preacher, public theologian toward creating an antiracist, just, fully welcoming society in which everyone has enough. After graduating with an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1992, Jacqui fell in love with urban...

Jeffery Smith describes a 5-step pathway to go beyond the fragmentation of the different schools of psychotherapy and define how psychotherapy works. He discusses: (1) What psychotherapy treats (at 0′ 13″) (2) Entrenched Maladaptive Patterns (at 5′ 28″) (3) The learned fear paradigm (at 16′ 06″) (4) Requirements for change (at 29′ 12″) (5) How this dovetails with other approaches (at 34′ 26″) See also: Podcast notes (PDF) Continuation of this topic: –  how this perspective...

We talk about metaphors that Salvador Moreno-López uses to understand and orient interaction in psychotherapy and daily life, such as the music of the speech and a jazz duo. Dr. Salvador Moreno-López, Ph.D., Universidad Iberoamericana, in México City. Certified Focusing Instructor and Certifying Coordinador for Mexico of the International Focusing Institute. Has been a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, and at the ITESO in Guadalajara, in postgraduate studies in...

In this 9-minute video, Serge Prengel describes an embodied perspective on how we experience a sense of being (part of) something larger. Published November 2021.

See the audio recording below the text. Today, I am going to describe to you a one-minute practice. Now, when I say one minute, it could be 50 seconds or five minutes. We’re not timing it. You sit on a bench or a chair, with your feet touching the ground. If you are on a chair, your back is not touching the back of the chair. Your hands are in front of you. You touch the fingers to each other so that each finger touches the corresponding fingers on the other hand. You rest your arms on...

This conversation starts with a guided, experiential exploration. Then we talk about early developmental experiences, with a perspective informed by trauma therapy and mindfulness. Cherionna Menzam-Sills, Ph.D., began teaching Embodied Embryology through somatic movement in 1997 as part of her doctoral studies in Pre- & Perinatal Psychology, which led to her teaching at Naropa University and the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute. She has taught and facilitated Pre- and Perinatal...

Elliot Jurist and I had planned to have a recorded conversation about his perspectives on the human mind. Ten days before our conversation, his father passed away. So we talked about the process of mourning and how it relates to the human condition. Elliot Jurist, Ph.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at The City College of New York, CUNY.  From 2004-2013, he served as the Director of the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at CUNY. From 2008-2018, he was the Editor of Psychoanalytic...