Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

When grief hits, it can feel bottomless, like freefall with no floor in sight. Psychotherapist and grief ritualist Francis Weller has spent decades helping people find exactly that: a bottom. In this episode, he tells Tami Simon why grief can't be processed alone, and what it actually takes to be held in sorrow instead of drowning in it.
Francis Weller is the author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow and one of the most trusted voices working at the intersection of grief, ritual, and community. In this conversation, Tami and Francis explore:
Why grief so often shows up as panic instead of pure sorrow
The difference between containment and release, and why grief work needs both
How community, not solo processing, creates a real "bottom" to fall into
Why reclaiming our capacity for sorrow is essential to staying alive, awake, and engaged with what Francis calls "the long dark"
This one's for anyone who's ever felt like their grief has no floor, and who's ready to learn how ritual, community, and a little honest confession can change that.
Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Francis Weller: https://bit.ly/francis-weller
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Twenty-six years ago, a chiropractor sitting in her first meditation class was transported into a field of light ten times brighter than the desert sun. Dr. Sue Morter, bestselling author of The Energy Codes, joins Tami Simon to map the energetic architecture behind that kind of awakening, and how the rest of us can build the inner circuitry to access it on purpose instead of by accident.
Dr. Sue earned her doctorate in chiropractic more than 40 years ago and has spent decades developing a body of work in bioenergetics—the study of how energy flows through, builds, and heals the body. She's the founder of the Body Awake School of Yoga and the Morter Institute, an internationally recognized speaker, and the author of the new book The Anatomy of Awakening: The 5 Hidden Codes to Activate Self-Healing, Unlock Your Higher Consciousness, and Live Your Divine Destiny, which maps five additional energy centers beyond the familiar seven chakras.
In this conversation, Tami and Dr. Sue explore:
The spiritual experience that reoriented Dr. Sue's entire career and, over time, helped resolve her lifelong scoliosis and migraines
Why "seeking enlightenment" misses the point, and why embodiment, not transcendence, is the real work
The five additional chakras beyond the traditional seven (eight through twelve), and what each one governs in our energetic architecture
How to build "energetic circuitry" at the site of a trigger instead of getting lost in its story
Spherical breathing and Mula Bandha as practical tools for grounding and stabilizing the nervous system
What it actually means to regulate your nervous system, and why trying too hard to do it can backfire
This episode is for anyone navigating a season of nervous system dysregulation, energy practitioners and bodyworkers, and listeners drawn to the chakra system who want a more embodied, practical approach to awakening.
Listen in for a guided practice you can use the next time you feel triggered, overwhelmed, or ungrounded.
Dr. Sue uses a number of visual aids throughout this conversation, so if you'd rather watch than just listen, you can find the video version on YouTube @SoundsTrueManyVoices or on our premium membership platform at soundstrueone.com
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Giving love comes easy, but can you actually receive it? Lama Rod Owens says most of us flinch at being cared for, even by something as simple as the chair we're sitting in. In this practice from his book The New Saints, he walks us through what it takes to actually let love in.
Lama Rod Owens, a Black Buddhist Southern Queen, authorized lama in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors, guides Tami Simon (and all of us listening) through a short meditation on receiving care, drawn straight from the pages of his new book.
In this conversation, Tami and Lama Rod explore:
Feeling supported by the seat or ground beneath you
Recalling a time someone, or something, really loved you
Letting that love move through the body, including the grief it can stir up along the way
Imagining the whole universe wanting you safe, happy, and free
Gently returning to the body and closing the practice
This one's for anyone who finds it easier to give love than to receive it, which, let's be honest, is most of us.
Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Lama Rod Owens. Find the complete interview in this feed or at https://bit.ly/new-saint
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Terri Cole calls it an invisible wound: the imprint left when a daughter never receives protection, presence, or emotional attunement from her father. This week, Tami Simon talks with Terri Cole—Sounds True's own Boundary Boss—about her new book, Father Wound, and why even women with loving fathers can carry this wound without ever naming it.
Terri Cole, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist, relationship expert, and best-selling author who has spent nearly three decades helping people break dysfunctional patterns and build healthier relationships with themselves and others. With Sounds True, she is the author of the trilogy that began with Boundary Boss and continued with Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency. Her newest book, Father Wound: Break Unhealthy Patterns to Reclaim Your Worth and Power, examines what happens when a father or father figure is absent, abusive, immature, or simply not emotionally attuned—and why daughters of patriarchy carry a version of this wound no matter what kind of father they had.
In this conversation, Tami and Terri explore:
- How to recognize a father wound even when "my father wasn't that bad"
- Why Terri defines the father wound as, at its root, a worthiness wound
- The difference between self-parenting and re-parenting, and what healing your inner child looks like in daily decisions
- The "father wound trance": how old patterns resurface in adult relationships, and how to work with transference instead of being run by it
- Mourning the Dream, Terri's exercise for grieving the father you wished you'd had
- Why healing this wound personally is tied to healing patriarchy at a collective, societal level
Who this episode is for: anyone doing inner child work, anyone who keeps finding themselves in the same relationship pattern and wondering why, and anyone ready to ask whether their sense of worth was shaped long before they had any say in it.
Listen now, and start reclaiming your worth. →

This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where you can enjoy early, ad-free access to episodes of Insights at the Edge: https://join.soundstrue.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What do Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, a roadside run-in with the law, and conversations with Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Rob Bell, and Liz Gilbert have in common? In this month's Point of Insight, Tami Simon follows a single image — the river — through her own life and through the teachers she's spent twenty years interviewing, and asks what it means to finally stop resisting the current and enter it.

In this Point of Insight, Tami explores:
How Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha first introduced her as a young person to the river as a symbol of timelessness and impermanence
A humbling roadside encounter with a police officer that became an unplanned teaching on the dangers of "self-congratulatory" thinking
Eckhart Tolle's answer to a question he's asked often at retreats: how do you know if you're making progress on the spiritual path?
A practice from Caroline Myss's new Spiritual Homebase community, viewing a current challenge first through the lens of fear, then through the lens of faith
Author and former megachurch pastor Rob Bell on reframing risk, and why the risk of not taking a risk is often the greater one
Elizabeth Gilbert's new memoir, All the Way to the River, her relationship with Rayya Elias, and the "two doors" conversation that changed the course of her life
The Buddhist teaching of the "stream-enterer," one of the earliest stages of awakening to an impermanent, flowing nature

For anyone standing at the edge of a change, a risk, or an uncertainty they haven't yet stepped into — press play and enter the river.

And if you’re intrigued by any of the guests mentioned in this episode, be sure to visit soundstrue.com/podcast to find their full episodes of Insights at the Edge.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.