Better begins in the mind - The Mindshine Podcast Mindshine - Charlie Inman

Today on the podcast, I’m talking to Anna Peterson Macsalka, the inventor and founder of Zenimal, meditation aid which aims to get little kids thinking about breath and mindfulness . We spoke about how suffering from anxiety as a kid go her started on her own mindfulness journey, and how she’s aiming to share that with the world via a sweet little silicon turtle with a speaker in the top of its shell.

Today on the podcast, Charlie is talking to George Taktak and Joe Thomson, from How Mental, who are ona mission to improve the world’s mental health and link up mental health service providers to make talking about and taking steps to work on our mental health easier, less stigmatized, and ultimately more enjoyable. To find out what drove them both to get involved in the mental health space, and how George tried to make an app to communicate with his grandfather via touch, listen to the episode.

Today’s guest is Zain Peer from London Nootropics, a company aiming to bring us the brain boosting benefits of nootropics squeezed into a cup of coffee. I met with Zain Fresh from a winning performance on the BBCs dragon’s den, during which they managed to persuade two of the dragons to invest 50 grand in their business. We met up in the appropriately named shroom town, their pop up adaptogenic coffee bar in the heart of piccadilly Circus, so apologies for the background noise.

We’ve been off the air for the summer break but we’re back with another season, and kicking it off this week is Mr Bhairav Shankar, inventor of the Dhyana meditation ring, a piece of wearable tech which promises to answer a question we have long wanted to know the answer to, how effectively are we actually meditating when we’re sitting. Through tracking changes in heart rate variability, The Dhyana ring can apparently measure mindfulness, and then track your progress as you use it over time, to show you how you’re improving. He chatted to Charlie from his base in India about all things meditation and technology. To hear all about it, including how Charlie got on testing out the ring, listen here.

How to find the Dhyana Ring

We’ve had a lot to deal with over the past couple of years, health pandemics, political turmoil and conflict, environmental and economic instability, and now a war in Europe which is threatening to spin out of control. And with all that uncertainty levels of stress and worry around the world have been rocketing. This week, we’re trying something a bit different. I’m going to be chatting to Monika Mayer, one of our business psychologists and writers in the Mindshine app about how we can help ourselves when we’re feeling overwhelmed with worry and to share some of the tips and techniques which come out of a course which we’ve just released in the app to help deal specifically with this problem. We’ve called it worrying about the world.

This week’s guest is Brenda Sarai Zuniga. Comedian, artist, motivational speaker and mindfulness coach and Miss Burbank 2019. At the age of 1, she was smuggled into the United states by her teenage parents from Mexico, and got through 11 schools and 15 different homes before she was finally diagnosed with ADHD and started getting treatment. She has since, among other things, become a US citizen, become a mindfulness teacher, started a podcast, Getting Metal with Brenda Sarai Zuniga, written, produced and starred in a one woman comedy show about mental health on the livestream. As you might imagine given an intro like that, Brenda had a whole lot to say, Listen to find out.