Wisdom Without The Guru

Regina Sayer
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Behind every pivot, loss, career shift, trauma or reinvention is a story. Wisdom Without the Guru grew from my belief that growth is something we live, not something we’re taught from a pedestal. Through grounded, real-world conversations, I explore how people rebuild, adapt, and rediscover purpose after trauma, change and conflict — in work, health, relationships, and identity. My guests are coaches, authors, healers, social workers, therapists and everyday people who’ve turned lived experience into practical insight. Together, we look at what awareness, authenticity, and being human really mean when life gets complex.

  1. 23H AGO

    Addiction, Identity, and Recovery - The Disease of Me with Michael Bugary

    Michael Bugary, a former elite baseball player whose life shifted after injury, addiction, and serious illness changed his direction, reflects on growing up in a military family, finding structure and recognition through baseball, and progressing through college athletics into professional baseball. He speaks openly about prescription stimulant use, injury, and the end of his playing career. Following his release from professional baseball, Michael describes cycles of substance use, repeated attempts to return to the sport, and a family intervention that led him into treatment. He later received a diagnosis of a rare adult brain cancer and underwent multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation. After surviving cancer, Michael was left with chronic nerve damage and persistent pain. As part of his recovery, he began exploring meditation, intentional movement, and nervous system retraining. He also speaks about the role of his therapy dog, Lingo, whose presence became a stabilising and meaningful part of his healing and later advocacy work. Today, Michael shares his story as a speaker and therapy dog advocate, reflecting on addiction, identity loss, recovery, and what it means to rebuild life beyond former definitions of success while remaining accountable. Key Takeaways Identity built on performance alone is fragileAddiction often begins long before substances enter the pictureSuccess can mask distress — and delay interventionInjury and illness can expose unresolved emotional patternsRecovery requires honesty, not just abstinenceHealing can be physical, psychological, and behaviouralPurpose often emerges only after old identities fall awaySupport systems matter — even when they’re uncomfortableAbout: Michael Bugary is a former Division-I and professional athlete, playing baseball for the University of California, Berkeley and for the Boston Red Sox organisation. He is also a recovering addict and brain cancer survivor. Today, as a motivational speaker, he shares his story with the hope of helping others who face challenging times.  Connect at: IG, FB, Website We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    1h 37m

  2. FEB 19

    Childhood Trauma, Healing, and Intuition with Natasha Randolph

    Natasha Randolph shares her experience of growing up with instability, neglect, and abuse, alongside the early emergence in childhood of an intuitive and sensory awareness she didn’t yet have language for. Much of Natasha’s childhood was spent without consistent adult supervision. She describes being passed between caretakers, navigating bullying, food insecurity, and abuse, and learning early how to stay quiet, adapt, and rely on herself and her sister. At school, this showed up as a stutter, difficulties with reading, and periods of withdrawal that were often misunderstood. During the same years, Natasha began experiencing vivid dreams, sensing energy, and seeing spirits. With no guidance or framework, she searched for explanations on her own, experimenting with protection, ritual, and grounding — sometimes helpfully, sometimes not.  Later, she walked away from a promising nursing career after recognising how deeply she absorbed others’ pain.  Key topics Growing up without protection or emotional safetyThe overlap between trauma, hyper-vigilance, and intuitive perceptionUsing spiritual ability as control during adolescence — and the consequencesA crisis at sixteen that forced a choice between continuing to self-destruct or taking responsibility for healingWalking away from a medical career after recognising how deeply she absorbed others’ painGradually building a grounded, ethical, and legally registered spiritual practiceAbout: Natasha Randolph is a professional psychic medium, Usui Reiki Master, and eclectic pagan witch helping others reclaim their power on their spiritual and healing journey. Through spiritual education, private sessions, and events, she guides others to connect with their spirit team, higher self, and inner child. As the founder of Psychic Medium Natasha LLC, she empowers empaths, witches, healers, and seekers through accessible teachings and transformational experiences. Connect at: YouTube, FB, Website If you want to show your appreciation, please do leave a comment or give us a feedback. And best of all, share the show We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    1h 42m

  3. FEB 17

    Inside The Way Through Chronic Pain: A Conversation with Author Elizabeth Kipp

    Elizabeth Kipp returns for a focused conversation on her book The Way Through Chronic Pain: Tools to Reclaim Your Healing Power. In this special episode, Elizabeth explains why she chose to write the book after being told she would never heal from chronic pain—and how the writing process itself became part of her ongoing recovery. Rather than focusing on memoir, the book explores the lived inner experience of chronic pain, the neurological stress patterns that sustain it, and the practical tools she used to interrupt those patterns.  Elizabeth also discusses what she has learned since the book’s publication through years of client work. This episode is for people living with chronic pain, those supporting them, and practitioners who want a clearer understanding of what chronic pain sufferers are actually navigating internally. Key Takeaways Chronic pain is often maintained by long-term nervous system stress patterns Avoidance, numbing, and resistance can reinforce pain rather than resolve it Meditation and breathwork can support neurological recalibration Safety perception plays a central role in pain reactivity Daily practice matters more than occasional intervention Healing involves identity shifts, not just symptom relief Ancestral and inherited stress patterns may contribute to chronic pain Recovery is an ongoing relationship, not a one-time fixAbout: Elizabeth Kipp is a Stress Management, Historical Trauma Specialist, and Addiction Recovery and Betrayal Trauma Coach. She healed from over 40 years of chronic pain, including betrayal trauma, anxiety, panic attacks, and addiction. Now, in long-term recovery, she helps others tap into their healing potential, discover freedom from suffering, and lead a thriving life. She is the international best-selling author of “The Way Through Chronic Pain: Tools to Reclaim Your Healing Power.”  Connect at: IG, LinkedIn, Website We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    40 min

  4. FEB 12

    Rethinking Chronic Pain: Stress, Trauma & Nervous System Recovery with Elizabeth Kipp

    What if chronic pain isn’t only physical? In this episode, Elizabeth Kipp shares how she lived with chronic pain, anxiety, and panic attacks for over 40 years — including 32 years on prescription medication and multiple spinal surgeries — before finding a path to recovery. But this episode is not just about back pain. Elizabeth reframes chronic pain as a nervous system condition — one shaped by trauma, hypervigilance, stress response dysregulation, ancestral imprinting, and long-standing patterns in the brain. Born into early trauma, raised in instability, and living through Cold War fear and family dysfunction, Elizabeth explains how chronic stress became wired into her system long before her physical injury. We explore:  • Why chronic pain is often a stress-response condition  • The limits of a purely physical medical model  • Detoxing after decades on opiates and anti-anxiety medication  • Meditation, breathwork, Qigong, EFT tapping, and ancestral clearing  • The moment she realised she had a role in her healing This conversation bridges science, trauma recovery, nervous system regulation, and spiritual experience — without bypassing the realities of medical intervention. If you’ve ever been told to “just live with it,” this episode offers a broader perspective on what healing might mean. Key Takeaways Chronic pain is not only physical; it is often a nervous system condition shaped by stress and traumaThe brain processes emotional, physical, and psychological pain through similar pathwaysHypervigilance in childhood can become chronic stress in adulthood.Medication can mask pain while reinforcing the stress response underneath itYou cannot think your way out of chronic pain; you must regulate your nervous systemMeditation becomes powerful when the stress chemistry is addressedAncestral patterns may influence stress physiologyPain is information — and can become a catalyst for transformationHealing requires participation, not passive treatmentDaily nervous system practices sustain recoveryAbout: Elizabeth Kipp is a Stress Management, Historical Trauma Specialist, and Addiction Recovery and Betrayal Trauma Coach. She healed from over 40 years of chronic pain, including betrayal trauma, anxiety, panic attacks, and addiction. Now, in long-term recovery, she helps others tap into their healing potential, discover freedom from suffering, and lead a thriving life. She is the international best-selling author of “The Way Through Chronic Pain: Tools to Reclaim Your Healing Power.”  Connect at: IG, LinkedIn, Website We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    1h 35m

  5. FEB 4

    Childhood Trauma, Policing, and PTSD: Breaking the Silence as a First Responder with Laverne Friesen

    What happens when the environment that raises you is also the source of harm? In this episode I speak with Laverne Friesen, a former Canadian law enforcement officer who grew up in an ultra-conservative, closed religious community in rural Alberta. From early childhood, Laverne experienced violence, scapegoating, fear-based control, and profound betrayal — including sexual assault that was never properly addressed because the church insisted on “handling it internally.” Laverne eventually left the community as a teenager and built a career in policing and emergency response. But the nervous system that grows up in chaos doesn’t simply reset. Over time, the hypervigilance, emotional suppression, workplace toxicity, and untreated trauma began to surface — culminating in severe anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and the realisation that the culture around him had no language for honest support. This is also a conversation about what actually helps: the difference a trauma-informed therapist can make, the power of hearing “you are not alone,” and the importance of holding space — not fixing, not performing, simply being present. Key Takeaways Trauma is not only what happens, but what happens when no one protects you afterward. Closed systems thrive on silence, fear, and social control. The nervous system adapts to chaos and later mistakes it for normal. First responder culture often rewards toughness, not honesty. Emotional suppression doesn’t remove pain — it delays it. Burnout is often the final stage of long-term unacknowledged stress. Healing often begins with safety, connection, and being truly seen. Support doesn’t require perfect words — it requires presence. Recovery includes boundaries, change, and redefining what peace looks like. Speaking openly becomes part of breaking the cycle for others.About: Laverne Friesen is a former law enforcement officer in Canada with a background marked by personal adversity and professional intensity. Nowadays, he is a single father focused on building a life defined by peace rather than adrenaline. He's also a trauma advocate, peer support leader, podcast host and public speaker who brings a voice of experience to conversations around childhood trauma, mental health and healing.  Connect at: FB, IG  We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    1h 36m

  6. JAN 28

    Grief Without Timelines: Caregiving, Loss, and Holding Love After Death with Maria Belanic

    What does grief look like when it doesn’t follow the timeline people expect?   In this episode I speak with Maria Belanic, a certified grief educator whose life has been shaped by cultural identity, caregiving, and profound loss. Maria shares what it was like growing up as a first-generation Italian immigrant in Canada, raised in a traditional household with strict gender expectations, silence around emotion, and the constant pressure to be “good” and “strong.”   Years later, those early experiences would echo through the most difficult chapter of her life: supporting her son Stefan through an 11-year battle with a rare incurable blood cancer, and eventually facing his death at age 27.   Maria speaks candidly about the isolation of long-term caregiving, the way grief changes families, why she protected her son’s hope until the very end, and what it means to stop treating grief as something to “get over.” Today, Maria works as a peer-to-peer grief educator, helping others feel witnessed rather than fixed — and offering a different way to hold love and loss together. This episode is for anyone who has supported someone through illness, felt unseen in their grief, or wondered why “moving on” never felt like the right language. Key Takeaways Grief isn’t something we “get over” — it’s something we learn to carry alongside love.Caregiving can be deeply isolating, especially when emotional support is absent.Language matters: how we name illness and loss shapes how we survive it.Sibling grief is often overlooked, creating silent pain in families.Many grievers don’t need advice — they need to be witnessed.Old childhood wounds often resurface through grief, bringing insecurity and self-blame.About: Maria Belanic is a bereaved mom and certified grief educator. When her son died, Maria's world shattered. On the outside, she looked fine, inside, she felt  lost. Now Maria guides others living with loss, whether recent or years ago feel acknowledged, heard and seen. Healing is carrying love and loss in the same breath. Connect at FB, IG, LinkedIn We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    1h 43m

  7. JAN 22

    Faith, Trauma & Mental Health: Breaking Silence and Redefining Healing with Mylira Green

    In this episode, I speak with Mylira Green, a licensed clinical social worker, therapist, Reiki master, and advocate who bridges faith-based traditions with trauma-informed healing. This is a layered interview about faith, trauma, and healing beyond rigid frameworks. Raised in a deeply religious household, Mylira shares how early childhood experiences—many of them unspoken, misunderstood, or silenced—shaped her relationship with love, safety, faith, and her own body. She reflects on growing up with strict religious values, navigating sexual development without language or guidance, and carrying long-held secrets that affected her mental health well into adolescence. The conversation explores taboo topics rarely addressed openly: childhood sexual play, purity culture, body shame, cultural silence around sex and trauma, and the long-term consequences of not naming experiences when they occur. Mylira also shares her experiences with physical disability in childhood, disordered eating, depression, sexual assault, and multiple pregnancy losses—each layer adding complexity to her healing journey. We explore the long-term impact of secrecy, the stigma surrounding therapy in faith-based and cultural communities, and why healing often begins when we stop forcing lived experience to fit neatly into inherited beliefs. This episode invites honest reflection on breaking generational patterns and redefining what healing can look like. Key Takeaways Silence around childhood development can create long-term confusion and shame.Trauma often reflects environmental failure—not personal fault.Purity culture without education leaves young people unprepared and vulnerable.Therapy is not only for crisis; it is ongoing mental health maintenance.Cultural and religious stigma can delay healing—but doesn’t prevent it.Faith and energy-based healing do not have to exist in opposition.Naming experiences is often the first step toward breaking generational cycles.Motherhood, grief, and identity are deeply intertwined and rarely discussed honestly.About - Mylira Green is a psychotherapist, writer, coach, and master healer dedicated to guiding others through transformation. She uses her personal journey of trauma, healing, and purpose to help others reclaim their voice and power. Through storytelling and strategy, she creates space for others to walk in freedom and wholeness. Connect at: Linktree We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    2h 2m

  8. JAN 19 · BONUS

    Pain to Purpose: The Healing Oracle Born from Poetry and Intuition with Antoinette Thompson

    In this special mini-episode, I'm joined again by Antoinette Thompson to explore the creation of her Pain to Purpose Healing Oracle. Born from lived experience rather than theory, the deck emerged through poetry, intuitive artwork, and years of personal healing. Antoinette shares how 14 poems—written over 18 months—became the foundation for 55 oracle cards, each reflecting a specific aspect of pain, healing, belief, shadow, and insight. Rather than offering quick affirmations, this deck invites deep self-reflection. Antoinette explains how the cards are designed to speak directly to the subconscious, encouraging users to engage with both shadow and light, without rigid spreads or prescribed meanings. This conversation covers the creative process behind the deck, the role of intuition and embodiment in healing, and why some tools ask more of us than comfort—and why that matters. And... there is a special offer from Antoinette for all listeners: if you wish to order this beautiful Pain to Purpose Healing Oracle deck, you can receive a $10 discount, as well as a personal one-card reading via email with your order. Listen to the podcast for the promo code. Key Takeaways Healing tools can emerge from lived experience, not instruction manualsCreative expression (writing, drawing, intuition) can be deeply therapeuticShadow work does not exclude light—it creates access to itIntuitive tools don’t require rigid systems to be effectiveThe subconscious responds to imagery, metaphor, and feeling more than explanationHealing is not linear, comfortable, or decorative—and it doesn’t need to beAbout - Growing up in Australia and with a Maltese, Catholic upbringing, Antoinette Thompson experienced trauma in her early life and decades of chronic illness. Eventually, Antoinette found her way back to her soul and purpose after discovering a new way of being through her own healing journey and recognising the gift in her adversity. As an Intuitive and certified Andean Shamanic Energy Medicine and Reiki Practitioner, Antoinette utilises her various skills and modalities to support and guide others to activate the healer within to become one with their highest versions of themselves and live a soul-aligned purposeful life. Her life and Holistic practice are deeply rooted in her own experience of transforming pain into purpose. She also offers this wisdom through her own Oracle Deck “Pain to Purpose Healing Oracle.”  Connect at Bio Site We'd love to hear from you 🥰. Support the show ✔️ Like, Comment & Subscribe ✔️ Share with someone who needs this message ✔️ Leave a review on your podcast app ✔️ Subscribe and support here or here ☕ 🙏 Follow us for video clips and more: Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

    47 min
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About

Behind every pivot, loss, career shift, trauma or reinvention is a story. Wisdom Without the Guru grew from my belief that growth is something we live, not something we’re taught from a pedestal. Through grounded, real-world conversations, I explore how people rebuild, adapt, and rediscover purpose after trauma, change and conflict — in work, health, relationships, and identity. My guests are coaches, authors, healers, social workers, therapists and everyday people who’ve turned lived experience into practical insight. Together, we look at what awareness, authenticity, and being human really mean when life gets complex.

Information

  • Creator
    Regina Sayer
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    43
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Wisdom Without The Guru
  • Show Website
    Wisdom Without The Guru