Good Questions

Lauren Cestero
  • 5.0 (8)
  • Mental Health

A podcast for the part of you that already knows the answer — and just needs the right question to hear it. I'm Lauren Cestero. I've spent years sitting with people at the edge of their own lives — listening for the question underneath the question. What I've learned is that the right question does more than any answer ever could. Each episode is a slow, unhurried conversation with one question at the center. About the body. About the nervous system. About what it means to come back to yourself after a long time away. No fixing. No advice. Just a warm room, a bowl of something warm, and room to feel. Here I am. And here you are.

  1. 5d ago

    Who is the mask for?

    Someone Lauren works with is in a season of fierce becoming. Through months of tracking her days and paying close attention to what’s true, she began to see an unmasked version of herself, and then asked a question that stopped Lauren in her tracks: Who was the mask even for? This episode doesn’t offer one answer. It’s an invitation to wonder together. Lauren explores what the mask might be, tracking what’s expected of us, making ourselves more palatable, the face we put on to keep a room calm. She looks at why the nervous system reaches for it, drawing on polyvagal theory and the way our faces are wired into our sense of safety. And she traces the word persona back to its roots: the mask an actor wore on stage. The mask can protect us. Sometimes it’s exactly what we need. But it can also keep away the very people we’re hoping will find us. The question isn’t whether to wear one. It’s whether you’re the one choosing. Who is the mask for? Further reading Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

  2. Oct 27

    Do you need a hug?

    Most of us are very good at not noticing what hurts. We keep busy, push through, and tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later. But the hurt doesn’t disappear. It goes underground, and the body keeps holding it. This episode is an invitation to do the opposite: to be willing to notice what hurts, name it, and hold yourself through it. Lauren explores what happens in the body when we turn toward our pain instead of away from it, how naming a feeling helps quiet the brain’s alarm system, how special nerve fibers in the skin respond to gentle touch, and why your own hands can help your nervous system feel safe. Then she guides you through a self-hug practice, so you can feel it for yourself. This one is soft. Find somewhere cozy, and let it hold you. Do you need a hug? And if you do — will you let yourself have one? Research mentioned in this episode Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.xLöken, L. S., Wessberg, J., Morrison, I., McGlone, F., & Olausson, H. (2009). Coding of pleasant touch by unmyelinated afferents in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 12(5), 547–548. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2312Dreisoerner, A., Junker, N. M., Schlotz, W., Heimrich, J., Bloemeke, S., Ditzen, B., & van Dick, R. (2021). Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity. Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology, 8, 100091. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpnec.2021.100091

  3. Oct 20

    What are you running from?

    In this episode, Lauren explores the quieter ways we run, not just numbing out, but fixing, optimizing, and problem-solving our way around what we’re actually feeling. She looks at why the body reads even good change as a threat, drawing on the Holmes–Rahe stress research, and at the three stages of rites of passage, including the liminal space: the in-between that was never meant to feel comfortable. She also shares the Kinaaldá, a coming-of-age ceremony of the Diné (Navajo) people, where a young woman runs toward the rising sun with her community behind her, running not as escape, but as direction. And she talks about what she reached for instead of a new system: support. Skullcap, tulsi, nettle, and so much rose. The in-between isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a place to be held. What are you running from?

  4. Oct 13

    What are you waiting for?

    When Lauren left the ambulance after more than a decade, she made herself a rule: I do not rush. And she kept it. But somewhere along the way, slowing down quietly turned into waiting, for the right time to speak up, to tend to her body, to act on what she already knew. In this episode, Lauren explores the difference between urgency and immediacy. They look the same from the outside, but inside the nervous system they’re opposites. Urgency is fast because it’s afraid. Immediacy is fast because it’s present. Drawing on her years as a paramedic, polyvagal theory, and what she’s learning from traditional Latin American and Indigenous healing lineages - where body and spirit are never separate, and what happens inside you is treated as real - Lauren shares how she found her way back to acting in the moment. Not rushing. Just answering her life while it’s still happening. The person you’re becoming isn’t waiting for you in the future. She shows up every time you stop waiting. What are you waiting for?

  5. Oct 6

    Have you decided?

    There's a moment that doesn't get talked about enough in healing work. It comes after the feeling, after the naming, after the tracing-it-back and the having-compassion and the understanding exactly where it came from and why. It's the moment where all of that is sitting in your hands - and you still have to choose what to do with it. In this episode, Lauren shares something she doesn't usually say out loud: that when good things happen, her nervous system's first instinct is to look for what's wrong with them. And what she realized this week, sitting inside that familiar scan, is that awareness alone wasn't moving her. Understanding wasn't moving her. Only one thing was going to move her. A decision. Drawing on polyvagal theory and Stephen Porges' concept of neuroception, and a story from her practice about a client who came in one week visibly, unmistakably different - Lauren explores the difference between doing the work and actually crossing the threshold the work brings you to. The work brings you to the edge. The decision is the step. Have you decided?

  6. Sep 29

    Are we home yet?

    Most of us have spent years trying to solve the home problem from the outside. The right place. The right person. The right zip code. And most of us have noticed, quietly, that it doesn't work, that the feeling follows us, that the restlessness relocates with us, that something underneath keeps asking a question we haven't quite named yet. This episode is about that something. Lauren calls it the home monster, not because it's dangerous, but because it deserves a name. Because unnamed, it drives. Named, it becomes something you can actually work with. Drawing on polyvagal theory, anthropological research on belonging and orientation, and her own years of making home inside a twelve-hour ambulance shift, Lauren explores what home actually is physiologically, why we keep outsourcing it to external things, and what becomes possible when we stop. This is the first episode of Season Three, and it begins where everything begins: with the question you've been carrying longer than you realized. Where is home? And have you checked inside lately?

  7. Sep 22 ·  Bonus

    Autumn Equinox Special: What Are You Crossing?

    Ancient peoples built Newgrange, Chichén Itzá, and the pyramids not just as sacred sites but as survival infrastructure, precise structures engineered to catch a single shaft of light and tell them when to plant, when to store, when to prepare for the dark. Ritual wasn't decoration. It was load-bearing. In this equinox special, Lauren explores transitions of every size, the big ones like a new career or an empty nest, and the small ones like walking back through your front door after a long shift, and what it means to actually mark the crossing instead of just push through it. She shares stories from her years as a paramedic mentor, the rituals her students and colleagues invented without knowing that's what they were doing, and what she's learned about the body's capacity to know, always, when it's crossing. This episode closes with four questions as an offering, a way to orient yourself to right now, to honor what was and what will be, so you can actually feel where you're standing. What are you crossing? And what does this threshold want to be marked with?

  8. Sep 15

    Where are you?

    This is the season finale. And it ends where everything begins. If you were dropped in the middle of a forest and handed a map, shown exactly where you wanted to go, but nobody told you where you were standing right now, the map would be useless. You cannot navigate from an unknown location. No matter how clearly you can see the destination. This episode is about orientation. About the false floor we build underneath ourselves when we think we know where we are but haven't actually felt it. About the storm, and the radical discovery that you are the weather, not just the one being swept away. About what the brain does with the good days and why your felt sense of your own life is almost never the whole story. And at the end, where "here I am, and here you are" actually comes from. Lauren traces it all back to a hurricane, a father's hand, and a door opening onto the brightest blue sky she'd ever seen. The question underneath every question this season has been asking: now that you know where you are — what do you want? Your first month of weekly somatic practice is free, accept the gift here.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

A podcast for the part of you that already knows the answer — and just needs the right question to hear it. I'm Lauren Cestero. I've spent years sitting with people at the edge of their own lives — listening for the question underneath the question. What I've learned is that the right question does more than any answer ever could. Each episode is a slow, unhurried conversation with one question at the center. About the body. About the nervous system. About what it means to come back to yourself after a long time away. No fixing. No advice. Just a warm room, a bowl of something warm, and room to feel. Here I am. And here you are.

Information

  • Creator
    Lauren Cestero
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Lauren Cestero

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