Living Mirrors with Dr. James Cooke Dr. James Cooke

Willoughby Britton is a clinical psychologist, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School, and the director of the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory there. Her lab researches the psychophysiological and neurocognitive effects of meditation and mindfulness-based interventions for mood and anxiety disorders, with a particular focus on potential risks of meditation practice. She is also the founder of Cheetah House, a nonprofit organization that provides evidence-based information and support for meditators in distress, as well as meditation safety trainings to providers and organizations. Today we discuss the potential adverse effects of mediation and how to meditate safely.  

Chris Guimond is an awakening and nondual realization guide who works with the Trauma Release Exercises that I’ve previously spoken about on the podcast. You can listen to my interview with the creator of the TRE approach, David Bercelli (episode 64), if you want more detail on the practices. Chris and I connected over the fact that we’ve found the combination of TRE and nondual integration to be incredibly powerful, yet no one else in this space appears to be talking about it. On her own journey, Chris worked with previous podcast guest Angelo Dillulo (episode 110), and he has now started recommending these practices too, thanks to Chris. I think we’ll see this combination spread in years to come so I'm very grateful to Chris for her work promoting TRE in the awakening and nonduality space. I hope you enjoy the conversation. https://christinaguimond.com/

Ask questions for the next AMA via patreon or the channel membership community (click the "join" button above): https://www.patreon.com/DrJamesCooke

Michael Levin is a developmental and synthetic biologist and a professor at Tufts University. He is known for co-discovering Xenobots which are living robots made from frog skin cells but his research is wide ranging, contributing to fields such as regenerative medicine and the treatment of cancer, as well as to our fundamental understanding of biological systems. As you’ll hear from our conversation, Michaels’ innovative science is based in a very thorough and rigorous philosophy of the intersection between biology and cognitive processes such as intelligence and memory.  

The Genocide in Gaza & the Psychology of Denial

Alicia Juarrero is President and co-founder of VectorAnalytica, Inc., a data collection and analysis platform. She is also a research associate at the University of Miami and is the author for influential complexity theory text Dynamics in Action. Her new book is called Context Changes Everything and it explores how we can think about causality in emergent systems, such as living things, in terms of constraint.