The Neuro's Journey

Steve Sapourn
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Mental Health

The Neuro's Journey is about the raw courage it takes to face ourselves, our wounds, our patterns, our truth, and transform into who we're meant to be. Host Steve Sapourn, a former hedge fund manager and crack addict who survived a childhood marked by sexual abuse, gun violence, and domestic violence, rebuilt his life through neuroscience-based healing and psychedelic-assisted therapy.Now he brings you raw, real conversations about trauma, recovery, and transformation. Through his own story and insights from leading experts, Steve explores how our past shapes us and how we can actively reshape our future. Each episode offers practical wisdom for understanding your emotions, calming your nervous system, and reconnecting with your purpose. This isn't about quick fixes or empty promises, it's about real change, grounded in both science and lived experience. Rewire your brain. Rewrite your story.

  1. 2d ago

    Is Daily Cold Plunging Safe for Women? Kristin Weitzel on Cold, Breath and Psychedelics

    Kristin Weitzel founded SHERPA Breath and Cold, hosts the WELLPOWER podcast and built the supplement company Vessel. She has put more than seven thousand people into a cold plunge one at a time, and three quarters of them were women. Her argument is that regulating your nervous system was never about staying calm. 00:00 Meet Kristin Weitzel, Founder Of SHERPA Breath And Cold 01:05 Nervous System Regulation Is Not About Staying Calm 02:47 How Cold Plunging Builds Your Window Of Tolerance 04:14 Why You Plunge Up To Your Neck: The Mammalian Dive Reflex 06:19 What Happens In Your Body During A Cold Plunge 14:08 Is Cold Plunging Safe For Women? 18:39 Cold Plunge, Sauna And Lifting: The Right Order 26:28 Breathwork: The Remote Control Of Your Nervous System 27:27 The Breathing Technique That Helps You Fall Asleep 30:21 Why You Should Breathe Through Your Nose All Day 38:24 Conscious Connected Breathwork And Its Red Flags 45:04 Why She Facilitates MDMA And Psilocybin Journeys 49:59 Why Integration Matters After A Psychedelic Journey 54:02 MDMA, Psilocybin Or Ibogaine: Where To Start 59:16 Vessel Love Stack: Support After A Psychedelic Journey 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Kristin Weitzel - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinweitzel/ 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/biohacking.breath.cold/

  2. Sep 30

    What Chronic Stress Does to Your Brain (and Heart) ft Ava Diamond Dreyer

    Ava Diamond Dreyer ran the addiction program at Yale's Child Study Center and has taught her own program at Yale Med School. Twenty years ago she built NQ, Neuroscience Intelligence, which she teaches in four pillars: nutritional psychology, specialized mindset, unique movement and restoration. For two years she carried grief for someone else, repeated one sentence about her heart out loud over and over, and then a year on year EKG comparison gave her something she was not expecting. 0.0:00    Cold open: the hand on her back that calmed her nerves 0:44    Why he quit drinking without calling himself powerless 3:41    Forty rounds of rehab, and what effort actually measures 7:26    IQ, EQ, and the third intelligence nobody taught you 9:24    Chronic stress is elevated cortisol for fourteen days 13:47   "My heart is so heavy," and what her EKG showed a year later 14:48   Why the heaviness stopped the day she saw her dad 18:04   Capability is not the same as capacity 21:41   The four pillars, starting with nutritional psychology 24:20   The first fifteen minutes after waking, and your core powers 29:38   Changing your identity without lying to yourself 34:01   The two for two rule: two minutes of movement every two hours 38:28   Sunlight, circadian rhythm and why sleep starts when you wake 43:38   The fifteen minute night routine, and why reading keeps you awake 47:40   The cortisol and dopamine cocktail, and dopamine dating In this episode you will learn: - Why two hours is the ceiling before cortisol starts shutting parts of your brain down - The difference between capability and capacity, and why only one of them drains - The third kind of intelligence after IQ and EQ, and why it sits underneath both - Why quality sleep starts the minute you wake up, not the minute you lie down - How to brush your brain the way you brush your teeth, in the same few minutes - What a dopamine date actually is, and why going to the movies does not count - The 2 for 2 rule, and what the first fifteen minutes of your day are doing to you 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Ava Diamond Dreyer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nqcoaching/ 🌐 Website - https://nqcoaching.com

  3. Sep 23

    "Stop Trying So Hard": Sean McAllister on Estrangement, Control, and Coming Back Together

    If your child stopped speaking to you, or you stopped speaking to a parent, this one is for you. Sean McAllister went six years without his daughter and nine without his son, and what brought them back was not trying harder. Sean McAllister is the Colorado attorney who helped write the state's psychedelic law and the lawyer who won federal recognition for two ayahuasca churches, the Church of the Eagle and the Condor and the Church of the Celestial Heart, with two more cases in court. He has sat in more than a hundred plant medicine ceremonies, most of them with indigenous practitioners. In this conversation he explains why so much of our pain is about control, what the spiritual insight 'stop trying so hard' did to a high conflict divorce, the prayer his daughter answered word for word, why hundreds of groups call themselves a psychedelic church when only five are federally recognized, how to vet a practitioner, what ego inflation and spiritual narcissism look like, and why the ceremony is never the work. Steve talks about the retreats that faded, the walk that told him nothing was wrong with him, and the trip he is about to take. In this episode you will learn: - Why control is underneath so much pain, and what giving up the fight actually looks like - How Sean got his daughter back after six years, and his son after nine - The difference between a federally recognized psychedelic church and one that only says it is legal - How to vet a facilitator, and the two things that are never okay in a ceremony - Ego inflation and spiritual narcissism, and why 'I am God' is the trap - Why you do not get to stay at the mountaintop, and what the first hour of your day has to do with it 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Sean McAllister - https://www.instagram.com/mcallister2928/ 👍 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/sean.mcallister.710 💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/attyseanmcallister/

  4. Sep 16

    Becoming the CEO of Your Own Mind ft Laura Weiner-Kiser

    Laura Weiner-Kiser is the founder of Change By Challenge, a behavior change specialist and a certified stress and mindset coach. She works underneath behavior, on the scripts and patterns and the nervous system that are running it, and she calls the goal becoming the CEO of your own mind. In this conversation she explains why reading about change never changes anyone, the four scripts she hears most, the difference between control and discipline, why we trust our stress more than we trust ourselves, and how she broke her own stress addiction. Steve talks about losing the buzzy highs of a hyped-up nervous system, and what he got back. 00:00 Meet Laura Weiner-Kiser, Becoming The CEO Of Your Own Mind 01:15 Nobody Teaches You How Your Brain Works 02:49 The Basketball Test: Reading Is Not Practice 03:33 The Four Scripts: I Should, I'm Not Enough, Too Much, Failure 08:26 Motivational Highways And Building An Express Lane 09:34 Control Versus Discipline: Two Different Questions 11:47 Steve's Hyped-Up Nervous System And The Buzzy High 14:34 What It Is Like To Be Around Someone Who Is Not Judging You 21:01 What Are You Judging Yourself Against? 23:19 Meditation Is A Game Of Catch, Not A Zen Buddha 25:11 A Boss Nobody Would Work For: Raise Your Hand 34:03 Circling, Listening, And Being Heard Is Close To Being Loved 45:46 Should-Choosing Versus Choosing-Choosing 49:23 The Paradigm Of Suffering And The Two-Sided Sandwich 55:06 What Type Of Regret Do You Want To End Up With? Follow us everywhere 📺 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Laura Weiner-Kiser - https://www.changebychallenge.com/ 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/change.by.challenge/ 💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-weiner-kiser-b9a3011b9/ 📺 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ6Sui_Vn0TNQE8qz10r8Hw 🎧 The Challenges Of Change podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/05uuM1JCw1Ex1MFLhhOWdk 👍 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Change.By.Challenge/

  5. Sep 9

    Why Telling Men to "Just Talk" Never Works ft Neil Smith

    You have been told to open up. You did not, and this is the episode about why that advice was never going to reach you. Neil Smith ran some of the biggest production companies in the UK, making The Apprentice, Grand Designs and The Undatables, and dozens of shows with Bear Grylls. At fifty he remortgaged his house and left to build Mettle, a men's mental health and mental fitness app, with Bear Grylls as co-founder and Imperial College behind the content. He suffered from depression through his twenties and told nobody for ten years. In this conversation he explains the statistic that made him leave television, why the advice to talk more does not reach the men who need it, the three reasons men gave for avoiding help, and what a digital front door has to look like before a man will walk through it. 00:00 A Woman Tells Eight People, A Man Tells No One 00:44 Meet Neil Smith And Mettle, The Mental Fitness App Built For Men 02:24 From Britain's Biggest TV Shows To Bear Grylls As Co-Founder 04:38 Turning 50, His Father's Death, And Walking Away From The Top 05:44 Meditation At Eleven, Depression, And Ten Years Of Silence 07:15 Suicide Is The Biggest Killer Of Men Under 50, And Why "Just Talk" Fails 08:51 Meet Men Where They Are: The Undateables And The Digital Front Door 11:22 Too Female, Too Woo, Nothing Wrong With Me: The Three Objections 13:46 What Using Mettle Is Like, And The Randomized Trial Behind It 16:36 The Man Who Walked His Daughter Down The Aisle 18:39 From Safety To Community: Maslow's Hierarchy Inside An App 21:29 The Flossing Story: Accountability Beats Fear 24:20 Six Weeks And Five Minutes A Day: Habits That Stick 28:32 Investing In Mettle And Bringing It To America 33:54 How Early-Stage Investors Get Their Money Back Neil Smith and Mettle: 🌐 https://www.bemettle.com 📸 https://www.instagram.com/be.mettle/ 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-s-smith/ Follow us everywhere 📺 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Neil Smith - https://www.bemettle.com 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/be.mettle/ 💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-s-smith/

  6. Sep 4

    The Reason That You Feel Lonely In A Crowded Room ft Jake Ross

    You can be surrounded by people all day and still feel completely alone. Jake Ross has spent his career on why that happens, and on what actually fixes it. He founded BelongTogether, studied the psychology of belonging at UC Berkeley and at the University of Pennsylvania, and recently worked with his father, Howard Ross, on a new edition of Howard's bestseller Everyday Bias, adding what social media and AI have done to the problem. In this episode you will learn: - Why Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone reads like it was written about social media, and was published before any of it existed - What a third place is, why almost all of them closed, and what people are using instead - Where positive psychology actually works, in Jake's own framing: clinical work takes people from zero to four, this takes them from five to ten - Daryl Davis, the Black pianist who could not understand how someone could hate him without knowing him, so he called the Maryland Klan and started asking - Why Jake does not believe any human being is purely bad, including people who do purely bad things - What the algorithms want from your attention, and what it costs to give it to them Jake holds a master's degree in psychology and says clearly in this episode that it is not a licence to practise: he is not a psychologist or a therapist, and nothing here is clinical advice. Follow us everywhere 📺 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Jake Ross - https://belongtogether.us 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/you.be.long.here/ 📖 Everyday Bias, Second Edition - https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/everyday-bias-9798216477501/

  7. Aug 26

    Why Healthy Aging Starts With Who You Refuse To Stop Being ft Greg Shindler

    If you are doing the work, and you still catch yourself saying I used to be able to do that, this conversation is about the sentence underneath it. Greg Shindler is back for part two. Last week he told you his story. This week he tells you what he has built with it. He has spent a decade in longevity, starting with PCR testing sold to around 350 doctors' offices, then clinics in Oklahoma and Houston, then a longevity facility in San Jose, Costa Rica that opened its doors in April 2021 and became the selected cellular medicine partner for Fountain Life. He left that business in November 2023. His next one is Amara, a 21,000 square foot facility at Palmilla in Los Cabos, opening next year. Amara is Sanskrit for immortal, and Greg found a second definition he likes better: the flower that does not fade. His argument is that the whole field is answering the wrong question. Longevity, he says, is an identity long before it is an outcome. So the question is not how long you live. It is who you refuse to stop being as you age, and who you refuse to become. In this episode you will learn: Why you experience aging as first losses rather than as birthdays, and what that changes The flywheel Greg builds everything on: identity drives behavior, behavior drives biology, biology drives capability, and capability becomes the evidence that reinforces the identity What a stem cell actually is, the difference between the ones that come from you and the ones that come from a donor, and where each one is genuinely useful Why the Yamanaka factors won a Nobel Prize five years after the discovery, and what it meant to reverse a skin cell back to an embryonic like state What therapeutic plasma exchange does, explained through a fish tank you have never cleaned, plus the honest price and the honest evidence Why lifestyle is still 80 to 90 percent of your result, and why there is no magic bullet in any of this Follow us everywhere 📺 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ 🎙 Host Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter - https://theneurosjourney.com/ 👤 Guest Greg Shindler - https://gregshindler.com/ 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/gregshindler/ 💼 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shindler-aa62b84b/

  8. Aug 19

    Your Story Explains You. It Doesn't Define You. | Ft. Greg Shindler

    Identity is the thing running underneath almost everything you do, and Greg Shindler has spent most of his life working out how to change his. At 12, his world came apart. Then it happened again in 2010, in a completely different set of circumstances. For decades those events were not just his story, they were his identity. He was the person those things happened to. What changed, in his words: that story explains me, but it doesn't define me. Greg is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Amara, a longevity company opening in Los Cabos in Spring 2027. He is ten years sober. He is a father of three. And this conversation is about the work underneath all of it. What you will hear: - Why you can spend decades surviving something that is no longer happening - The identity loop: how believing you are not enough makes you go looking for evidence that you are not - The two questions Greg asks himself daily, starting with who am I before I start explaining myself - What his sponsor said that changed everything: it is who you are, but you do not have to be - Why ten years sober takes him no willpower, and what identity has to do with that - The exercise where he spoke to his 12-year-old self, and what he heard himself saying - The drive to a cemetery he had not visited in over 40 years, and what forgiveness actually looked like - The question he was terrified to ask his own sons - Why certainty is a prison you cannot escape without knowing you are in it - His work with Bikers Against Child Abuse, and the hardened men it reduced to tears Greg speaks openly about losing both his biological father and his adoptive father to suicide, and about breaking that cycle for his three sons. If you are in a hard place, support is available. In the US you can call or text 988. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists services by country. Guest: Greg Shindler Co-Founder & CEO, Amara Website: https://amaraloscabos.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shindler-aa62b84b Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gregshindler/ Follow us everywhere Host: Steve Sapourn Podcast Host & Trauma Educator LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-sapourn-642215118/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneurosjourney/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNeurosJourney Join The Neuro's Journey Newsletter: https://theneurosjourney.com/

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5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The Neuro's Journey is about the raw courage it takes to face ourselves, our wounds, our patterns, our truth, and transform into who we're meant to be. Host Steve Sapourn, a former hedge fund manager and crack addict who survived a childhood marked by sexual abuse, gun violence, and domestic violence, rebuilt his life through neuroscience-based healing and psychedelic-assisted therapy.Now he brings you raw, real conversations about trauma, recovery, and transformation. Through his own story and insights from leading experts, Steve explores how our past shapes us and how we can actively reshape our future. Each episode offers practical wisdom for understanding your emotions, calming your nervous system, and reconnecting with your purpose. This isn't about quick fixes or empty promises, it's about real change, grounded in both science and lived experience. Rewire your brain. Rewrite your story.

Information

  • Creator
    Steve Sapourn
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    48
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Steve Sapourn
  • Show Website
    The Neuro's Journey