Pay Attention

Holly McNeill
  • 5.0 (3)
  • SELF-IMPROVEMENT
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Pay Attention is a podcast dedicated to a journey from the chaos of the mind to the clarity of the open heart. As a seasoned architect turned teacher and spiritual guide, Holly McNeill spent two decades while working full time and as a single mom exploring neuroscience, psychology, Buddhism, and spirituality all to uncover the transformative power of the present moment. Here you'll find practical tips and insights on how the mind works, why you get stuck, how to break free, how to create space for real change, and what lies beyond the chaos. All here to help you build a life of clarity, peace, and purpose.

  1. S2:E5 The Invisible Made Visible - Awareness Felt Through Energy & Art

    3D AGO

    S2:E5 The Invisible Made Visible - Awareness Felt Through Energy & Art

    Last week, we explored what research is revealing about the mind–body connection—and how science is beginning to build a bridge toward contemplative practice and lived experience. This week, we step into the experience itself. In this episode, Holly is joined by Marc Noël, a Belgium-based artist, therapist, and creator of Quantum Paintings, whose work sits at the intersection of energy, consciousness, and art. Marc's paintings may be analyzed or interpreted—but ultimately, they are meant to be felt. Created through intentional presence and infused with chi, his work invites a direct, embodied experience of awareness that many describe as grounding, calming, and deeply familiar. Working intuitively with energy and intention, Marc draws from an early understanding of presence and awareness that has been familiar to him since childhood. Also returning to the conversation is Ann Van de Winckel, PhD, founder and Director of the Brain–Body–Mind Lab at the University of Minnesota. If you listened to last week's episode, you know that Ann is conducting research in NeuroArts and body awareness that draws directly from Marc Noël's quantum paintings—helping bridge lived experience with emerging scientific inquiry. Together, they explore how art can act as a doorway into felt experience—supporting regulation, restoring connection to the body, and offering access to states of clarity that are often difficult to reach through cognition alone. Through Marc's creative work and Ann's research, embodied experience and scientific inquiry meet, inviting the analytical mind to soften as awareness is seen, felt, and experienced directly. This conversation moves beyond explanation and into experience. It invites listeners to consider how awareness can be felt, how healing can emerge through presence, and how art may help make the invisible visible—within the body, the mind, and the human experience itself. Learn more about Marc at his websites: WEBSITES  https://mapeinturequantique-fushigina.com https://fushiginachoowa-marcnoel.com https://myquantumpaintings-marcnoel.com   Reach him at his email:   EMAIL mapeinturequantique.fushigina@gmail.com   Subscribe to his Youtube channel:   YOUTUBE  https://www.youtube.com/@mapeinturequantique.fushigina

    51 min
  2. S2:E4 The Mind-Body Connection | What Research Is Revealing with Dr. Ann Van De Winckel

    FEB 4

    S2:E4 The Mind-Body Connection | What Research Is Revealing with Dr. Ann Van De Winckel

    One clear goal of this podcast is to build the bridge between science, contemplative practice, and lived experience. We have real and significant pieces to take us from struggle to peace, and from chaos to clarity. We feel them in the body. We sense them in the mind. We practice them in daily life. And now, research is beginning to explain how and why they work. In this episode, Holly is joined by Ann Van de Winckel, PhD, Associate Professor in the Division of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at the University of Minnesota Medical School and Director of the Brain–Body–Mind Lab, whose work is supported by a fellowship from the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing.   Ann's research explores how the brain and body communicate, how pain and stress can escalate when early signals are ignored, and how restoring awareness of the body can help reduce suffering—particularly for people living with chronic pain and neurological injury. Together, they explore how this research is being applied in real-world settings: from using mindful movement such as qigong to support regulation and sleep in hospital environments, to helping people with amputation reduce phantom limb pain by improving body awareness. They also discuss the emerging field of NeuroArts, including how Marc Noël's quantum paintings and immersive virtual experiences may support grounding, calm, and restored body awareness in students with anxiety and in people living with spinal cord injury. This conversation is about more than research alone. It's about connecting what we feel, what we practice, and what science is beginning to validate—so we can live with greater awareness, clarity, and agency. #PayAttention #MindBodyConnection #HealingAndScience #Awareness #IntegrativeHealth #ChronicPain #Qigong #Mindfulness #NeuroArts #LivedExperience #BakkenCenter

    42 min
  3. S2:E3 When The Mind Goes Quiet, The Body Remembers with Maira Holzmann

    JAN 26

    S2:E3 When The Mind Goes Quiet, The Body Remembers with Maira Holzmann

    In the last two episodes of Pay Attention, we explored why doing more isn't the answer—and why deeply ingrained habits can't be changed through intellectual insight or thinking alone. So what does create real change? In this episode, Holly McNeill is joined by somatic psychotherapist Maira Holzmann for a grounded conversation about what happens when awareness moves beyond thought and includes the body. Together, they explore how trauma lives in the nervous system, and how insight and clarity can be supported on the path to healing through body-based approaches. The conversation looks at how expanding awareness to include sensation, regulation, and the lived experience of the body—through practices such as somatic therapy and carefully supported psychedelic work—can help interrupt survival patterns and open the door to integration and change. Rather than positioning psychedelics as a solution, this episode places them in proper context: as one possible support for deepening awareness when used with intention, preparation, and integration. This episode is about remembering—not fixing. About embodiment, not effort. And about what becomes possible when awareness includes the whole system, not just the thinking mind.

    44 min
  4. S2:E2 You Can't Outthink Your Habitual Thoughts with Amy Kemp

    JAN 19

    S2:E2 You Can't Outthink Your Habitual Thoughts with Amy Kemp

    Coming out of last week's conversation with Dr. Patel on Less Is More and the power of doing less for our physical health, this episode of Pay Attention turns toward the mental and emotional habits that quietly shape our lives. Holly sits down with Amy Kemp, author of I See You, to explore why working harder eventually stops working—and how many of our most celebrated traits are actually survival mechanisms formed long before we were conscious of them. Together, they examine how thought habits are formed, why the brain resists change even when something no longer serves us, and how intuition gets buried under years of over-functioning and responsibility. This conversation bridges neuroscience, lived experience, and mindfulness to reveal how awareness—not effort—is what creates real agency. In this episode, you'll explore: Why you can't outwork your thought habits How survival patterns become damaging when we outgrow them The quiet loss (and recovery) of intuition Why high-achieving women often feel unseen despite outward success How paying attention creates the space for change If Less Is More invited you to reconsider your relationship with health, this episode invites you to look at what you may still be carrying—mentally, emotionally, and unconsciously—and how to begin letting go.

    34 min
  5. S2:E1 Less Is More In The New Year - Compassionate Care & Healing

    JAN 12

    S2:E1 Less Is More In The New Year - Compassionate Care & Healing

    As the New Year begins, many of us feel pressure to fix, improve, or overhaul our lives. In this episode of Pay Attention, Holly McNeill is joined by osteopathic physician Dr. Neal Patel for a grounded, compassionate conversation about what healing can look like when we slow down and do less—not more. Together, they explore the connection between stress, mental health, and the body, and how unresolved emotional patterns often show up as physical pain, inflammation, or chronic illness. Dr. Patel shares his holistic, patient-centered philosophy—emphasizing fewer pills, fewer procedures, and greater awareness of the habits that quietly shape our health. The conversation also touches on meditation, foundational practices like sleep, movement, and nutrition, and emerging research on the endocannabinoid system and energy-based healing.  Rather than offering resolutions or quick fixes, this episode invites you to pause, pay attention, and listen—to your body, your mind, and the signals you may have been ignoring. #PayAttentionPodcast #LessIsMore #CompassionateCare #MindBodyConnection #HolisticHealing #StressAndHealth #MindfulnessInMedicine #PreventativeHealth #HealingJourney #NewYearReflection

    36 min

  6. JAN 5

    42: Creating The New Year with Intentional Attention

    The Mindfulness Architect, Holly McNeill, reflects on New Year's resolutions—and why intention alone is rarely enough to create real change. Rather than offering another checklist or goal-setting framework, this episode invites listeners to pause and examine what they are actually paying attention to—day by day, moment by moment—and how that attention shapes identity, choices, and the direction of their lives. As the year comes to a close, Holly explores the relationship between intention and attention, sharing how her own intention to find something better opened her to seeing new possibilities. She closes by inviting listeners to create a New Year's resolution grounded in intentional attention, and to carry that awareness into the year ahead.

    25 min

  7. 12/29/2025

    41: The Gift of the Human Journey

    On this Christmas Eve, I invite you to pause. In a season that can feel joyful for some and heavy for others, this episode is a quiet reflection on the gift of the human journey — with all of its beauty, struggle, tenderness, and possibility. There is a natural flow to life, and much of our suffering comes from the habits, beliefs, and patterns we've unknowingly created in an effort to protect ourselves. Part of this human journey is gently learning to recognize and unwind that conditioning. The P.E.R.L.O.V.E. framework emerged from lived experience and years of exploration across mindfulness, neuroscience, and spirituality, offering one compassionate way to do just that. This episode is not about fixing yourself — it's about remembering who you are beneath the conditioning. Wherever you find yourself this holiday season, may this be a moment to breathe, soften, and reconnect with the quiet wisdom already within you. Wishing you peace, presence, and love on this precious human journey. #Mindfulness #SelfAwareness #InnerPeace #HumanJourney #PayAttention

    26 min

  8. 12/23/2025

    40: Trusting The Intuition Within with Dr. Lenka Schulze

    This week, the Mindfulness Architect, Holly McNeill is joined by Dr. Lenka Schulze, an Intuologist, Author, Educator and Spiritual Guide. Her lifelong experience, ongoing research, and ample knowledge in the area of intuition and consciousness, create a solid platform from which she invites others to view and to see life from the soul's point of view. She is very passionate to share her unique perspective to subtle energies, vibrations and frequencies and bring them down to earth in a palatable way for people to not only comprehend easily but to take this information to apply easily into their daily life.

    41 min
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5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Pay Attention is a podcast dedicated to a journey from the chaos of the mind to the clarity of the open heart. As a seasoned architect turned teacher and spiritual guide, Holly McNeill spent two decades while working full time and as a single mom exploring neuroscience, psychology, Buddhism, and spirituality all to uncover the transformative power of the present moment. Here you'll find practical tips and insights on how the mind works, why you get stuck, how to break free, how to create space for real change, and what lies beyond the chaos. All here to help you build a life of clarity, peace, and purpose.

Information

  • Creator
    Holly McNeill
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    47
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2024
  • Show Website
    Pay Attention