Wonder And Awe

LaPorte is a best selling author who has inspired millions of people around the world, naming her as one of Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100 Leaders for ""uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters."" Her newest book, How to Be Loving, is a nuanced perspective on the life changing power of Self Compassion, shadow work, and being more receptive to Higher Guidance. This is a guide on how to use the genius of your heart to create conditions for healing. The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul has been translated into 8 languages, evolved into a yearly day planner system, a top 10 iTunes app, and an international workshop program with licensed facilitators in 15 countries. LaPorte's website, DanielleLaPorte.com, discusses spirituality, entrepreneurship, and personal growth. Forbes named her blog one of the top 100 websites for women in 2012, calling LaPorte ""a contrarian self-help guru."" In this episode, Louie and Danielle look at the multi-faceted layers of Love, and how it can best serve as a practice for healing and connection around the world.

Sara Luria is the founder of Beloved, a home-based experiment in Jewish life in Brooklyn. In her family's home, she hosts Shabbat meals, creative rituals based on the Jewish calendar, meditation circles, learning for families with young children, and more. Prior to Beloved, Luria's experiences as a community organizer, birth doula, and hospital chaplain inspired her to found ImmerseNYC, a pluralistic, feminist, grassroots-energized community mikveh (ritual bath) project. She has published poetry and essays on motherhood, Jewish innovation, and healing in various Jewish books and publications. Luria was ordained as a rabbi from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 2013.

Lynne Twist has been a recognized global visionary committed to alleviating poverty, ending world hunger, and supporting social justice and sustainability for more than forty years. She is also the cofounder of the Pachamama Alliance and founder of the Soul of Money Institute. Twist has worked with over 100,000 people in fifty countries in workshops, keynote presentations, and one-on-one coaching sessions on how to fundraise with integrity, practice conscious philanthropy, and create a healthy relationship with money. She is the bestselling author of The Soul of Money, which has sold over 200,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into nine languages.

Rita D. Sherma is founding Director and Associate Professor at the Center for Dharma Studies; Core Doctoral Faculty; Department Chair of Theology & Ethics; and Co-Chair of Sustainability 360 Initiative at GTU, Berkeley, CA. Formerly, she was the Swami Vivekananda Visiting Professor in Hindu Studies at USC, Los Angeles. She holds an MA in Women's Studies in Religion, and a PhD in Theology & Ethics from Claremont Graduate University, CA. Sherma is co-founder of the American Academy of Religion's Hinduism Program Unit. She is the founding Vice President of DANAM (Dharma Academy of North America)—a scholarly society for research on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious & interreligious studies—and serves as Vice President of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. Dr. Sherma has authored/edited/co-edited numerous books and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of "Journal of Dharma Studies." She serves on the Editorial Board of "Reading Religion" Journal (an AAR publication), serves as Advisor to the Parliament of the World's Religions Climate Action-sponsored Faith for the Earth online & print project, as well as on the Advisory Board of the Yale Forum for Religion and Ecology. Her pedagogical approach goes beyond encounters in the classroom to create collaborations with her students in research, writing, publications, and sponsoring students' leadership in their disciplines.

Anna Sun, an Associate Professor at Duke University, holds a Princeton PhD in Sociology and is a prominent scholar in the field of religion and culture. Her research focuses on Confucianism as a world religion, gender and Global Confucianism, comparative studies of prayer and ritual, and methodological issues in studying East Asian religions. Throughout her career, Professor Sun has been a fellow at prestigious institutions such as the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She is actively involved in various academic organizations, including serving as a trustee of the Fetzer Institute and being part of the Advisory Committee for the "Women's Studies in Religion Program" at Harvard Divinity School. Additionally, she is an advisor for the Pew Research Center on surveys of religion in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the US (Asian-Americans). Professor Sun has held leadership positions as Chair of the Board of Directors of ASIANetwork, Vice President of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, and Co-Chair of the Chinese Religions Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Among her notable publications are "Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities," which received book awards from the American Academy of Religion and the American Sociological Association. She has also co-edited "Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power" and co-authored "Against Happiness," exploring comparative notions of wellbeing. Currently, Professor Sun is working on two monographs: one focusing on Global Confucianism and the other examining contemporary ritual life in relation to magic, rationality, gender, time, and urban space.

Adah Parris is a highly sought-after keynote speaker, polymath, anti-disciplinary artist, tech futurist, and activist who is dedicated to inspiring individuals and organizations to embrace new ways of thinking and doing. She has a unique blend of expertise in multiple fields, including living systems, technologies (digital and ecological) and systems design. Her perspective on innovation, transformation, and technology is both empathetic and subversive, challenging the status quo and helping people to recognise and bridge the gap between their external stories and internal behaviors. Adah is the Chair of Mental Health First Aid England and the advisory group for the Centre for Cultural Value, and she has also been recognised as a TED Talks Global Emerging Innovator. Her work explores the anatomy of transformation and innovation, and she focuses on changing how we experience the world by asking the question, "What type of Ancestor do you want to be?" Her cutting-edge philosophy, Cyborg Shamanism™, merges ancient wisdom, living systems, traditional ecological knowledge and practices, and digital technologies, and she provides individuals with the tools and practices to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be through her consulting and her Ancestors Retreats. Adah has over 20 years of experience in transforming cultures to nurture decentralized innovation environments and has worked with some of the world's leading organizations and institutions.

Louie Schwartzberg, Howard and Michele Hall have a longterm beautiful friendship, the core of which is based in capturing and celebrating nature's wonders. While Louie explores the earth and air, Howard and Michele have magnificently captured the splendors of what lies within beneath our waters. Howard and Michele Hall are perhaps best known for their underwater IMAX films. In 1994 Howard directed the first underwater IMAX 3D feature, Into the Deep. In 1998 Michele produced and Howard directed the IMAX feature, Island of the Sharks, which was an enterprise of Howard Hall Productions. In 2005 they returned to the IMAX 3D format by directing and producing Deep Sea 3D which was awarded Best Picture at the Giant Screen Cinema Association Conference and Best Large Format Film at Wildscreen 2006. In 2009 the Hall's released Under the Sea 3D. This film won best cinematography at the Giant Screen Cinema Association Conference in 2009 and Best Documentary at the Internationnal 3D Society in 2010. Howard was director of underwater cinematography for the Primesco Productions film Lost Worlds, the MacGillivray Freeman film The Living Sea, the IMAX 3D feature Return to Hubble, and was underwater cinematographer for MacGillivray Freeman's Journey Into Amazing Caves. In 2002 Howard was underwater sequence director and Michele was location manager for MacGillivray Freeman's IMAX feature Coral Reef Adventure, a film in which both he and Michele are featured on-camera. Of the five highest grossing 3D films produced by IMAX Corporation, two were directed by Howard Hall. Into the Deep has earned box office receipts of over $70 million and Deep Sea 3D has earned over $96 million. The Hall's recently released Under the Sea 3D has earned over $52 million. Between them, Howard and Michele have won seven Emmy Awards. Howard has produced and/or directed many award winning natural history television films including a National Geographic Special, which he co-produced with Michele, and three episodes of the PBS series Nature. Howard also directed and Michele produced the award winning, five-hour series Secrets of the Ocean Realm for PBS. Howard holds a BS degree in zoology from San Diego State University. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Michele is a Registered Nurse and holds a B.S. degree in Health Sciences. She is a member of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Women Divers Hall of Fame.

Uvinie Lubecki brings compassionate leadership to organizations and is passionate about the role of mindfulness and compassion in leadership and building cultures of connection. In this episode, Louie and Uvinie discuss the the positive impact wonder and awe can have on large organizations who are willing to risk vulnerability and change.

Brenda Salgado is the author of Real World Mindfulness for Beginners: Navigate Daily Life One Practice at a Time. She is a mindfulness teacher, motivational and public speaker, a facilitator and consultant, a health and wellness expert, a traditional medicine woman, and a Toltec energy healer. The founder of Nepantla Consulting, Brenda has two decades of experience in leadership development, nonprofit management, spiritual teaching, movement building, women's health, and environmental and social justice. Enjoy this episode of Wonder & Awe as Louie and Brenda discuss how social justice and wonder and awe are intricately related."

"Michelle ""Lani"" Shiota is an associate professor of social psychology at Arizona State University. Her studies of positive emotions, emotion regulation, and emotional mechanisms of close relationships use multiple methods including perpheral psychophysiology measures, behavioral coding, cognitive tasks, and narrative analysis as well as self-reports. Shiota's research has been funded by National Institutes of Health, the John Templeton Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, and has been published in high-impact journals including: Emotion, JPSP, Cognition and Emotion, Psychology and Aging, and American Psychologist. She is lead author of the textbook ""Emotion"" (Oxford), and co-editor of the ""Handbook of Positive Emotions"" (Guilford). She is currently on the Executive Committee of the Society for Affective Science, she is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), and member of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP). She received her bachelor's in communication from Stanford University, and her doctorate in social/personality psychology from University of California at Berkeley. Shiota joined the social psychology faculty at ASU in 2006, establishing the Shiota Psychophysiology Laboratory for Affective Testing (a.k.a. SPLAT Lab).