Colleen Quinn on the breath as a critical gateway to conscious living

In a world that moulds us into “socially acceptable” identities, labels and personas, what does it mean to truly show up in community as your authentic self? How can tuning into our intuition help us re-learn the art of standing strong in your truth, regardless of social conditioning? In this episode, we welcome to the show Elaine Martini, a writer, speaker, and storyteller whose work explores what it means to live a life that is truly our own. Elaine is the bestselling author of Truly Connected: Create a Life and Work Guided by Your Inner Wisdom, Authenticity and Soul and founder of the Connected Life Path, a community exploring authenticity, intuition, inherited patterns and the deeper layers that shape how we live. Born in Brazil, her journey has taken her through Rome, Barcelona, London and now the Algarve, with each place shaping the way she understands identity, belonging and the stories we carry. After a career that moved through architecture, entrepreneurship and writing, her own path of questioning, unlearning and trusting her inner knowing became the foundation of the work she shares today. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).  

We all dream, pray, manifest, hope and work for a better tomorrow, for ourselves and our communities - where do wishes come into catalysing transformative change? How can engaging in wish rituals within the collective bring the sciences and arts together to co-create a powerful roadmap towards a resilient future? In the 100th episode of the Mind Full of Everything podcast, we invite Brownell Landrum, a storyteller, TEDx speaker, inventor, and change catalyst with a passion for opening hearts and minds toward peaceful, positive, and purposeful progress. Brownell is the author of The Art and Science of Wishing book (as well as author to children’s books, fiction, nonfiction and screenplays), inventor, and songwriter, and explorer of metaphysical mysteries. Brownell is the executive producer of the Life is a Trip Reincarnation Stories Podcast and her most recent project is the Cosmic Wishes podcast, where science and the art of wishing come together to create a roadmap for change. In this conversation, we discuss the science behind the art of wishing and how, as a collective, we can strategically wish our way to a more just and equitable future. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).  

If we lived in a world that embraced diversity in upbringing, cultural values and ways of knowing, how much more resilient would our societies be to change? How can ontological coaching help overcome hyper-fixation on the “right” and “wrong” in nurturing younger generations to instead a process that helps experience the authenticity of the self - being in coherence. This episode, we bring onto the show Daniela Blanchet, a Certified Ontological Coach, speaker, and founder of MomToo Coaching, where she helps expat moms and internationally mobile women navigate identity shifts, belonging, and major life transitions. Today, she combines her personal experience as as a Third Culture Kid, expatriate, and mother of three with her professional background in leadership development, education, and coaching to help women build resilience, reconnect with themselves, and create a sense of home wherever life takes them. This episode is an invitation for expat parents to organise for re-innovating societies to become resilient to exponential change by celebrating diversity and teaching younger generations how to lean into coherence to find belonging and place. Explore Daniela's Why Do You Feel So “Off” Since Moving Abroad? quiz as a starting point for expat parents to finding place and power in new cultures. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Breathing is the only bodily process that can be practiced consciously and unconsciously, tapping into the physical, spiritual and mystical all at once with a simple intake and release of the breath. Yet, like many parts of the body and self, this process has been trivialised and mechanised by the head-centric dominant culture, blocking the foundational gateway to consciousness that makes us the relational, caregivers we innately are. How can we bring the conscious back into the “unconscious” through breathwork as a crucial pathway to deprogramming the human being as separate to the rest of the world?   In this month’s episode, we bring onto the show Colleen Quinn, a transpersonal psychologist with a child specialty along with certification in breathwork. Colleen has taught psychology at The Ohio State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Columbus State Community College and has published research in many top-tier scientific journals, among them Emotion, Adolescent Psychology, and Residential Treatment for Children and Youth to name a few. In her private practice, spanning decades, Colleen used Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Both techniques use breathwork to find and feel our body’s stored traumas, loving them to bring healing.  Through a guided breathwork practice to exploring the themes of her latest book Essence Merging, Colleen takes us on a journey to remembering the human being as embodied love through the foundational pathway to consciousness - the breath. The episode is an invitation for listeners to discover their own divine blueprint, and return home to the sacred self as deeply connected to life on Earth and beyond. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

During childhood, we move through the world with curiosity and fearlessness of the unknown and near-endings. As we become more institutionalised within the dominant culture, we begin to embody harmful anti-ageing values which are rooted in a crippling fear of the inevitable - death. How then can practicing death in our lives help us re-experience endings and letting go as crucial pathways to living more freely within the wider death-positive ecosystem?   In this episode, we are in conversation with Pamela Rathbun, a Death Doula and Quantum Healing Practitioner, and the creator of Reunion Tour: Making Peace with Your Life. With a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and over 25 years of experience in education, elder care, and integrative healing, she supports people through life’s most meaningful transitions—helping them reconnect with themselves and make peace with their lives. In this episode, Pamela walks us through the expansiveness of death doula work, more as a spiritual journey through the various endings in our lives rather than the physical transition, and the many ways we can experience and practice death in our living lives, regardless of age or stage in life. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Disaster preparedness expands beyond short-term charity and immediate on-ground support, yet the “behind-the-scenes” relational work of ongoing organising and community resilience-building is often sidelined by the capitalist aid paradigm. How can leveraging the work of mutual aid organisers and providers through community publishing and media platforms help sustain existing infrastructures of care fortifying disaster preparedness?  In this episode, we are joined by Kailea Rose Loften and Kate Rose Weiner, coeditors of the community publisher Loam and co-authors of the book Compassion in crisis: building disaster-resilient communities. Kailea Rose Loften is a mother of Tahltan, Kaska, and Black American ancestry. She has a background climate change policy with an emphasis on Indigenous rights, previously serving as a Climate Commissioner for the City of Petaluma, California. Kate Weiner works at the intersections of culture and climate justice as a writer and editor, and her work is shaped by her studies in environmental art, social practice, and community herbalism. With the extended version of Compassion in Crisis launching in May, we explore the ways the book provides insight into relational practices and care infrastructures for disaster preparedness and management to support and build community resilience pre- and post-disaster.  Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Nature “connectedness” is often prescribed as a healing modality for our trauma states but this eco-psychological approach fails to get to the root of our socioecological problems - the separation of the human being from nature. Whilst utilising the benefits of nature immersion to aid our healing journeys is essential, how can we move away from individualistic healing paradigms to re-earthing the nature-embedded mind, bereft of social conditionings on human exceptionalism, to heal and regenerate in the collective? In our first guest episode of the year, we invite to the show Julie Brams, an Earth-centered psychotherapist, meditation practitioner/teacher, and author of The Nature Embedded Mind: How the Way We Think Can Heal Our Planet and Ourselves. The Nature Embedded Mind is a groundbreaking new book at the intersection of psychology, ecology, and social justice. Certified as an ANFT Forest Therapy Guide, and founder of the nature-informed retreat and education organisation Elemental, Julie integrates Earth-centred psychotherapy, neuropsychology, meditation, and nature immersion to help individuals and communities heal their relationship with earth. Drawing on clinical practice, evidence based methodology, and scientific research, as well as lived experience and relational work, Julie guides us on how healing our disconnection from our Earth is the next frontier of psychology. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).  

As the new year begins with the crumbling of hope for a stable future, how can we tap into the restorative power of the erotic to regenerate our capacities to make change and attain collective liberation from a place of deep pleasure and joy?  In our first episode of 2026, join me in exploring the ways in which we can reclaim the erotic as power and political resistance in the new year, reconnecting with the feminine life-force within all our bodies to engage in radical pleasure-making that can help us dismantle systems of oppression, at the macro-level but also at the level of the self. Inspired from the work of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, adrienne marie brown, Minna Salami and others, this episode discusses everything from the weaponisation of the erotic as a tool for oppressing women’s bodies and erotic awakenings in childhood, to pleasure self-determination and building pleasure-positive communities, workspaces and lives. Feeling good is freedom, let’s feel good together. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Conservation urgently needs creative and artistic solutions to addressing pressing biodiversity and climate issues in democratic and ethical ways. What role can the creative storytelling practice of native insect photography play in transforming species conservation to a discipline which respects and cares for overlooked insects and the critical ecosystems that support declining populations such as native bees, and is inclusive of the invaluable contributions of communities and those outside the discipline?    In this month’s conversation, we are joined by Krystle Hickman, a National Geographic Explorer, TEDx speaker, conservation photographer, and native bee expert who uses her photography to raise awareness about the decline of native bee species and their complex ecosystems. Her work has been featured on platforms like Vox, PBS, and the podcast Ologies, expanding her impact beyond visual storytelling. Hickman has also presented at major global and academic venues, including the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) and universities such as Harvard, UCLA, and UC Irvine. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Under the oppressive systems of white supremacy and colonialism, and the internalisation of "whiteness" in the dominant culture, how can the practice of reparative philanthropy re-story colonial narratives of power to shift to flattened hierarchies of giving and receiving? In today’s episode, we are in conversation with Hilary Giovale, a mother, writer, and community organizer. Being a ninth-generation American settler, she is descended from Celtic, Germanic, Nordic, and Indigenous peoples of Ancient Europe. As an active reparationist, her work is guided by intuition, love, and relationships to transmute harmful philanthropic practices to ones rooted in reciprocity and equitable giving. Hilary’s recent book Becoming a Good Relative shares remedies for the debilitating shame that can overtake white Americans when facing their peoples’ colonial past and our current complicity with systemic white supremacy. It offers a unique methodology, supported by African American and Indigenous Elders, which we dive into the depths in today’s conversation. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).