Sara Avant Stover - Entrepreneurship as a Spiritual Path
Leading with Genuine Care
Sara Avant Stover is a business strategist, Internal Family Systems practitioner and author based in Boulder, Colorado. She works with female spiritual entrepreneurs to help them with both the spiritual and practical aspects of building a business and pursuing inner transformation. She draws on 25 years as a yoga and meditation practitioner and a teacher, author, and entrepreneur. Sara is an "overachiever." She started dancing ballet at the age of three and continued until she went to college. She was also an entrepreneur, making and selling candy, T-shirts, and jewelry boxes...
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The Path Within: Uncovering Self-Love and Mental Wellness with Blake D. Bauer
Leading with Genuine Care
"All the past and all the future are present in this moment." — Blake D. Bauer Blake D. Bauer is the author of the international best-seller You Were Not Born To Suffer. A speaker and teacher, he has studied a wide range of modalities, including psychology, nutrition, traditional Chinese medicine, and past life regression therapy-hypnosis. All that Blake has learned started as a quest when he was 18 to simply find a way to stop the pain he was experiencing. He found his calling in helping others find optimal mental, physical and emotional health. When Blake was...
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Elysabeth Williamson - Relationship as a Doorway to the Soul
Leading with Genuine Care
"Relationships are where we receive the greatest fulfillment and the greatest challenge." — Elysabeth Williamson Today's guest is Elysabeth Williamson, a self-taught yoga teacher of 35 years who developed Principle-Based Partner Yoga,™ a system of yoga that focuses on relationship and connection with others. She also uses this work to encourage people to think and talk about death and dying as a way to live life more fully. She is the author of the award-winning book The Pleasures and Principles of Partner Yoga and is working on a second book, Becoming Fully Human: How Learning To...
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Andrew Holecek | Dreaming To Live and Die
Leading with Genuine Care
"Really, death is a journey into and through the mind." — Andrew Holocek In this episode, I speak with Andrew Holecek, the author of several books on meditation and lucid dreaming. While he's had a career as a dental surgeon, he has had a lifelong interest in meditation and the wisdom traditions. In 1998, he went on a three-year retreat at Sopa Choling in Nova Scotia, Canada. He calls this experience "transformative," and it was in his last year he had the idea for his first book, The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy. He has gone on to publish...
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Dr. Tho Va Hinh l Changing the World With Happiness
Leading with Genuine Care
"The fundamental idea of gross national happiness is to say that the center of our attention should be the happiness of all people as well as all life forms." — Tho Va Hinh This week I speak to a returning guest, Tho Va Hinh, author of The Culture of Happiness and founder of the Eurasia Foundation and the Eurasia Learning Institute for Happiness and Wellbeing. He's designed the Happy Schools curriculum, which started its first program in Vietnam and is now being tried in Switzerland and Germany. He is also a Buddhist teacher ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh. Tho's...
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Spencer Sherman l Your Worth Is More Than Just a Number
Leading with Genuine Care
“When we're no longer grasping for the money, it often flows more easily to us." — Spencer Sherman This week's guest is Spencer Sherman, CEO of Abacus Wealth Partners, a certified mindfulness teacher and author of The Cure for Money Madness. He also teaches people how to have a healthier relationship with money through his online courses and is on the faculty at NYU's Inner MBA program. In this episode Spencer and I dig into how our relationship with money is shaped by our parents, cultural messages, and the historical events we live through. Spencer grew up in...
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Koshin Paley Ellison | You Are Not Who You Think You Are
Leading with Genuine Care
“If we want to be free, at some point we have to plant our staff in the ground and say, 'I am here.'" — Koshin Paley Ellison This week's guest is Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, founder and guiding teacher of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. Ellison is an author, Jungian psychotherapist and ACPE Certified Chaplain Educator. Koshin has served as the co-director for Contemplative Care Services in the Department of Integrative Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center and is currently on the faculty of the University of Arizona Medical School's Center for...
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Don Lupo | Living to Serve
Leading with Genuine Care
"I just believe we were put here for a purpose." – Don Lupo This week's guest is Don Lupo, an advocate for the homeless and others in need. Twenty-three years ago, Lupo left a career as a successful businessman to start a new career in service to his community, the city of Birmingham, AL. In 2016, he was awarded the FBI Director's Community Leadership Award and was named one of the "Top 50 Over 50" in the state of Alabama; in 2018 he was awarded the Civilian Service Award by the Birmingham Police Department. One of the defining moments of Lupo's life was the passing of...
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Jay Steinfeld | Experimenting and Enjoying the Ride
Leading with Genuine Care
Jay Steinfeld | Experimenting and Enjoying the Ride "You really never know when you set out to do anything, if it's going to work. If you do know, then you're not experimenting enough." — Jay Steinfeld This week's guest is Jay Steinfeld, author of Lead from the Core and founder of Blinds.com, which he sold to Home Depot in 2014. Steinfeld remained the company's CEO until he left in 2020 to not retire but, as he calls it, "rewire." He teaches business and entrepreneurship at Rice University, serves on multiple boards, and is active in charitable organizations....
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Dr. Sabrina Starling | Finding the Sweet Spot
Leading with Genuine Care
"I'm on a mission to share with the world that you can have a good quality of life and a successful business." — Dr. Sabrina Starling This week's guest is Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist, bestselling author of the How To Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation and host of the Profit by Design podcast. Sabrina's company, Tap the Potential, helps entrepreneurs learn how to build successful businesses without sacrificing their quality of life, health, and relationships. Many entrepreneurs put off taking time to be with their families, to...
info_outline"Really, death is a journey into and through the mind." — Andrew Holocek
In this episode, I speak with Andrew Holecek, the author of several books on meditation and lucid dreaming. While he's had a career as a dental surgeon, he has had a lifelong interest in meditation and the wisdom traditions. In 1998, he went on a three-year retreat at Sopa Choling in Nova Scotia, Canada. He calls this experience "transformative," and it was in his last year he had the idea for his first book, The Power and the Pain: Transforming Spiritual Hardship into Joy. He has gone on to publish several other books on dying, meditation, and dream yoga and speaks and teaches on these topics. His teachings draw on Buddhism, but he stresses that all wisdom traditions have something to offer and often teach the same things in different ways.
Andrew's book Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom From the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition explains that how we prepare to die is just as important as how we live. Many of the spiritual masters understand that death is just another phase of life, and they make no distinction between life and death. The best way to prepare for death is to become familiar with your own mind, and the best way to do this is through the practice of meditation. Further, living your life to the fullest and living a life of goodness are also spiritual practices that prepare you for death. These masters seek to be at the moment of looking forward to death when they die. Having no fear and no regrets are also states to aim for. Indeed, the "awakened ones" see death as liberation.
Andrew's work on lucid dreaming further extends these ideas, as this practice is really about becoming more conscious and intentional. In his books about dream yoga and lucid dreaming, he explains that dream yoga incorporates but also transcends lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is the act of becoming conscious when in a dream state, so that the "conscious mind can face the unconscious mind directly." It's a powerful practice that has helped people become more mindful and conscious in their awake states, as well as having mental and physical benefits. Most of our lives are spent in the phase of "non lucidity" or distraction; practicing meditation and lucid dreaming can help us become more conscious. It can "accelerate your psycho-spiritual development."
Intention-setting is another important practice. At a dream yoga training, the teacher taught only that practice. This practice might involve the repetition of your intention throughout the course of the day, especially right before sleep.
As a dental surgeon and founder of Global Dental Relief, which provides dental care to people in developing countries, Andrew believes in the efficacy of Western medicine. However, as he notes, we are one of the only cultures that do not regard the dream state as important. He seeks to draw on the best of Eastern thought and Western medicine in his approach to sleep and dreaming. He gives examples of accounts of people who dreamed events that later became true and his own experiences with precognitive dreaming.
Another topic Andrew has written about is "reverse meditation." This is a practice that teaches you to be with an unwanted experience instead of running away from it as an opportunity for transformation. Pain and suffering can be a pathway for change; tranquility "sedates, it doesn't liberate." The goal is to live in a state of expansion rather than contraction. Acceptance and open awareness are key in this practice.
Andrew offers retreats for people interested in learning more about his work and is hosting one in March in Costa Rica. He also hosts an online community, Night Club.
In this episode of Leading with Genuine Care, you’ll also learn:
- More about the best way to prepare to die
- How death can be seen as a form of liberation
- The power of lucid dreaming and practices that help you get there
- How the dream state is a "truer dimension"
- What Andrew thinks about dream interpretation
- Why someone might want to practice reverse meditation
- How to become less distracted and more aware
- What the three phases of beginning meditation are
- Why language can be a trigger and how to transform its power
- What Andrew experienced when he met the Dalai Lama
Connect With Andrew Holecek
Websites
Night Club: nightclub.andrewholecek.com
Global Dental Relief: www.globaldentalrelief.org
Podcast
www.linkedin.com/in/andrewholecek/
www.facebook.com/andrewholecekauthor
X (Twitter)
Books:
www.andrewholecek.com/andrew-holecek-books
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