Energy Sovereignty: Reclaim Your Power Through Boundaries
The Urban Monk podcast with Dr. Pedram Shojai
Release Date: 11/21/2025
The Urban Monk podcast with Dr. Pedram Shojai
🎙️ In this intimate conversation, Dr. Pedram Shojai sits down with Frankko Vivo, a musician and ceremony guide who transformed from a basketball player into a guardian of sacred space. Frankko shares how an 82-year-old violinist named Sol changed his life's trajectory with a single gift, leading him to carve a temple into a Brazilian mountainside over 13 years. Through stories of water infiltrations that forced him to listen to the mountain's wisdom and ceremonies where improvisation trumps performance, Frankko reveals how voice activation, deep breathing, and authentic frequency work...
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🎙️ Most people breathe 20,000 times a day, yet modern life has systematically broken this fundamental function. Dr. Pedram Shojai reveals how collapsed posture, chronic stress, mouth breathing, and lost body awareness have created a breathing crisis—leaving us in survival mode with shallow, chest-based breathing that signals constant danger to our nervous systems. In this essential episode, discover the four ways modern life has stolen your breath and why dysfunctional breathing creates cascading physical consequences from chronic anxiety and brain fog to digestive issues, immune...
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🎙️ Dr. Pedram Shojai sits down with integrative medicine physician Dr. Scott Sherr to unpack one of the most overlooked health crises of our time: the sympathetic spiral of doom. When your nervous system gets stuck in fight-or-flight mode, your mitochondria desperately try to produce more energy but lack the resources to sustain it. The result? Plummeting energy, skyrocketing stress, and a body that can't heal itself. Dr. Sherr explains the intricate dance between sympathetic nervous system activation and mitochondrial dysfunction, revealing how this vicious cycle begins and, more...
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🎙️ Dr. Pedram Shojai addresses one of the most common yet dismissed complaints in modern medicine: chronic fatigue that conventional doctors can't diagnose or explain. He reveals why standard medical tests fail to identify this multi-system breakdown and presents a comprehensive, phased recovery approach spanning 6-24 months. Drawing from his experience treating thousands of patients, Dr. Shojai explains the seven interconnected systems involved in energy production—from mitochondrial function to gut health to nervous system regulation—and why treating just one piece never works. If...
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🎙️ Registered dietitian Ashley Koff joins Dr. Pedram Shojai to unpack the truth about GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. While these drugs mimic hormones our bodies naturally produce, they don't solve the root cause of why our own weight-health hormones aren't functioning properly. Ashley explains how gut health, the vagus nerve, stress, and digestive function all play crucial roles in our body's natural hormone production. She shares her personal journey from childhood obesity to understanding that healing weight health isn't about what you eat or avoid—it's about optimizing...
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🎙️ In this transformative episode, Dr. Pedram Shojai addresses the modern energy crisis that leaves so many people chronically depleted. Moving beyond simple fatigue from lack of sleep or overwork, he reveals how we experience systemic energy depletion from thousands of tiny leaks we haven't learned to protect against. Through practical frameworks and actionable strategies, he teaches listeners how to identify what drains their vital energy, recognize energy drains in real time, and implement boundaries that protect their life force. This isn't about becoming selfish or isolated—it's...
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🎙️ Are you spending hundreds of dollars a month on supplements you can't even remember why you're taking? Dr. Pedram Shojai exposes how the $50 billion supplement industry has convinced health-conscious people to swallow 20-30 pills daily—creating more confusion and expense than actual health benefits. He reveals the uncomfortable truth: most people are medicating symptoms they don't have, optimizing pathways that aren't broken, and actually creating deficiencies through nutrient competition and over-supplementation. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why taking more supplements doesn't equal...
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🎙️ Dr. Pedram Shojai addresses one of the most pervasive issues in modern wellness: the food fear pandemic. Are you spending 20 minutes reading ingredient labels? Avoiding social situations because you can't control the food? This isn't about real food sensitivities—it's about the crippling anxiety that's turning food into the enemy. Dr. Shojai reveals why the stress of restriction might be more inflammatory than the foods you're worried about, and shares a practical framework for shifting from fear-based eating to body wisdom. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why "healthy eating" becomes...
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🎙️ Dr. Pedram Shojai exposes the invisible thief stealing your peace, presence, and authentic self-worth: social media comparison culture. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why your brain—evolved for tribes of 150—now compares you to billions of curated highlight reels 24/7 The five-step neuroscience behind the comparison spiral (from comparison trigger to deepening spiral) How chronic "not enoughness" drives anxiety, depression, elevated cortisol, and inflammation The difference between true inspiration and toxic comparison Practical protocols: three-breath awareness practice, ruthless...
info_outlineThe Urban Monk podcast with Dr. Pedram Shojai
🎙️ Discover why deliberately stressing your body might be one of the most powerful health interventions available—hormesis: the principle that low to moderate doses of stress trigger beneficial adaptations that make you anti-fragile. 🎯 What You'll Learn: The science behind cold therapy, strategic fasting, and exercise as consciousness-expanding tools The adaptation cascade: from immediate stress response (minutes) to long-term resilience (months) Four-week cold therapy progression protocol (300% norepinephrine increase, 250% dopamine boost) Three-level strategic fasting approach:...
info_outline🎙️ In this transformative episode, Dr. Pedram Shojai addresses the modern energy crisis that leaves so many people chronically depleted. Moving beyond simple fatigue from lack of sleep or overwork, he reveals how we experience systemic energy depletion from thousands of tiny leaks we haven't learned to protect against. Through practical frameworks and actionable strategies, he teaches listeners how to identify what drains their vital energy, recognize energy drains in real time, and implement boundaries that protect their life force. This isn't about becoming selfish or isolated—it's about learning to give from fullness rather than depleting yourself to emptiness.
🎯 What You'll Learn:
- The Four Categories of Energy Drains: Digital vampires (social media, email, notifications), relational drains (victims, narcissists, boundary pushers), environmental factors (clutter, noise, crowds), and internal leaks (unexpressed emotions, unaligned actions, mental loops)
- The Three Types of Sensing to practice daily: Interoception (internal energy state), proprioception (body position and tension), and exteroception (environmental impact)—catching drains in real time
- The Three Levels of Boundary Management: Awareness boundaries (internal energy accounting), interpersonal boundaries (the clear no and qualified yes), and environmental boundaries (digital, time, space, social protections)
- How to practice "the clear no" with exact phrases that require zero explanation or justification
- The 24-hour rule: Never say yes to anything non-urgent immediately—check your calendar and energy capacity first
- Why every yes when you mean no betrays yourself and builds resentment (worse for relationships than an honest no)
- The relationship audit framework: Five critical questions to identify which connections nourish versus deplete you
🔑 Key Insights:
"Your energy is your life force, and when you protect it, you protect your health, your relationships, your capacity to serve and to be fully alive."
"Every time you say yes when you mean no, you are betraying yourself and you are building resentment towards the other person. That's worse for the relationship than an honest no."
"When someone pushes on your boundary, that's information. People who genuinely care about you will respect your limits. People who only value what you give them will resist your boundaries."
"Your body knows before your mind even rationalizes it. Please learn to trust that."
"Resentful giving helps nobody. Good boundaries make space for aligned, joyful giving."
💡 Action Steps:
- Rate your current energy level on 1-10 scale right now—then track how many times you feel noticeable energy drain today
- Practice the body check-in before agreeing to anything: Does it feel expansive and aligned (yes) or constricted with dread (no)?
- Implement Week 1: Build awareness of what's draining and what's restoring throughout your day
- Week 2: Start with ONE boundary—your biggest energy drain—and protect it fiercely
- Practice "the clear no" phrases: "I don't have the capacity for that right now" and "That doesn't work for me" (no explanation needed)
🎧 Perfect for: Anyone running on empty by day's end, people-pleasers who say yes when they mean no, highly sensitive people exhausted by environments and relationships, anyone spending more time managing other people's emotions than their own, or those who've forgotten what having energy actually feels like.
📚 Mentioned Resources:
- The Sanctuary Course (available in academy)—creating energetically supportive physical environments
- Temple Grounds—Qigong and restorative practices
- Monthly Reading: "The Gene Keys" (large reference book, review mid-January)
- Gut Testing Options: $199 test only, $299 includes Jeff Bland's Gut Healing Masterclass
🌐 Connect with Dr. Shojai:
- Website: theurbanmonk.com
- Books: The Urban Monk, Inner Alchemy, The Art of Stopping Time, Focus
- Documentaries: Interconnected, Gateway to Health, Trauma, Conscious Parenting
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