Happy Brain

Join us on a joy-filled journey as we spread happiness through emotional wellness. Discover the science-backed tools and practices to cultivate emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and self-regulation. Uncover the joy within and experience the positive impact on your relationships, career, and overall well-being. Let's embark on this transformative adventure together!

Here are key topics we discuss:

About our Guest

Ashley Williams has dedicated her career to helping individuals and organizations increase their overall happiness and satisfaction in life. As an emotional wellness advocate, Ashley has shared her insights and strategies with audiences around the world.

She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clymb, an emotional wellness software for school-age children. She is the 2022 Culture Builder of the Year for Baltimore, which honors her work to make children’s happiness a policy priority. Ashley’s published work has appeared in EdPost, and in journals at Cornell University, Howard University and Southern Illinois University. She has been featured on NPR, the Baltimore Sun, Champions of Wellness, and Technicaly, among many others. She is represented by CCMNT Speakers.

Ashley is an avid meditation practitioner who is passionate about sharing the transformative power of mindfulness with others and believes that it has the ability to improve the quality of life for anyone who is willing to commit to the practice. She is a student of Swami Nityananda of the Awake Yoga Meditation community.

Resources

Welcome back, folks! It's time for another exciting episode of Happy Brain with your host, Sean Bloch. Today, we have the incredible Lauren St George joining us to talk about injecting creativity and fun into our lives. The goal? To help us discover what's next in our journey, whether it's a new job, a different relationship, or even a fresh chapter of health.

Now, mental health is a topic we always touch upon here, and today we dive deep into how we can embark on a new chapter of mental well-being. Where do we want to be? Do we strive for a greater sense of relaxation and peace or perhaps a shift in our mindset? It's essential to envision our destination and set that as our mental health goal.

But here's the fun part: once we set that goal, it's like magic! Suddenly, all the tools and techniques we discuss on the show start popping up, just like when you decide to buy a new car and suddenly see your dream car everywhere. Meditation, breathing exercises, playfulness—they all come together to improve our mental health.

So get ready for a value-packed episode that will frame your mind towards better health and mental well-being. Lauren St. George shares her wisdom and a specific program that will guide you towards better mental health and, of course, a happier brain. Cheers to that!

About our Guest

Lauren St George is a coach and a consultant. She helps companies and individuals navigate change, overcome big hairy challenges and imagine truly creative solutions. Lauren is the founder of What's Next, a one of a kind, highly engaging program that helps people figure out their best next chapter. Often this need for change is triggered by a major life event (divorce, grief, empty nester, retirement) or feeling stuck and unsure on what to do next (career, purpose, happiness). At the heart of it we are all looking to live a more fulfilling life and Lauren has helped hundreds of people find theirs.

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Hello there-

Grateful to my brother, sister-in-law, friend Rachel and my two nephews for an amazing and touching two days. I went to Santa Cruz to mainly see my nephews play ball but it went so much deeper than that.  This is a audio/video journal about baseball, the love of family and the serenity of Santa Cruz coast in making my brain very happy.  It is a departure from our regular episode, but I can not be more proud to share this with you.  

Sean

Host of Happy Brain

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Sean Bloch, the host of Happy Brain was interviewed by ChatGPT!  It was one of the first times ChatGPT has hosted a Mental Health podcast.  In this personal conversation about Happy Brain and the importance of Mental Health, here are some of the questions asked by our guest host ChatGPT.

What inspired you to create a podcast that explores the fun side of mental health?

How do you define mental health and why is it important to prioritize it in our lives?

Can you share some of your favorite mental health hacks or tips that have worked for you?

How can we incorporate more fun and joy into our mental health journey?

What are some potential benefits of prioritizing mental health and incorporating more fun and joy into our lives?

About our Guest Host ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI, trained on a massive amount of text to be able to generate human-like responses to a wide variety of prompts. With its advanced natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT has become a popular tool for research, language understanding, and even entertainment. As a guest host on the Happy Brain podcast, ChatGPT provides a unique perspective on the importance of mental health and the role of technology in promoting wellness.

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Did you know that you can improve your mood by paying attention to colors?

Do you know how you can use color to calm your nervous system?  

Psychologist Rachel Awes shares how dressing in bold colors became a part of her life and how it has helped her to be more authentic.

Here are Key Takeaways:

About our Guest

Rachel Awes is a psychologist, illustrated self-help author, art playgroundist, and clothing ambassador, who loves listening to the beauty in people. Our conversation is inspired by her newest colorful personal growth book and she shares helpful and delightful encouragement from it!

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Summary

About our Guest Phil Barth

"On August 5, 2015 I took a surprise visit to the cardiac wing of Bethesda North Hospital in Cincinnati.

I suffered what was labeled a "small" heart attack. I remember thinking "if this is small I'd hate to see medium."

Per the advice of my Doctor I changed my diet, started exercising more and decided to work on controlling stress.

For the past five years I have published a daily list: Great things that happened today. Each day I celebrate the great things that happened. Since I started this journey I've met some fascinating people, discovered new recipes and celebrated life. And I've laughed a lot.

I even wrote a book on the subject - it's an International Best Sort of Seller (it went to #1 on free books when I released it... that's sort of a sale).

For my 15 minutes of fame, I was on the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" in 2003."

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Do you want to stay sane while navigating the online world of dating?  Have you been Love Bombed?  Are you tired of sex but not finding those meaningful relationships?  Do you need advice on setting boundaries?  If yes to any of these questions, this episode is for you!

Key Points:

About our Guest

Erin is a single mom, teacher, musician, and highly sensitive person. Erin believes that learning how to take care of ourselves is the key to healthy relationships with others, and she's devoted the past decade to studying and practicing how to better love and support herself and her loved ones.

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Do you want to learn how intuition and clairvoyance can help improve your self-awareness and mental health? Do you want to learn from a live reading by a clairvoyant healer?

About today’s episode:

About our Guest

Djali Vesela is a clairvoyant master healer and mindful energy coach. Using cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, compassion, and clairvoyant studies, Djali helps personal development enthusiasts discover their intuition and improve mental health through energy and mindfulness tools.

Djali has changed the lives of stressed executives and entrepreneurs by healing their insomnia and body pains, guiding them to true intuitive power, and teaching them to find happiness and purpose. With her signature energy clearing group and clairvoyant intuition workshops & courses she supports her clients through the pitfalls of being more intuitive so that they are in alignment with their purpose in their personal and professional lives.

Djali’s clients have included high-ranking individuals who work for Fortune 500 companies such as Guerlain, Council of Europe, and Google. She has partnered with Gaia TV star Dr. Lauren Cielo in his Golden Rose Psychic Services, teaching clairvoyant and energy clearing and healing classes for the internationally renowned school.

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"When I first came to mindfulness and meditation, I thought it was you had to sit with a very quiet mind, you couldn't have any thoughts. And I was thinking, how is this going to happen? And I've learned over time that it's really just allowing the thoughts to move back and forth, recognizing that they're there, I almost kind of wave at them and say, oh, hey, how are you?"

In this episode, we feature Erik DeRosa, a former financial analyst from New York who found peace and mindfulness in the mountains of Colorado. Erik shares his story of how he left the fast-paced city life to become a ski instructor and how skiing helped him beat stress and anxiety.

Key points:

Through his journey, Erik emphasizes the importance of living in the moment and finding peace in nature. He shares his tips and insights on how to get the most out of your time on the mountain and how skiing can help you find balance and inner peace. Join us as we explore Erik's journey to mindful skiing and learn how to bring mindfulness into your own life.

About our Guest
Erik DaRosa, known by friends as “Yoda,” is the Founder and CEO of From Survivor to Thriver, a mental health advocate and speaker and Co-host of the popular From Survivor to Thriver podcast. Through his work, Erik is upending the front-end of the mental health space and building a bridge between those who seek resources and those who provide both help and hope. Each week on his podcast, he tackles different mental health topics through honest and relatable "kitchen table" conversations with real people who are helping to shatter mental health stigmas and find their voices. He aims to normalize discussions around mental health topics and remind his audience they are not alone, there is strength in community and "it's perfectly ok to not always be ok."

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The AI Episode

Like so many, I have been fascinated by the emergence of ChatGBT, an accessible AI that can write poetry, recommend travel plans and yes generate text for a Podcast.  Combining this with other tools, such as Descript and Pictory, I created this AI Mental Health Podcast.  This is a total experiment and I would love your feedback, good or bad and what these kinds of tools will mean going forward.

In this week's episode of Happy Brain, host Sean Bloch takes a step outside of his usual fare and ventures into the world of spiritual clearing. Joining him as a guest is Alida Morrill, an expert in the field with over 12 years of experience helping people get and stay balanced.

The episode is an experiential and hands-on journey through a spiritual clearing process, with Alida guiding listeners through the process of ridding their minds of stinking thinking and clearing their energy of contaminants. While the topic may be a departure from the norm for Happy Brain, it is certainly thought-provoking and a must-listen for those interested in exploring alternative approaches to mental wellness.

However, it should be noted that there is a trigger warning for the topic of suicide mentioned in the episode. The guest does talk about the tragic suicide of her ex-husband, but the episode itself does not address the issue.

Author of the Calm Code, Dr. Annie White, shares these simple, yet powerful stress busting tips:

About Our Guest

Dr. Annie White is the author of The Calm Code: Transform Your Mind, Change Your Life. She developed a revolutionary step-by-step method to minimize stress and maximize happiness based on the science of neuroplasticity. Annie has a Doctorate in Eastern Medicine.

Resources

“How would your life change if you were an exceptional communicator? There's so much fear and stigma and stress around communication, whereas for me, communication is sending a video message to somebody that you really love spending time with.   It's ordering food at a restaurant and making the waiter for once in that shift feel really happy. It's about making new friends, about raising our families. And our children, and  once we realize that we get a lot more motivated to practice all of this,”  - Brenden Kurmarasamy

Why is it so important to be a good communicator in terms of your mental health? We talk with Brenden Kumarasamy, an expert communication coach and teacher about ways to set boundaries in important relationships in your life for better mental health!

About our Guest
Brenden Kumarasamy the is founder of MasterTalk, he coaches ambitious executives & entrepreneurs to become top 1% communicators in their industry. He also has a popular YouTube channel called MasterTalk, with the goal of providing free access to communication tools for everyone in the world.

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Take a pen and paper and set a time for 5 minutes.  Start writing, preferably in cursive, and then do some quick reflection.  That simple technique has helped make my brain happier by connecting to internal messages. It helps stop the thinking and connect with my heart! Thanks to meditation teacher, Hema Vyas for helping me with this practice.  Try it today!

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Today we're talking Gratitude Games!   Games are fun, right? We also know that gratefulness is scientifically proven to make your brain happier.  So what if you combine these two things together? Games and gratitude? A perfect combination to make your brain a little happier!

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How can starting with a 60 second jog lead to running an ultra marathon and beat depression? Join us as we chat how Nita  has made her brain happier by combining running and meditation. She has run marathons and ultramarathons in her 40's and 50's.

Nita is a well published author. She's published three books, including Depression is a Moving Target and her latest book we talk about is Make Every Move a Meditation. You will learnhow she found a way to combine two pillars of mental health to improve her overall mental health.

About our Guest
Nita Sweeney is the award-winning wellness author of the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and co-creator of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration & Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving. Her next book, Make Every Move a Meditation, was a finalist in the International Book Awards. A certified meditation leader, mental health advocate, ultramarathoner, and former assistant to writing practice originator Natalie Goldberg, Nita founded the groups Mind, Mood, and Movement to support well-being through meditation, exercise, and writing practice, and The Writer’s Mind, to share using writing practice to produce publishable work. Nita also publishes the writing resource newsletter, Write Now Columbus. Nita lives in central Ohio with her husband, Ed, and their yellow Labrador retriever, Scarlet.

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Today, we're talking about intuition. How do you listen to yourself in this world where things are going fast and furious? How do you pause, stop and actually listen to what's inside. Those are some subjects I talk about today with our guest,  Amanda Kate. Amanda is  a kinesiologist, a mentor, mother and author.  She wrote Divine Messy Human, a Spiritual Guide to Prioritizing Internal Truth over External Influence.

About our Guest

Amanda Kate is a Kinesiologist, Mentor, Mother and more. Author of 'Divine. Messy. Human. A Spiritual Guide to Prioritising Internal Truth over External Influence', she released the book with the information, tips and practices that have helped her move from self-loathing to self-acceptance, self-love and self-empowerment. A recovering people-pleaser and self-flagellator, she walks the path straddling the Divine and Messy daily. Always growing, developing and learning new ways of being to, hopefully, one day leave the Earth better than she found it. Amanda Kate helps people to regain their vitality, smashing through their internal glass ceiling and limitations to find new levels of health, vitality and abundance. She also works with business owners to increase their vibration and attract greater wealth and prosperity. Amanda Kate lives in Melbourne, Australia with her twin flame, her children, his children and a dog named Zeus.

Today we're talking about Holiday games.   Games are fun, right? We love games. Games are good for your mental state. We know that. Do you know what else is really good for your mental state? Gratitude! We also know that gratefulness is scientifically proven to make your brain happier.  So what if you combine these two things together? Games and gratitude? A perfect combination to make your brain a little happier!   

Resources 

Summary

At 23, Danielle Matthews was hit by a drunk driver and suffered a serious brain injury.

We try to keep things lighter on the show, but sometimes you have to get a bit heavy to even get to the point where you can use tools and techniques. Today, we focus on how to get  over the hump of a serious mental health period. This is a point where you're willing to search for helpful tools and techniques. From there we talk about the powerful tool of Yoga Nidra.  You will learn from Dianne’s expertise on Yoga Nidra as she puts us all through a powerful exercise to make our brain happier.

Resources Mentioned in the Show

How do you find positive people in your life?  I speak with Afsheen Shah about finding people, places and events that can really make a difference in your life!  We cover how to get started by filling up your social feed with positive influences and role models.  From there, we discuss how personal development conferences play a role in finding good people in your life.  Join us as we talk about how positive people can make your brain happier!

About Our Guest - Afsheen Shah

Afsheen Shah is a master life coach who works with high achieving women who are struggling with finding deeper meaning in their life. She helps them create fulfillment on a personal and professional level by helping them optimize their mental and physical well-being so they can bring their mind, body and spirit in alignment.

◼️  Instagram:@afsheenshah

Connect with us! ---- Connect with Happy Brain and Sean Bloch

◼️ Show Instagram @happybrainfm
◼️ Instagram:@seanstevebloch
◼️ Twitter: @seanstevebloch

Resources Mentioned in the Show

The Happy Brain Podcast went mobile with a beautiful Camel ride at sunset. This touched on being outdoors, the healing properties of animals and being present and grateful for special moments. Enjoy!

On Location

Today's episode is all about getting up and getting going!  Today on World Mental Health Day, we revisit morning pages.  We explore a method to write, ideate and meditate to get a better start to your day.

For Emergencies 

Call 911 or 988 in the US or Your Local Emergency Hotline

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Today's episode is all about sleep! Yes, sleep. Especially when you're having a hard time doing it. You lay down after a long day with lots of thoughts in your head, a lot of anxiety and you just can't fall asleep.  What if there was a way that you could use a type of yoga to make it easy to fall asleep and make your brain happier? 📍 

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Today we're talking about flow. We're not talking about the Flo from those progressive insurance commercials. We're talking about the all-encompassing flow that takes over your body when you get into something that you really, really are into!  Do you have an activity, a sport, an artistic endeavor that really captivates you? Dive right into this short episode and you might just find a way to make your brain happier

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(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

Do you want some tips on how you can get started with Gratefulness?

In this episode of Happy Brain, you will get practical, actionable tips on how you can incorporate gratefulness into your life.

We will cover:

◼️ The Person, Place and Experience Gratitude Method
◼️Tips in using  a Gratitude Journal
◼️ Using Slack for Gratitude Accountability
◼️ Listening to Gratefulness Meditations (Props to Jeremy Zinzan on Insight Timer for a great one!)
◼️ Using the Tooth Brush Method

Show Resources

Are you just having one of those crappy days?  You can’t get going in the morning or you just had a frustrating meeting at work. Maybe you get home and want to just lay on the couch.  What if you could make a simple list of some mood boosters, a list things that make you feel good and even make your brain happier? 

Show Resources

Cow Cuddling involves meeting, sitting with, cuddling, and scratching hand-raised cows on a farm. The slower heart rate and warm body temperature of the cows induces a slowing of our own heart rate, as well as the release of Oxytocin, our social bonding hormone.  Virtually experience in the episode of Happy Brain an Animal Rescue Farm and meet a number of beautiful, hand-raised Therapy Cows (incl. Amy, and Sally) to enjoy both the scientifically proven physiological benefits of the activity as well as the relaxing effects of being outside in the open air on our scenic farm surrounded by tropical rainforest.  -----------------------

Cow Cuddling Co. is currently fundraising to purchase the offspring of our beloved Therapy Cows.

How can telling your story benefit your mental health?  

Paul Henczel is a Storytelling Expert. He has told his stories on TV, Radio and the TEDx stage.   Learn How his story helped Paul go from an injured mill worker to an international speaker and how storytelling can help you.  Can telling your story make your brain happier?

Free Storytelling Resources

Welcome to Happy Brain. My name is Sean Bloch, a big fan of the show and now host! I love quick and easy ways to help our mental wellness. In today's episode, I will share how one tip by Dr. Erin Sepic can quickly calm you down, lower that anxiety and make your brain a little happier.

About Sean Bloch

https://linktr.ee/seanstevebloch

Links

Dr. Erin Sepic

Speak into the ears that are hearing you. This will make you feel powerful and effective (and it just might make your brain happy)!

Struggle with trying to BALANCE everything? Maybe you need to tap into the "other me's". It just might make your brain...happy.

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This quick routine before bed could help "drain your brain" and maybe (just maybe) make your brain...happy.

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What if I told you that rubbing your face, maybe doing some yoga on it, might make your brain...happy?

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If you struggle with resting, taking time off, or feeling GUILTY that you are not "doing more", this episode is for...YOU.

Want to add MORE joy to your life? What if I told you that failing would do the trick? In fact...it would be FUN!?

Masculine energy. Whew. Over the past few years, there has been a lot of emphasis on celebrating and raising feminine energy which I am all for! But today we are going to shine a light on something that may not be talked about a ton but is just as important. How do we nurture and encourage healthy masculine energy in the world? In our partners? Today’s guest says…this just might make your brain happy.

Did you know you could get a hug HERE? This tip (just might) make your brain happy (hint..bring a lifejacket)

Is there a way to control your dreams? If so...is it good for your mental health?

Can sitting in a dark theater or maybe your living room for two hours make your brain happy?  Cinema Therapy: Is It Really A Thing?

Is there a way to manifest easier? Faster? 

Is there a way we can LEARN to be more charismatic? Will it make our brain happy?

Mental health is a BROAD term. Is there an easier way to understand it?

Want an interesting and fun way to relieve stress? Try this. It just might make your brain...happy.

How could using your WHOLE brain, help you get more done!?

This one small thing may be easy to overlook but could TOTALLY brighten your day (and someone else's!)

Do you, or someone you know, struggle with anxiety? Did you know taking a big glass of water and gargling…yes gargling…might help ease that feeling of anxiety and maybe…just maybe make your brain happy?