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Spirit · 36 episodes

Intuition & Spirituality for entrepreneurs

Ask a dozen guests where intuition comes from and you'll get physics, neurology, and theology in the same breath — and none of them think they're contradicting each other. Dean Radin points to decades of random-number-generator and precognition data suggesting intention measurably shifts probability. Deborah Rozman points to heart-rate-variability patterns and an electromagnetic field generated by every heartbeat. Chelsea Horton and Sara Gilbert point to the nervous system itself, calling intuition 'somatic intelligence' that arrives before the mind can name it. Caroline Cory and Don Estes push furthest into consciousness-as-fundamental-reality territory. The disagreement isn't whether intuition is real — everyone here treats it as real and trainable — it's about vocabulary: is this quantum, physiological, or spiritual? The show doesn't force a resolution, because the practical advice converges regardless of which model you pick.

The recurring claim, stated in a dozen different frames, is that the body knows things before the analytical mind does, and most entrepreneurs have been trained to ignore that channel entirely. Fleet Maull says the body sends far more signals to the brain than the reverse. Sara Gilbert says trust 'lives below the neck' while most people operate purely from logic above it. Sachin Patel calls breath the steering wheel of the nervous system. Jordan Harcourt-Hughes calls it resonance — what vibrates as true in the body regardless of whether it's rationally explicable. None of them are arguing against logic; they're arguing against logic-only decision-making, and several explicitly recommend pairing intuitive signal with verbal, rational justification rather than replacing one with the other.

Where the conversations get more provocative is in treating altered states — breathwork-induced hypoxia, psilocybin journeys, near-death experience — not as escapism but as maintenance tools for people whose default mode is overwork. Niraj Naik's breath-hold research produced Cambridge-documented experiences comparable to psychedelics. The Journeymen Collective works specifically with high-achieving executives using mushroom journeys as what they call a 'house cleaning mechanism.' Ashley Black's near-death experience reshaped how she runs a $200 million company. The throughline: founders who never interrupt their own operating pattern don't get new information, spiritual or otherwise. Interruption, however it's induced, is the mechanism.

What holds across every conversation

  • Pair intuitive signal with rational justification rather than choosing one over the other — several guests explicitly describe following gut instinct and then articulating it in logical terms before acting.
  • Treat breath as a direct lever on nervous-system state: paced breathing or breath-hold practice can shift you from sympathetic to parasympathetic mode in under five minutes, no meditation experience required.
  • If you're using manifestation language, audit whether you're actually initiating and following through — for most people, setting an intention without concrete action is the failure point, not the universe.
  • Build in deliberate interruption of your default operating pattern (breathwork, psilocybin work with trained guides, extended silence) rather than waiting for burnout or crisis to force the interruption on you.
  • Notice bodily sensation before analyzing the thought attached to it — several therapeutic approaches here argue the sensation-thought loop runs in that order, not the reverse, so somatic-first processing gets to resolution faster.
  • Don't confuse thick skin with health — guests in the emotional-processing space repeatedly note that people who seem unaffected by stress are often just masking it with a different defense mechanism that compounds silently.

Intuition as a Trainable Signal

Multiple guests reframe intuition not as a mystical gift but as a bodily sense that atrophies from disuse and strengthens with attention.

Everyone's living above the neck, but trust is below the neck. So we all live here and we think that our body's useful purpose is just to carry our head around. But all the magic and all the knowing and the intuition and the gut feeling, it's below the neck. So can we trust that a little bit more?

Sara Gilbert: Intuition, Language & Leading with Courage · 5:42· listen →

I say that intuition is actually somatic intelligence. It's like your body's ability to attune and be present with a situation. And it's like the wisdom that comes before your mind can even make sense of it.

Somatic Therapy for Entrepreneurs with Chelsea Horton · 33:59· listen →

Resonance for me is what vibrates truthfully in my body. So for me, if I resonate with something, I'm connecting with it holistically... and it is an intuitive feeling because it isn't based on one thing or the other.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity · 14:58· listen →

Intuition is simply an expansion of all of your physical senses. Sight, smell, taste, hearing, knowing— our brain— feeling— skin. So it's what we've done is over thousands of years diminished our capacity to read energy and to receive information from anything except our core senses.

Teresa Wornstaff: Using Intuition to Grow Your Business · 12:58· listen →

One thing broadly, our body knows, our body knows what we need. Our body has tremendous wisdom. The body knows how to heal itself. The body has all kinds of extraordinary abilities, which science is just beginning to understand, right? So the body is a tremendous source of wisdom and knowledge.

Somatic Mindfulness for Entrepreneurs with Fleet Maull · 22:38· listen →

The Science Behind Mind-Matter Claims

Researchers here treat psi, coherence, and intention effects as testable phenomena, not articles of faith, and report data that at minimum complicates a purely materialist model of decision-making.

Probably the longest running series was at Princeton University. It was called the PEAR Lab, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory. So they used the same random number generator for a sequence of experiments over 12 years... When you look at the results, the cumulative results over the 12 years, it's very clear that probabilistically people can push the system in those— in that way.

Dr. Dean Radin: Consciousness, Psi Science & Intuition · 25:53· listen →

Yeah. So in the 1970s, a former colleague did an experiment with executives at different companies. And so he used as one of the variables of interest, the degree of profit in the company. He gave all of them a precognition test. And he found a significant positive correlation between profit in the company and how well they did on the precognition test.

Dr. Dean Radin: Consciousness, Psi Science & Intuition · 37:43· listen →

So we call it heart coherence, heart-brain coherence, and there's been over 500 research papers now published on it since it was first published in the American Journal of Cardiology by independent researchers. So it's, it's a real key state for us to get a handle on our moods, emotions, and our health and well-being.

Dr. Deborah Rozman: Heart-Brain Coherence for Resilience · 2:26· listen →

So for those who don't know, haven't seen the film, working with scientists, you create baselines and you do it over time and you repeat it and we have controls. So we did do that. But of course, in the film, we show the part. And so what was fascinating was when we work with the DNA, the idea, the intention was to increase the electrical conductivity.

Consciousness, Intention & Healing with Caroline Cory · 11:58· listen →

Breathwork and Somatic States

Breath and body-based practice show up repeatedly as the fastest, most controllable entry point into altered states and nervous-system regulation, no substances required.

So intermittent hypoxia is the magic of breathwork. When you hold your breath for 60 to 90 seconds, you invoke a positive state, a positive stress on the body, and it creates an adaptive change to having less oxygen in the body.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 9:45· listen →

When you hold it to as long as I was saying, intermittent hypoxia, you produce ADOSE. ADOSE standing for anandamide, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. So this makes you feel naturally high.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 30:37· listen →

The breath is the steering wheel of the nervous system... it literally is grabbing your nervous system by the steering wheel and guiding it in the direction you want it to go in. So if I need more focus, there's a breath for that. If I need more strength, there's a breath for that.

The Doctor of the Future Is You with Sachin Patel · 37:26· listen →

You'll notice that your resting heart rate— it's measurable— your resting heart rate will drop by about 10 points after doing 2, 3 minutes of this breathing, which is like amazing if you think about it. It's faster than taking a Xanax.

Dr. Mao Shing Ni on Energy, Qi, and Longevity Secrets · 33:53· listen →

I think it's really our superpower. And not only that, we all have kind of our individual superpowers, but it's our access to our own superpower. It's the portal into the best we have and the best we can do through presence. It's just simply being present.

Somatic Mindfulness for Entrepreneurs with Fleet Maull · 15:39· listen →

Psychedelics and Altered States for High Achievers

Journeys — mushroom-assisted or otherwise — are presented as tools for founders who are successful on paper but stuck, not as recreational detours.

It's a purpose-driven journey that you're not just coming in to experience the medicine. There's a purpose for your stepping into and on this path.

Conscious Leadership Through Psychedelic Journeys · 8:44· listen →

The mushroom is a bit of a house cleaning mechanism that helps you to make decisions and choices to move forward. So the vessel, the human vessel, is sort of like stronger and cleaner as you move forward in decision making.

Conscious Leadership Through Psychedelic Journeys · 13:07· listen →

The responses were as profound or more profound than the kind of psychedelic insights you get, um, like oneness, connection, feeling like you've been channeled by God and all that stuff, as you would from a big dose of psychedelics.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 15:31· listen →

Did I want to come back? And I was like, no, like this, this is amazing, this feeling. And I heard voices that told me that I needed to go back, that I had children and that I had a purpose.

Ashley Black: Necessity, Near-Death & High Vibration Living · 4:11· listen →

Spiritual Frameworks for Business Decisions

Whether the language is Vedanta, mediumship, Human Design, or 'the spiritual is scientific,' guests use spiritual frameworks as practical decision architecture, not just belief systems.

The more selfish you are, the more the mind is stressed. This is the law of life. It is selfishness which causes stress. So if the goal of your organization, your mission, your purpose is something beyond your selfish interest, immediately the mind becomes calm. And this is the secret which nobody knows. No business school teaches you that.

Success Without Stress: Vedanta for Entrepreneurs · 29:33· listen →

It's my body that will get this done. It's my body that will attract a good mate, get me love. And the truth is your body is an effect of your mind. So you've got to start with what I've come to call source and then spirit, because that spirit is really who you are.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf · 4:38· listen →

We are spirit living in a physical body. So our spirituality is like, we are spirits having a human experience. We are not humans having a spiritual experience.

Lindsay Mastrogiavanni: Spiritual Entrepreneurship & Mediumship · 37:09· listen →

It's more of setting that intention, going into space and just stepping in and relaxing and trusting yourself, trusting the conversation and knowing that the right people in that moment will always come find you.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 6:32· listen →

It really all boils down to the fact that the universe is a quantum universe and it goes way beyond just frequency and phase and amplitude, and it all becomes quantum-oriented... everything is, uh, related to like a black hole. And in the center of the black hole is a singularity, and that singularity has all of the potentials that could happen in that particular circumstance.

Don Estes: How Words and Waveforms Shape Reality · 14:58· listen →

Manifestation, Reframed

Several guests push back on pop-culture 'manifestation' and replace it with something closer to intention plus disciplined follow-through, warning against passive wishing.

When you want to manifest something, you want to identify what you want and why you want it. From those two fundamentals, you begin to daydream. You begin to envision what that looks like when it occurs, and when you envision it, you begin to infuse it with emotions. And emotions are fuel for intention.

Teresa Wornstaff: Using Intuition to Grow Your Business · 28:24· listen →

So that isn't in alignment with quote unquote manifestation is that, oh, I'm going to set this intent and I'm going to initiate it. And you know, for some people that's just initiating it with a certain word or a certain practice or what have you. And then it's going to magically work. Well, unless you are a manifester and you're doing it in a way that isn't aligned with your design as a manifester.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders · 32:03· listen →

If I have the thought I'm going to be successful, I get to live a life of someday I'm going to be successful. That's not success. But if I live the life I am successful, because if I am successful, then the physical world, my physical life has to reflect that back to me.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf · 31:57· listen →

I hold my vision. This is my goal. And I say, this or better. And I keep working towards my goal, but I'm always open to other opportunities and other guidance.

Emotional Intelligence & Manifestation with Randy Lyman · 27:15· listen →

The companion guide

Reading about intuition & spirituality is one thing. Changing it is another.

John’s companion guide turns what these conversations cover into something you can actually work through.

More moments worth hearing

Everything else these conversations turned up on this subject.

It was in 2010 I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis, and that's what left me housebound for almost a year, shitting blood like 40 times a day. It was hell.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 2:20

Now, what they've shown is that when you get a constant supply of oxygen going to your mitochondria, right, the mitochondria get fat and lazy. So for most people, they're just constantly feeding food and oxygen to their mitochondria without any breaks, and they get fat and lazy and then die.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 13:00

When you hold your breath, right, for a long enough time, we create intermittent hypoxia and you reduce the oxygen supply to that mitochondria. You will make that mitochondria wake up and go, oh my God, I'm running out of oxygen. I need to do a spring clean.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs · 13:00

Burnout isn't about doing too much. It's doing what's not true for you for too long. And so alignment feels different, right? There's still effort, but there's clarity of direction and growth.

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout · 0:00

Your soul should be the chief of the energy that your soul's leading from, because most people, have you noticed, lead from the outside and then address strategy, as opposed to the inside and out.

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout · 5:43

What's fascinating is we all avoid those discomforting topics because they're not comfortable for us, or they're what we actually came to learn, but we avoid them.

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout · 9:19

Deserving isn't earned, it's remembered, right? And so nobody in that room cares about you. Nobody in that room thinks about you. They're thinking the same thing whoever this person is thinking. They're thinking the same thing. What if they find out?

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout · 26:32

Anxiety tells me when they show up is that they're either living in the past or the future. They're not present right now.

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout · 31:20

I can have a crappy day and go get a massage and feel good for 24 hours, and the next day, if I did not address that crappy whatever's going on inside of me, it's back. So I can do things to feel good, but they're not solving the internal.

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout · 45:15

I believe every single human being has the beautiful power within them to transform, to come home to themselves, as I like to say. And so my role is really to provide the safety, the love, the education, and the tools that people need in order to kind of cross that bridge into self-transformation.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 2:25

Everything is a choice. Truly, everything is a choice to wake up, to say yes, to say no.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 6:12

I said, okay, well, I see the divorce and I raise you. I'm quitting the job, selling the house. I'm gonna go on this travel sabbatical and just, you know, kind of my own little Eat, Pray, Love adventure because I knew that I could handle whatever came my way.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 14:50

It's really hard for judgment and curiosity to coexist, 'cause if we can truly embody curiosity and say, huh, where does that pattern come from? Why do I think that? What am I afraid is going to happen? Then that's where we're really opening a door rather than judging something and closing a door.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 16:19

I'm not going to go into the gym on day 1 and try to lift 100 pounds off the rack. You know, I'm going to go with a 5 or 10-pound weight. And then over time, I'm going to slowly increase the amount of weight that I can lift until I get to that 100-pound weight.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 22:30

I also really love the one, worrying is like a rocking chair. It'll pass the time, but it won't get you anywhere.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban · 34:58

You know, we move, journal, breathe, meditate to tone mental muscles, which are presence, courage, gratitude, confidence, and resilience. And within each mental muscle, there are different skills that you can cultivate and exercise in order to build that strength.

Building Mental Muscles with Olivia Bowser · 11:05

And it was interesting when we started doing classes at Liberate, the curriculum would ask people to write down like 10 things they liked about themselves, and a lot of people couldn't write down a single thing.

Building Mental Muscles with Olivia Bowser · 13:53

I think it's even harder too for younger generations with social media. Like, even if you're not being told you're not enough, you're looking at somebody else accomplish something and you're saying, oh, I couldn't have done that. There's like, it's just constant comparison, which really can create negative self-worth and negative self-talk and all of that. So stay off social media.

Building Mental Muscles with Olivia Bowser · 16:27

Imagine you want that person to have it be 80% positive or 70% positive. You have to start changing the way you talk to yourself, cuz of course you're gonna have imposter syndrome if everything you say to yourself is like, oh, you're not good enough. Oh, she's smarter than you. Oh, that outfit's better. Oh, you shouldn't be here. Oh, what are you doing? Like, of course you're not gonna feel good.

Building Mental Muscles with Olivia Bowser · 20:00

Or the other one I love is your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.

Building Mental Muscles with Olivia Bowser · 23:58

Every episode on intuition & spirituality

36 conversations, oldest to newest.

Niraj Naik on Breathwork, Hypoxia & Natural Highs

Intermittent hypoxia from breath holds triggers mitochondrial renewal and stem cell release, improving cellular energy and healing.

Become the CEO of Your Soul: Daune M. Thompson on Burnout

Burnout comes from doing what's not true for you for too long, not from doing too much.

Cognitive & Embodied Awareness with Carissa Karban

Living safely and checking boxes for success often leads to burnout rather than fulfillment.

Building Mental Muscles with Olivia Bowser

Mental fitness can be trained like physical fitness through five 'mental muscles': presence, courage, gratitude, confidence, and resilience.

Burnout as a Mirror: Karenna Soto on Somatic Healing

Burnout is not just physical exhaustion but a mirror showing where you're dishonoring your unique capacity or abandoning parts of yourself.

Jordan Harcourt-Hughes: Intuition, Resonance & Creativity

Entrepreneurs over-rely on logical, scheduled thinking and need to balance it with intuitive, embodied ways of knowing.

Dr. Gary Sprouse: Realistic Optimism to Beat Stress

Worry, guilt, and regret are side effects of the human skill of envisioning the future, not separate flaws to be eliminated.

Emotional Healing for Entrepreneurs w/ Benjy Sherer

Trauma is the wound as it exists right now, not the past event, so healing means addressing current defense mechanisms rather than re-analyzing history.

Emotional Intelligence & Manifestation with Randy Lyman

Business success without emotional awareness leaves entrepreneurs unfulfilled, even after reaching high levels of financial achievement.

Phil Neil: Emotional Mastery & Entrepreneurial Reinvention

Three emotions—uncertainty, fear, and unworthiness—derail entrepreneurial decision-making and push founders into a 'shadow' failure zone.

Success Without Stress: Vedanta for Entrepreneurs

Stress comes not from desire itself but from losing control over desire, which turns ambition into greed or addiction.

From Burnout to Balance: Dr. Lynise Green on Wellness

Deferring self-care until after success is achieved is unsustainable, and prioritizing wellness actually improves performance and decision-making.

Lindsay Mastrogiavanni: Spiritual Entrepreneurship & Mediumship

Conscious entrepreneurship means building a business grounded in your why, mission, vision, and values rather than external expectations.

Dandapani: Training Focus and Awareness as an Entrepreneur

Awareness, not the mind itself, is what moves, and entrepreneurs can train it to stay anchored in a chosen 'home' area instead of reacting to their environment.

Integrative Medicine for Entrepreneurs with Carolyn McAuliffe

Integrative medicine combines conventional evidence-based care with alternative approaches like acupuncture, massage, and nutrition, while functional medicine seeks root causes rather than just treating symptoms.

Sara Gilbert: Intuition, Language & Leading with Courage

Potentiality is the invisible expansion beyond what we consider our maximum potential, and most people treat their ceiling as a stopping point rather than a floor.

Dr. Deborah Rozman: Heart-Brain Coherence for Resilience

Heart rate variability patterns shift between jagged (stress) and smooth coherent waveforms (positive emotion), and this coherence synchronizes the heart and brain to improve clarity, intuition, and executive function.

Dr. Jax Black: Redefining Success Through Joy

Joy, not deficits or trauma, is our natural born state, and fear of judgment or failure is taught by others rather than innate.

Mel McSherry: Human Design & Mental Profitability for Founders

Entrepreneurs should prioritize mental and emotional profitability before financial goals, or financial success becomes unsustainable and leads to burnout.

Dr. Lynn Anderson: Proactive Aging & Naturopathic Health

Health rests on three pillars—sleep, nutrition, and movement—and it takes roughly 120 days to replace an old habit with a new one, both cellularly and mentally.

Dr. Mao Shing Ni on Energy, Qi, and Longevity Secrets

Energy, not time or intelligence, is the entrepreneur's true currency, produced through mitochondrial ATP, regulated by the nervous system, and channeled as qi in Chinese medicine.

Somatic Mindfulness for Entrepreneurs with Fleet Maull

A daily mindfulness practice as short as 12 minutes creates the mental gap needed to respond consciously instead of reacting from old conditioning.

The Clarity Map: Lynn Mull on Purpose and Alignment

Career transitions away from toxic, high-pressure environments often take years and require deliberate financial and emotional planning, not a sudden leap.

The Doctor of the Future Is You with Sachin Patel

The healthcare system only measures disease markers, not the circadian rhythm, nervous system state, and rest/recovery patterns that actually determine health.

Nicole Van Valen on Joy, Spirit & Resilient Leadership

Resilience doesn't have to come from grit and misery; it can be built through cultivating internal, self-sustaining joy.

Dr. Dean Radin: Consciousness, Psi Science & Intuition

Noetic science studies intuitive knowing and psychic phenomena like remote viewing, precognition, and mind-matter interaction using the same rigorous tools as conventional science.

Anthony DeNino: SMART Mindset for Entrepreneurs

Success follows a four-step SMART process: mindset, emotion, confident speech, and action.

The Spiritual Is Scientific with Rev. Tony Senf

The body is an effect of the mind and spirit, so entrepreneurs should prioritize source and spirit first for real effectiveness.

Conscious Leadership Through Psychedelic Journeys

Psilocybin mushroom journeys can act as a 'house cleaning mechanism' that releases habitual patterns and unresolved grief, trauma, or depression.

Consciousness, Intention & Healing with Caroline Cory

Controlled experiments filmed for Superhuman showed human intention measurably changing DNA electrical conductivity and the pH of water.

Teresa Wornstaff: Using Intuition to Grow Your Business

True success should not be measured by money, which is an outcome rather than the goal itself.

Don Estes: How Words and Waveforms Shape Reality

Waveforms have three components—frequency, phase, and amplitude—and phase, which is usually ignored in sound therapy, actually determines the shape and geometry of a wave.

Ashley Black: Necessity, Near-Death & High Vibration Living

Ashley Black's chronic childhood illness and a near-fatal infection directly led her to invent the Fascia Blaster and build a $200 million company.

Introducing The Total Entrepreneur: Mind, Body, Spirit

Entrepreneurial stress and disconnection are more intense today, making mind-body-spirit balance more critical than ever.

EMF Exposure & Sleep: The Hidden Bedroom Health Risk

Cell phones, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth devices emit pulsed non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation that couples with the body's bioelectric system and disrupts deep, restorative sleep.

Somatic Therapy for Entrepreneurs with Chelsea Horton

Somatic therapy addresses emotions by working through the body's sensations rather than only intellectualizing feelings through the mind.