My guest this week is Amanda Knox, author of the New York Times bestselling book Waiting to be Heard (affiliate link). Amanda’s name is probably familiar to you because she was in the news a lot over a decade ago when she was tried for murder in Italy. Even though she was convicted, it turned out the charges were completely false, and eventually she was fully exonerated.

Topics we discussed included:

• Amanda’s history of being falsely accused of murder
• The power of the anchoring bias in maintaining false impressions
• My guest’s feelings toward the prosecutor on her case
• Letting go of the need for other people to believe certain things about us
• The fundamental insight that there is nothing between you and your well-being
• Figuring out what we can give or take action on, instead of waiting for others to give us what we need
• Deciding not to be the victim
• Discovering what no one can take away from you
• The inherent opportunity in any kind of experience
• The deep empathy that comes from Amanda’s experience
• Grieving the loss of the life that could have been
• The freedom of recognizing that everything is in flux all the time
• Realizing that this actually is my life, and choosing intentionally to live it
• Tolerating anything for short bouts of time (with reference to The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)
• My guest’s relationship with comedy
• “Hurt Feelings” by Flight of the Conchords
• Laughing at the absurdity of our self-seriousness

Amanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, public speaker, and co-host, with her partner Christopher Robinson, of the podcast Labyrinths.

Between 2007 and 2015, she spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit.

She has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics.

She sits on the board of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice.

Find Amanda online on X/Twitter and Instagram and on her website, and check out her excellent podcast Labyrinths that she co-hosts with Christopher Robinson.

My guest this week is Brett Larkin, yoga instructor and author of Yoga Life: : Habits, Poses, and Breathwork to Channel Joy Amidst the Chaos (affiliate link).

Topics we discussed included:

• Practicing yoga with awareness
• The appeal of yoga for helping us remember that we’re more than our minds and brains
• Yoga as a “science laboratory” to observe what’s happening internally and how one responds to life
• The moment my guest discovered what yoga can teach us about ourselves
• How to distinguish our highest Self from the inner strategist that keeps us in unhelpful patterns
• Looking for opportunities to move through life in a new way
• Crafting a yoga practice to offer you what you need
• 20 minutes as a thoroughly adequate length of yoga practice
• Self-care and being one’s own parents
• The complementary energies of the masculine (Shiva) and feminine (Shakti)
• Balancing acceptance and change, as in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
• Prioritizing the breath in yoga as a means to awareness
• The non-optimal inhibited breathing we often get trapped in
• A brief guided experience in healthy breathing
• Discovering through yoga that there is a healthier way to live

Brett Larkin is the founder of Uplifted Yoga and the author of Yoga Life.

She has trained thousands of yoga teachers, and her training has set the standard for quality online certification since 2015.

Brett’s award-winning YouTube channel has with over half a million subscribers, and her Uplifed Yoga Podcast empowers listeners to actively design their lives using yoga’s ancient wisdom.

Yoga enthusiasts love her courses on Kundalini, Prenatal Yoga, and the Uplifted Yoga Academy.

Learn more about Brett and her practice at her website.

My guest this week is psychologist Dr. Steve Taylor, author of the new book, The Adventure: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening (affiliate link).

Topics we discussed included:

• The practical components of “enlightenment” or “spiritual awakening”
• Commonalities across different spiritual traditions
• The unease and anxiety created by a sense of separateness from the world and others
• The fundamental background unease humans tend to feel
• The hijacking of spiritual awakening by the ego
• Aligning yourself with the organic impulse toward growth and greater awareness
• The process of waking up and transforming through intense suffering
• The naturalness of waking up, which often happens spontaneously
• Disidentification with the thought mind as the first step in spiritual awakening
• The difference between identifying vs. deidentifying with a worry
• The power of emptying one’s mind
• The relative amount of time spent in absorption, abstraction, and awareness
• A “gentle mental nudge” to spend more time in awareness
• Accepting your non-acceptance and embracing your imperfections

Steve Taylor, PhD, is the author of many bestselling books.

He’s senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and the chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society.

Steve’s articles and essays have been published in over 100 academic journals, magazines, and newspapers.

He blogs for Scientific American and Psychology Today.

Visit him online at his website.