Updates on the Liberated Being podcast and studio, and The Healing Arts Business Incubator at www.brookethomas.me/incubator

Today I’m talking with Dr. Ginger Nash. Ginger is a naturopathic physician who has been in practice for over 20 years. Her practice centers around nutrition, herbal medicine and homeopathy, with a focus on personalized care and treating the underlying causes of disease rather than just symptom management. Her practice offers some of the best techno…

Today I’m talking with Emory M. Moore Jr. A health and fitness pioneer and innovator, he created the EM LifeWork TM & EM technique TM methods for holistic fitness, wellness and body harmony. Emory is a multi-certified exercise & movement master teacher and pioneer. With over 35 years of experience, Emory has immersed himself in the study of a myria…

Today I’m talking with Brea Fisher. Brea is the founder of Quan Yin Gongfu and has spent the last 13 years dedicated to the disciplines of Qigong, Taiji, and Gongfu, drawing on focused study and knowledge of Daoist philosophy and lifestyle, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yin Yang theory, and Five Element theory. Brea unites the visual arts and the w…

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with David Treleaven about his book and training on Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. If you missed that episode- it’s a good one- and you can find it in the podcast player you’re on now or at liberatedbeing.community at the podcast tab. This episode is a personal experience with where trauma met what is often referr…

Today I’m talking with Isha Vela. Isha is a psychologist and somatic trauma professional who works as a somatic expressive coach with healers, weavers, change agents, bridge-builders, connectors, and other folxs who feel called to make an impact on the world. She runs the Revolutionary Rompe Reglas community and you can find more of her work at www…

David Treleaven is a writer, educator, and trauma professional working at the intersection of mindfulness and trauma. He is the author of the acclaimed book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness and founder of the Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM) Community—a group of practitioners committed to setting a standard of care through mindfulness-based practices…

Today I’m talking with Diana Winston. Diana is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and the author of The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. Called by the Los Angeles Times “one of the nation’s best-known teachers of mindfulness,” she has taught mindfulnes…

This is a practice-based episode that speaks more deeply to the issues that were brought up in the last episode, with Jane Clapp, about how social media is changing us. This is from the point of view of a podcast/body-centered mindfulness studio that wants to "make the world a more embodied place" and that is "in the inquiry of being fully human". …

Jane Clapp is a mindful strength and movement coach, an embodiment educator and a Jungian analyst in training. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work that goes beyond mindfulness, to enmesh each client’s physical condition with the psychological and emotional aspects of their selves while always factoring in that the oppressive systems…

Today I’m talking with Master Mingtong Gu Named Qigong Master of the Year by the 13th World Congress for Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Master Mingtong is on faculty for Esalen Institute, OmegaInstitute, 1440 Multiversity, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Shift Network. He is the founder of The Chi Center / The Center for Wisdom Hea…

Today I’m talking with Betsy Polatin. Betsy Polatin, is an Alexander Technique teacher, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and has her MFA. She is An internationally recognized breathing and movement specialist,, has been teaching for more than forty five years and is currently a master lecturer at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. She has…

This is a practice-based episode. We are so inundated with information all the time! Even information about being less conceptual and more embodied, as on this podcast lol. Within Liberated Being we also run an embodied practice studio, where we can engage with practices that help us to make the shift into embodying what we know, becoming more real…

Liam Bowler is a teacher, bodyworker, and a somatic philosopher. He’s also the creator of The Body Awake podcast which, if you’re listening to this podcast, I can highly recommend! He is most recently the author of the book A Creator’s Companion: A Handbook for the Practice of Creation. I found it to be a wonderful read, and a highly experiential b…

Today I’m talking with Caprice Taylor Mendez. Since getting her Masters from Harvard in education, administration, planning and social policy, Caprice has spent the last 30 years supporting social justice in the nonprofit sector. She works to support strategic grant making and nonprofit collaborations to co-create systemwide impact. She has done a …

This week’s episode is with Amoda Maa Jeevan. It is an outtake from a longer guest teacher gathering that happened with Liberated Being members on November 14th of 2020. We talked about her recent book, Falling Open in a World Falling Apart. A fitting title for the times we are living through! In this talk, Amoda connects some important dots betwee…

Today I’m talking with Marika Baxter. Marika has a Masters of Science in Physical Therapy and for 17 years practiced as a physical therapist and Pilates teacher working in particular in the dance medicine world. She is a Realization Process teacher and is currently studying through Internal Family Systems with Richard Schwartz. Marika is also a dea…

Today I’m talking with Kimberly Ann Johnson. Kimberly is a Structural Integrator, a Sexological Bodyworker, a birth doula and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. She is the author of the book The Fourth Trimester, and her forthcoming book which we are talking about today is Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use it for…

Today I’m talking with Steve Hoskinson. Steve is the founder of Organic Intelligence® (OI) and the nonprofit Organic Intelligence Outreach Institute. OI’s Human Empowerment And Resiliency Training (HEARTraining®) is an international personal and professional development training program using OI’s strengths-based, trauma-safe approach for resilienc…

Today I’m talking with Constance Clare-Newman. Over 30+ years of teaching embodiment, Constance has developed a trauma-sensitive, neuroscience-informed approach to embodiment practices that focus on wholeness of being. Foremost in her work is a pedagogy of pleasure. The cultural norm of working hard at improvement is relinquished for a slow pace of…

Today I’m talking with Steve Haines. Steve has been a bodyworker for 20 years primarily in the field of craniosacral therapy. He is now a senior international teacher of craniosacral, and together with his colleague Ged Sumner he wrote the book Cranial Intelligence and founded a training program at bodyintelligence.com. He is also a lead TRE Certif…

Today I’m talking with Enroue Halfkenny. Since 1993, Enroue has been a practitioner within the nature based, West African, Òrìṣà religious tradition of the Yorùbá people. He was initiated as a priest of Ifá in Nigeria in 2000. In 2008, Enroue graduated as Valedictorian from the Smith College School for Social Work. Since then, he has worked in a co…

Today I’m talking with Laura Banks. Laura is a Certified Compassion Cultivation Training© (CCT) teacher through the Compassion Institute and Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). Laura has studied literature, languages, folklore, and philosophy to explore expressions of human experience across time…

Today I’m talking with Sarah Histand who is blending her worlds as a personal trainer, mental health counselor with a masters’ in social work, and an outdoor adventurer to become a mental health-informed adventure fitness trainer Born & raised in Alaska, Sarah teaches mindful bodyweight interval training classes that build functional strength -- in…

Today’s episode is an excerpt from a longer guest teacher gathering with Will Pye that took place on October 27th of 2020 within Liberated Being. This is an especially practice based episode, and it is a profoundly delicious meditation practice. It is a gem of a practice session that you can use sometime when you’re able to drop into a meditative s…

This is a homeplay episode! In other words, it's a chance to be guided through some embodied practice. In this case, it's about inhabiting internal space so that we can relate to ourselves, others, and the world in a more present and clear and heartfelt way. At its core, embodied practice has to be relational or it risks being a hobby or, weirdly, …

This talk is an excerpt from a longer guest teacher gathering with Vanessa Scotto which took place on May 15th 2020. Vanessa Scotto may sound familiar to you- she is a very dear friend of mine the co-creator of a podcast we ran together for 4 years titled Bliss and Grit which was dedicated to embodied awakening. She is a Teacher, Mentor and Coach i…

This talk is an excerpt from a guest teacher gathering with Nkem Ndefo which originally took place on September 24th, 2020. Nkem is the founder and president of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, a model that promotes embodied self-awareness and self-regulation in an ecologically sensitive framework and social justice context. …

In today’s episode this is a talk that is an excerpt from a guest teacher gathering with Peter Blackaby which originally took place on August 28th, 2020. Pete Blackaby is a yoga asana teacher and osteopath, and is the author of the book Intelligent Yoga. His interest comes from a loosely humanist perspective firmly rooted in the here and now, and h…

This talk is an excerpt from a guest teacher gathering with Isha Vela that happened within the Liberated Being embodied practice community. It took place on April 6th of 2020. To give you some context, you’ll hear Isha talking about various survival patterns- you can read more about that via Steven Kessler’s book The Five Personality Patterns. You …

This talk is an excerpt from a guest teacher gathering with Loch Kelly that happened within the Liberated Being embodied practice community. It took place on April 27th of 2020. Just to give you a little context, he is talking about moving from locating in the head, to what he refers to as the heartmind. Locating lower down in the body which he is …

This talk is an excerpt from Bayo Akomolafe's guest teacher gathering on Liberated Being which took place on May 26th 2020. You can find more of his work at www.bayoakomolafe.net and more about the embodied practice community at www.liberatedbeing.community.

This talk is an excerpt from a guest teacher gathering with Jeannie Zandi that happened within the Liberated Being embodied practice community. In this gathering, Jeannie brings deep embodied presence to the question of how we meet this moment in history. It took place on March 27th of 2020. You can find more of Jeannie’s work at jeanniezandi.com, …

This is a recording of a free class that I taught on July 26th 2020. In the class I talk about why the ability to deeply experience and know safety is so foundational to any shift being able to take place in us and in how we relate to the world. We work with an embodied approach, and go through two practices for coming into embodied presence- both …

As we all spend time at home these days, I've been reflecting on where Liberated Body took me. So I wanted to record an episode that traced that. It all boils down to one question I think: That question is: What is embodiment? It's an exploration from my own experience- certainly not the final word on anything- and I hope it's interesting and usefu…

This episode functions like a little embodiment gift, courtesy of myself and Liam Bowler, who is the creator of the podcast The Body Awake. It is also an appetizer, a teeny tiny appetizer, of our upcoming weekend course: Living Your Body’s Intelligence, this July 28-29 2018 in Seattle. So many of you have gotten in touch with me over the years to s…

For the past 3 years I have talked with somatic visionaries about new paradigms of understanding about the human body- and today is the final episode of the show. I have had the great honor of exploring inner space with the exceptional people I got to interview, and with all of you listeners who have formed such a warm and inquisitive community. Fo…

It is my great good fortune for this to be my second interview with Mary Bond. Mary has an MA in Dance from UCLA, and studied with, and was certified by, Dr. Ida Rolf, the originator of Rolfing Structural Integration. Mary is currently Chair of the Movement Faculty of The Rolf Institute® of Structural Integration in Boulder, CO. She also teaches wo…

Today I’m talking with Judith Blackstone. Judith is the creator of The Realization Process, which is an integrated approach to embodiment, psychological, relational, physical healing, and spiritual awakening. That maybe sounds like a tall order, but I’m here to tell you as someone who has been in the somatic fields for 20 years and who just finishe…

Today I’m talking with Peter Blackaby who is the author of the book Intelligent Yoga which he is currently writing the 2nd edition for. Pete started practicing yoga in 1978 and began teaching in 1986. He then went on to become an osteopath. In 2002 he became involved in the British Wheel of Yoga (which is the governing body in England), and ran a t…

Leslie Kaminoff has been a yoga educator for the last four decades and is an internationally recognized specialist in the fields of yoga and breath anatomy. He leads anatomy and yoga methodology workshops for many of the leading yoga associations, schools and training programs in the world. He is the co-author of the bestselling book Yoga Anatomy, …

Today I’m talking with Amy Matthews. Amy Matthews, has been teaching movement since 1994. She is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst, a Body-Mind Centering® Teacher, an Infant Developmental Movement Educator, and a movement therapist and yoga teacher. Amy is also the co-author of the best-selling book Yoga Anatomy, and together Amy and Leslie teach …

Katy Bowman is a biomechanist and the founder of Nutritious Movement. She is the author of several books including Move Your DNA, Whole Body Barefoot, and her most recent collection of essays, Movement Matters. In today’s conversation we’re talking about the ecology of movement. How does your movement affect not just your health but also humans eve…

I’m talking with Leslie Kaminoff, Amy Matthews, and Peter Blackaby about our upcoming somatic symposium in New York this April called Beyond Anatomy. There is a vast amount of information about the body out there (and in here within the show)- so how do we discern what's applicable and useful and not simply make ourselves crazy with information ove…

Bo Forbes turns the tables and interviews host Brooke Thomas with her own and listener questions. Brooke's personal path with her own body, how learning through the podcast changed the way she sees the body, how she parents based on what she's learned, her current practices (particularly in natural movement and somatic meditation), and what the roa…

I’m talking with Cynthia Price. Cynthia describes herself as a bodywork researcher, and is an Associate Research Professor at the University of Washington in the Biobehavioral Nursing Department. Her clinical and research expertise is in the development of body awareness, or interoception, to improve health and well-being. She is the creator of an …

Today I’m talking with Dr. Jean-Claude Guimberteau. Dr Guimberteau practiced for many years as a hand surgeon specializing in microsurgical replantation and transplantation. He is the co-founder and former scientific director of The Aquitany Hand Institute, and was the director of research at the French Society of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthet…

Julie Angel received her doctorate researching Parkour, and she has a new book out, Breaking the Jump, which chronicles the birth of this movement. The book, and our conversation, wind up tackling the larger issues that have emerged out of Parkour- like how the origin and effects of this movement is about something so much bigger than athletics or …

Jaap van der Wal is a phenomenological embryologist who is looking for the soul via the embryo and teaches about this all over the world through his Embryo in Motion project. In our conversation today we talked about the dualistic time we are living in and how we make the brain and/or the genes the most important “parts” of the body- how we concept…

Cathy Kerr is the director of the Mind In Body Lab at Brown University. Her research focuses on whether brain rhythms underlying body awareness and movement are actively modulated by mindfulness and movement practices such as Tai Chi and Qigong. Her hope is that understanding how these therapies work will have a positive impact on conditions like a…