Feelings with Strangers

Could removing limiting beliefs or processing trauma be as simple as noticing where your eyes rest?
Dr David Grand, the founder of Brainspotting, has shown that it might be. Brainspotting is a therapeutic approach designed to access and process trauma held deep within the nervous system.
David shares the story of how Brainspotting was discovered in 2003 while working with a competitive ice skater who had developed an unexplained performance block. During a session, her eyes fixed on a particular point in space and a deep processing response began to unfold. The following day, she returned to training and successfully landed the jump she'd never been able to perform.
In this conversation we explore how trauma is often stored beyond the thinking brain - within the body and nervous system - and why approaches that bypass language can sometimes access deeper layers of healing. David also discusses how Brainspotting is used not only for trauma therapy but also for enhancing performance in athletes, artists and professionals.
David also reflects on the broader landscape of healing, including the role of Indigenous knowledge systems, the importance of humility in modern therapeutic practice, and the remarkable intelligence of the human nervous system.
This was a fascinating discussion on trauma, performance, and the deeper mechanisms of healing within the body.
About David Grand
David Grand is the founder and developer of Brainspotting, a therapeutic approach designed to help access and process trauma held deep within the nervous system. A psychotherapist, author and international teacher, he has spent decades working at the intersection of trauma healing, performance and neurophysiology. His work has influenced practitioners around the world and helped expand the conversation around healing beyond traditional talk-based models.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Brainspotting
Site
https://brainspotting.com/about-brainspotting/david-grand-phd/

 
What if the quiet presence of the dog beside you, the horse in the paddock, or the birds outside your window is not the absence of language, but a language we’ve forgotten how to hear?
In this episode, we have one of the pioneers of modern animal communication, Penelope Smith — a teacher, author, and trailblazer whose work has helped thousands of people rediscover the intuitive, telepathic connection between humans and animals.
In this culture, most still sadly view animals as objects to own. Penelope flips this disconnected way of being on its head. Animals may be our companions, but they are also conscious beings on their own spiritual journeys - beings who can communicate with us directly through feeling, imagery, and awareness when we become quiet enough to listen.
Penelope shares how a childhood connection with animals, forged during difficult early years, evolved into a lifelong calling. From her first remarkable experience counselling a traumatised cat who transformed in a single session, to influencing entire fields of animal training and care, her work has helped re-open a door many of us unknowingly closed as we grew older.
This conversation moves far beyond technique. It touches on telepathy, consciousness, kindness, and the possibility that communication between species may be part of humanity’s next stage of evolution.
We explore:
• Why animals may be some of our greatest spiritual teachers• How telepathic communication actually appears - through images, sensations, emotions, and knowing• The role animals play in opening the human heart• What animals understand about death that many humans forget• Why kindness may be the most fundamental structure of consciousness• And how simply being present with animals can begin to restore a deeper connection with life itself.
At its core, this episode is an invitation - not to believe anything blindly, but to become curious again. To remember the mystery of the living world, and perhaps rediscover a form of communication that has always been there.
 
Penelope Smith
Penelope Smith is widely regarded as the founder and leading teacher of interspecies telepathic communication, commonly known as animal communication. For over five decades, she has helped people around the world deepen their relationships with animals and understand them as conscious, spiritual beings rather than objects or possessions.
Her work began in the early 1970s after a profound experience communicating with a traumatised cat whose behaviour transformed immediately following their interaction. Recognising the potential for deeper understanding between humans and animals, Penelope devoted her life to exploring and teaching this form of communication.
She is the author of several influential books, including Animal Talk, which has served as a foundational text for animal communicators worldwide for more than forty years. Through workshops, consultations, and training programmes, she has taught thousands of students how to develop their intuitive and telepathic abilities.
Penelope’s work integrates spiritual awareness, telepathy, and deep respect for animals as fellow beings sharing the Earth. Her teachings emphasise presence, compassion, and the understanding that true communication arises not from techniques alone, but from an open heart and a quiet mind.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Penelope Smith
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/penelopesmithanimaltalk/
Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqP3uYQ5YGt4QO9kuMC2SDw
Site
https://animaltalk.net/
 

What if you’re not seeing with your eyes at all?
In this conversation, with Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman - optometrist, vision scientist, mystic and author - explores light, perception, intuition, healing and the quiet intelligence that breathes us.
Jacob’s journey began in conventional science. Trained as an optometrist and researcher, he built his career around the mechanics of vision - lenses, retinas, prescriptions. But in 1976, during meditation, something happened that would change the course of his life forever. With his eyes closed, he experienced crystal-clear vision. When he opened them, his eyesight had permanently improved - without any change to the structure of his eyes. That experience led him beyond the physiology of sight and into a deeper inquiry: What is it that truly sees?
Jacob explores:
– The difference between thinking and direct experience
– Why most of what we perceive is filtered through conditioning
– The “observer” behind the mind
– Light is the fundamental organising force of biology
– Intuition as a built-in guidance system
– Why stress is often a product of thought, not circumstance – How awareness changes the body at a cellular level
– And what it means to live “choicelessly” guided rather than efforting
Jacob speaks about light not only as a physical phenomenon, but as a living intelligence, the energy that regulates circadian rhythms, influences cellular timing, and underpins both perception and consciousness itself. He challenges the idea that we must “fix” ourselves. Instead, he suggests that healing often occurs when the glue of our labels dissolves, when we stop identifying with the mind and return to simple awareness.
This is not a conversation about adopting beliefs. In fact, Jacob is clear: don’t believe anything he says. Instead, notice what resonates. Notice what catches your eye. 
Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman
Former optometrist and vision scientist who has spent over five decades exploring the relationship between light, perception and consciousness. He is the author of several books, including Light: Medicine of the Future and Luminous Life, and has pioneered work in light therapy, colour, effortless learning and intuitive perception. Now based in Maui, he mentors individuals around the world in integrating awareness, biology and direct experience into everyday life.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman
Site
https://www.jacobliberman.org/
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/drjacobliberman/

Ellen has spent decades studying what happens when we stop moving through life on autopilot. When we stop treating our assumptions like facts. When we replace certainty with a simple act: noticing. In this episode, we talk about mindfulness without meditation—her version of mindfulness that doesn’t require silence or a retreat. Just attention. Just the willingness to admit: I don’t know.
We move through her iconic experiments - like turning back the clock on ageing, or rigging clocks to show how perceived time changes what happens in the body. We talk about why stress isn’t caused by events, but by the meaning we attach to them. And why so much of what we call reality is really just… a story we’re clinging to because it makes us feel safe.
That the body doesn’t just respond to biology — it responds to meaning.To perception.To the story we’re living inside.
Ellen's work is quietly radical. Her work time and again shows that we have far more influence over our biology than we’ve been taught. Not through force. Not through positive thinking as a performance. But through attention. Through flexibility. Through refusing to collapse life into single answers and embracing the constant change.
 
Ellen J. Langer
Ellen J. Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher best known for developing a Western, evidence-based approach to mindfulness without meditation—often described as “the simple act of noticing new things.” She is widely recognised for decades of research on mindlessness, decision-making, ageing, health, and what she calls mind–body unity. Her work has earned major honours, including multiple Distinguished Scientist Awards and the Liberty Science Center “Genius” Award, and she has been repeatedly named one of Harvard’s favourite professors by students. Her recent books include The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health (released in 2023) and Finding Happy, an illustrated book exploring everyday mindfulness and wellbeing. She shares more of her work at her website.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Ellen J. Langer
Site
https://www.ellenlanger.me/
Books
https://www.ellenlanger.me/home#book-s
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/ellenjlanger/
https://x.com/ellenjl

What happens when the cultural story of “we’re all the same” collides with biology?
World-renowned relationship expert John Grey explores what has changed, and what hasn’t, since Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus reshaped the conversation on modern relationships.
Together, they move beyond slogans and into the deeper architecture of connection: hormones, polarity, evolutionary biology, childhood imprinting, stress, sexuality, and the subtle misunderstandings that quietly erode intimacy over time.
John argues that much of today’s relational suffering isn’t because men and women are broken - but because we’ve lost fluency in our differences. As women have become more independent and men increasingly uncertain of their role, the hormonal and psychological dance between masculine and feminine energy has shifted. Stress rises. Attraction fades. Communication collapses.
But beneath the tension, he suggests, there is a blueprint.
We discuss 
Why misunderstanding differences creates resentment
How stress hormones affect empathy and emotional connection
Why “talking it out” can sometimes make things worse
The role of polarity in sustaining sexual attraction
How childhood wounds shape adult relationships
Why happiness in one partner affects the other biologically
The subtle ways modern culture may be weakening both men and women
And what it really means to support - rather than compete with - one another
The conversation also moves into deeper territory: forgiveness of the father, repeating ancestral patterns, the biology of bonding, the role of space in love, and even the spiritual dimension of intimacy through Taoist and tantric traditions.
This is not a nostalgic call to return to the past. It’s an invitation to move forward with greater awareness of how we’re wired - and how that wiring can either divide us or bring us closer.
About John Gray
John Gray, Ph.D. is one of the world’s most recognised relationship experts and the author of the international bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which has sold over 50 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 40 languages.
For over four decades, he has counselled individuals and couples, integrating insights from psychology, biology, spirituality and Eastern traditions. A former celibate monk and long-time meditator, Gray combines practical relationship tools with a broader understanding of consciousness and hormonal health.
His recent work explores how modern cultural shifts have altered male–female dynamics and what couples can do to restore polarity, emotional safety, and lasting attraction.
John's new book out now - "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus – For Women Only: Be Happy With or Without a Man" 
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
John Gray
Site
https://www.marsvenus.com/john-gray
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/johngraymarsvenus_official/?hl=en
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@JohnGrayMarsVenus
 
 
 

Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist-turned-consciousness researcher whose work lives right on that edge where science, healing, and the mystery of being human start to overlap.
 
Lynne is best known for The Field, and The Intention Experiment - and for taking a question most feel:  What if thoughts and intention don’t stay inside us? What if they have influence and reach we can only begin to imagine? In this conversation, we get practical and specific. Lynne breaks down what “intention” actually is (and what it isn’t), why language matters, why groups consistently amplify outcomes, and how the Power of Eight approach became a kind of global laboratory - not in theory, but in real experiments, with measurable results.
 
This conversation is an invitation to consider that the world is more connected than we’ve been trained to believe - and that there is a disciplined, repeatable way to work with that connection to radically change your life.
 
Lynne McTaggart
An award-winning journalist, author, and researcher known internationally for her work on consciousness, healing, and the science of intention. She is the author of The Field, The Intention Experiment, The Bond, and The Power of Eight, and she co-founded What Doctors Don’t Tell You, which began as a newsletter in 1989 and grew into an international health publication. Lynne also teaches the Intention Masterclass, a year-long program focused on her “13 Keys to Intention Mastery” and the Power of Eight® group method. The 2026 lesson plan lists the first live session as Saturday, February 28, 2026.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Lynne McTaggart
Website https://lynnemctaggart.com/ Intention
 
Masterclass https://lynnemctaggart.com/courses/intention-masterclass/
 
What Doctors Don’t Tell You  https://www.wddty.com/about-us/
 
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/lynnemctaggartofficial/?hl=en
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@lynnemctaggart4255⁩ 

Today’s conversation is with Hitesh Bhatt - the voice behind Echoes of Existence, a YouTube channel and podcast dedicated to spiritual inquiry, self-realisation, and inner transformation.
Hitesh calmly speaks to the things we tend to avoid - death, fear, suffering, and the pressure of trying to “get life right”. He has this rare ability to make the big existential questions feel… workable. 
In this episode, we talk about fear - not as something to eliminate, but something to clarify. Hitesh shares how, in his early twenties, he quit the path he was expected to follow and began travelling - not as an escape, but almost as a set of lived experiments: meeting people, sleeping rough at times, and finding out what’s actually real underneath the mind’s worst-case stories.
We also go into the difference between ambition and clarity - the kind of ambition that runs on willpower and validation, versus the clarity that doesn’t need force because it comes with its own energy. And later, we touch on manifestation - not as “getting what you want”, but as learning to inhabit a way of being, rooted in presence.
Hitesh Bhatt
Is a long-time yoga teacher, and through Echoes of Existence, he shares short contemplative reflections on ego, identity, freedom, and the deeper texture of everyday life - often from a place that feels more like a fellow traveller than a teacher. This is a space for quiet exploration - of movement, stillness, and the nature of being. 
If you enjoy conversations that don’t rush to conclusions, and that aren’t afraid to sit with paradox, I think you’ll get a lot out of this one.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Hitesh Bhatt
YouTubeEchoes of Existencehttps://www.youtube.com/@EOExistence
Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/yogawithhitesh
Linktreehttps://linktr.ee/echoesofexistence
Substackhttps://substack.com/@echoesofexistence1
Podcast
Apple Podcastshttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/echoes-of-existence/id1837613927
Spotifyhttps://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/echoes-of-existence
 
 
 

Water isn’t a utility, and it’s not just “hydration.” It’s memory, relationship, it's the animator of life. The quiet medium everything living moves through - and in this episode, you’ll hear why the quality of that medium shapes far more than we’ve been taught to notice.
My guest is Mario Brainovic, CEO of Analemma - a company exploring what they describe as “coherent” water: water brought into a liquid-crystalline, ordered state using a quartz tool filled with what they call “Mother Water,” alongside ongoing research of its profound effects for humans, plants, and other living systems.
We talk about the practical side - what most people miss about water, even when they filter it - and then we move into the edge of the map: coherence, biophotons, brainwave harmony, nature’s timing, and that water is not only alive… but highly sophisticated and intelligent. 
If you’ve been searching for conversations that feel less like content… and more like a doorway into higher levels of health, consciousness, and connection, this is it.
Mario Brainovic
Mario Brainovic is the CEO of Analemma. In Analemma’s published materials and media releases, he’s described as helping lead the company’s research and communication around coherent water and its potential effects on living systems, alongside collaborations and studies referenced on their site. Mario Brainović is an entrepreneur, researcher, and visionary in health and wellness, best known for his work in what’s often called structured or coherent water science and for leading companies focused on health-related innovation.
Analemma
Analemma is a wellness and research-focused company centred on “coherent water”, — including a quartz wand product filled with “Mother Water,” and a broader mission statement oriented toward restoring water to what they describe as its natural coherent state. Their site also references an advisory board and multiple research tracks (including human, plant/soil, and other studies).
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Mario
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/mariobrainovic/?hl=en
 
Analemma
Site
https://www.analemma-water.com/
Use DISCOUNT CODE  'feelings' at checkout for 10% off. 
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/analemma_water/

In this episode, I sit down with Bill McKenna and Liz Larson, the co-creators of Cognomovement, to explore one of the most influential - and least examined - forces shaping our lives: the subconscious patterns running quietly in the background.
Most of us sense these patterns only when we’re forced to confront them - repeating the same relationship dynamics, sabotaging ourselves around money or health, and reacting in ways we don’t fully understand. We can often see the pattern, but knowing it’s there doesn’t necessarily give us a way out.
This conversation moves into that gap.
We talk about the subconscious not as something abstract, but as the nervous system itself - a living, biological process that generates emotion, perception, and reaction before thought ever arrives. Bill and Liz describe how these emotional circuits can act like an “electric fence” around our lives, quietly defining what feels possible, safe, or threatening.
We do a live, unscripted Cognomovement process around a long-running pattern of mine. What unfolds is not analysis or storytelling, but a direct shift in perception: how something that once felt immediate and charged can suddenly move into the past, creating space for entirely new options to appear.
We also explore grief, cravings, confirmation bias, projection in relationships, and the strange way reality seems to reorganise itself when an internal pattern collapses.
If you're looking to break a pattern in your life, then this is the episode for you.
 
Feelings with Strangers
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
Conomovement 
Site
https://www.cognomovement.com/
Socials 
https://www.instagram.com/cognomovement/

Over the last six months, I’ve been keeping a dream journal, not to “decode” anything perfectly, but to listen. And what’s surprised me most is how the dream-state speaks in a language that doesn’t make sense until it does: symbols that feel abstract…and then, weeks later, land with uncanny precision in waking life.
My guest today is someone who’s spent decades mapping that invisible terrain, not to make it more mystical, but to make it more usable: as a tool for healing, for creativity, and for self-trust in a world that’s getting louder by the day.
In this episode, we explore why modern life is quietly eroding dream recall, how emotion and symbol work together like an inner therapist, why meditation and nature can sharpen the signal, and how dreaming might be less about “escaping reality” and more about remembering what we are beneath it.
This is a conversation about intuition, balance, and the quiet intelligence that’s been with you every night of your life.
My guest is Theresa Cheung. 
 
Theresa Cheung is a bestselling author and researcher who has spent over twenty-five years writing about spirituality, dreams, and the paranormal. She studied Theology and English at King’s College, Cambridge, and her work bridges mystical experience with ongoing dialogue in psychology and consciousness research.
Theresa is the author of numerous international bestsellers, including two Sunday Times Top 10 titles, and her Dream Dictionary from A to Z (HarperCollins) is widely regarded as a modern classic in dream interpretation. Her books have been translated into 40+ languages.
She’s a regular dreams and spirituality expert across major media — including ITV’s This Morning, and she hosts her own podcast White Shores as well as the weekly UK Health Radio show The Healing Power of Dreams.
 
Feelings with Strangers
 
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/feelings.with.strangers/
Youtube
https://youtu.be/kmDja4q83i8?si=xIl7TbBrdeCEk5dh
 
 
Theresa Cheung
 
Site
https://www.theresacheung.com/
Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/white-shores-with-theresa-cheung/id1475553348
Socials
https://www.instagram.com/thetheresacheung/