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Feel Safe in Your Body

Victor Goenka

What does it actually take to feel safe in your own body? Psychologist and breathwork coach Victor Goenka sits down with one guest per episode to trace a single arc: the survival wiring they grew up with, the moment it changed, and what safety feels like in their nervous system now. Guests range from authors and clinicians to parents and recovering overachievers. Every conversation translates lived experience into nervous system mechanics in real time. No wellness cliches, no toxic positivity, no trauma voyeurism. Just one honest story per episode and a clear map of how a loud mind finds its way back to calm. New episodes daily. Join the BreathX Collective on Nas!

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#21
July 3 · 21 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 21: Your Mind Isn't Against You, with Tiffany Nicole
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka talks with Tiffany Nicole, a coach who works at the meeting point of belief and the body. Her own story starts in a hard place: anxiety she carried for most of her life without a name for it, a depression in college severe enough that she says she did not want to live, and a panic disorder that sent her to the ER more than once. Content note, also stated at the top of the episode: this conversation touches on panic disorder, anxiety, and depression. Tiffany traces her wiring to her childhood home: a single mother working constantly under stress, a house where the emotional temperature always felt unpredictable. She absorbed the belief that overworking and hypervigilance were normal, a belief that eventually collapsed her nervous system into full panic disorder in her twenties, once she moved to Manhattan and started hustling to make it. The turn started with something simple: finally having language for what was happening in her body. From there she worked on presence, on getting out of her head and back into her body, and eventually on healing the inner child who was still carrying the original belief. She says the panic does not come knocking anymore. Victor and Tiffany do not share every framework. Victor works from psychology and nervous system science, Tiffany works through subconscious belief and energy work. Where they land together is the show's core conviction: healing happens in the body, and belief and the nervous system shape each other. The signature question of the show shows up where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? For Tiffany, the answer is a body that has gone quiet. Calm, grounded, present, with room to feel a hard emotion fully instead of forcing calm over it. She closes with what she tells clients stuck in panic and anxiety. A grounding tool can get you through a panic attack tonight, but her real answer is finding and removing the belief underneath it so the attacks stop needing to happen at all. IN THIS EPISODE How undiagnosed childhood anxiety compounds into adult panic disorder. What panic actually does to the body when it takes over. Why simply understanding and naming what was happening was the first real shift. Healing the inner child as the mechanism that finally quieted the triggers. The difference between forcing calm and actually feeling safe. A simple five senses grounding tool for panic in the moment, and why Tiffany treats it as a stopgap, not a fix. ABOUT TIFFANY NICOLE Tiffany Nicole is a Theta Healer, Medical Medium, and Manifestation Coach who helps clients identify and release the subconscious beliefs and suppressed emotion behind stuck patterns, including generational and childhood wiring. She trained through Stanford University's Creative Insight Journey and became a lead global trainer for the program, later studying under Tony Robbins before developing her own coaching method blending healing, subconscious reprogramming, and manifestation work. Find Tiffany: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tiffanynicole.co/ * TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tiffanynicole.co FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside Breath X Collective. * Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#20
July 2 · 26 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 20: It's Never Too Late, with Vaishali Bhargava
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Vaishali Bhargava, a soft skills trainer, wellness advocate, content creator, and the founder of NaniMa's Wisdom. At 60, she is living something our culture rarely talks about honestly: the way a whole season of life can quietly disconnect you from yourself. Vaishali is clear that her story is not about one big event. It is the slow, cumulative weight of a life spent performing. She left her parents at six to live with relatives for her studies, and learned early to keep her thoughts to herself. From there she was the one who held everything together. A wife, a mother, a daughter-in-law, a perfectionist, the third woman president of her Rotary club in 65 years. Always strong, always steady, always expected to deliver. Then menopause, diabetes, chronic stress, and hard personal chapters arrived at once. On the surface, everything looked normal. People saw her speaking, leading, showing up. Underneath, she was lost. She describes a nervous system that felt like it was rebelling: functioning but not thriving, foggy, anxious, sweating for no reason, gaining weight, losing motivation, merely existing rather than truly living. The conversation traces one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Vaishali rebuilt slowly. She took a full year to stop performing and simply be. A ten day Vipassana retreat. Time inside her own family across four generations. Yoga her daughter pushed her back into. Singing she had set down. Diet and lifestyle instead of reaching only for more medication. Becoming vocal about her feelings for the first time. The signature question of the show shows up where it always will: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? For Vaishali the answer is a steady heartbeat, a steady breath, and sleep that lets her wake up fresh. She closes on the thing she most wants women in midlife to hear. It is never too late. Whenever you decide is the right time. Stop chasing perfect, be comfortable with your imperfections, and never stop growing, because if you are not growing you are decaying. IN THIS EPISODE Why cumulative stress can quietly dysregulate a nervous system with no single dramatic event. What it feels like to look fine on the surface while feeling lost underneath. Menopause as a real nervous system event, not a punchline. The cost of being the strong one who guides everyone else. How Vipassana, yoga, singing, family, and lifestyle change brought her back. Why reinvention is not just for the young. ABOUT VAISHALI BHARGAVA Vaishali Bhargava is a soft skills trainer, wellness advocate, content creator, and the founder of NaniMa's Wisdom. At 60 she stands between four generations of her family and teaches that women can regulate their nervous systems and reclaim their lives at any age. Through NaniMa's Wisdom she shares insights on healthy ageing, emotional well-being, and personal growth. Her message is simple and hard won: your body heals fast when given the right raw material, and it is never too late to begin. Find Vaishali: * Instagram: @nanimaswisdom_byvaishali * Facebook: NaniMa's Wisdom by Vaishali FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside Breath X Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#19
July 1 · 15 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 19: Your Body Knew First, with Emmy Riker
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Emmy Riker, a coach who spent years at a Fortune 200 company, successful by every external measure, until her body started doing something her mind could not argue with. Panic attacks. Depression. Nights that frightened her. Emmy names something Victor sees often: a nervous system rejecting a life that does not fit. The great title, the great company, the life she was told to want, and underneath it a quiet, growing signal that this was not hers. As she puts it, she may have been living someone else's dream, not her own. The conversation follows one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. The signals built slowly. Forgetting what she had just said in a meeting. A racing heart that grew into full panic attacks, waking in the night unable to breathe. A leave of absence that helped, a return that did not, and a year of rising anxiety that ended in one hard decision: choosing herself over the role, even when it felt, in her body, like failure. The turn started with movement. Her intuition told her to get up in the living room, play the music loud, and dance, and that was the first time the anxious energy had somewhere to go. From there came the tools she now teaches: noticing a fearful thought, thanking it for trying to protect her, and asking it to step aside. Realizing, as she says, that she has the power to shape her own reality. The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Emmy's answer is steady. Safety is the absence of fight or flight, and the knowing that whatever she feels is a moment, not a permanent state, energy she can move rather than something that has power over her. IN THIS EPISODE Why success on paper can sit on top of a nervous system in quiet revolt. The slow build of panic, and the night her body finally would not be overridden. What it costs to choose yourself when the job is your identity and income. Movement and dance as a first, real way back to safety. The thought reframe she uses now: thank you for trying to protect me, and you can step aside. The one small action she would ask a listener to take today. ABOUT EMMY RYKER Emmy Riker is a coach who left a long corporate career after her body made it clear the life no longer fit. Through her own recovery from panic and depression, she found her way back to feeling safe in her body, and now helps others trust the signals they have been overriding. Find Emmy on Instagram: @emmyriker FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#18
June 30 · 29 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 18: Art Is My Language, with Kriti Ghosh
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Kriti Ghosh, an artist who is autistic and ADHD, and who was misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder more than once. She talks about what it costs to have your wiring named wrong, and what it took to find her own language instead. For her, that language is art. Kriti names something Victor sees often: expression as nervous system regulation, and what happens to a body when its voice gets suppressed long enough. Outcast early, bullied for years, and masking everywhere she went, she learned to perform a self that other people could accept. The cost showed up in the body. Her throat closed. She could not sing for five years. The conversation follows one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. The turn began about four years ago, when she started listening to her inner child and coming back to practice, slowly. Vocal riyaz, meditation, yoga, dance, and painting whatever was in her head. She has synesthesia, so color carries emotion for her, and she learned to use it. As she puts it, the opposite of depression is expression. She also describes the moment she left her country, framed not as escape but as choice: try for the last time, with nothing to lose. Now, more than two years on, she is building toward becoming an art therapist, helping other people use creation as their own way back to themselves. The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Kriti's answer is precise and physical. She is safe when her voice is not suppressed and her tone is her own, when her breath moves freely, when her body is unmasked and unclenched and she can laugh without bracing. IN THIS EPISODE What it costs to have your wiring named wrong, and to be diagnosed with the wrong label more than once. Masking and autistic burnout, and why expressive does not mean fine. How suppression lived in her body, including five years without her singing voice. Art and synesthesia as regulation, not decoration. Why she left her country, framed as choice rather than escape. A practical close anyone can use tonight: you do not need to be an artist, you need to become an expressive person. ABOUT KRITI GHOSH Kriti Ghosh is a multidisciplinary artist who works across theatre, music, painting, dance, and writing, and is training to become an art therapist. Autistic and ADHD, she uses creation as her language and her regulation, and wants other people to feel free to express themselves without fear. Find Kriti on Instagram: @khwab_e_kriti FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#17
June 29 · 19 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 17: When the Body Says Stop, with Evi Kyriakopoulou
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Evi Kyriakopoulou, who spent fifteen years as a corporate overachiever, a director, an expat climbing the ladder in the Netherlands, the kind of person who could push through anything. Until her body stopped letting her. Evi names something Victor sees everywhere: a nervous system that learned worth had to be earned, and never learned how to stop. The chasing. The nightly replay of every conversation. The small panic attacks at the first sign of uncertainty. We call it drive, when it is often a body bracing for a threat that never clocks out. The conversation follows one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. The warning signs built quietly. No coffee, no alcohol, no stimulants, and still a resting heart rate of one hundred twenty beats a minute. Then, on a summer trip to a Greek island, the collapse. A hospital bed, numb hands and legs, an extreme panic attack the tests could not explain. Her body had finally said stop. The turn did not come from one clean fix. A two day reaction to SSRIs closed that door fast and left her one path forward: natural remedies, talk therapy, hypnosis, and CBT, given as much time as it needed. Six months in, steadier, she took a Harvard course to understand what had actually happened in her brain, and started to uncouple her identity from her job title. At thirty seven she chose to start over, helping people move from what she calls anxious surviving to liberated thriving. The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Evi's answer is simple. She has learned to read her own cues, to treat anxiety as a notification rather than an emergency, and to take the day off before the body forces one. IN THIS EPISODE Why high performance can be a nervous system that never learned to stop. The early warning signs that get explained away. What a resting heart rate of one hundred twenty is really telling you. Why her recovery went past positive thinking into slow, unglamorous relearning. Uncoupling identity from job title, and building a self around your own values. A practical close you can use tonight: breath work, ten minutes of stillness, and the truth that the benefits accumulate over time. ABOUT EVI KYRIAKOPOULOU Evi Kyriakopoulou is a former corporate director turned guide for people moving from anxious surviving to liberated thriving. After a nervous system collapse ended a fifteen year career, she studied the neuroscience of her own breakdown and rebuilt with natural remedies and talk therapy. She is based in Greece and, by her own choice, still mid journey. Find Evi: https://www.ennoia.me/ FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#16
June 28 · 25 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 16: The Radar That Never Switches Off, with Dr. Adam Anthony
Dr. Adam Anthony learned to read rooms before he could name why. As a same-race Black adoptee who came up in spaces that were not always safe, his body got good at sensing the shift before it happened, knowing who was safe and who was not. He calls it sharp attunement. It kept him safe as a kid, and it did not switch off when he grew up. In this episode, Victor Goenka sits with Adam around one arc: what the wiring looked like, what started to change it, and what safety feels like now. They get into the cost of staying alert, the difference between a personality trait and a survival adaptation, and the day Adam felt his body want to respond differently but not yet know how. Adam works with young men of color carrying their own versions of this, navigating identity and belonging in a world that is not always safe for them. He names the two directions he sees a young nervous system go, high alert or numb and zoned out, and the internal experience that rarely matches what people see on the outside. We also get into the turn. Therapy with someone who understood and made space to unpack it. Faith as the steady thread that tells his body who he is when the old alertness fires. And the move from rebellion to self-care: choosing his spaces on purpose, and the line he lives by now, that his presence is a gift wherever he goes. In this episode: - Sharp attunement, and why reading the room is a skill, not a flaw - How a child in an unsafe space builds a threat radar that stays online for life - The difference between your personality and what your body learned to survive - What constant alertness costs a young man over time - Therapy, faith, and the first thing that quieted the radar - The signature question: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? - A doable first move for anyone exhausted by always being on About Dr. Adam Anthony Dr. Adam Anthony is an educator, leadership consultant, and speaker, and the founder of EmpowerMENt, where he builds intentional spaces for men with adoption and foster care backgrounds to explore identity, belonging, and healing with honesty and care. He holds a Doctor of Education in Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University, and his scholarly and community work centers male adoptees and Black male college students and educators. Find Adam: Website: https://www.empowermentbydradam.com Instagram: @empowermentby_dradam From Victor: If your mind runs loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the BreathX Collective and one-on-one with a few people. https://nas.com/breathxio Feel Safe in Your Body is hosted by Victor Goenka, psychologist and breathwork coach, based in Tulum, Mexico.
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#15
June 27 · 33 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 15: You Are Not Your Patterns, with Sherri Grieve
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Sherri Grieve, a peer support coach, author, and founder of Life Rewired who works from lived experience. For most of her life Sherri ran on survival mode without knowing that is what it was. From the outside she looked like she had it all together. Single parent, full-time job, putting herself through college, volunteering for every one of her son's sports. On the inside she was anxious, switched off, and slowly disappearing. This conversation is about the moment the picture flipped. The people pleasing, the fixing everyone, the over functioning, the need for control. Sherri stopped seeing those as flaws and started seeing them for what they were: nervous system adaptations her body built to keep her safe. As she puts it, we are not our patterns. She talks about what survival actually cost her, how the patterns turned into habits that went against her own values, and the night she hit a wall and asked for change. That was the start of the rewiring. She walks through the difference between coping and healing, and the first time she could sit in silence and hear her own heartbeat instead of running from it. Victor maps each turn to the nervous system in real time. People pleasing that earned safety through approval. Fixing that borrowed control where there was none. Chaos that felt safer than calm. The guest brings the story, Victor brings the map. The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Sherri answers with peace, acceptance, and the tools to remind herself that a hard moment is a moment in time, not proof she is unsafe. She closes with gentle first steps for anyone who feels like their whole personality was built out of survival. Start small. Speak to yourself differently. Ask what happened to me instead of what is wrong with me. And keep the line she wants you to hold: you get to choose who you are. IN THIS EPISODE High-functioning on the outside, dying on the inside. People pleasing, fixing, over functioning, and control as nervous system adaptations. How the patterns turned into habits that went against her values. The night she asked for change. Coping versus healing. Learning to sit in silence and hear her own heartbeat. Turning lived experience into books and coaching. The signature question, and why you are not your patterns. ABOUT SHERRI GRIEVE Sherri Grieve is a peer support coach, author, and founder of Life Rewired. Through her own journey of overcoming trauma, abuse, and life's challenges, she discovered that healing is possible with the right support, practical tools, and a willingness to grow. Today she helps others move beyond survival mode by building healthier boundaries, strengthening resilience, and creating lives rooted in hope and authenticity. We are not our patterns. Her books, This Is Me (a bilingual English and Spanish memoir) and Dig Deep Shit (a workbook), are on Amazon worldwide. Find Sherri: * Linktree: https://linktr.ee/life.rewired.sherri * @life.rewired.sherri on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Threads FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#14
June 26 · 25 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 14: Ground Zero, with Keola Grey
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Keola Grey, a childhood brain tumor survivor from Oahu who has spent over two decades learning how to feel safe in a body that was once the battlefield. Keola was diagnosed as a young child. The tumor was caught early and removed completely, and that is where the harder part of his story begins. He had to start again from ground zero. Learn to walk again, learn to speak again, learn everything from A to Z. For years he could not relate to other kids his age. As he puts it, he fit in everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This conversation is about the second fight, the one that arrives after the medical one is over. Keola talks about the day he realized his cancer history and his mental health were two separate things, what it took to come back into his body, and why the holistic road called to him after years on the pharmaceutical side. At the center is a simple reframe that changed how his system runs. You don't have depression, you're feeling depression. Keola describes emotions as the puppet and the mind and body as the puppet master, and how learning to watch a feeling instead of being run by it gave him room to choose. Victor maps that in real time to the nervous system work of stepping back and observing rather than attaching. The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Keola answers from the day before, fresh out of the ER with clean scans, surprised to notice he felt safe in the one place that used to undo him. He closes with hard-won, practical advice for anyone in a health fight right now, theirs or their child's: listen to your doctors, keep your checkups, ask the follow-up questions, get the second opinion, and above all learn to read the signals your body is already sending. And the one line he wants you to keep: don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game. IN THIS EPISODE Starting from ground zero and relearning the body after surgery. Fitting in everywhere and nowhere as a kid. The second fight, when the medical battle ends and the mind's begins. Why the holistic road called after years on the pharmaceutical side. The reframe: you don't have depression, you're feeling it. Emotions as the puppet, not the puppeteer. Feeling safe in the ER, the place that used to undo him. Practical advice for anyone in a health fight right now. ABOUT KEOLA GREY Keola Grey is a childhood brain tumor survivor and mental health advocate from Oahu, Hawaii. He shares his story to support others moving through their own health fight and the longer recovery that follows. Find Keola: * Instagram: @green_i808 * Facebook: Keola Grey FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the Breath X Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#13
June 25 · 32 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 13: Are We Good Today?, with Farrah Weir
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Farrah Weir, a life coach and single mother of two from South Africa who rebuilt her own sense of safety through years of moment-to-moment practice. Farrah came on with a simple line: if anyone's nervous system should be shot, it should be hers. A marriage that ended, a business lost, a birth navigated with almost no support, two kids raised largely alone through real financial and emotional pressure. By that math she should be wrecked. She isn't. This conversation is about why. Farrah and Victor see the map differently in places, and they say so on tape. What they agree on is what the show is built around: safety is not a place you arrive at, it is something you build from the bottom, moment to moment. At the center is one repeatable move. When the fear arrived, can I pay rent, can I feed my daughter, Farrah learned to come back to a single question: are we good today? She tells the story of sitting on the kitchen floor in the middle of a small disaster, stretched thin, and noticing the old spiral did not take her this time. The thought came in, and the thought went out. That is when she knew the work was working. They get into walking meditation, the "neutral observer" where you watch a thought instead of being run by it, why energy work is a band-aid without moment-to-moment choice, honoring a hard emotion rather than bypassing it, and reparenting the younger self who first decided the world was not safe. The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Farrah closes with a first practice for the exhausted parent at 11pm with ten minutes and nothing left: stop, take one breath, lean into what you do have rather than what you fear, and ask, are we good today. IN THIS EPISODE Why "are we good today?" became the question that held her nervous system together. Walking meditation as a way back into the present. The neutral observer, and watching a thought instead of being run by it. Why energy work is a band-aid without moment-to-moment choice. Honoring a hard emotion instead of bypassing it. Reparenting the younger self who decided the world was unsafe. One doable practice for the wired, exhausted parent. ABOUT FARRAH WEIR Farrah Weir is a life coach, consciousness teacher, and single mother of two based in South Africa. Her work helps people come back into their bodies and rewire old survival patterns. Find Farrah: * Website: https://farrahweir.com/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farrahweir.iam/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC4Gp6zAtUVCNP8sLnBGXAw FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#12
June 25 · 40 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 12: Nothing Is Wrong Right Now, with Derek Notman
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Derek Notman, a somatic educator and lifelong student of movement and healing arts who teaches people how to come back into their own bodies. Derek has spent more than three decades studying physical culture and philosophy, including years living in China and Southeast Asia training with traditional masters of martial, movement, and healing arts. What he is after, in his own words, is peace and contentment. Not a destination he has planted a flag on, but something he is still moving toward. The conversation traces one arc: where he started, what wired him, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. At the center of it is awareness, which for a nervous system is where everything begins. You cannot settle a state you cannot feel, and you cannot change what you cannot notice. Victor and Derek get into the idea that our thoughts shape our reality and that the body becomes the vehicle to experience them. They talk about how fluid movement rebuilds the bridge between a mind and a body that modern life keeps separate, what actually reacts first when the body meets real danger, and the moment awareness first arrived for Derek, when he felt what his body was doing instead of only thinking about it. They explore comfort in discomfort, the observer behind the thought, and why, when you stop thinking about it, there is nothing wrong with right now. The signature question of the show shows up where it always will: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Derek closes with a first move for anyone who lives almost entirely in their head, a way to begin to relax, and a message for the person who is afraid that feeling what is in their body will be too much. IN THIS EPISODE Why awareness is the starting point for any nervous system change. How thoughts shape reality and the body becomes the vehicle to experience them. Rebuilding the bridge between a separated mind and body through fluid movement. What reacts first in real danger: body, nervous system, or mind. Finding comfort in discomfort, and how ice work and vipassana point to the same thing. The observer behind the thought, and meeting the present moment. A first, doable move toward awareness for people who live in their heads. ABOUT DEREK NOTMAN Derek Notman is a somatic educator and the founder of Island Physical Culture. For over three decades he has studied the movement and healing traditions of the world, including martial arts such as Tai Chi, Xin Yi Liu He Quan, Bagua Zhang, Nei Gong, and Qi Gong, movement systems including Gyrokinesis, Gyrotonic, the Egoscue Method, and Somatics, and bodywork including Jin Shin Jyutsu, Ortho-Bionomy, Zero Balancing, and Reiki. His work helps people upgrade their movement patterns, release tension, and reconnect mind and body through embodied practice. Find Derek: * Website * YouTube * Instagram * Facebook FROM VICTOR If your ego or mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside the Breath X Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * Breath X Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#11
June 24 · 29 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 11: You Can't Outrun Your Nervous System, with Trung Nguyen
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Trung Nguyen, a founder who spent ten years and three burnouts learning that the decisions breaking his business were not business decisions. They were nervous system states dressed up as strategy. For years his answer was the same. Push harder, more output, more proving. It looked functional. Underneath it ran on hidden stress and old survival wiring. Then he caught the pattern: dysregulated, he overreaches. Calm, he thinks clearly and decides well. Chasing more goals never fixed the old patterns. It just gave them more speed. A lot of that landed on a bike, alone in Vietnam, where there was nowhere left to hide. They get into ambition as a numbing strategy, the slow creep of stress as death by a thousand cuts, what staying with discomfort actually feels like, and the ten second break that teaches the nervous system it is safe. The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? IN THIS EPISODE Why dysregulation makes founders overreach. Ambition as a numbing strategy. Staying with discomfort instead of converting it into work. The body level tells that a crash is coming. Why business problems are often regulation problems in disguise. ABOUT TRUNG NGUYEN Trung runs 90 minute Founder Bottleneck Diagnostics, finding the constraint founders scale around before they can name it. Born in Berlin to Vietnamese parents, now based in Vietnam, he cycles long distances, which is where most of the real thinking happens. Find Trung: Website: https://iamtrung.com LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ctn1991 Substack: https://theuncomfortzone.substack.com FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#10
June 23 · 23 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 10: Stage Fright Lives in the Body, with Robyn Riedlinger
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Robyn Riedlinger, a public speaking coach who helps founders and entrepreneurs find stage confidence, and the founder of Your Signature Talk. Public speaking is the most common fear on the planet, and Robyn's premise is that it is not a mindset problem. It is a body problem. The moment you stand in front of a room, your nervous system runs the oldest program it has. This conversation is about what that fear actually is, what it felt like in Robyn's body, and how mastering it became a doorway to something far bigger than the stage. Robyn started a women's walking community in Charlotte that grew to groups of sixty, eighty, a hundred women. The first time a friend filmed her promoting a walk, her whole body tried to override her. Underneath the camera was something older: a girl who was bullied in middle school and learned that being seen was not safe. She reframes the speaker as a conduit, not a performer, and shares a counterintuitive move for anyone who freezes up. Instead of waiting for the body to settle, go straight to the voice. The thing you are most afraid to use is often where the relief is hiding. She and Victor get into why so many high performers take huge risks yet still fall apart in front of a room, and how the throat holds the block. The turn came on a stage in Las Vegas in 2024, where Robyn spoke first at her own event and named the hardest part of her childhood out loud, not to make it her brand story, but to release the shame and decide she did not have to carry it anymore. She talks about selling her house and everything she owned as a nervous system decision as much as a business one, and the two and a half years it took to become her own safe space. The signature question of the show shows up where it always will: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Robyn closes on the one thing she tells anyone about to walk on stage in fear. Put in the reps. The stage is not the pinnacle, it is the laboratory where you find out if your message works. IN THIS EPISODE Why public speaking is a nervous system response, not a confidence flaw. What the body does when a room locks eyes on you. How childhood experiences of being seen wire adult stage fright. The conduit reframe that takes the attention off you. Why going to the voice first can calm the body. The Las Vegas moment that released a lifetime of shame. Selling everything as a nervous system decision. Why adrenaline is not danger, and how to put in the reps. ABOUT ROBYN RIEDLINGER Robyn Riedlinger is a public speaking and stage confidence coach for founders and entrepreneurs, and the founder of Your Signature Talk. She sold her house and everything she owned, built her business while traveling the world, and now speaks on stages internationally, from her own events to keynote rooms full of policymakers and industry leaders. Her work helps business owners access their voice and command a room without manipulation or tactics. Find Robyn: * Website * Instagram * Email FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#9
June 23 · 24 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 9: Calm Felt Like a Threat, with Braden Hatch
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Braden Hatch, a mortgage lender, real estate agent, author, and podcast host out of Arizona. By every external measure, Braden is a man who handles things. He ran three businesses and thrived on daily crisis. Then the chaos finally quieted, and his body panicked. It is a story a lot of high-functioning people will recognize: a nervous system so organized around constant alarm that calm starts to read as danger. At 40, after a divorce and a season of slowing down, Braden had his first ever panic attack. He drove himself to the ER convinced he was having a heart attack. The tests came back clean. What he was feeling was peace, and his body did not know what to do with it. The conversation follows one arc: where he started, what wired him, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. As the firstborn, raised by adults who never sat still, Braden learned early that his worth was tied to what he accomplished. If he was not producing, he was worthless. So the absence of crisis felt threatening, and the old wiring kept demanding a problem to solve. The first turn came through his sister, a breathwork coach he used to make fun of. One session reached him when nothing else could. Breath got him through the panic. Meditation took him deeper. The real shift arrived on an ordinary day, when he sat in a meditation and felt, for the first time, that he was good enough exactly as he was. A man whose kids had never seen him cry broke down in tears. He describes it not as becoming someone new, but as remembering who he had been all along. Then comes the signature question: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Braden's answer is trust. After years of overriding his gut with logic, he has learned to feel what is right for him and act on it. He pauses before jumping into action. He says no without apology. He puts his own needs first, guilt and all. The back half opens up men's mental health. Braden makes the case that strength is not the absence of emotion, it is the willingness to feel it, to ask for help, and to be a sounding board for other men. Everything you want, he says, is on the other side of fear. IN THIS EPISODE Why a nervous system built on chaos reads calm as a threat. The panic attack that sent a healthy man to the ER. How worth got tied to accomplishment, and how to unhook it. The meditation that brought a crisis-hardened man to tears. Learning to feel an emotion instead of analyzing it. The thirty-second pause that interrupts the old crisis reflex. Why asking for help is strength, especially for men. ABOUT BRADEN HATCH Braden Hatch is a mortgage lender, real estate agent, author, and podcast host based in Arizona, with over a decade in the mortgage industry. He is the author of Make Content. Close Deals., host of the Happy Hour Podcast, and founder of HatchManLoans. Find Braden: * Everything in one place: https://linktr.ee/hatchmanloans * Search "Hatchman" or "Braden Hatch" on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#8
June 22 · 35 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 8: Survival Wore a Smile, with Maria Arlene (Coach A)
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Maria Arlene, known to her audience as Coach A. A life coach, content creator, operations manager, and a single mother of three, she spent more than a decade rebuilding a nervous system that had only ever known defense mode. Maria names something Victor sees everywhere: the survival strategies we mistake for personality. The overthinking. The people-pleasing. Being the strong one, the strict one, the one who carries it all alone. We call it who we are, when it is often a body that learned to brace for the next problem before the last one finished. Abandoned by her mother, raised by her father until she was twelve, then on her own, Maria married young after an unplanned pregnancy, into a life she did not choose and a self she did not yet know. Her father died days after she gave birth. Two relationships did not survive. For years she smiled physically without feeling the smile, looked unapproachable, and could not connect to people or to herself. The turn did not come from positive thinking. It came from slow, unglamorous relearning. She moved cities to start over, found coaches and teachers online, and reached a moment she nearly did not survive, a night something in her chose to stay. From there she rebuilt: she learned that no one outside her could make her whole, that her value was hers to set and not the crowd's to grant, and that the discipline she once aimed at performance could be turned, gently, toward her own healing. What changed is mechanical, not magical. Her nervous system learned a different job. Now she pauses, breathes, and regulates instead of bracing. She no longer panics into a problem; she turns toward the solution, the resource, the next honest step. The boundaries came too: choosing the people who help her grow, and learning to say no out loud without an apology. The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Maria's answer is calm. Her nervous system no longer fires the old alarm. Even when money is short or a child is in the ER, the signal that once said panic now says, you have got this, and you are not alone. IN THIS EPISODE Why overthinking, people-pleasing, and hypervigilance are a nervous system managing threat, not a personality. What it costs to be the strong one, and what it gives back when you finally set it down. Why healing has to go beyond positive thinking. The first boundary that actually held, and what it cost. Practical regulation tools she uses in real life: the five-four-three-two-one grounding technique, slow nasal breathing, and mirror work to meet yourself without judgment. Reconnecting with the inner child, and the promise to give yourself thirty minutes a day. ABOUT MARIA ARLENE (COACH A) Maria Arlene is a life coach, content creator, and operations leader based in the Philippines, and a single mother of three. Through her channel The Inside Job with Coach A, she shares the long, real work of healing so that no one has to feel alone in their suffering. Find Maria: * Threads: Coach A FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#7
June 22 · 30 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 7: Fear Wearing a Costume, with Aline Harrington
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Aline Kara Harrington, a public school teacher of 25 years, a writer, and a longtime yoga practitioner whose early life was shaped by fear. Severe anxiety and OCD that began in childhood, even as she learned to function, succeed, and carry everyone around her. Aline names something Victor sees everywhere: the survival patterns high-functioning women mistake for personality traits. The control. The vigilance. The carrying it all alone. We call it who we are, when it is often fear wearing a costume. The conversation follows one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. As a child, Aline could not sleep and could not be alone, and she heard a voice that told her to erase and rewrite her schoolwork or her father would die. At 19 it became a breakdown. Cognitive behavioral therapy through her twenties taught her to tell the voice to quiet down, but it did not make her feel safe. The first real turn came twelve years ago on a yoga mat. One week of practice did more for her fight-or-flight than years of therapy had. In corpse pose she felt present and at peace for the first time, and began to see that the voice in her head was not her. Therapy, she felt, handed responsibility to someone else. Breath and practice put it back in her own hands. Recovery was the deeper turn. After a twenty-year drinking career spent self-medicating the tension, she got sober three years ago. Find your higher power, clean house, serve others. She learned to surrender the obsession to drink, and then to surrender everything else she could not control. A fear inventory, pen to paper, and faith replaced the old grip. Now the patterns are unwinding in real time. This year she hit a wall in the classroom, realized her values were in direct conflict with the job, and admitted she can no longer absorb every emotion in the room. Instead of forcing it, she is building a plan B, one step at a time, treating spirituality as action rather than insight. The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Aline's answer is sleep. After a lifetime of needing the lights on, bundled up, never on her back, she now sleeps anywhere, on her back, unafraid. Peace, a happiness she has never known, and the quiet certainty that she is going to be okay. IN THIS EPISODE Childhood OCD and the voice that demanded "one small sacrifice." Why control, perfectionism, and hypervigilance are a nervous system managing threat, not a personality. How one week of yoga outran years of therapy. Getting distance from the voice and learning you are not your thoughts. Self-medicating with alcohol, and what surrender in recovery actually clears. Burnout, a values conflict, and the courage to build a plan B. A simple fear-inventory practice: name it, write it, give it away. ABOUT ALINE KARA HARRINGTON Aline Kara Harrington is a public school teacher of 25 years, a writer, and a yoga practitioner. She writes about fear, faith, recovery, and coming home to the present moment, drawing on a lifetime with anxiety and OCD and three years in recovery. Find Aline: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aline.cara.harrington/ * Substack: linked in her Instagram bio FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#6
June 22 · 28 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 6: Addiction Is Survival, with McKayan May
McKayan May spent most of his life as, in his own words, a neurotic, depressed, and compulsive person, with addiction from a young age and a nervous system locked in fight or flight. He brought one frame worth taking seriously: addiction is survival, and performance is worth. The compulsion and the overachieving were never two problems. They were the same nervous system running the same program. The conversation traces one arc: where he started, what wired him, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. McKayan is the oldest of six in a chaotic, deeply religious household, the kid who took it on himself to regulate everyone else so he might feel safe at home. That was an impossible job for a child. Addiction arrived at thirteen as the release valve, a way to soothe a body vibrating with too much input and no one there to co-regulate. Later the same wiring put on a different costume: hit the quota, top the team, make the commissions. The performance never touched the state it was chasing, because it was still a survival program long after the threat was gone. Victor and McKayan get into how nervous system work creates choice over compulsion, the window where a craving stops being an order and becomes a decision. McKayan walks through his practice: track the sensation in the gut before the mind names it, send breath to it, sit with it, and let the choice window widen over time. They talk about breath as the thing that replaced the substance, and why so many socially sanctioned dependencies never get called addiction at all. The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? McKayan checks his breath. Shallow and stuck high in the chest means activated. Deep into the belly means safe. The back half is the conversation Victor most wanted: integration versus the fantasy of being fully healed. McKayan makes the case that "healed" implies something was broken and can be finished, and that the belief in a final, symptom-free destination is exactly what feeds the shame cycle that keeps addiction running. Integration is different. Keep the shadow close, see it, sit with it, without indulging its energy. IN THIS EPISODE Addiction as a survival mechanism, not a moral failure. How overachieving and compulsion run on the same wiring. Why hitting the quota never quiets the nervous system. Finding the choice window between craving and action. Breath as the thing that replaced the substance. Integration versus the fantasy of being fully healed. ABOUT McKAYAN MAY McKayan May is a writer, builder, and coach with a decade in startup sales. He writes about addiction, psychedelics, somatics, and religious deconstruction, and is developing coaching using IFS, somatic experiencing, and breathwork. He co-writes Living Eros, on Eros, desire, and sexual compulsion. Find McKayan: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mckayan888 * Threads: https://www.threads.com/@mckayan888 FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#5
June 21 · 32 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 5: Where Fear Lives, with Meryl Hayton
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Meryl Hayton, a trauma-informed inner peace specialist who helps women feel safe in their own minds and bodies. She did not start there. For most of her life she was run by fear. Fear of running out of money. Fear of speaking up. A constant worry about what everyone thought of her, and an anxious grip on the people she loved. Her mind ruminated and her body held the tension. She people-pleased and over-gave through relationship after relationship, ignoring red flags to be liked. From the outside she looked capable. Inside, she did not feel safe. The conversation traces one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Meryl grew up with parents she loved, but a father who showed up financially yet never said the words, and a critical mother. She learned early that being liked was a safety issue. When she was 17, her father died at home, alone with her. She spent decades seeking the love she had never been given. Her turning point is also her strongest opinion, and Victor shares it. You cannot think your way into regulating a nervous system. Insight and forgiveness live in the logical mind, but the resentment, sadness, and fear stay stored in the body. Ask someone who says they are over it how it still feels, and they will give you an eight out of ten. The work is clearing what the body still carries, not understanding it better. Victor and Meryl get into the one negative core belief underneath everything. Hers was "I am not good enough." She walks through how she found it, the inner-child reparenting that followed, EFT tapping and her CLEAR method, and what changed when that belief dropped from running her most of the time to almost never. The signature question of the show arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Meryl's answer is a complete sense of relaxation in the muscles, a body living in fluidity rather than tension. She closes on choice. You can stay stuck, or you can create something new. She did not think she could have the life she has now. She does. IN THIS EPISODE Living run by fear: money, speaking up, and what everyone thinks. How being liked becomes a safety issue. Why logic alone never regulates a nervous system. The one negative core belief underneath all the others. Where forgiveness in the head leaves the anger in the body. Inner-child reparenting and EFT tapping. The small daily promises that build self-trust. ABOUT MERYL HAYTON Meryl Hayton is a trauma-informed inner peace specialist, energy healer, retreat leader, and speaker. A yoga teacher since 2012 and a Reiki practitioner, she helps high-functioning women who look successful on the outside but crave a deeper sense of ease within. Her work helps them release stored tension, regulate the nervous system, and build self-trust through EFT tapping and her Emotional Clearing Method. Find Meryl: * Website: https://www.merylhayton.com/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merylhayton/ FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#4
June 21 · 34 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 4: Functioning, Not Living, with Rachel Heather
A note before you listen: Rachel's story touches grief, trauma, and addiction. We keep those at the level she chose and do not go into the private parts. Take care of yourself as you listen. For about a decade, Rachel Heather had small burnouts and partial recoveries, always just well enough to keep working, never well enough to actually live. Her words for it are functioning, not living. She was hyper-alert, in survival mode, masking so well that the people closest to her had no idea. Then the big one came and took her feet out from under her. The conversation traces one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Rachel is candid about the cost of survival mode: a childhood shaped by her father's absence, decades of masking neurodiversity no one had a name for, and a 38-year relationship with cannabis that started as relief and became a plaster over everything she could not feel. When the collapse arrived, she surrendered to it. She shook, she cried, she stayed on the floor for three months, and she let her body release what it had stored for a lifetime. Victor and Rachel get into what surrender actually means, why she stripped out every stimulant, how frequency meditation and nature and painting regulated a system that could not settle, and what it was like to receive an autism and ADHD diagnosis at 55 that reframed her entire life. This is also an honest conversation about addiction, about her son's recovery from cannabis-induced psychosis, and about the danger of normalizing the things we use to numb. The signature question arrives where it always does: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Rachel's answer is the heart of the episode. She feels calm. She feels at peace. She says she has never felt this way in her life. In this episode: What functioning, not living feels like day to day. The physical cost of a decade in survival mode. Masking undiagnosed neurodiversity. How addiction works as nervous system regulation. Surrendering to a collapse instead of fighting it. Meditation, nature, and creativity as regulation tools. A late autism and ADHD diagnosis. An honest talk about cannabis and what we normalize. About Rachel Heather: Rachel is a former chef turned front-of-house manager who ran several of her own businesses, raised and home-educated two children, and came through long-term burnout, grief, and a late autism and ADHD diagnosis into what she calls living the real kind. She now paints and works with clay in her open-air Inner Child Studio, makes pieces she calls imperfectly perfect, and volunteers with a neurodivergent artistic community. Her creativity is both her regulation and the way she tells the story she could not put into words. Find Rachel: Instagram: @asliceoflife69 Threads: @happypotter69 Resources mentioned: Mind Clearing, the practice Rachel credits in her recovery, developed by Alice Whieldon: https://alicewhieldon.com/mind-clearing/ From Victor: If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#3
June 20 · 22 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 3: When Numb Felt Safe, with Oak Mountain
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Oak Mountain, an author, philosopher, and men's mentor who spent years dissociated, numb, and hyper-vigilant, and who calls himself "mid journey" on purpose. This is a story told from the trail, not the summit. Oak is a survivor of complex childhood sexual trauma. He starts where the wiring lived, inside a daily life that did not feel. He describes thinking he might have an empathy disorder, hearing people share the most painful things and feeling nothing, struggling to read tone or body language, and carrying a quiet certainty that he was fundamentally flawed and about to be found out. The conversation traces one arc: where he started, what wired him, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Oak walks through the survival patterns that quietly decided what intimacy was allowed to look like for him as a man. Shame and confusion got louder than touch. Intimacy collapsed into sex and fixation, and the people closest to him were left feeling unmet. Then a decade of slow, real work began. Victor and Oak get into the body as the place healing actually happens. Oak talks about a 2014 awakening and the careful, intentional use of low-dose psilocybin that helped him feel fear without dying from it and come home to his body. He talks about sacred sexuality, periods of celibacy, and learning that pleasure is permitted. He names the turn he can point to: a moment around 2015 when everything repressed came pouring out, his body shaking, and he was held by two people in what he calls his first adult experience of unconditional love. That became the floor. A felt sense of loving presence that now tells him it is safe to lean in. He closes with the most useful first move for any man who recognizes the numbness but has never said a word about it: start with writing. A written body scan. The skill of putting what is happening inside into words. And one line worth keeping: lean in when you want to lean out. IN THIS EPISODE What it feels like to live dissociated and numb, and to mistake it for not caring. How survival wiring narrows intimacy into fixation. The body as the place the work happens. Coming home through fear, breath, and slow integration. Why pleasure has to be permitted before it can be felt. The first adult experience of unconditional love, and how a felt sense of safety becomes the signal to lean in. Reparenting an old pattern of isolation. Why writing is the first move toward emotional literacy. Going all in on what you love. ABOUT OAK MOUNTAIN Oak is an author, philosopher, and men's mentor. Born in Calgary, Canada and now based in Costa Rica, he works with men on emotional literacy, intimacy, and the long road back to the body. Through his platform Beyond the Hero he shares free resources for men and guidance for those facing the work of coming home to themselves. Find Oak: * Meta: Mythic Mystic * Website: beyondthehero.ca * Substack: https://substack.com/@oakmountain FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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#2
June 19 · 41 min
Feel Safe in Your Body, Ep 2: The Tsunami Behind the Smile, with Thien Harrah
In this episode of Feel Safe in Your Body, Victor Goenka sits down with Thien Harrah, an author, songwriter, and speaker born in Vietnam who writes about healing, exile, and the long road back to the self. Thien describes her nervous system journey as weather. First calm, the kind where you move through your days on autopilot and never stop to ask if you actually want this life. Then, last September, something shifted. She felt a volcano inside her with no idea when or why it would erupt. She cried for no reason. She could not sleep. Her mind ran like a highway the moment her head hit the pillow. Calm became stormy, then a hurricane, then a typhoon, and a single comment from a stranger online turned it into a tsunami. The conversation traces one arc: where she started, what wired her, what turned it, and what safety feels like now. Thien grew up in Vietnam under a father who ran the household like a boot camp, where no one spoke and everyone was afraid, and she learned to suppress everything she felt. She left at 18 for the United States with no language and had to raise herself, carrying childhood trauma, exile trauma, and the alienation of belonging fully to neither world. When the tsunami hit, all of it surfaced at once. Thien is candid about the part most people skip. The hardest task she ever faced was opening what she calls her Pandora box, sitting with everything she had stored her whole life, and meeting the inner child she had forgotten. Victor and Thien get into the nervous system as intuition, why she writes instead of meditates, how breathwork can carry an agitated system into stillness, and why home is something you build inside yourself rather than a place on a map. The signature question of the show shows up where it always will: how do you know, in your body, that you are safe right now? Thien closes on her forthcoming book, Behind the Smile: In the Quest to Find My Inner Child, and a message for anyone sensing there is a box in their own life they have not opened yet. IN THIS EPISODE How a nervous system escalates from calm to collapse. The difference between real calm and autopilot. Childhood, exile, and alienation trauma, and how they compound. What it is like to open the Pandora box and meet your inner child. Why home is built inside you, not on a map. Why writing can regulate a body that cannot sit still to meditate. Learning to receive after a lifetime of only giving. ABOUT THIEN HARRAH Thien Harrah is an author, songwriter, speaker, and lifelong student of personal transformation. Born in Vietnam and shaped by experiences of war, displacement, loss, and resilience, she explores the connections between healing, spirituality, self-discovery, and the human spirit. Her upcoming book, Behind the Smile: In the Quest to Find My Inner Child, chronicles uncovering hidden wounds, shadow work, reconnecting with her inner self, healing childhood trauma, and finding self-acceptance. Find Thien: * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thienharrah/ * Threads: https://www.threads.com/@thienharrah * Book: Behind the Smile: In the Quest to Find My Inner Child (forthcoming) FROM VICTOR If your mind is loud and your body never quite settles, that is the work I do inside BreathX Collective and one to one with a few people at a time. * BreathX Collective: https://nas.com/breathxio This is Feel Safe in Your Body. Thanks for being here.
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