We spend our entire lives having thoughts, but because no one else can hear them we can fool ourselves into thinking they don't matter unless we act on them. But the tone and word choices of our inner dialogue are incredibly important. Today's episode offers Commune course excerpts from three teachers – Lauren Zander, Danielle LaPorte, and Brendon Burchard – on how to cultivate thought patterns that uplift your life.

If you like hearing from multiple teachers like this, check out the Commune Wellness Summit. Sign up for free here: onecommune.com/summit.

Jeff: Hi, I’m Jeff Krasno and welcome to Commune, a global wellness community and online course platform featuring some of the world’s greatest teachers. We’re on a mission to inspire, heal, pass down wisdom, and bring the world closer together.

This is the Commune podcast, where each week we explore the ideas and practices that help us live healthy, connected and purpose-filled lives.

Today we bring...

We recognize the importance of self-reflection, but there is also tremendous value in stepping back as a business or a family to contemplate the bigger picture, the higher purpose, the deeper “why” behind it all. As we embark on our first company off-site, here are some thoughts on the value of briefly disengaging from the “world of the 10,000 things.”

Jeff Krasno: Hi, I'm Jeff Krasno and welcome to Commune, a global wellness community and online course platform featuring some of the world's greatest teachers. We are on a mission to inspire, heal, pass down wisdom, and bring the world closer together. This is the Commune Podcast, where each week we explore the ideas and practices that help us live this healthy, connected, and purpose filled life.

Now I hope that you as a listener to the Commune Podcast, that you've learned something from these amazing guests that we've had on the show, gems of wisdom that you've been able to apply to your own life. Well,...

Today’s show is about what it means to be an advocate: why and how and with what intention we should speak up for the causes we care about.

We’ve pulled excerpts from three Commune courses:
• Finian Makepeace talks about the importance of the “second person” who makes an idea available to new, broader audiences.
• Marianne Williamson shares with us the difference between “speaking up” and “tearing down.”
• Suzanne Sterling offers advice for how to discover the authentic voice that lives within you.

We hope this episode gives you some tools and motivation to speak up with compassion—for yourself and for others. As Marianne Williamson says, “There's no religious or spiritual tradition anywhere that gives anyone a pass on addressing the suffering of other sentient beings.”

All of these courses are represented in the Commune Summit! Sign up for free at onecommune.com/summit.

Jeff: Hi, I’m Jeff Krasno...

What comes after the job, the money, the power? Why do we seek these things if not, in the end, for happiness? And is happiness simply a chemical symphony in the brain that we can hack into, or does true contentment lie somewhere ineffably beyond our physiology? Today, Jeff offers an orchestrated monologue of his thoughts on happiness.

Devon: Happiness means to me that my internal condition is in alignment with my external circumstances and that I feel a connectedness between those two.

Megan: I find happiness through letting go of my strong grasp of expectations.

Devon: I find happiness when I'm present in the moment because I'm not looking into the future and over analyzing the past. I can realize that everything in this moment is exactly what it's meant to be and that I'm OK. 

Megan: I find happiness through listening, instead of responding. 

Devon: There's nothing left to be done. I don't need anything. I realized that I truly have all that I'd ever need and I'm not...

Modern allopathic medicine is brilliant at treating acute trauma, but it’s a big problem when we try to treat chronic health issues with the same approach. Today on the show Jeff speaks to Kelly Noonan Gores, writer, producer and director of the documentary Heal. She explains how our medical system throws drugs at symptoms instead of understanding and treating the root cause of the disease. This is no small matter, as over half the American population is now afflicted by chronic issues such as diabetes, arthritis, asthma, and cardiovascular disease. Yet Kelly’s message is one of empowerment: We are not destined by our DNA. We have agency over our own well-being.

Modern western allopathic medicine is brilliant at treating acute trauma. Clearly, there are times when surgery and drugs are absolutely necessary and modern medicine has saved lives.

However, as today’s guest on the show adeptly points out, our medical system is often treating chronic disease as if it...

How can we remember those who have died with more than just love and pain? David Kessler’s insights in this podcast are both professional and intensely personal. For decades he taught doctors, nurses, counselors, and first responders about end of life and trauma. Yet despite that knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. His journey through that tragic loss ultimately led him to discover and write about the sixth stage of grief—meaning.

David Kessler: My name is David Kessler, and I am a grief specialist.

Jeff: Grief specialist. When I'm asked to check the box on one of those forms, I rarely see that particular vocation. Can you unpack that for me a little bit?

David Kessler: Sure. I often think about no one's in the third grade and goes, "Let's see, police officer, fireman, and grief specialist, I'll do that." I don't think it's a profession you choose sometimes as much as it chooses you. So that's what it did when I was...

Hardship, loss, loneliness. These aspects of the human experience can be doorways for finding meaning in life. According to Michael B. Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, the key is asking yourself the right questions. Don't ask, "What is the meaning of this suffering?” Instead explore, "Based on this obstacle, how can I imbue my life with greater meaning?” Today, Jeff and Michael discuss that imaginary hole we sometimes feel in our lives, and how what that feeling is really asking for is a spiritual awakening.

Michael B.: I'm Michael B. Beckwith. Right now, I am the founder of Agape International Spiritual Center. We're celebrating our 33rd year as a community here in Los Angeles. Basically, I teach meditation. I facilitate worship services and whatever falls under that description of a spiritual teacher. I speak at the United Nations. I teach around the world. I feel very grateful that I get to be and do what I get to do. 

Jeff: Was...

Dr. Jolene Brighten is a women's health naturopathic medical doctor and author of Beyond the Pill. She believes every woman (and the men in her life) should get to know her hormones, because only by understanding how her body works can a woman make informed, healthy choices about interventions such as birth control. Hand-in-hand with education, Dr. Brighten also believes we need to flip the script in women's medicine – where everything is diagnosed is a “dysfunction” – and instead embrace that the cyclical nature of female hormones is actually a superpower.

Dr. Brighten’s new course, Balance Your Hormones, will be launching on Commune in early 2020. Go to onecommune.com and sign up for our newsletter to get our latest course releases!

Dr. Brighten: So I have a very interesting background, so I'm a  nutritional biochemist who then went on to naturopathic medical school and then pursued my postdoc in functional medicine. So functional medicine,...

When life starts to overwhelm us, it can feel like there's nowhere to turn. Stress and anxiety come in all shapes, sizes, and emotions. But what if we learned to turn inward and start to heal our minds from the inside out? Suze Yalof Schwartz founded Unplug Meditation to help you find the meditation that clicks with your personality and neurology. When that magic match is made, meditation meets you where you are and helps you reengage with the world around you with clarity and energy.

Jeff: Can you remember the first time that you meditated?

Suze Yalof S.: Yes.

Jeff: And why?

Suze Yalof S.: Yeah, I was so stressed out and my mother-in-law was like, "You need to breathe," and I'm like, "You're right, I actually do." So, she did this little three minute exercise with me and afterwards I said, "Wow, what was that," and she said, "It's called meditation, you really should do it," and then I was like-

Jeff: This is your mother-in-law?

Suze Yalof S.: Yeah, my mother-in-law.

Jeff: Yeah,...

Life does not necessarily play out the way we want it. Much of the actions we take in the present, or our current behavior, is based on scripts written for us by others in our past. It may be a traumatic incident or a strong influence, but only through working to become aware of those past influences can we then actively re-write our own scripts to grow and change for the better. In this week's episode, Jeff works with Byron Katie to do "the work", recalling and reliving a difficult time that still impacts his life today. Through that recollection and allowing himself to respond differently in the present, the two of them can help turn what was once a trying time into an opportunity for growth.

In 1986, Byron Katie had an epiphany. She was in a counseling facility dealing with addiction to alcohol and codeine. She was agoraphobic. Her self-esteem was so low that she didn’t think she deserved to sleep in a bed. One morning, She was in slumber on the floor when a cockroach...