Healthy Mind, Healthy Life

What happens in the quiet moment after a serious diagnosis, when the room empties and the words finally settle into the body? For some, it becomes fear. For others, it becomes a search for understanding, for hope, for some sliver of agency in a moment that feels overwhelmingly out of control.

In this episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, host Sana sits with Rick Hill, who was diagnosed with stage 3 embryonal cell carcinoma in his early twenties and given little hope of survival. Rick shares the full arc of that decision-making moment, the unexpected role mindset and self-talk played in his recovery, and what he has come to believe about the relationship between mind and body across five decades of being cancer-free. This is a nuanced conversation — Sana brings clear-eyed skepticism, Rick shares his lived experience, and listeners are invited to think for themselves.

About the Guest:

Rick Hill is a 51-year cancer survivor and author of Too Young to Die and The Cancer Conundrum. Diagnosed in his early twenties with stage 3 embryonal cell carcinoma, he chose an integrative path at the Oasis of Hope hospital in Tijuana, where he was treated with pancreatic enzymes, B17, and a strict whole-food diet. He now speaks publicly about mindset, integrative care, and patient choice.

Key Takeaways:

• The hardest part of a serious diagnosis is often mental, not physical. Holding agency in your own mind shapes how you walk through treatment.
• Self-talk is not a soft skill in healing. The way you speak to yourself about food, body, and recovery is heard by your nervous system every single day.
• Curiosity, discipline, and hope can co-exist in the face of fear. You don't have to choose only one.
• Lived experience and clinical evidence are both valid lenses. Listeners are encouraged to engage critically, ask questions, and consult qualified professionals before making any health decision.
• Mindset alone is not a treatment plan, but it is a real factor in how the body and immune system respond to whatever path you choose.
• The most important question in any health journey is not "what's the right answer," but "am I making this choice with full information and full ownership?"

Connect With the Guest:

• Website: https://b17works.com
• Books: Too Young to Die and The Cancer Conundrum (available on Amazon)
• Affiliated organisation: Richardson Nutritional Center (RNCstore.com)

Episode Chapters:

For millions of people, tinnitus is more than a ringing in the ears. It becomes a background tenant in the mind, shaping sleep, focus, mood, and sometimes hope itself. The advice many receive, just learn to live with it, leaves them with a sound and no map.

In this episode, co-host Sayan sits with Dr. Emily Hensarling, audiologist with over 20 years of clinical experience and founder of Seeds of Insight Coaching, to look at what's really happening when tinnitus shows up. They unpack why the brain flags this neutral sound as a threat, how the nervous system can amplify or soften the experience, and small, practical tools, breath, grounding, sound, that begin to rewire the response. Honest, science-grounded, and quietly hopeful.

About the Guest:

Dr. Emily Hensarling is an audiologist with more than two decades of clinical experience and the founder of Seeds of Insight Coaching. After living with hearing loss herself and watching too many tinnitus patients leave clinics without real tools, she trained as a coach to bridge the gap between audiology and nervous system support. Her upcoming program, Sound Shift, brings together education, group coaching, and skill building for people learning to live alongside tinnitus on their own terms.

Key Takeaways:

• Tinnitus is a symptom, not a disease. It often correlates with hearing loss, stress, medications, or other body-wide factors, which is why the first step is a proper hearing evaluation.
• The brain is the amplifier. Because tinnitus does not match anything familiar, the survival brain quietly tags it as a possible threat, creating a monitoring loop that intensifies it.
• Just learn to live with it is incomplete advice. Without tools, that sentence becomes dismissive and feeds the very stress spiral it is trying to soothe.
• Two simple practices help: box breathing (4-4-4-4) to settle fight-or-flight, and the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise to pull attention back into the present moment.
• Relief is not instant. The brain's rewiring is structural and built through consistent practice, the same way one learns piano. Locus of control sits in breath, focus, and response, not in the sound itself.

Connect With the Guest:

• Website: https://seedsofinsightcoaching.com/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-hensarling/
• Program: Sound Shift (soft launch April, full launch July) — details on her website
• Free webinar: Tinnitus and stress — link available via Seeds of Insight

Episode Chapters:

Sometimes the stress you're carrying isn't really yours. It's the lighting. The clutter. The sound bouncing off bare walls. Your body has been quietly working overtime to filter all of it out, and you didn't even know.

In this episode, host Yusuf sits with Stephanie Lee Jackson, founder of Practical Sanctuary and a pioneer in sensory interior design. They unpack how your home talks to your nervous system, why so many spaces unintentionally exclude highly sensitive and neurodivergent people, and the small, low-cost shifts that can change how you sleep, focus, feel, and connect. A grounded conversation about treating yourself like a respected guest in your own life.

About the Guest:

Stephanie Lee Jackson is the founder of Practical Sanctuary, a sensory interior design practice rooted in trauma-informed neuroscience. With a background spanning fine art, massage therapy, and design, she helps highly sensitive people, neurodivergent families, and anyone overwhelmed by their environment build spaces that calm the nervous system. She is also the author of The Eccentric Genius Habitat Intervention.

Key Takeaways:

• Your environment is not separate from your brain. Your mind, body, and surroundings work as one feedback loop, which means changing any one of them can shift the others.
• Sensory adaptation is real. You stop noticing the lighting, the noise, or the clutter, but your body keeps paying the cost in focus, sleep, and emotional bandwidth.
• A space can be functionally inaccessible without being physically inaccessible. Harsh sound, light, and visual chaos can shut highly sensitive and neurodivergent people out of full participation.
• Two simple practices can shift how a room feels: walk out, take three breaths, walk back in and notice your body. Then "scurry-funge" for ten minutes as if a respected guest is on the way.
• The deeper invitation is to stop adapting yourself to your space and start letting your space serve you. Small, low-cost changes in lighting, sound, and layout often produce relief that feels disproportionate to the effort.

Connect With the Guest:

• Website: https://practicalsanctuary.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieleejacksonpracticalsanctuary/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/psanctuary/
• Book: The Eccentric Genius Habitat Intervention: Interior Design For Highly Sensitive People (paperback and e-book, linked from her website)
• Free e-course: available at practicalsanctuary.com

Episode Chapters:

Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatch DM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik

Disclaimer: This episode is produced for educational and informational purposes only. All views expressed by the guest are their personal opinions alone and do not represent the views of the host or Healthy Mind by Avik™. The Network does not verify, endorse, or assume responsibility for any guest statements. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, legal, financial, or professional advice, please consult a qualified professional before making any decisions. Listeners are encouraged to engage critically and independently with all content do not consume blindly. Use this content as a starting point for your own reflection and research, not as a substitute for professional guidance. Third-party content is referenced under fair use for informational purposes only. Guest speakers are solely responsible for their own statements.

If you have concerns about any content, please contact us here. By listening, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer in full. Read detailed disclaimer here.

Healthy Mind By Avik™ is a global platform redefining mental health as a necessity, not a luxury. Born during the pandemic, it's become a sanctuary for healing, growth, and mindful living. Hosted by Avik Chakraborty, storyteller, survivor, and wellness advocate.

With over 6500+ episodes and 200K+ global listeners, we unite voices, break stigma, and build a world where every story matters. Subscribe and be part of this healing journey.

Brand: Healthy Mind By Avik™ | Email: https://www.podhub.club/contact | Website: https://www.podhub.club | Based in: India & USA Listen to all podcast shows: https://www.podhub.club/podcastnetwork | Be a guest: https://www.podhub.club/beaguest | Newsletter: https://healthymindbyavik.substack.com/

#podmatch #healthymindbyavik #podhub.club #sensoryinteriordesign #neurodivergent #highlysensitiveperson #nervoussystemregulation #mentalhealthpodcast #mindfulliving #healthymindhealthylife #traumainformeddesign #sensoryoverload #emotionalwellbeing #healingspaces #neuroinclusion #practicalsanctuary

Pregnancy is often packaged as pure joy. But for so many people, it shows up as something more layered: hope and fear, love and grief, excitement and exhaustion, sometimes all in the same morning. The people around her can either ease that load or quietly add to it.

In this episode, host Yusuf sits with Suzzie Vehrs, birth and postpartum doula and founder of She Births Bravely, to talk about what pregnant and new mothers actually carry emotionally, why presence matters more than perfect gifts, and the small, consistent ways partners, friends, and family can show up. Tender, honest, and deeply human.

About the Guest:

Suzzie Vehrs is a birth and postpartum doula, childbirth educator, and the founder of She Births Bravely, a platform supporting families through pregnancy, birth, and the early postpartum months. After leaving a career in finance and walking through her own challenging birth experiences, she has gone on to support over 200 births and reach more than a million mothers through her writing. She is also the author of Divine Birth.

Key Takeaways:

• Pregnancy emotions are not one note. Joy often arrives later, after grief, fear, and uncertainty have been allowed to exist. Skipping straight to performed happiness blocks the real thing.
• Presence is the foundation. A partner simply being in the room, holding a hand, staying close, can physiologically support a labouring person, oxytocin moves with felt safety.
• Support is small and steady. Thoughtful texts, a walk together, a shared meal, taking something off her plate at work, this is what actually changes her week.
• Postpartum mothers need to be seen as whole humans, not just as the baby's caregiver. Helping her stay connected to herself is one of the most underrated gifts.
• When in doubt, bring food and skip the questions. Drop a meal, say what day works, and keep her space and energy protected.

Connect With the Guest:

• Website: https://shebirthsbravely.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shebirthsbravely/
• Doula profile: https://doulamatch.net/profile/28670/suzzie-vehrs
• Book: Divine Birth: A Collection of Wisdom + Coloring Pages to Inspire and Empower the Pregnant Mother (linked from her website)

Episode Chapters:

You can have hundreds of online friends and still have nobody to call when life gets heavy. That quiet kind of loneliness is showing up everywhere right now, full inboxes, busy calendars, and a strange ache that doesn't have a name.

In this episode, host Yusuf sits down with Gabor Kadas, founder of the Friending app, to talk about modern loneliness, why social media feels like connection but often isn't, and how meeting real people in your neighborhood, over coffee, a walk, a jog, can shift something that no scroll ever will. Honest, simple, and grounding.

About the Guest:

Gabor Kadas is the founder of the Friending app, a platform built to help people form real-life friendships through shared activities and verified, in-person meetings. Having lived across Hungary, the UK, Canada, and the US, Gabor draws on his own experience of repeated relocation and isolation to build a tool he wished he'd had.

Key Takeaways:

• A long list of online "friends" is not the same as one person you can actually meet. Notice the difference before loneliness becomes invisible to you.
• Loneliness often hides in plain sight. It shows up as cancelled plans, restlessness, low mood, even in physical signs like raised blood pressure or blood sugar.
• Real friendship needs proximity and shared activity, walking, coffee, tennis, jogging, anything that puts two humans in the same room.
• Verification and safety matter when meeting strangers offline. First meetings in public places, with built-in safety features, lower the barrier to showing up.
• Technology is not the enemy. Technology used to push people back into real-world contact can actually rebuild the community structures social media weakened.

Connect With the Guest:

• Website: https://friending.com/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaborkadas 
• Email: gabor@friending.com
• Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/friending

Episode Chapters:

We are taught early that good decisions come from clean logic. Pros and cons. Spreadsheets. Sound advice from the right people. And yes, those tools matter. But the decisions that actually shape who we become rarely yield to a checklist. They live somewhere quieter, in the body, in our values, in the longing we have spent years explaining away.

In this conversation on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, host Yusuf welcomes board-certified executive coach and author Stephanie Peirolo, whose new book The Saint and the Drunk offers an internal compass for the moments when no spreadsheet will do. Drawing from the ancient practice of Ignatian discernment and reframed for anyone, religious or not, Stephanie walks us through the genius of the body, the wisdom hidden inside aversion, and why honouring what you actually want is one of the most countercultural things you can do.

A grounding listen for anyone standing at a fork in the road and trying to hear themselves over the noise.

About the Guest:

Stephanie Peirolo is a board-certified executive coach with nearly a decade of experience coaching leaders and teams. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Stanford and an MA in Transformational Leadership from Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry. She is the author of The Saint and the Drunk: A Guide to Making the Big Decisions in Your Life, co-host of The Bad Boss Brief podcast, and writes the Fierce Grace newsletter on Substack. Her storytelling has been featured on The Moth and NPR.

Key Takeaways:

• A discernment practice is not the same as a pro-and-cons list. It is a slower, deeper way of asking: what am I actually being called toward?
• The first question is rarely what should I do. The first question is what do I want? And we have been trained to skip past it.
• The "genius of the body" is real information. Comfort, discomfort, attraction, aversion — these are not distractions from clarity, they are part of it.
• Aversion deserves the same respect as attraction. If your body says no to something your culture or family says you must want, that no is data worth listening to.
• Resistance comes in two flavours: the kind that asks for more time and care, and the kind rooted in old people-pleasing patterns. Telling them apart is the work.
• A scavenger hunt for self-knowledge: the books you keep choosing, the films you keep watching, the dreams that keep returning. Pay attention. Your inner life is leaving you clues.
• Discernment is a muscle. Awkward at first. Eventually, second nature.

Connect With Stephanie Peirolo

• 🌐 Website: https://www.speirolo.com/ 
• 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/speirolo
• ✍🏼 Substack — Fierce Grace: https://speirolo.substack.com
• 🎙️ Podcast — The Bad Boss Brief: https://badbossbrief.substack.com
• 📘 Book — The Saint and the Drunk: https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Drunk-Guide-Making-Decisions/dp/1916517110
• 🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/speirolo

Episode Chapters:

(Timestamps approximate)

Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatch DM Me Here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik

Disclaimer: This episode is produced for educational and informational purposes only. All views expressed by the guest are their personal opinions alone and do not represent the views of the host or Healthy Mind by Avik™. The Network does not verify, endorse, or assume responsibility for any guest statements. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, legal, financial, or professional advice, please consult a qualified professional before making any decisions. Listeners are encouraged to engage critically and independently with all content do not consume blindly. Use this content as a starting point for your own reflection and research, not as a substitute for professional guidance. Third-party content is referenced under fair use for informational purposes only. Guest speakers are solely responsible for their own statements.

If you have concerns about any content, please contact us here. By listening, you acknowledge and accept this disclaimer in full. Read detailed disclaimer here.

Healthy Mind By Avik™ is a global platform redefining mental health as a necessity, not a luxury. Born during the pandemic, it's become a sanctuary for healing, growth, and mindful living. Hosted by Avik Chakraborty, storyteller, survivor, and wellness advocate.

With over 6500+ episodes and 200K+ global listeners, we unite voices, break stigma, and build a world where every story matters. Subscribe and be part of this healing journey.

Brand: Healthy Mind By Avik™ | Email: https://www.podhub.club/contact | Website: https://www.podhub.club | Based in: India & USA Listen to all podcast shows: https://www.podhub.club/podcastnetwork | Be a guest: https://www.podhub.club/beaguest | Newsletter: https://healthymindbyavik.substack.com/

#podmatch #healthymindbyavik #podhub.club #discernment #decisionmaking #somaticwisdom #intuition #executivecoaching #lifecoaching #thesaintandthedrunk #stephaniepeirolo #healthymindhealthylife #innerwisdom #personalgrowth #boundaries #spiritualpractice