When Adriana Marchione released, When The Fall Comes, she opened our eyes to how dance, poetry and performance could guide us through enormous grief. Today, she sits down with me to talk about the things that came first; what happened before her short film and the birth of her thriving therapy practice— her own story of recovering from addiction. The motivation and inspiration for her upcoming film, The Creative High.
Adriana helps hundreds of people through her art and therapy practice, supporting them as they heal from grief, addiction and illness. As an expressive arts therapist, she takes a creative approach to recovery. Listen in as she shares how creating can serve as a container for pain and the ways art can not only help us to heal but also teach us a whole new way of seeing and communicating with one another.

Storytelling. An oldie, but a goodie. So good in fact, that Antonio Sacre— author-in-residence at the UCLA Lab School— has used it to connect children and adults alike to their cultures, identities and possibly most importantly, to each other.
Antonio Sacre’s approach to life is one with an emphasis on creating memories and remaining present. In sharing his own personal narratives and invented stories, he has been able to preserve his family’s history while offering a unique, human relatability that’s proven itself universal.

What do your opinions have to do with spirituality? Turns out when we enter a conversation only looking to share what we know, we miss out on the mystical potential that comes from opening up to what we do not know in dialogue. An editor of Evolve Magazine in Germany and Cultural Anthropologist, Dr. Nadja Rosmann shares how connection and dialogue liberate the human spirit into possibility.

Dr. Charlie Easmon is a Primary Care Physician specializing in Travel Medicine, Mental and Occupational Health. He trained at St George's Hospital Medical School in South London and performed his medical elective period in Ghana. Since then he has worked with a number of international medical organizations and charities including Merlin, Raleigh International and Save the Children in Rwanda, and ECHO in Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

Nina Horne is founder and CEO of Samara Family Services, a company focused on building healthier teens and happier families through skill-building and mentoring: samarafamilyservices.com As a public policy expert, large-scale systems builder, and emotional health advocate, her goal is to ensure every teen and young adult has the skills needed to manage difficult times. Most important, she’s a mom who’s been there and back. At home, Nina teaches meditation in nature and is a reiki healer for underserved cancer patients in Oakland, CA.

An influential voice in today's culture, she is regularly invited to inspire and motivate various women groups and conferences in the UK and Africa.

Nana has been nominated Best Media Personality by Women4Africa Awards, and her Talk Show was nominated Favourite Talk Show led by a woman by Screen Nation Awards in the UK.

Nana has also been to BET Experience to interview all international artists in LA.
Nana believes there is greatness in each and everyone of us. And dreams come true if you don't quit. Her catch phrase is "see you at the top."
Nana is a wife and a mother of four. She resides in London.

All of my life, I’ve been fascinated by what it means to be human together.
This has driven me deep into the study of art, film and storytelling, experiential learning, relationships, sexuality, the human reproductive life cycle, the transmission of intergenerational trauma, parenthood, attachment, loss and human behavior, and performance. And the same drive has guided me to deepen my professional studies into Relational Life and Sex Therapy. My experiential teaching style draws from a range of leadership experiences over the past decades ranging from Wilderness Field Instructor to TMI Project Workshop Facilitator.

In this episode, Dr. Brackett is committed to teaching emotional intelligence as you can hear it deeply touches his own personal story of being bullied in school.  He does not create a cheesy "fix it all" mentality to teaching emotional intelligence.  Instead, his work is thoughtful, research-backed, and he is calling us all in to do better in understanding our own feelings so we can then understand the feelings of others.

Do you want to hear someone who knows how to be real and connect? Ashanti Branch was raised by a single mom on welfare in Oakland, CA. A fateful day, a teacher broke through to him and changed his life and he went on to one of the most prestigious engineering schools.
Yeah, he likes math.

​If that wasn't enough to admire the guy for excelling at a subject most of us dread...he was making oodles of money and he left it all!

Dr. Tania Singer is one of the foremost researchers in the world on compassion. She hails from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany. See her info here.

She set up a very specific experiment that allowed people to practice "contemplative dyads" where a listener and speaker come together to operate in a kind of meditative listening in connection.

She tested three different styles of dyads or pair work. Her findings are stunning.

Just attention based mindfulness does not create any reduction in cortisol stress after three months but an interpersonal practice leads to a 50% reduction in cortisol stress. HUGE! HUGE!

Heather Monro is a leadership coach, a former athlete, and a parent. She is a self-described passionate student of human connection. You can learn about her work at Bright Space Thinking.

She has always found great personal meaning through her connections as a young girl so this idea of leading a Sidewalk Talk chapter was in her DNA.

Hear about Heather's fears of being rejected on the sidewalk before her very first listening event.
None of those fears came true.

Esther Boykin was the very first city leader outside of California to bring listening ot her community. Sidewalk Talk turned into an organization, if you really think about it, because of Esther nudging Traci to bring Sidewalk Talk out to the East Coast.

Esther is a psychotherapist, a group practice owner, leads Sidewalk Talk in the DC area, as well as runs a project called “Therapy is Not A Dirty Word”.

The US Veteran experience is one many of us feel heartache about. We see homeless veterans on the sidewalks or living on the streets. Seven percent of the US population are veterans. Seventy-five percent of those served during wartime.

Twenty-two US Veterans die by suicide every day. 22!

Hear Gary describe his experience of healing from the trauma not only from his young life, but the wounds he took with him into the Vietnam War when he was just 19 years old.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. His books are available in 26 languages and include Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture.

Today, Traci and Rick have such a sweet connection and exploration together as they discuss how to be a resilient connector even if you are an introvert.  If you want to find out more about Rick please visit his website to find his podcast and online courses here which we highly get behind.

Dr. Belinda Hernandez Arriaga is a Faculty Coordinator for the Masters In Counseling MFT program at USF's South Bay location. Belinda has a doctorate in Education and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with eighteen years of experience working in community mental health, with a specialization in child trauma and Latino Mental Health. She is Founder and Chief Executive Director of Ayudando Latinos A Soñar (www.alashmb.org), a Latino cultural arts, education, and social justice program dedicated to working with rural youth and families.

When he was a teen, Julian Plumadore was living on the streets of Seattle, Washington. His lived experience as a trans teen, experiencing homelessness, and his own twenty-year work sustaining his own mental health have created a beautiful and loving conviction to do right by people struggling with homelessness and mental health crisis. In this interview, you will learn and be inspired to take up the work of humanizing homelessness.

Dr. Shelly Harrell is a Psychologist at Pepperdine University and a Couples Therapist.
She has built a meta transactional framework called PEaCE for interacting across differences and holding a larger context in mind. (Person-Environment-Culture - Emergence).
Dr. Harrell grew up in Detroit Michigan during the civil rights movement which shaped the lense she brings to the field of psychology.

Pioneers in Human Relating:Drs. Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt are pioneers in the field of marriage counseling and now human relationship. They are therapists turning therapy upside down. Harville has been on Oprah over 17 times, his work is that revolutionary.