Finding Harmony Podcast

Deep rest is a birthright, and daily ritual can be the way back to it. Author and teacher Tracee Stanley joins Harmony Slater and Russell Case to talk about retreat, ritual, and reclaiming your attention in a world built to distract you.

Tracee is the author of Radiant Rest and The Luminous Self, and her new book, Living Ritual, answers the question she hears at the end of every retreat: how do I bring this home? She shares the story of her spiritual awakening in Cape Town, her years as a film producer, her donation-based yoga studio, and a simple evening and morning ritual you can try for seven days. She also leads a short guided practice to call your attention back to you.

In this episode

How the yoga nidra book Radiant Rest came to be, from a Shambhala editor's request to a sign at a Wanderlust workshop in Whistler

Why The Luminous Self goes beyond asana into the yamas, niyamas, kleshas, and samskaras

The question "What lessons are you tired of learning?" and what it reveals about seeing other people's potential instead of your own

A spiritual awakening on a balcony in Cape Town, and the books a friend handed her afterward

Leaving a career as a film producer, opening a donation-only yoga studio, and moving to Mount Shasta

Studying with teachers from the Himalayan tradition and the Sri Vidya Tantra lineage

Living Ritual and the idea of micro rituals for the householder

Why our attention is being monetized, and how to build an "analog cocoon" around sleep and waking

Turning the dishes into a sadhana

A guided two-minute practice to reclaim your attention

What to expect on a retreat, and why some practices need to be taught in person

Harmony's invitation to the Purple Valley retreat in Tenerife

About Tracee Stanley 

Tracee Stanley is the author of the upcoming book Living Ritual: Infuse Each Day with Purpose and Spirit (St. Martin’s Essentials 2026) and the bestselling books Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity and The Luminous Self: Sacred Yogic Practices & Rituals to Remember Who You Are - (Shambhala Publications). Tracee is the founder of Empowered Life Circle, a sacred community and portal of practices, rituals, and Tantric teachings inspired by more than 30 years of studentship in Sri Vidya Tantra and the teachings of the Himalayan Masters. Tracee is devoted to sharing the wisdom of yoga nidra, rest, meditation, self-inquiry, nature as a teacher, and ancestor reverence. Tracee holds certificates from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Advanced Eco-Therapy, New Thinking, Best Practices, and Emerging Modalities, and a certificate in Advanced Ecopsychology. Tracee is devoted to illuminating the magic and power found in liminal space and weaving devotion and practice into daily life.

Links and resources

Tracee Stanley: https://www.traceestanley.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Ritual-Infuse-Purpose-Spirit-ebook/dp/B0FLYQWTR1/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

https://www.instagram.com/tracee_stanley

Books: Radiant Rest, The Luminous Self, Living Ritual 

Purple Valley Retreat Center, Tenerife, Canary Islands, with Harmony: Week one, February 20 to 27, and week two, February 27 to March 6 

Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 1: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater/ 
Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 2: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater-2/   Ancient Breathing 2.0 Master Class - https://harmonyslater.com/free-90-minute-pranayama-masterclass

FIND Harmony online: https://harmonyslater.com/
Harmony on IG: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyslaterofficial/
Finding Harmony Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingharmonypodcast/

FREE Manifestation Activation: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/manifestation-activation

What if your symptoms aren't the problem? What if they're a message?

Harmony Slater and Russell Case welcome Allison Lorne, a certified nurse midwife with 25 years in women's health who guides women through perimenopause and menopause as a sacred passage rather than a set of symptoms to silence. Allison is also a spinal energetics practitioner, so the conversation moves between the clinical and the energetic: what hormones are doing, what the body is asking for, and how to come home to it.

Allison explains why she calls perimenopause "adolescence in reverse," how the history of hormone therapy shaped what women were told for two decades, and why emotional symptoms like anxiety, irritability, and sleeplessness often arrive first. She shares her own first symptom, why it took her years to recognize perimenopause, and how a lifetime of intuitive healing work led her from hospital nursing to private practice. Along the way: the grandmother hypothesis, a coven on California's Central Coast, dandelions, and a simple practice for tuning in to your inner wise woman.

In this episode

Why perimenopause can feel like adolescence in reverse, and what the big feelings are asking you to look at

How hormone therapy went from widely prescribed to widely feared, and what Allison says the reanalysis of the Women's Health Initiative data showed

Why Allison describes hormone therapy as comparable to insulin or thyroid medication, and why she says the decision is case by case

The emotional symptoms that often come first: anxiety, irritability, sleeplessness, a sense of doom, rising feminine rage

Allison's own first symptom, and why she did not recognize perimenopause for about ten years

How relationships change when children leave home, and why communication and intimacy matter in midlife

The grandmother hypothesis, orcas, and why menopause may be about purpose rather than decline

How spinal energetics keeps a client alert and engaged, and why that matters for lasting change

Why empaths need to learn "what's mine and what's not mine"

A simple daily practice for meeting your inner wise woman, using the elements of water, fire, earth, air, and ether

Key takeaways

Perimenopause is a whole-systems transition, not only a hormonal one. Emotional symptoms are information.

Allison's view: hormone therapy decisions are individual, and the greatest benefit is seen when it starts before 60 or within ten years of the last period. Talk with your own provider.

Midlife is an opportunity to take inventory of what has been pushed down and to choose embodiment, self-awareness, and nervous system regulation.

Women's health research has lagged behind, and community is part of the remedy.

Time in nature, even gazing at the sky, helps the brain settle into the states where insight arrives.

Guest bio
Allison Lorne, CNM, is a certified nurse midwife with 25 years in women's health. After two decades in hospital and clinical practice, she opened a private practice three years ago, where she guides women through perimenopause and menopause with a blend of clinical education, somatic work, and spinal energetics. She leads a three-month coaching program for women in midlife and lives on five acres on California's Central Coast.

Connect with Allison

Website: https://www.healwithallison.com/

https://www.instagram.com/spiritualsomatics/

Sensitivity Quiz

 

Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 1: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater/ 
Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 2: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater-2/   Ancient Breathing 2.0 Master Class - https://harmonyslater.com/free-90-minute-pranayama-masterclass

FIND Harmony online: https://harmonyslater.com/
Harmony on IG: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyslaterofficial/
Finding Harmony Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingharmonypodcast/

FREE Manifestation Activation: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/manifestation-activation

Description
Everyone is talking about nervous system regulation. But what if the goal isn't to be calm all the time? In Episode 337, Harmony Slater and Russell Case talk with Laurie James, author of Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, host of the Confessions of a Free Bird podcast, and a certified somatic practitioner and coach who works in the Somatic Experiencing approach developed by Peter Levine.

Laurie shares how caring for aging parents while raising four daughters, and the end of a 26-year marriage, led to a season of overwhelm and then to somatic healing. She explains what Somatic Experiencing is, why a healthy nervous system moves between activation and rest many times a day, how to build capacity instead of chasing calm, and why you can heal without retelling your whole story.

In this episode

Why the goal of nervous system work is flexibility and resilience, not constant calm

What Somatic Experiencing is, and how listening to the body differs from directing it from the top down

How the vagus nerve and neuroception shape your response to safety and threat

What it means to complete a threat response that never finished

How yoga, nature and slow movement support regulation

Why you don't have to revisit your story to release it

How a memoir, a podcast and one-on-one work grew out of a second-half-of-life reinvention

About the guest
Laurie James is an author, certified somatic practitioner and coach, and the host of the Confessions of a Free Bird podcast. Her memoir, Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go (2021), chronicles a season of raising four daughters, caring for her parents, and the unraveling of a long marriage. She lives in Southern California.

Links and resources

Laurie's website: https://www.laurieejames.com/

Laurie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurie.james/

Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go on Amazon and wherever books are sold

Confessions of a Free Bird podcast, where Harmony was a guest

Mentioned in this episode
Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing), Stephen Porges (polyvagal theory), Gabor Maté, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris (The Deepest Well and the ACE study)

Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 1: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater/ 
Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 2: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater-2/   Ancient Breathing 2.0 Master Class - https://harmonyslater.com/free-90-minute-pranayama-masterclass

FIND Harmony online: https://harmonyslater.com/
Harmony on IG: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyslaterofficial/
Finding Harmony Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingharmonypodcast/

FREE Manifestation Activation: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/manifestation-activation

What happens when the thing that saved your life becomes the thing you have to heal from?

Chad Herst has been practicing Ashtanga yoga since his twenties — authorized to teach by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois himself in 2003 — and coaching high-performing founders and executives since 2008. From the outside, he'd figured it out. From the inside, he was running the exact pattern he now helps his clients name: the drive that builds something real, and then keeps running long after it stops feeling like enough.

 

Harmony and Russell sit down with their old friend from the Mysore years to talk about what actually broke that pattern open — a body that finally refused to cooperate, a decade of sitting with ayahuasca, and a grief from his brother's death in 1991 that he didn't let himself fully feel until he turned 50. It's a conversation about achievement, identity, family patterns, and what it costs to keep proving you're enough — and what's on the other side of finally stopping.

Chad's new book, The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix, launches October 1, 2026 Get the first chapter, read in his voice, at herstwellness.com/chapter-one.

 

Guest bio:

Chad Herst is a mind/body and executive coach and the author of The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix. He has been coaching since 2008. His work helps people notice the patterns that take over under pressure, listen for what matters to them, and try different ways of responding in daily life.

Find out more: https://herstwellness.com

His new book, The Performance Trap: The Ache No Success Will Ever Fix, names the pattern he kept finding underneath the success in his clients, and in himself: the drive that builds something real, then keeps running long after it stops feeling like enough. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Melissa.

 

Connect with Chad:

Website: herstwellness.com

Free first chapter (read in his voice): herstwellness.com/chapter-one 

 

Key takeaways:

Achievement can be a coping mechanism as much as a calling — and the two can look identical from the outside

A pattern that starts as protection (being "the good kid," never a problem) can quietly become an identity you can't set down

Practices like Ashtanga, meditation, and ceremony don't create your patterns — they reveal and can magnify them

Sometimes the body has to break down before old grief finally has somewhere to go

Integration — bringing an insight into ordinary daily life — is harder, and more important, than the peak moment that produced it

Telling the truth about your own story, even imperfectly and even when family disagrees with how you tell it, can itself be a form of healing

 

Content Advisory: This episode includes a personal conversation about grief after a suicide loss, a family member's mental illness, and the complicated emotions that can follow. Please take care while listening, and feel free to skip this one if it isn't the right time.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available:

United States: Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or chat at 988lifeline.org. Available 24/7.

Canada: Call or text 9-8-8 (Suicide Crisis Helpline). Available 24/7, in English and French.

Outside the US and Canada: Find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.

If you're in immediate danger, please call your local emergency number (911 in the US and Canada).

 

Leave a review: If this episode resonated, a 5-star review and a note on your biggest takeaway helps other seekers find these conversations.

 

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube · or wherever you listen.

Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 1: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater/ 
Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 2: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater-2/   Ancient Breathing 2.0 Master Class - https://harmonyslater.com/free-90-minute-pranayama-masterclass

FIND Harmony online: https://harmonyslater.com/
Harmony on IG: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyslaterofficial/
Finding Harmony Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingharmonypodcast/

FREE Manifestation Activation: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/manifestation-activation

Marie Manuchehri was a thirty-seven-year-old oncology nurse when, mid-task at a patient's bedside, her clairvoyance switched on — and never switched off. Thirty years later, she has spent more time than most of us at the edge between living and dying.

In this conversation with Harmony Slater and Russell Case, Marie explains why joy is the condition that opens intuition rather than the reward for it, how to tell a genuine knowing from ordinary fear, and what she has noticed in the rooms of people who were about to cross over. She also shares the moment she told her nursing supervisor what was happening to her — certain it would end her career.

Key takeaways:

Joy isn't a reward for doing the work — in Marie's model it's the condition that makes intuition possible

Intuition is a high-frequency state, which is why it goes quiet in fight-or-flight, where most people live

Fear is not intuition. If a message arrives with a story attached, it's coming from the mind

Her technique: deliberately move your energy down out of the brain and into the pelvis, so the third eye has room

Her abilities opened at 37, on a day shift she hadn't chosen, in a hospital she loved

She doesn't remember her sessions afterward, which she considers a mercy

"You can only love your neighbour as much as you love yourself"

For empaths: stay in your own lane, stay in your own joy, stop carrying the world

Marie Manuchehri is an intuitive, healer, and medium who began her healing career while working as an oncology nurse in a Seattle-area hospital. Her perceptions and her ability to move energy have assisted many people in healing their bodies.

Marie loves to educate those who are also on the healer's path, and teaches many courses focused on intuition and the awareness of energy — tools for recognising and understanding your own intuition, and for offering new perceptions to those seeking healing. She's devoted to teaching people about the real, positive impact their own psychic abilities can have on transforming their lives and their psychology, as well as the lives of others.

In her private practice, Marie cares for clients around the world, providing insight into their health concerns as well as mediumship to help them connect with loved ones on the Other Side. She hosts the bi-monthly Joyful Intuitive Podcast and is the author of Intuitive Self-Healing and How to Communicate with Your Spirit Guides.

Connect with Marie
Website: energyintuitive.com

Instagram: @MarieManuchehri

Facebook: @MarieManuchehri

YouTube: @MarieManuchehri — youtube.com/user/mariemanuchehri

Podcast: The Joyful Intuitive Podcast

Books: Intuitive Self-Healing · How to Communicate with Your Spirit Guides

 

Free masterclass — Sunday 27 September. Three pranayama techniques, taught live. If this conversation made you want to slow down enough to actually hear yourself, this is the practice. 

Free 90-Minute Pranayama Masterclass: https://harmonyslater.com/free-90-minute-pranayama-masterclass

 

DISCLAIMER: This conversation is shared for educational and inspirational purposes and is not medical advice. Nothing discussed here is a substitute for diagnosis or treatment by a qualified healthcare provider. Please don't change a treatment plan without talking to your doctor.

Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 1: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater/ 
Purple Valley Retreat WEEK 2: https://yogagoa.com/harmony-slater-2/   Ancient Breathing 2.0 Master Class - https://harmonyslater.com/free-90-minute-pranayama-masterclass

FIND Harmony online: https://harmonyslater.com/
Harmony on IG: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyslaterofficial/
Finding Harmony Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingharmonypodcast/

FREE Manifestation Activation: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/manifestation-activation