Invite the Light: Healing, Wholeness, and Awakened Living

Health and healing begin with a spiritual foundation. Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian explores how prayer, spiritual awareness, and divine intelligence guide the healing process, helping us move through challenges and discover the deeper wholeness already present within life.

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Yogacharya Ellen Grace O'Brian is an acclaimed Kriya Yoga teacher, award-winning author, poet and minister who has served seekers of spiritual enlightenment from all walks of life and religions for over forty years. She has published several books and programs about meditation, mindfulness, and spiritual living. Her published works include the award-winning the Jewel of Abundance, Living the Eternal Way, and Living for the Sake of the Soul, as well as a volume of spiritual poetry The Moon Reminded Me. She is the founder of The Yoga Hour podcast and also hosts Kriya Yoga Today podcast. She is the founder and spiritual director of The Center for Spiritual Enlightenment, a Kriya Yoga meditation center with world headquarters in San Jose, California.

Learn more about Yogacharya O’Brian: ellengraceobrian.com

Listen to Yogacharya O’Brian’s Satsang series: “Health, Healing, and Awakened Living” (remaining dates are April 12th, May 3rd, and June 7th)

DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: My conversation with Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian about the spiritual basis of healing is wonderfully timely as there is so much need in this moment for healing ourselves, our communities, and our world.  I appreciated Yogacharya’s framing that healing is returning ourselves to an awareness of our original wholeness which extends beyond the physical body to encompass mind, heart, and soul. We discussed three steps of healing: intending to heal, believing that it is possible to heal, and having a practice that quiets the mind and allows our inner light to shine.  Also included is a 5 step prayer for healing that listeners will find useful for healing at all levels.  I highly recommend this episode.

THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: I really enjoyed the discussion Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian had with Dr. Laurel Trujillo on how health and healing begin with a spiritual foundation. The key concept that resonated with me is that having a practice that quiets the mind allows connection to  intuition/discernment. Look at how nature does it. The actual guidance comes from within. It was particularly powerful to view healing not as a cure, but as bringing us into our innate wholeness. This episode is powerful, giving actual steps to take toward the healing process of self, relationships, the world. A great thanks to Yogacharya O’Brian for sharing her insights to actualize the healing process through steady spiritual practice and the belief that healing is possible.

Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian

Cultivate Radiant Living and Nourish Your Soul

How can we empower food to work in favor of radiant living and soul nourishment? Nutritionist Sue Van Raes shares practices that can help us understand what satisfies our true hungers. We can learn to trust the wisdom of the body’s signals for self-care and building resiliency.

Sue Van Raes is a functional nutritionist, food psychology specialist, and wellness expert who is dedicated to helping women who are stressed out about food finally make peace with their plates. She is the founder of Boulder Nutrition where she offers many programs to support nutrition for the body/mind/spirit.  Sue draws on her personal and professional experience providing a body, heart, mind, and soul approach to stop stressing and start living. Sue’s insight on nutrition, food psychology, and yoga has been featured in numerous publications, including People Magazine, The Chopra Center, The Sacred Science, and the Elephant Journal. She is the author of the book we are discussing today, Food and Freedom: Discover Your Personal Recipe to Eat, Think and Live Well

THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: I really enjoyed this conversation between Sue Van Raes and Dr. Trujillo. They spoke about hunger in its different forms, physical, mental, heart hunger and soul hunger. Sue’s extensive knowledge of how hunger works in our bodies and her spiritual understanding supports us in being able to nourish ourselves in a healthy balanced way. Most of the program was spent on mental, heart and soul hunger. Physical hunger was described in Sue Van Rae’s previous appearance on The Yoga Hour.
I appreciate how she said that we often get these other hungers confused with physical hunger and try to satisfy these hungers with food which doesn’t address our core desires. An important piece of advice she left the listeners with is to simplify. Trying to do everything and perfectly just increases our stress levels and throws us off balance. When we feel more balanced in all ways we can make conscious choices about all areas of our lives, including food, and everyone benefits.

DR TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: This conversation with Sue Van Raes about her book Food and Freedom asks wonderful questions about how we nourish ourselves at the level of the body, the mind, the heart, and the soul.  In addition to reviewing the hormones leptin and ghrelin, which control hunger and satiety in the body, I appreciated the information that Sue shared about how stress impacts our eating, along with some breathing practices that can help relieve that stress.  I enjoyed our discussion of “glimmers" which are the opposite of triggers, and are something that we can look for whenever we claim a mindful moment in our day.  We discussed how emotional eating can be a teacher for us, and the importance of self-compassion as we work to try to improve our diets.  I highly recommend this conversation for anyone who is curious about how to better nourish themselves fully.