WellBeings with Dominic Bowden

If you’ve ever felt ineffective, invisible, or inarticulate, chances are you weren’t actually any of those things. Those feelings may instead have been the result of a lack of awareness we all seem to have for how our words, actions, and even our mere presence affect other people. Talking us through it is this week’s guest, Professor Vanessa Bohns a social psychologist, award-winning researcher and teacher from Cornell University in the United States, on her book, ‘You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters’. Vanessa wants to help us flip our internal script about how powerful our influence can be, and how we can harness this awareness for our own good and for the good of those around us. A super positive and heart-warming episode to help us all tackle the social demands of the silly season and beyond. 

Tom Carroll is a true legend, an era-defining figure for the sport of surfing - two times world champion, dominating Hawaiian monster wave Pipeline, and surfing’s first millionaire. This diminutive and dreamy kid from Sydney’s Northern Beaches grew up to redefine professional surfing, paving the way for its transformation into the billion-dollar industry it is today.Proving it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog, Tom is the perfect example of how mindset is everything in life - chasing highs from surfing to substance abuse, overcoming injury and chronic pain - this soulful, thoughtful and generous man is now finding the ultimate body/mind connection through meditation, and sharing this gift with others.Having practised meditation for decades, Tom now teaches what he considers "the Rolls Royce of practice" Sattva Meditation, from his hometown in Australia to people all over the world, including holding free morning sessions via Instagram Live. He's hosting a retreat this February on the beautiful South Coast of New South Wales, Australia, where you can Journey with Tom Carroll into meditation, surfing, yoga and ocean connection. Find out more at https://www.tomcarrollmeditation.com/retreats

Do you want to feel more alive? The answer is, probably, who doesn’t? And that’s why it’s one of the first questions LA-based pleasure and embodiment coach Euphemia Russell asks their clients. Because that feeling of being alive, however that feeling hits you - excitement, aliveness, engagement - that’s pleasure. And we’re delving deep into the pleasure spectrum with Euphemia in this episode of WellBeings through their best-selling book Slow Pleasure: exploring the pleasure spectrum.We have so many choices available to us in every moment to invite more pleasure into our lives, but the barrier to this, as Euphemia describes it, is that we’ve inherited a society that structurally and collectively views pleasure as selfish, something to be deferred until after all the work is done or just downright shameful. Pleasure is about so much more than sex. There it is! That naughty, taboo word that has us all feeling super awkward. You knew it was coming so we thought we’d get it out of the way early. Yes, of course, pleasure can be about sex, but it can also be about movement, engagement, ease, connection - it can even just be the very basic reminder that we live in a body. One of the traps that society has created for us around pleasure is that we’re presented with two very binary options, one that is hyper-sexual and one that is totally desexualised. But like so many things, Euphemia explains, pleasure is a spectrum. So jump on in with us, the water is lovely and warm.

Here at WellBeings, we have been fans of Sarah Wilson for many years. A New York Times best-selling author, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist, for those unfamiliar with her work, she was formerly the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, a news journalist, as well as host of Masterchef Australia. She’s written 11 cookbooks including the international phenomenon, ‘I Quit Sugar’ which sparked a movement that has helped millions in over 130 countries, making her a household name around the world. Since then though, that world we live in has become a lot more complex; climate change, loneliness, the question of how we all live more sustainably, and that’s nothing on the last few years. So what shows up for most of us is burnout, stress, and of course anxiety. And Sarah’s trying to put her finger on why, in a time when we’re more interconnected than ever, we are feeling so disconnected, fractured. She has a theory, “Where the real loneliness sits is that we feel lonely from ourselves, so we feel disconnected from a relationship with ourselves, but we also feel disconnected from nature, and what I call the matrix of life, a sense of meaning, a belonging to something larger than ourselves.”In some ways, Sarah is letting us tag along on her own journey of growth and spiritual discovery, picking up where she finished off in her last book. She is now on a mission to try and help us find a way back together, to find a way to connect us back to what matters, to the life we feel we ought to be living and the world we live in. She started her journey in nature, hiking solo around the world and writing as she went, returning home just as the pandemic hit.  Sarah withdrew to a remote cabin in Northern NSW to finish the book within the frame of the new normal, and it changed and grew into something bigger than even she could have anticipated. 

Author of 2022 New York Times’s Best Selling book, Stolen Focus. From this deeply researched book, we look into how our ability to pay attention is collapsing and how that is affecting our ability to connect. This is a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening and how to get our attention back.

We exist in the most connected period in human history, yet more than half of us feel lonely regularly. As well as making us feel bad, sad and unhappy, Dr. Jonathan Leary explains how loneliness can be more detrimental to our physical health than chronic disease, actually breaking down the body. As the Founder and CEO of Remedy Place, the world’s first social wellness club dedicated to enhancing your health and your social life at the same time, Dr. Leary spent a decade researching and developing Remedy Place’s cutting-edge techniques that optimize the body’s natural ability to heal. He's dedicated to transforming the relationships we have with our health professionals plus the way we interact socially to ensure we can do so in a way that nourishes our bodies, minds and relationships. TThroughout his career, he has brought his professional expertise to a wide range of celebrities, professional and Olympic athletes, and patients from all walks so this is your opportunity for a consultation - Dr. Jonathan will see you now!

You already have all the things you need to live a better, healthier and happier - WellBeings shows you how through insightful conversations with some of the most acclaimed and influential thought-leaders pioneering the wellness movement internationally. 

Everyone is obsessed with sleep - with good reason - it's our most powerful weapon against aging. Dr. Frank Lipman, NYT best-selling author of "Better Sleep, Better You" breaks down the steps you can take today to get a better sleep tonight.