The Sweet Spot Podcasts

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb host of The Sweet Spot Podcasts interviews Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of 365 Prescriptions for the Soul: Daily Messages of Inspiration, Hope and Love published by New World Library.

Dr. Bernie Siegel is a well-known proponent of alternative approaches to healing that involve not just the body, but the mind and soul as well. As the author of several books, including Love, Medicine & Miracles and Peace, Love & Healing.

Bernie has been at the forefront of the medical ethics and spiritual issues of our day. He and his wife (and occasional coauthor), Bobbie, live in a suburb in Connecticut. They have five children and eight grandchildren.  Visit his website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews  Larry Dossey, M.D., author of The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing The Future Can Shape Our Lives published by Dutton Adult.

This distinguished Texas physician, deeply rooted in the scientific world, has become an internationally influential advocate of the role of the mind in health and the role of spirituality in healthcare. Bringing the experience of a practicing internist and the soul of a poet to the discourse, Dr. Larry Dossey offers panoramic insight into the nature and the future of medicine.

Upon graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Dossey worked as a pharmacist while earning his M.D. degree from Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, 1967. Before completing his residency in internal medicine, he served as a battalion surgeon in Vietnam, where he was decorated for valor. Dr. Dossey helped establish the Dallas Diagnostic Association, the largest group of internal medicine practitioners in that city, and was Chief of Staff of Medical City Dallas Hospital in 1982.

An education steeped in traditional Western medicine did not prepare Dr. Dossey for patients who were blessed with "miracle cures," remissions that clinical medicine could not explain. "Almost all physicians possess a lavish list of strange happenings unexplainable by normal science," says Dr. Dossey. "A tally of these events would demonstrate, I am convinced, that medical science not only has not had the last word, it has hardly had the first word on how the world works, especially when the mind is involved."

The author of nine books and numerous articles, Dr. Dossey is the former Executive Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine the most widely subscribed-to journal in its field. The primary quality of all of Dr. Dossey's work is scientific legitimacy, with an insistent focus on "what the data show." As a result, his colleagues in medical schools and hospitals all over the country trust him, honor his message, and continually invite him to share his insights with them. He has lectured all over the world, including major medical schools and hospitals in the United States --Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, the Universities of Pennsylvania, California, Washington, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic.

The impact of Dr. Dossey's work has been remarkable. Before his book Healing Words was published in 1993, only three U.S. medical schools had courses devoted to exploring the role of religious practice and prayer in health; currently, nearly 80 medical schools have instituted such courses, many of which utilize Dr. Dossey's works as textbooks. In his 1989 book Recovering the Soul he introduced the concept of "nonlocal mind" -- mind unconfined to the brain and body, mind spread infinitely throughout space and time. Since then, "nonlocal mind" has been adopted by many leading scientists as an emerging image of consciousness. Dr. Dossey's ever-deepening explication of nonlocal mind provides a legitimate foundation for the merging of spirit and medicine. The ramifications of such a union are radical and call for no less than the reinvention of medicine. Visit his website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Dr. Robin Goldstein, author of The New Baby Answer Book, 2E: From Birth to Kindergarten, Answers to the Top 150 Questions about Raising a Young Child published by Sourcebooks Trade.

Dr. Robin Goldstein is a nationally known parent educator, specialist in child development, and faculty member at John Hopkins University. Her advice has appeared in Redbook, Working Mother, Good Housekeeping, and other national publications. She is a frequent guest on TV and radio, and a popular corporate speaker. As a parenting consultant, Robin advises families on their everyday challenges and helps parents understand their young child's behavior. Visit her website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of The Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Mr. Russill Paul, author of Jesus in the Lotus: The Mystical Doorway Between Christianity and Yogic Spirituality published by New World Library.

Russill Paul is a world-renowned musician as well as a teacher of Eastern spirituality. He trained simultaneously as a monk and Yogi under the direction of the renowned sage and mystic Bede Griffiths in South India for close to five years and has taught in graduate and postgraduate spirituality programs for the past seventeen years. Born and raised in India, Russill lives in Austin, Texas, and runs a Yogic Mystery School. He performs and conducts workshops, retreats, and pilgrimages throughout the world. Visit his website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of The Sweet Spot Podcast, interviews Dr. Joanne Stern, author of Parenting Is a Contact Sport: 8 Ways to Stay Connected to Your Kids for Life published by Greenleaf Book Group Press.

Joanne Stern, PhD, is a psychotherapist with a private practice emphasizing family and couples counseling. She’s a teacher, consultant, speaker, and expert guest on parenting and family topics, including communication, discipline, self-esteem, addictions, eating disorders, grief, and loss. In 2002, she also became an EEG neurofeedback practitioner to address a variety of childhood disorders, including attention deficit disorder, anxiety, and depression.

Dr. Stern is dedicated to helping individuals, couples, families, and groups learn, heal, change, and grow in their relationships with one another.

Parenting Is a Contact Sport: 8 Ways to Stay Connected to Your Kids for Life is her first book. A mother and grandmother, she and her husband, Terry Hale, live in Aspen, Colorado.  Visit her website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of The Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Fr. Paul Coutinho, S.J., author of Just As You Are: Opening Your Life To the Infinite Love of God published by Loyola Press.

Fr. Paul Coutinho, S.J. is an internationally recognized Ignatian scholar, author, and speaker who brings an Eastern flavor to Western spirituality. A native of India and a Jesuit from the Bombay province, he frequently leads retreats, gives spiritual direction, and trains people to lead the Spiritual Exercises. He holds master’s degrees in both clinical psychology and religious studies, and he has a doctorate in historical theology from Saint Louis University, where he specialized in Ignatian spirituality and is now a visiting theology professor and on the Advisory Board of the Review for Religious and the Faculty Advisor for the Theology Club.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Mr. Rex Weyler, author of The Jesus Sayings: A Quest for His Authentic Message published by House of Anansi Press.

Rex Weyler is a journalist, writer, and ecologist. He was born in Denver, Colorado in 1947, went to high school in Midland, Texas, and later studied physics, mathematics, and history at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He worked as an apprentice engineer for Lockheed in 1967, but left engineering for a career in journalism. In 1969, he published his first book with photographer David Totheroh, a pacifist discourse with photographs from a winter in California’s Yosemite Valley.

Weyler married Glenn Jonathans in Nijmegen, Netherlands in 1971 and immigrated to Canada in 1972. He worked at the North Shore News in North Vancouver and with Greenpeace. Between 1974 and 1982, he served as a director of Greenpeace, editor of the Greenpeace Chronicles magazine, and was a co-founder of Greenpeace International. He sailed on the first Greenpeace whale campaign, and his photographs and news accounts of Greenpeace appeared worldwide.

Weyler’s photography and essays have been published in the New York Times, Oceans, Smithsonian, Rolling Stone, New Age Journal, Conscious Choice, New Times, Shared Vision, National Geographic, and other publications. Weyler received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his Native American history, Blood of the Land, and he co-authored the self-help classic Chop Wood, Carry Water. He co-founded Hollyhock Educational Centre on Cortes Island in British Columbia – dedicated to environmental, personal, and professional studies – and which remains Canada’s leading educational retreat centre. He co-developed the Justonic tuning software used by innovative musicians around the world and wrote The Story of Harmony about the history of musical tuning theory. His account of the first decade of Greenpeace is available in September 2004 from Raincoast Books in the Canada and Rodale Press in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Weyler was married for the second time in 1990, to Lisa Gibbons. He remains active in environmental work. He writes for magazines and newspapers, is widely reprinted on the Internet, and appears weekly on Canada’s Omni-10 News show, The Standard. He lives in Vancouver, BC, and has three sons: Jack, Jonah, and Liam.

Weyler and his wife, Lisa Gibbons, are foster parents for displaced teens. Weyler serves on several company and non-profit boards, including Greenpeace International Marine Services. He speaks regularly to schools and public audiences. For correspondence and bookings: Contacts.  Visit his website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Ms. Amber Lupton, co-author of Give Peace A Deadline: What Ordinary People Can Do To Create World Peace in Five Years written by Nathan Otto and Amber Lupton and published by Greenleaf Book Group Press.

Amber Lupton is an expert at personal development and transformation having studied at a young age with great minds such as Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and Ken Wilber.  AMBER has taught workshops all over the world incorporating cognitive and motivational approaches.  She is also the co-founder of a marketing company in Santa Barbara, California for holistic healers called the The Holistic Alliance, a specialized website hosting company serving psychotherapists, massage therapists, construction contractors and has recently expanded to eco-builders. She has also taught workshops all over Canada with a company called Warrior Sage and is consultant for Women's Spirituality program for one of the most successful seminars in Canada that has now been brought to Los Angeles and Portland. Visit her website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Dr. Barry Weinhold and Dr. Janae Weinhold, authors of Conflict Resolution: The Partnership Way published by Love Publishing Company.

Barry and Janae are lifelong teachers with a world of experience working with children, youth and adults. In addition to almost 60 years combined teaching experience, they have served for over five decades as licensed mental health professionals.

Dr. Barry Weinhold is licensed as a psychologist and Dr. Janae Weinhold as a professional counselor. Co-founders of the Carolina Institute for Conflict Resolution & Creative Leadership (CICRCL), they specialize in the areas of developmental psychology, trauma, violence prevention, conflict resolution, cosmologies and consciousness studies.

They are the authors or co-authors of 31 books. Visit their website.

Dr. Lara Honos-Webb, host of the Sweet Spot podcast, interviews Mr. Steve Ryals, author of  Drunk with Wonder: Awakening to the God Within published by Rock Creek Press.

Steve Ryals has published over 1,200 music reviews in the past 12 years in magazines such as New Age Retailer and Sedona Journal. He has been a student of philosophy, religion, spirituality, science, and human behavior for 30 years.  Visit his website.