How to Trust What You Feel

Summary

Mayim Bialik's Breakdown – "How to Trust What You Feel"

Date: December 19, 2025
Host: Mayim Bialik
Guest Host: Jonathan Cohen
Special Guest: Martha Jo Atkins, End-of-Life Counselor and Death Doula

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Episode Overview

In this deeply intimate and thought-provoking episode, Jonathan Cohen sits down with renowned death doula Martha Jo Atkins for a candid discussion about dying, transformation, intuition, and the language of transitions. Originally aired only for Jonathan’s Substack "Practical Spirituality," the episode goes beyond standard interviews, venturing into the deeply personal and practical lessons learned from working with the dying, the cues our bodies and spirits give during transitions, and how we can use this awareness to better navigate life’s big and small crises.

Mayim Bialik introduces the episode as an exploration of the intersections between death, intuition, spirituality, and conscious living—focusing on how trusting what we feel can lead to greater peace, meaning, and connection, even amidst uncertainty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Death Teaches Us to Live

Start — 05:46

• Jonathan frames death as not solely about the end of life, but as holding lessons for how we live:

  "There are so many lessons in that transition that can help us here and now shape the lives that we want to live." (Jonathan, 04:50)

• Martha Jo shares her journey:

  • Raised in a Methodist clergy home, spiritual curiosity began after the loss of her brother at age 24.
  • Early extraordinary experiences (physical sensations, vivid dreams after his death) sparked her search for connection beyond the material.
  • Quote:

    "Along the way I had a few experiences that were, I would say, non ordinary. I believe now they're probably more ordinary than we think." (Martha Jo, 07:16)

2. Connecting with Loved Ones and Experiencing “Thinning of the Veil”

07:16–14:30

• Childhood stories of grief and connection:

  • Martha recounts working with grieving children who openly communed with deceased loved ones.
  • Memorable scene:

    "...they were having a tea party and they were introducing their deceased mothers to each other. It was beautiful." (Martha Jo, 12:47)

• Cultural and developmental openness:

  • Children "live more in between these worlds," unburdened by adult frameworks (Jonathan & Martha, 14:30).

3. Is It Real or Am I Making It Up? (Intuition and Validation)

17:11–20:10

• Jonathan brings up a core question:

  "Is it real or am I making it up?" (Jonathan, 17:11)

  • Martha reframes this: it’s less about external validation and more about the felt sense and subjective meaning.
  • Quote:

    "If it's comforting and helps them get on with their day...great. I think we get to make meaning in ways that serve us. I don't abide by the crazy thing anymore." (Martha Jo, 17:39)

• Assigning meaning:

  • The focus is on how beliefs or feelings help us settle and navigate daily living (Martha Jo, 19:00).

4. Training Ourselves to Feel and Navigate Sensations

20:10–23:54

• Somatic awareness:

  • Martha describes learning to distinguish anxiety from other sensations through somatic therapy (Peter Levine’s methods).
  • Anxiety is often an umbrella term masking a spectrum of feelings and bodily cues.
  • Practice: Notice and describe sensations in detail (bubbles, thickness, etc.) to decode feelings and their messages.

• Quote:

  "Understanding that she [the body] really is pretty smart. I just didn't know....I didn't understand that I was getting clues all the time." (Martha Jo, 20:10)

5. Grounding Intuition: Practical Exercises

22:26–24:09

• Jonathan’s advice:

  "If your body has intelligence...then starting to be embodied...is the first way to start to expand your extrasensory abilities." (Jonathan, 22:26)

• Sit Spot Practice:

  • Martha’s exercise: sit in the same spot outside daily for 30 days; over time, perception deepens, and new details emerge.
  • Noticing the present physical reality sharpens all forms of intuition.

6. Unlocking New Perspectives through Meditation

24:35–28:35

• Loving Kindness Meditation:

  • Martha shares a practical and accessible “Metta” (loving kindness) meditation as her entryway into self-soothing and resetting during emotional storms.
  • Her personalized version:

    "May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be safe inside myself and outside. May I be well in mind, body and spirit. May I be at ease, happy and content." (Martha Jo, 25:00)

• Jonathan likens this to tuning a dial:

  "We're not trying to cure the feeling...we're adjusting the frequency to allow the body to move into another state." (Jonathan, 27:39)

7. The Practice of Rebalancing and Agency in Healing

28:35–39:23

• Recovery as an addition of positives, not just processing negatives:

  • Sometimes we need to crowd out trauma by intentionally creating new, positive experiences—“rebalance the scale” (Jonathan, 39:23).

• Media & lifestyle diet:

  • What we consume—news, entertainment, people—affects our frequency and mental wellness (Jonathan & Martha Jo).

8. Signs and Metaphors in the Dying Process

41:44–45:13

• Universal patterns in dying:

  • Those transitioning often exhibit behaviors (like repeatedly asking the time, searching for shoes, or referencing travel) which serve as “signposts” that a spiritual and physical shift is happening.
  • Quote:

    "Very often people will start to ask about what time it is and it gets incessant...My conjecture is that they're starting to shift. Their body and their spirit are starting to shift a little bit." (Martha Jo, 42:31)

• Translating these signs to everyday transformation:

  • Our own life transitions might have emotional or physical cues we should honor—sleeplessness, restlessness, compulsions—which are natural parts of inner transformation.

9. Communication and Listening in Layers

45:50–47:53

• Listening for the deeper message:

  • Martha underscores the importance of listening not only to words, but to the feelings and intentions beneath—the “layers” of communication.
  • Quote:

    “We converse with each other in layers, don’t we? …Listening in layers can get exhausting. …Listening and then asking questions to ascertain if what you're feeling and sensing is where they are...can be really useful.” (Martha Jo, 46:28)

• Ritual and kindness as daily practice:

  • Both Jonathan and Martha share the value of bringing compassionate attention to everyday encounters and using loving kindness meditation for self and others.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Along the way I had a few experiences that were, I would say, non ordinary. I believe now they're probably more ordinary than we think."
  — Martha Jo Atkins (07:16)

• "If it's comforting and helps them get on with their day in a way that is useful, great. I think we get to make meaning in ways that serve us."
  — Martha Jo (17:39)

• "Our bodies are getting clues all the time. I just didn't know how to inhabit my body."
  — Martha Jo (20:10)

• "[Loving Kindness meditation] became a way for me to tend to myself instead of staying in that mind place."
  — Martha Jo (25:00)

• "We're not trying to cure the feeling. We're adjusting the frequency to allow the body to move into another state."
  — Jonathan (27:39)

• "I have a practice of being able to move my awareness outside of my ordinary focus to ensure that that line [to higher self] is clear."
  — Jonathan (32:47)

• "We converse with each other in layers, don't we? …Listening and then asking questions...can be really useful."
  — Martha Jo (46:28)

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment / Topic | |--------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:46 | Opening: Death as a teacher for life | | 07:16 | Martha Jo’s spiritual upbringing and early experiences | | 12:47 | Child grief and talking to the dead | | 17:11 | “Is it real or am I making it up?” – Validating intuition | | 20:10 | Somatic noticing & separating anxiety from other sensations | | 22:26 | Developing intuition through body-awareness | | 23:54 | Sit spot exercise for expanding perception | | 25:00 | Loving Kindness meditation – practice and effects | | 28:35 | Creating positive experiences as part of healing | | 41:44 | Metaphors & signals in the dying process | | 45:50 | Communication in layers; applying these lessons to daily life |

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Conclusion & Resources

This powerful conversation demonstrates how experiences at life’s edge can inform our day-to-day living, and how attending to the faint signals of body and soul can build trust in our intuition. The episode closes with practical exercises and an invitation to continue such explorations, either through Martha Jo’s new Substack ("Love Them Out") or through everyday mindful presence.

Resource Links:

• Martha Jo Atkins: marthajoatkins.com
• Jonathan Cohen: Practical Spirituality on Substack
• Mayim Bialik's Breakdown: [YouTube / Substack]

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“We do the best we can, don’t we?” — Martha Jo Atkins (47:53)

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For listeners seeking practical wisdom about transformation, grief, intuition, and the overlap of science and spirituality, this episode is both a gentle guide and a validating conversation for times of both crisis and calm.

Transcript

[Jonathan Cohen]

Mind Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep.

[Imbialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

The way that this conversation unfolded was that after the main interview that Mayim and I did with Martha Joe, she emailed me a really long email about all the ideas and topics that she wished she had spoken about and it inspired me to reach out and connect with her again. And what transpired was actually even more than I could have imagined. We explored how dying is not just about transitioning out of this life, but what it can teach us about how to live. Now we get into understanding subtle patterns that people experience and how those patterns can be similar to the ways that we experience transitions in our own life, how we're growing and how we're changing. If we can't sleep, if we're Checking the clock compulsively. If our bodies feel unsettled, there may be actually something else going on that's signaling a specific life change.

[Imbialik]

And sometimes what we call anxiety, Martha can help us understand, is actually some part of, of a transformation that's going on. And that's what makes this conversation so beautiful. Martha and Jonathan are going to talk about why so many of us feel anxious even when it doesn't seem like anything's wrong, and how our bodies might be sending us messages.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Martha and I talk about intuition. Actually. We go deep into a practice, how each of us have a practice to clear ourselves, to receive more intuition and harness our, I wouldn't say psychic ability, but it's something close to that. We even talk more about what is our somatic experience, how to get more familiar with it, clearing things when we feel stuck, and how to connect with our inner guidance.

[Imbialik]

And especially at this time of year, with the holidays upon us, so many of us are having these thoughts, conversations. You can't avoid thinking about it, especially when we're getting together with family and thinking about what are our lives for, what are we sensing and where are we going? We thought this was the perfect time of year to share this conversation, especially

[Jonathan Cohen]

because Martha gets exceptionally personal about her family, her relationship with her own brother who passed, and how that traumatic experience in her life shaped the course of her life and actually opened her up to many of the experiences and sensory experiences that she now relies on.

[Imbialik]

If you're going through a transition or if you're curious to hear more about what it's like when things, things shift significantly, this episode will give you the language for that, some really good perspective and some beautiful support. And if you'd like more episodes like this, make sure to follow Jonathan Substack Practical Spirituality where this conversation originally aired. We wish you all a safe, happy and healthy holiday season and we hope you enjoy this. And we'll see you over on Substack as well. And now please enjoy this beautiful conversation between Jonathan and Martha Jo Atkins. Break it down.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Welcome everybody. I'm extremely excited and grateful to have Martha Jo Atkins with us here and many of you may recognize her from the episode on Mind Bialix Breakdown that she joined us in studio for. Martha Jo is a death doula and has been helping people transition for many, many years. Her experience seeing people transition and what that means for them and their family for me, was so powerful because there are so many lessons in that transition that can help us here and now shape the lives that we want to live. And help us better understand, like what the heck we're doing here on Earth together with each other. Like, it just that window that you have, I think makes and sheds so much light on what we're doing in our normal lives. So thank you so much for being here and welcome.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

It's really my pleasure. I appreciate the ask and it's fun stuff to talk about. It's fun stuff to talk about with you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Let me say that how this originated was you and I were had the podcast and we got to connect there, which was amazing. And then after you graciously sent me an email with some additional thoughts that you had not been able to cover, you sparked a lot of ideas and I was like, oh, how fun would it be to continue the conversation? One thing I really try and do on this substack page is help normalize conversations about things that most people don't talk about. Yes, it could be mental health related, but it's also so many people having spiritual experiences that they don't have a context or framework to speak about.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And some people who are talking about guides and angels and sensing energy are sitting in the forest somewhere, aware and not integrating into society. And I love to try and bridge those worlds where extrasensory ability, intuition, connecting and sensing more than we've been taught to sense can have a practical role and a tangible role in our life. So I will first ask you to share a little bit about how does one get into this field? Did you grow up having spiritual experiences? What sort of both drew you to death, doula ing and in conjunction. Was there a spiritual upbringing before you got into this field?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

So I grew up a Methodist preacher's kid. My dad served in a whole bunch of churches and I went to church. And spiritual experiences were that my brother died when I was 24 and there began a quest to understand what dying is and to figure out about how to have a relationship with him even though he's not here anymore. And I didn't have language for that at the time, but I understand that's really what it was. And along the way I had a few experiences that were, I would say, non ordinary. I believe now they're probably more ordinary than we think. I was having a conversation with some people about these things this weekend. I was at a hospital one time and I got poked like I was the wall was right here and I felt a poke right here. I don't know who it was or what it was, but it was a poke. I have had an experience soon after my brother died Where I was just at the twilighty part of awakening and somebody was holding my hand and I turned over and there wasn't anybody there. Those things caused me to wonder and to seek and question and to be around people who do that. And I got really deeply into end of life work and learning about grief and loss and being with people who are dying, being with kids who are dying. For those of us who feel, my mode first into the world is feeling when you're in a room with somebody dying and you do that again and again and again, there starts to be some differences in the things one feels and notices. And as I did more of the work, I began to notice more and notice more. And then I heard this beautiful phrase, this Celtic phrase of thinning of the veil. We're at this season of the year where the veil is thin and it's this idea that it's this thin place where we can connect with our people and they come in dreams and all of that feels like beautiful soil to till. And it's fun to have people to talk about too with it.

[Jonathan Cohen]

There's a lot in what you shared that I want to touch each part of number one for me was what is dying? Having someone close to you to pass that passes brings up this question of where are they? The materialist will say, well, they've died and they're decomposed and that's all there is. But to people who feel strongly, it doesn't feel like they're that far. Yeah, My experience was when my brother had his accident and he was in a coma, my 14 year old brain was like, but where is he? Yeah, because he's not there. I see where he is. Which was this really trippy experience because I was like, I know he's not in his physical body right now because his body is there and it doesn't feel like him. And I didn't have any words, of course, to process this, but I kept wondering, where is he?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

And what did you come up with?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I didn't really have any answers then. I was trapped in a lot of grief and panic and a lot of the unknown which clouded it. But I remember having this vision of what I later probably learned was like a shamanic journey where you can travel into the underworld. And that's like a whole other conversation. Conversation that may be hard to summarize in this, but the short version is that in some traditions they believe that you can enter a lower earth environment through little portals, whether it be like a hole in a tree stump or in a Rock or somewhere. And I had these visions of this whole underworld environment where maybe he was, or some upper world environment where maybe he was. But I knew that the plane of current existence, he wasn't. And I believed strongly enough that he existed somewhere that was accessible. And I was like. Spent a lot of time before bed wondering where that was.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, I love that so much. It makes me think of the telepathy tapes and this space. And we look at someone and we assume something and then find out these whole other possibilities for communication and capacity. And when I hear stories like yours and I think about what they're doing on the telepathy tapes, there's this vast spaciousness of possibility. It's really hopeful, I think, because we have these human experiences. Our people die, our people get hurt. It's tragic. We've got to figure out what that means to us. And there are things happening, conversations happening, that allow us to give old stories space for new meaning. For me, it helps me live differently and live more open heartedly. And I still have my sad, I still have my stuff. But there's an opportunity for different. And I like that a lot.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What did you learn about how to communicate with your brother when he passed? What happened for you that you were like, the communication isn't gone or he's accessible in some way. What was that process for you? And did you have that sense before he passed? Like, what was. What was going on for you before he passed?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

He passed in a sudden way. We didn't know that he was gonna die. And I was having some worries and some fears that he was gonna die. And I look back at that in retrospect and wonder what in me understood something.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So you had fears before you knew that something bad was gonna happen. Would you call those premonitions?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

I probably would now. I don't know that I would have at the time. My brother, who was alive, I'm not even sure I've told him that, but I can remember driving down the road, driving down 35 to go to Austin, and having a think. And it was a think about him not being here and why that was even in my realm of possibility, I didn't know. And pretty soon after it was in my realm of possibility, I started a grief center, which I understand completely now. That was about my own grief at the center of it, the genesis of it. And then all these other people came in who were grieving. And we got to help each other and we got to help a whole bunch of kids. And it was this beautiful, concerted effort. And in those conversations, those kids talked about communing with their people, being with them in different ways. I was at the bereavement center one day and there were some little girls just giggling, giggling, giggling, probably seven, eight years old. And I walked over and got close enough to hear and they were having a tea party and they were introducing their deceased mothers to each other. It was beautiful. I don't for a moment think their deceased mothers were actually there that they could see, although maybe they were. They could have been standing in the background. If John Edward were here, he might say they were in the background. Maybe they were. When I got too close, those girls stopped talking. The adults here, we can't do that. But I have carried that story that's 30 years old. I love that story. And it reminds me that I can talk to Jim whenever I want. I can talk to my mother whenever I want. I've had some dreams of my people. I don't have them very often. I know some people have them quite frequently, and those are very hopeful and encouraging and connecting. And I have gotten to the point where I don't long for more. If another one happens, great. But I used to long for them and it's nicer now just to go, oh yeah, there, that happened. That's pretty great.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I love that story. And children live more in between these worlds. This episode is sponsored by Wandering Jews, an Open Door media brand.

[Imbialik]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

I think the number one question people have when someone is trying to expand an intuitive ability, their intuition, when they're starting to visualize anything, they say is it real or am I making it up?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, I hear that a lot too.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What do you say to that? Because someone will say, oh you're just in your grief and you're just imagining the possibility of connection exists. Like people are looking I think to not feel crazy, right?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, I would agree. So my question back to the person, how does it make you feel? And if it's comforting and helps them get on with their day in a way that is useful, great. I think we get to make meaning in ways that serve us. I don't abide by the crazy thing anymore. I think people have their experiences and whether it's your own internal self sorting things out for you or there's consciousness coming in to help you. Either way, I'm. I'm in for that.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, I appreciate that because I think looking for an objective, this has to be true and everyone has to agree is crazy making.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, Yeah, I agree.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What does it do for you? If you're constantly looking for signs and can't go on through your day because you. You can't make a decision until you see the butterfly that indicates that this is the past loved one telling you what to do, then that's probably really constricting and not uplifting and calming to your system.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, I would agree.

[Jonathan Cohen]

If you're assigning meaning that a feeling that you have can indicate the presence of support and that you're not alone and that we're all interconnected, both those people who have touched us in this life and who have moved on are still available to us, and it gives you peace and calm and comfort, then I would say you're crazy not to hold that as true.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah. Even as you say that, I can feel my shoulders relax and my body kind of settle. And that's the key thing for me. What is the thing that helps me settle in my physical self? What are the thoughts I'm having? What are the experiences I'm having that are helping me settle in my physical self and be in my day in a way that is gentle? And the more I can do that, the happier I am and the more content I am.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I want to connect this to the idea of those people who feel. I was recently talking about how rich our internal worlds are if we spend time in them, but most of us have either been taught to not spend time with it in them, to distract ourselves, to only look for external stimuli, or to dismiss or not validate what our internal experiences are. I want to be careful. That isn't to say I only do what I feel like or, you know, just because I have an emotion. You know, like sometimes we have to do hard things and we have to navigate a difficult world, but talk a little bit about what it means to feel a lot and use that as a guidepost to help you understand that there may be more happening.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

I think the switch for me to understanding that was taking training through Peter Levine's and learning about my body and understanding that she really is pretty smart. I just didn't know. I didn't know how to inhabit my body. I didn't understand that I was getting clues all the time. I just didn't. And as that has shifted for me, I am much more present and I Felt anxiety. And that was my big lumpy word for anxiety. And they taught us about understanding sensation. So what the sensation of anxiety sometimes is bubbly and sometimes it's the thick bubbles, and sometimes it's thick bubbles with papery edges. That gave way to understanding this whole continuum of what anxiety could feel like. And that it wasn't all of me. And that maybe there was something else that I was labeling as anxiety that maybe was sadness. And where does that live in my body? And as I began to navigate those things, I began to understand my feelings better. And when I could feel and move those through me and understand that they didn't have to take over my whole day, it made a whole change in how I was able to be present for myself, for my clients, for my family, for people I love. It's a really interesting thing to take ownership of how you feel and do practices that help you shift and go outside and look at a tree, because there's something about looking at a tree that changes the way you inhabit yourself.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Anxiety can be this blanket term.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That just goes over so many more intricate and detailed emotions. And when we're not metabolizing them or unpacking them, what happens is we feel anxious. It could be that there's a backlog of information that is available to us that we're not processing.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah. And I think most of the time there is. It's an indicator that there's something cooking. And do I check in with what's cooking or do I need to take care of myself? Do I need to go rest? It's, there's, there's some lever that needs to get pulled for me to get back into balance. It's a great tuning fork.

[Jonathan Cohen]

If I want to start developing intuition, how do I do that? And one of my answers is, well, if your body has intelligence, which I believe it does, then starting to be embodied, grounded and address the backlog of signals and information that your body is giving you is the first way to start to expand your extra sensory abilities. The reason being that it may be very hard to feel that poke in the back that you mentioned or the, the hand holding you if you're not aware of what's happening in your physical form.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, I would agree with that. I'm remembering a friend of mine taught me about sit spots and sitting in the same place in your yard every day for 30 days quietly and noticing what happens. So you theoretically are the same in your same spot. But then you begin to notice things by the sixth day or the seventh day by the 19th day, you're in the same spot. You see a rock you'd never seen before. Those are ways of opening perception and knowing. And you know, what you smell, what you feel with your fingers, what you feel in the air, what you taste in your mouth, what you hear. All of those things come together to give us a picture of where we are in our day. And if we stop and reset and go through those things, that's a way that we can ground ourselves and come to the present and work on expanding our intuition. There's lots and lots of ways, but those are a couple of easy ways.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, it's hard to sit still, but I hadn't heard that exercise before. And thinking that you can be in the same spot, you're like, well, I've gotten all this information.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

I know this tree, I know this yard.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's such a great analogy for all of our perception.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We think something is a certain way until something unlocks in us. All of a sudden we see it totally differently. So if I take that and I say, well, someone is struggling right now in any form of their life, their health, their relationships, their work life, and they're only seeing it one way, what are the myriad of possibilities of being able to just slowly shift and how do we do that?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

The one way to do it is with meditation. And I know people get all freaked out about meditation, and it's hard, and you have to do it particular ways. There are different ways to do it. For people who haven't done meditation before, a really simple way to start is to do a loving kindness meditation metameditation. And there's a great book about dipama d I P A M a Buddhist nun. And there's a beautiful story in there about this woman who needed some heart tending, her own heart tending. And the loving kindness meditation. Deepa told the woman she needed to do it just for her. So may I be filled with love and kindness. And when you think of love and kindness, you think of people who have come and kissed you on the forehead, or hugged you, or held you, or sat by you when you needed something. It's a very. It's visceral. Think of those people. May I be filled with loving kindness. But I say for myself, love and kindness. May I be safe inside myself and outside. May I be safe inside and outside from danger. May I be well in mind, body and spirit. May I be at ease, happy and content. So when I'm in a snit or sad or ruminating, I will say that meditation to myself to My own heart. And I do it over and over and over. I did it last week. There was a night I couldn't sleep most of the night. I said that meditation. There was a shift for me that happened, and it became a way for me to tend to myself instead of staying in that mind place. So that is a way of doing a meditation. There are other meditations where you sit for five minutes and you're just still and quiet and inhabit yourself, and you work a little more time and a little more time. But those silences when you can notice that you really want to be moving, but you're being still, or your mind is going and going and going, and you realize how often your mind is going. Those are really opening moments for us to see how we are inhabiting ourselves. And it gives us space, and we get to go, okay, maybe I want to do something a little different.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I love that. Mayim talks a lot about loving kindness meditation as the triage meditation, or like the first step, because it's so tangible and it's so powerful. When I hear it described and when I've done it, what it feels like is I'm tuning the dial.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah. That's a great way to say it.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We are resonance. Right. Our voices are resonance. We're hearing sound all the time. We have a frequency. These words are almost dirty words because they're so taken out of context or they don't really have a meaning for most people. But the way that we interact with people leaves us with a feeling. And when our thoughts are racing with the problems or whatever was keeping you up, that is creating a feeling throughout your whole body that is not able to rest. So what do you do? You call the repair person who is you, to adjust that feeling?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We're not trying to cure the feeling. We're not exiling the feeling. What we're doing is adjusting the frequency to allow the body to move into another state.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And if we can do that effectively, how powerful is that to uplift us?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Pretty powerful.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And we know that it changes our neurobiology. It changes how our brain works and the ideas that it comes up with. Because in that stress state, we default to negativity. We bias towards things going horribly wrong. We don't see opportunity, we don't see possibility for anything to be different than the negative bias.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So for me, that's like a huge way of then using our somatic experience saying, let's bring back my ability to rest and be calm and sense something else. And then a key for me is to know that there are options.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah. So, like, what if I believe that

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'm a part of a larger consciousness system and through the practices that we just discussed, I have the ability to be guided. I have the ability to sense more in the face of the unknown, that if something is unknown and I feel conflicted, it's not that this is the end state and I'm never going to feel clarity, that I can sit with that and ask for guidance and know that it may not be in this moment, but that I can hold that perspective, say that I'm safe, say that guidance is available, that my intuition is not broken because it doesn't have the exact information, as though Chat GPT is spitting out an answer, but that I'm part of a system that will get me there and get clear when the time is right and that I can be a part of that process and comfortable in that process. All of a sudden I feel like I'm tuning my intuition and my attention to be open and available for the information when it's there.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yes. And it's a practice. It's not a thing. You just go, oh, I'm gonna do this today. If you're in the middle of it and you're having a hard time being able to bring yourself into that space where you can do something different, even just for a little bit matters, and then you do it again, and then you do, and then you do it again and then you talk to other people who are doing it and you get reminded that we're all in this human experience and some days are easier than others. And we do what we can for ourselves. And then sometimes we need to call somebody and say, come sit with me while I work out this thing. And that's a whole other thing. But we have capacity to do things to help ourselves settle and center. And we can take ourselves out of situations. We can put ourselves into situations. Agency. We have agency.

[Jonathan Cohen]

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[Jonathan Cohen]

Make 2026 the year you finally start sleeping again. The other thing that's been very helpful for me, but I really struggled with for many years. Early in my life, when I started to get into spirituality, was the notion of a higher self. That there is some part of me that is connected to the larger consciousness system that is free from all the fear, doubt and worry that can guide me when the rest of it quiets and gets out of the way.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And knowing the difference between when that part is active online and guiding me and when I have so much noise in my system from fears or doubts or unprocessed emotion that I'm actually not attuned to that frequency.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

So can you tell now after having done whatever work you've done?

[Jonathan Cohen]

So I feel like there was a point of no return. Meaning it was like, oh, I could tap in, but then I wasn't sure. And then, you know, like, so what part of me was driving the bus? And now what happens is like, I have a practice of being able to move my awareness outside of my ordinary focus to ensure that that line is clear. You know, sometimes it's right there, right? Like, sometimes it's like I'm just making a decision and it's like right on my shoulder and I feel it clearly. And other times when I'm less clear, I'm like, I do a body scan. I'm like, what am I holding onto right now? Am I processing a difficult conversation? Am I processing annoyance that I had about someone who I maybe felt misunderstood by or Am I ruminating on something? And I will literally envision that stuff leaving my physical form and even being pushed outside of what I imagine my energy body to be. And I will clear it and I'll be like, okay, it's not gone, I'm not discarding it, but for right now I need it out of my system. And then I'll sort of reconnect to being a clearer channel and then from there. I spent some time working with the Akashic records. I read the Akashic record book and I worked with a teacher and I sort of practiced visualizing my conscious mind moving outside of my physical form and ascending. And what I'll do is I will, if I close my eyes right now and I push basically my awareness up out of my head, up as high as I can possibly go into that space, I feel differently. I start to feel a flutter here, a lightness in my shoulders, a tingling across my body. And that to me is a direct access to an information source that I had to imagine and learn existed. And by believing that it exists, knowing how to connect to it and pushing the baggage out and then I check, I'm like, what am I connected to? Let's go up there. What is the information? What's the vantage point from there on whatever situation I'm going to? So I spend time clearing and then going to a different perspective in order to ask the same type of questions of what should I do? Because when I ask down here, even from I can ask my heart, I can ask my mind, but when I push myself to a different space, the answers are often very different.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, that's amazing. And you have that knowing in your body when you've lined it all up,

[Jonathan Cohen]

it feels viscerally different.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. There's a couple things I do that are more visual related. One of them is to when I'm really out of sorts is to take myself into the flow of the universe, which my friend Hiro taught me about. And it is this imagining of this energy that's always flowing no matter what's happening, always has been, always will be, and to have whatever version of myself I'm in right now. So my 56 year old self. And I can imagine myself stepping out into the flow. And I have it like a dock that goes out into the ocean, except it's the universal flow. And I imagine that wind energy, whatever it is, that just takes out whatever needs to be taken out and soothes me and settles me. And if there's some aspect of work if there is a person I need to take with me, I'll imagine them with me and we are in that flow together. And then when I come back, I am settled in a way where I can explore differently than I could have before. It's nervous system settling. I'm getting settled somehow so I can approach this in a different way. And there's more. We get to choose about beliefs that make sense to us and offer us insight and wholeness. And you found a way to do that that's pretty cool.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I love your doc analogy. And also, as I'm listening to it, I'm imagining that there's a lot of. I'm going to use the word rule sets, but I don't mean that in a constrictive way, meaning that there's like a narrative or a whole world that you have built about what the doc entails and what exists there. When you say there's a universal energy, well, that has an intelligence to it and it has certain abilities and characteristics that you have defined for yourself so that you know what it can and cannot do. Probably it can do many more things than it can't, Right.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

I don't even know that I've gotten that far, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, some of them is our assumptions, right? Like if. If it has the ability to. To move and remove things, then it has that capability, I think.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, I guess so. It's something bigger than me that I don't have to understand that soothes me and heals me in a way that doesn't happen other places.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So it has healing properties.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Evidently. Now that I just said that out loud, yes.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It likely has some form of intelligence because it's not pulling things that you need, right? So like it's interacting with some sort of version of you that knows what you need. I don't know. I just. I think about the complexity. Like if we were writing this in a sci fi movie, we would have to establish. Right. What it does and doesn't do. And so it's just amazing how our minds and our creativity can create these spaces that I believe are actually an extension of how each of us interpret some sort of collective consciousness or divine force that we have seeded an understanding of and evolved our relationship with over many, many years, from likely the time we were children and started hearing the phrase God or superpowers or whatever it is. Now that we're adults, instead of pretending that we aren't the children who still have the ability to make believe, how do we then reclaim our creativity as a power that can help Shape our lives instead of thinking, wait a second, am I making this all up? It could be. Look how amazingly my imagination can benefit me.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yes, Yes. I think that's where I've gotten to. And how my thoughts can benefit me and how my thoughts can take me down. And being very particular about what comes out of my face and really being thoughtful about how I talk about myself, how I talk about other people in situations, and how I want to create a moment to moment. It's me, it's what I say, what I believe, how I engage, all of that matters.

[Jonathan Cohen]

This does lead us really well into one piece that I keep turning on. And it was in a live recently with Mayim where I said I have a hot take. And I didn't think it was all that hot a take. But maybe it's controversial, which is sometimes getting over something that's difficult, even a traumatic instance, isn't necessarily about reliving it over and over and seeing it from every angle. Obviously that is helpful for some people in some circumstances. But what I experienced was, at a certain point what I needed to do was create enough positive experiences and feeling to rebalance the scale.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah, makes sense.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And when you were talking about, like, what you say about people, I start to think also like what we consume. If we can program and adjust our frequency through love and kindness meditation, then we can also do that through what we consume, through who we're spending time with. What is our media diet? I'm not immune to this by any stretch of the imagination. There's pundits I listen to. I like to generally have a sense of what's going on. But we can spend so much time inflamed and enraged about how things from whatever perspective we have are not the way that we think they are. That just carries over and we're just like, everything is chaos all the time. There's no order or reason. There's no way through anything. And we're just furious. Also, the amount of true crime, which again, I will listen to a crime documentary because I'm fascinated about the dark corners of the world, especially if I'm on a long road trip and I need to pay attention to stuff. But the number of people who are just like obsessed and just filling their diet only with true crime every day, that's gonna have an impact on how you feel.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Thousand percent agree. I have times where I. They're few and far between now, where I watch really terrible, gory movies that are not based in reality at all. I recognize though, that something has happened in My life that I haven't been able to sort that somehow allows me to move something around inside. I need to move, and then it's done. But when I notice that that's what I'm looking for on the tv, I know there's something that's a little out of sorts for me. And yay for people who watch True Crime all the time, if that's what they need to do. Yes. And I'm with you. What we consume, who we're with, what we about, all that stuff matters about how we feel and how we are in the world.

[Jonathan Cohen]

One of the things that stood out for me from our previous conversation were the signs that happen. And while no one follows the exact pattern, there seemed to be signals that weren't immediately obvious that were indicating a process that was happening. Can you talk a little bit more about that? And the reason I'm asking is because I think it has a lot of relevance to the rest of our lives. We go through a breakup or we feel a level of uncertainty. You look at the circumstances of people's lives, and often we feel like that shouldn't bother me. Why am I not sleeping? Why is my stomach upset? You're actually going through an incredibly natural process that needs time.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And there are signposts along the way. Can you talk about some of the signposts that you've noticed about people who are transitioning?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah. So there's a whole group of them. I'm going to talk specifically about people who are on hospice. These also work for people with dementia and other situations like that, but specifically for hospice. And the other caveat I'll give here. When people come to hospice, they're already dying. It's not like it's just starting. They've been dying for a while and they're in it somewhere along the line. Very often people will start to ask about what time it is and it gets incessant. What time is it? What time is it? What time is it? And we want to be very helpful. And we'll get a clock and we'll get a calendar and we'll put it on the wall to help them understand what time it. My conjecture is that they're starting to shift. Their body and their spirit are starting to shift a little bit. And that's one of the indicators that their time is shifting and their soul is figuring out something a little different is cooking. There is movement. If people are able to get up and go to a couch or go to a chair and they're in the routine in the routine. And then their routine shifts somehow. That's often an indicator that something's up in the language metaphor area. People will talk about needing to go. They need to leave. We need to get out of here. Sometimes they can seem completely coherent and with us and say those things. And yes, maybe on one level that's happening. And again, if they're on hospice and those kinds of words and phrases start to come from them, things are starting to shift. Where are my shoes? They've been in bed for two months or something. They want to know where their shoes are. They want to know where the map is. They need their car keys.

[Jonathan Cohen]

They're going somewhere.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

They're going somewhere. One of the guys got up out of the bed and he was at the front door. And his wife was just beside herself because she didn't want him to leave and she didn't want to hinder him. And at the same time, he's having a vision in his mind about a basketball court. And there's three levels of people in the audience. And as he described those three people, when you get up to the third level, he's talking about heavenly realms. It was fascinating to hear that she didn't catch that because she worried about the physical and in the moment, which is what happens, which is fine. Planes. There's a plane outside the window. There's cars that don't have all their parts. The engine might be gone or the door might be gone. The car may be all packed and ready to go, but they can't find the car keys. There's these incremental shifts that happen along and along. And if you listen, you can hear a little bit of where they are in their process. And as they get closer to the end, there's lots and lots of silence. And then they'll come up and say something like, what I said with you and Mayim was, lift me up, up, up. That's one I hear quite often, which I just think is really beautiful. There's tons of them, but those are a few.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's exceptionally powerful. And again, if I'm thinking about the lessons from dying in our everyday life, I think about, like, how many of us are in a process of some form of transformation that is not dying.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Well, it is kind of dying. There's something going away and something coming.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I forget the exact length of time, but it's like every seven years, every cell has changed over in our body. And, like, we're a totally different people. And you hear the spiritual teachers talking about we're all on some Path of awakening.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

If nothing else on this earth, what we're doing is potentially learning to know a little bit more about our true nature.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

To figure out how to suffer slightly less or to be able to create a different type of meaning than we have created before. To learn how to use our creativity in the way that you described on the doc, to help calm ourselves, to be able to adjust our frequency just enough so that we feel differently and have a different type of experience. What are the signals that we're getting or what does someone say to us that isn't about the car keys or the time people are using words, but what are they actually saying underneath those words? And how do we start to tune in to people around us and to ourselves to better hear what's really being communicated?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

Yeah. We converse with each other in layers, don't we? It's hard sometimes you listen to people, and especially people we love. Listening in layers can get exhausting. And you've got to be careful not to assume and not to jump in and try to fix. But listening and then asking questions to ascertain if what you're feeling and sensing is where they are and if there's a communication and connection that could happen can be really useful. I've said to some people this weekend, it feels like the world is on fire. And the way I'm managing and the people I love are managing is that we're connecting. We're making a concerted effort to be together and have dinner together and have dinner with other people and to say hello to people on the street and say hello to people at the gas station. I don't know how to solve all the world's problems. It's exhausting and terrifying. And if I can be with my people here and go back to my loving kindness meditation when I need to take care of my own heart and then give that loving kindness meditation to somebody else. May you be filled with loving kindness. May you be safe from harm. Sometimes when I don't know what else to do, I'll do that. I walked by a guy on the street yesterday that I couldn't help, and I did that. And I don't know if it was helpful or not, but it shifted something in me and I could go on and we do the best we can, don't we?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Really, really. Beautifully said. Thank you so much for sharing your practice and your wisdom and your time with us. I just am so grateful to be able to connect again.

[Martha Jo Atkins]

I really enjoy talking to you and rock on. You're doing great. Things I'll be tuning in.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Thank you. Anything you want people to know about where to find you? You have a substack?

[Martha Jo Atkins]

I have a newish substack called Love Them out and my website is marthajoatkins.com. thanks for having me on, Jonathan. I sure appreciate it.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's my ambiolic's breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. Non fiction Martha. And now she's gonna break down. So break down. She's gonna break it down.