Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown — “How to Trust What You Feel”

Date: December 19, 2025
Host: Mayim Bialik
Guest: Martha Jo Atkins (death doula, end-of-life counselor), Jonathan Cohen (co-host)

Episode Overview

This episode is a deeply personal and eye-opening conversation centered on trusting intuition, understanding what we feel (especially during times of transition), and how experiences around death can teach us to live more fully. Martha Jo Atkins, an end-of-life counselor and death doula, joins Jonathan Cohen to explore patterns observed in those nearing death—and how similar patterns show up in everyday life transitions. Together, they discuss listening to bodily wisdom, using rituals and meditation to ground oneself, the richness of internal experience, and how to claim agency over meaning in our lives.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Martha Jo’s Path: From Personal Loss to Death Doula Work

• Martha Jo describes how her brother’s passing at age 24 sent her on a quest to understand death and continue a relationship with him beyond the physical.
  • “I grew up a Methodist preacher’s kid... But 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.” (07:06)
• She shares anecdotes of “non-ordinary” sensory events—such as feeling a poke on the shoulder or having her hand held by an unseen presence.
  • “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.” (08:05)

2. Where Do Loved Ones Go? Grappling with Death and Consciousness

• Jonathan discusses his own unresolved questions after his brother’s passing.
  • “When my brother had his accident and he was in a coma, my 14 year old brain was like, but where is he? Cause he’s not there. I see where he is. Which was this really trippy experience...” (09:42)
• Martha describes children’s openness to “in-between worlds,” referencing a story of girls at a grief center having a tea party with their deceased mothers.
  • “When I got too close, those girls stopped talking. The adults here, we can’t do that. But I have carried that story. It’s 30 years old. I love that story.” (13:15)

3. Trusting Intuitive Feelings (“Am I Making This Up?”)

• Many people question whether spiritual or intuitive experiences are “real” or just imagination. Martha flips the question:
  • “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.” (20:05)
• Jonathan highlights the risk of seeking unanimous external validation for inner experience:
  • “Looking for an objective, this has to be true and everyone has to agree is crazy making.” (20:35)
• Martha emphasizes the importance of feelings that help us settle and relax.
  • “That’s the key thing for me. What is the thing that helps me settle in my physical self?” (21:25)

4. The Body as an Instrument of Intuition

• Martha shares her somatic journey—learning to discern the nuanced sensations associated with emotions like anxiety.
  • “The sensation of anxiety sometimes is bubbly...sometimes it’s thick bubbles with papery edges...maybe there was something else I was labeling as anxiety that maybe was sadness. And where does that live in my body?” (23:00)
• Noting anxiety as a “blanket term,” Jonathan suggests it often masks a backlog of unrecognized signals:
  • “Anxiety can be this blanket term that just goes over so many more intricate and detailed emotions.” (24:15)

5. Practical Steps to Expand Intuition

• Bodily awareness and “sit spots”: Martha recommends sitting in the same spot outside every day for a month, quietly noticing subtle changes.
  • “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.” (25:25)
• Meditation, especially Loving Kindness (Metta), is suggested as a tangible, accessible tool.
  • “A really simple way to start is to do a Loving Kindness meditation...May I be filled with loving kindness. 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.” (27:00)

6. Tuning Your Frequency—Regulating Your Emotional State

• Jonathan reframes meditation and self-soothing as “adjusting the frequency” of your internal state, so new possibilities become accessible.
  • “What we’re doing is adjusting the frequency to allow the body to move into another state.” (30:04)
  • “And then a key for me is to know that there are options.” (31:00)
• Martha adds this is a gradual process and requires community support as well:
  • “It's just. It's not a thing you just go, oh, I'm going to do this today. If you're in the middle of it and you're having a hard time...even just for a little bit matters, and then you do it again...” (32:04)

7. Accessing a “Higher Self”—Clearing Space for Guidance

• Jonathan shares his practice for connecting with intuitive guidance: body scanning, visualizing energy clearing, and seeking perspective from a more “elevated” awareness.
  • “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...I'll sort of reconnect to being a clearer channel.” (36:00)
• He practices “going up,” a visual technique learned from studying the Akashic records, resulting in tangible bodily shifts:
  • “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.” (36:50)
  • Martha corroborates with her own visualization (“stepping into the flow of the universe”):
  • “I imagine that wind energy, whatever it is, that just takes out whatever needs to be taken out and soothes me and settles me.” (37:42)

8. The Role of Imagination and Meaning-Making

• Both discuss reclaiming imagination as an adaptive tool—creating inner “rule sets” for how spiritual support works can be empowering, not delusional.
  • Jonathan: “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...” (41:04)
  • Martha: “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 and situations...” (41:15)

9. “Signs” at the End of Life—And in Everyday Transitions

• Martha details patterns seen in those nearing death: repetitively asking for the time, wanting their shoes, talking about journeys.
  • “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.” (44:54)
  • “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.” (45:36)
• Jonathan connects this to everyday life: unexplained anxiety or feeling unsettled may be signposting transformation, not just “something wrong.”
  • “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.” (44:47)
• Listening “in layers” is a skill for hearing both others’ and our own deeper needs in transition.
  • “Listening in layers can get exhausting...But listening and then asking questions to ascertain if what you're feeling and sensing is where they are...can be really useful.” (48:51)

10. Connection, Kindness, and Agency

• In hard times, Martha recommends focusing on connection and extending kindness, even if only inwardly or in imagination.
  • “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...Sometimes when I don't know what else to do, I'll do that.” (49:24)
• Self-agency: choosing how to consume media, what narratives to feed ourselves, and reaching out for support are all vital tools for personal well-being.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What is dying? Having someone close to you pass brings up this question of where are they?... To people who feel strongly, it doesn’t feel like they’re that far.” — Jonathan (09:10)
• “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 a consciousness coming in to help you, either way, I’m in for that.” — Martha (20:05)
• “Anxiety can be this blanket term that just goes over so many more intricate and detailed emotions.” — Jonathan (24:15)
• “The loving kindness meditation... became a way for me to tend to myself instead of staying in that mind place.” — Martha (27:00)
• “What we’re doing is adjusting the frequency to allow the body to move into another state.” — Jonathan (30:04)
• “It's a practice. It's not a thing you just go—oh, I'm going to do this today…even just for a little bit matters, and then you do it again…” — Martha (32:04)
• “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…can be really useful.” — Martha (48:51)
• “We do the best we can, don’t we?” — Martha (50:13)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:41] — Jonathan welcomes Martha Jo Atkins, framing the episode’s purpose
• [07:06] — Martha Jo’s spiritual background and brother’s death
• [09:42] — Jonathan’s experience with loss and the search for his brother
• [13:15] — Story of children communing with deceased mothers
• [20:05] — “Am I just making it up?” — validating intuitive experience
• [23:00] — Understanding bodily sensation as information
• [25:25] — “Sit spot” daily practice for opening perception
• [27:00] — Loving Kindness meditation for emotional triage
• [30:04] — Regulating emotion as “tuning your frequency”
• [36:00-37:00] — Jonathan’s visualization technique for accessing guidance
• [41:04] — Imagination as a tool for adaptive meaning-making
• [44:54] — Martha’s observations of dying: signs and metaphors
• [48:51] — Listening “in layers” to others and ourselves
• [50:13] — Wrapping up: kindness as survival, doing the best we can

Closing Resources

• Martha Jo Atkins: Love Them Out Substack, MarthaJoAtkins.com
• Jonathan’s Substack: “Practical Spirituality”

Tone and Takeaway:
Warm, deeply empathetic, and refreshingly grounded, the conversation normalizes mystical and intuitive experiences as valid—even essential—in the human journey, especially when facing loss or major change. The hosts offer real-life practices and perspectives that empower listeners to trust their own feelings, care for themselves and each other, and listen for the deeper meanings present in daily life.