Podcast
Viral Mindfulness the Podcast
Hosted by Alexander Smith | Mindfulness Teacher · EN
Featured on CNN, viralmindfulness.com, HIV Plus Magazine, The Gay HotSpot, and the cover of Positively Aware—my work as a mindfulness teacher and artist encourages you to discover your spiritual rhythm.
I earned a Master of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Utah in 2003, and a Bachelor of Science from Brigham Young University (1999).
During migration from a basement office (with no windows) at Salt Lake Community College’s Health & Wellness Services, I resigned from the traditional clinical world, and moved my practice online in 2012.
I live near the ocean in Huntington Beach, California, and enjoy yoga, running trails at the Wetlands, bird watching, live theater & music, and painting. As a spiritual muse, teacher, and musician, you're invited to join my online tribe.
22episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
The Light Scarf: Pride, Shame and the Freedom to Be Fully Yourself
2d ago00:30:41Tap to summarizeWhat can a light scarf teach us about shame, identity, recovery, and freedom? In this Pride Month episode of Viral Mindfulness, Alexander Blue Feather shares a treasured audio recording from 01 June 2018 featuring his dear friend, Dr. Jude Theriot. What begins as a playful conversation about a lightweight scarf and grape Hi-Chew candy opens into something much deeper: the hidden shame many men carry around appearing feminine. From growing up queer in Utah and navigating masculinity as a Mormon missionary, to embracing a more gender-expansive identity later in life, Alexander reflects on the lifelong journey of liberating himself from internalized shame. Along the way, he explores Pride Month, women's equality, gender expression, sobriety, spiritual reconstruction, and the power of friendship to help us become more fully ourselves. The episode also includes reflections on the HBO series Euphoria, a powerful quote about recovery and spiritual revolution, updates on summer plans, and a delightful audio appearance from Harvey Pink Feather. Topics include: ‣ Pride Month and LGBTQ+ identity ‣ Gender expansiveness and self-acceptance ‣ Internalized shame and appearing feminine ‣ Recovery, sobriety, and spiritual transformation ‣ Friendship as liberation ‣ Euphoria and the poetry of recovery ‣ Living authentically ‣ Finding something greater than yourself Stay connected with me this Summer at viralmindfulness.com
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Being With the Dying: How to Offer Love at the End of Life
Mar 2400:41:29Tap to summarizeIn this first spring episode of Viral Mindfulness, Alexander Blue Feather reflects on grief, transition, and what it means to be present with someone who is dying. After sharing updates from his new South Bay home and the one-year threshold of his father’s passing, he responds to a listener’s question about how to support a brother in hospice and how to navigate the possibility of a peaceful passing. Drawing from Walking Each Other Home by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush, this episode offers compassionate guidance on being with the dying: how to listen, how to sit in silence, how to let go of control, and how to become what Ram Dass calls “a loving rock.” This is a tender conversation about presence, humility, grief, ritual, and the mystery of death. If you are accompanying someone at the end of life, grieving a recent loss, or learning how to sit beside what cannot be fixed, this episode is for you. Spring Wise Circle Open For Enrollment. Start Tuesday, April 21 and Finish Tuesday, May 19. Save $50 Early Bird Registration Through April 5. viralmindfulness.com/
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"Live The Life That Chooses You" The Final Chapter of Our Winter Soul Care Series
Feb 1900:21:25Tap to summarizeAre you feeling disillusioned? Disappointed? Bitter? Sour? In this final installment of the Winter Soul Care Series, Alexander Blue Feather offers a powerful closing reflection on self-compassion as medicine for modern life. Opening with Rebecca Del Rio’s poem Prescription for the Disillusioned, this episode explores how the overly critical mind contracts the soul. Be inspired to learn how compassion creates space for ripening, renewal and fresh beginnings. Drawing from Francis Weller’s teachings on the “generous heart,” Alexander reflects on self-judgment, the muscular agenda of self-improvement, and the quiet violence we sometimes direct toward ourselves. Through personal story (including the one-year anniversary of his father’s passing and a new chapter in South Bay) this episode becomes both teaching and testimony. What if the soul does not demand perfection or acceleration, but instead asks for mercy? What if compassion means “to suffer with," especially with yourself? This is an invitation to soften, to include your ancestors, to release rigid expectations, and to befriend your life as it is unfolding now. For spiritual explorers navigating grief, transition, and change, this episode offers a gentle and grounding prescription.
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Our Frenzied Fidelity to Speed -- May We Approach Geologic Speed
Feb 800:20:40Tap to summarizeModern life trains us to move faster. You must produce more, respond quicker and stay endlessly available. I give your soul permission to refuse this pace. In Episode Six of the Winter Soul Care Series, Alexander Blue Feather invites you into a therapeutic, imaginal space to explore geological speed. This is the pace at which the soul actually heals, remembers, and transforms. Drawing from Francis Weller’s In the Absence of the Ordinary, this episode reframes slowness not as a metaphor, but as medicine. You’ll explore the cost of our addiction to speed, the loss of intimacy with place and body, and why constant urgency leaves us spiritually exhausted. Through story, reflection, and grounded teaching, Alexander introduces three essential practices for restoring soul rhythm: patience, restraint, and reciprocity. Geological speed moves in seasons, layers, and cycles. It values stillness, spaciousness, and reciprocal relationship with the living world. This episode offers a powerful counterbalance to modern frenzy, and a practical invitation to slow down, listen, and return to what matters most. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or spiritually tired, this episode offers a different way forward. One rooted in time, earth, and soul.
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Intimacy With Soul - Core Practices That Sustain Us (Reflection Question 02)
Jan 2600:12:43Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Winter Soul Care series, Alexander invites you into a gentle writing practice centered on one essential question from Francis Weller: What core practices help sustain your intimacy with soul? Listeners are encouraged to pause, set a timer, and write—without editing or judgment—before returning to hear Alexander’s lived response, recorded along the ocean at Huntington State Beach. Through stories of caregiving, music, silence, creativity, ritual, and seasonal devotion, this episode explores how intimacy with soul is formed not through force or productivity, but through repeated, embodied practices of presence. This episode is an invitation to remember what has always sustained you—and to recommit to the practices that keep your inner life alive, nourished, and connected.
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Write About Repetition - Reflection Question 01 : Nourish the Ritual of Everyday Life
Jan 2500:10:39Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Winter Soul Care series, Alexander invites you into a simple, grounding writing practice inspired by the work of Francis Weller. Following the previous walking meditation, this episode shifts from movement to the page—using writing as a way to give the mind something nourishing to chew on. You’re offered a single reflection question: In what ways do you nourish the ritual of everyday life? Listeners are encouraged to write for ten minutes, then return to hear Alexander’s own lived response—exploring ritual, repetition, grief, tending, and the sacredness hidden in ordinary acts like laundry, sleep, movement, and daily care. This episode is an invitation to slow down, make room for intention, and rediscover how the small, repeated moments of life can become a source of nourishment and meaning.
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Kissing the Earth With Your Feet (Guided Walking Meditation) Huntington State Beach
Jan 2100:19:18Tap to summarizeIn this gentle installment of the Winter Soul Care series, Alexander Blue Feather invites you into a shared walking meditation—recorded live along the shoreline at Huntington State Beach. Drawing inspiration from the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, this episode transforms the ordinary act of walking into a practice of presence, grounding, and return. You’ll explore core principles of mindful walking—walking without arriving, uniting body and mind, and noticing the here and now—followed by a simple, embodied walking practice accompanied by the sound of the ocean. This episode is an invitation to slow down, reconnect with your body, and remember that every step can be a homecoming. Best enjoyed with headphones, outdoors if possible, or wherever you can safely walk and listen.
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Amnesia + Anesthesia: Why We're Trained to Forget and Go Numb
Jan 2000:32:46Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Viral Mindfulness, I explore repetition as a core value of the soul and a vital practice for staying awake in unordinary times. Part five of the Winter’s Edge Soul Care series, this teaching draws on Francis Weller’s work to examine how repetition fosters depth, memory, devotion, and resilience—countering our cultural pull toward novelty, progress, and forgetting. Through stories of music, meditation, grief, recovery, creativity, and career reinvention, I invite you to consider repetition not as boring or mechanical, but as musical, rhythmic, and alive. This episode is an invitation to return—again and again—to what matters most. MidWinter Wise Circle Open For Enrollment! Grab your seat → viralmindfulness.com
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Does Your Soul Value Restraint? A Mindfulness Podcast Series for Winter (Part 4 of 7: Soul Care Series)
Jan 1400:27:08Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Viral Mindfulness, I explore the gift of restraint as a powerful and often overlooked soul practice. Drawing from Francis Weller’s teachings, this fourth installment of the Winter’s Edge Soul Care series invites us to slow down, hold back, and allow insights, grief, creativity, and longing to ripen rather than rush toward expression or consumption. We reflect on restraint as both an internal practice—pausing, containing, and listening—and an external one that honors our interdependence with others, the planet, and the commons. In a culture shaped by excess, immediacy, and accumulation, restraint becomes a radical act of care, humility, and wisdom. This episode is an invitation to let less become enough—and to discover what wants to emerge when we allow things to cook in their own time. MidWinter Wise Circle Open For Enrollment → https://www.viralmindfulness.com/wise-circle-winter-2026 Save $50 on Enrollment through Jan 21st. Start Tuesday, Feb 17 and Finish, Tuesday March 24. 90 minutes weekly!
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Singing The Blues + Tending The Candle's Flame
Jan 800:14:29Tap to summarizeIn this Winter’s Edge check-in episode, I pause at the beginning of 2026 to reflect, breathe together, and tend the nervous system in the midst of winter, grief, and collective uncertainty. Lighting a candle, I acknowledge the anniversary of last year’s Southern California fires, honor those living with loss, and invite us into a moment of shared warmth and compassion. I offer a preview of what’s ahead in the Winter’s Edge Soul Care series—especially the upcoming teaching on restraint—and reflect on the soul “muscles” being strengthened during this season. Drawing on poetry, grief wisdom, and the idea that January is for roots rather than resolutions, this episode encourages gentleness, patience, and trust in winter’s intelligence. It’s a quiet invitation to start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can. MidWinter Wise Circle is open for enrollment. Start Tuesday, February 17. Finish Tuesday, March 24. Six Weeks. Six Practice Labs. One Powerful Small Circle of Like-Minded Soul-Siblings. Save $50 on enrollment through January 21st. Use Coupon Code: earlybird2026. https://www.viralmindfulness.com/wise-circle-winter-2026
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