Welcome to the LaidOPEN Podcast hosted by Charna Cassell. Charna is a Trauma-Trained Psychotherapist and Sexuality Coach with over 20 years of experience. Every day, Charna helps clients heal from trauma and access more bodily joy, emotional regulation, vitality, and hope.
Now she’s bringing her expertise to podcasting with interviews from post-trauma thrivers who share creative resources to support living an authentic, passionate, mindful existence.
Together they explore how to have a more pleasure-filled, peaceful life while reducing self-sabotaging behaviors and gaining control over reactive behaviors. Charna’s mission is to help people like you understand the impact of trauma on their nervous system and therefore their relationships with an emphasis on ways to heal.
In every episode, Charna explores how to build our physical and emotional capacity to be with all that moves through us and around us to ultimately feel more liberated on the other side. Join our community as we embark on this transformative journey by reaccessing our connection to aliveness.
In this episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, I open up about my own deepening journey with Kundalini Yoga and sit with one of the teachers who
In this episode, Margaret unpacks how she and her husband developed somatic practices to help survivors heal the trauma stored in the body after years of purity culture, spiritual coercion, and obedience enforced through shame and fear. She breaks down what truly happens inside high control religious communities and why so many people leaving them feel like they’re stepping out of a parallel universe.
This week on the podcast, Charna speaks with Dr. Chelsey Hague-Zavaleta, an expert in applied educational neuroscience and social–emotional learning. Together, they explore what it
In this episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, host Charna Cassell sits down with award-winning playwright, performer, and teacher Ann Randolph, whose autobiographical solo shows blend comedy, storytelling,
This season of LaidOPEN, dreams are really on my mind. I’ve been thinking about how they shape our creativity, our healing, and the subtle ways
Welcome back to LaidOPEN Podcast. In this week’s episode, we explore altered states of consciousness, sound, healing, and the legacy of ancestral trauma. My guest
*Trigger warning: this episode contains discussions of sexsual assault* In part 2 of this powerful conversation on LaidOPEN, Charna sits down again with Ariella Daly: dream
Trigger warning: discussion of sexual assault near the end In this episode of LaidOPEN, I speak with Ariella Daley, a seasoned dream worker, animist, and beekeeper
In this powerful episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, I sit down with medical researcher, writer, and host of Modern Hysteria, Micah Larsen, to dive deep into her deeply personal and courageous journey through PMDD, menopause, and preeclampsia. With warmth and unflinching honesty, Micah illuminates the painful gaps in our healthcare system and the persistence of medical misogyny—and, more importantly, how we can begin to dismantle those barriers.
Are you out of touch with what you really want? Somatic sex therapist Susan Morgan Taylor joins laidOPEN to share her Pleasure Keys Process—tools for cultivating desire, reigniting intimacy, and healing through the body. Whether you’re navigating low libido, seeking deeper connection, or curious about sacred sexuality, this episode offers a grounded path back to pleasure.
I’m ecstatic to introduce you to my guest this week on the LaidOPEN Podcast. I have a fascinating conversation with Nick Brancato, a relationship systems architect
In this episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, I have an insightful conversation with activist and author Dean Spade about his extensive work in movements for queer and trans liberation, anti-militarism, and the abolition of police and prisons.
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Charna Cassell has spent over two decades helping people heal and find pleasure in their bodies. Every week on the LaidOPEN Podcast, she shares her own story, answers your questions, offers practical exercises, and interviews other survivors, as well as experts and authors in the field of somatics, trauma, healing modalities, mindfulness, and the arts.
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