
Ep. 122 What Is Meditation? A Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Meditation Practice
What is meditation? Recently, someone asked me if I could point them to a podcast episode I had done about meditation. And I realized something
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.

What is meditation? Recently, someone asked me if I could point them to a podcast episode I had done about meditation. And I realized something

Somatic therapist Charna Cassell joins Emerald Podcast host Josh Schrei to explore myth, ritual, and animism as paths to trauma healing and nervous system regulation.

Some patterns in life feel impossible to shake. Maybe it’s a recurring relationship type, self-sabotage in work or health, or an emotional trigger that always

Psychotherapist and host Charna Cassell talks with Social RV creator Chase McCarty about remote viewing, psi abilities, and how to train your psychic intuition. Includes a guided meditation to develop your own psychic perception.

Some conversations feel like being handed a map. Others feel like being handed water. This one feels like both. In this episode of LaidOPEN, I

In this episode of LaidOPEN Podcast, I’m joined by Christine Olivia Hernandez, Mayan astrologer, cacao ceremonialist, and author, for a conversation about ritual, gratitude, discernment, and remembering

What happens when everything you were taught about truth, God, and yourself falls apart? In this episode of the LaidOPEN Podcast, I sit down with

I’ve been having conversations about manifestation, embodiment, and healing for most of my adult life, but my conversation with Colette Baron-Reid on LaidOPEN Podcast felt especially

In this episode of the LaidOPEN Podcast, I sit down with Elizabeth Rea, an evidentiary clairvoyant psychic medium and former psychic detective whose work has evolved from solving cold

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
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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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