Season 4, Episode 4

Today’s Guest: Dr. Reji Mathew is an award-winning intermodal artist, thinker, neuroscience-informed psychotherapist, expressive arts therapist, advocate, and educator. Her therapeutic expressive arts philosophy is grounded in the narratology-narrative therapy lens. Her understanding of a person begins in the context of time, place, and culture. This intersects with a commitment to understanding people's complex identities, including class, culture, location, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and accessibility. She is an arts reporter for Disastershock.com, a humanitarian psychological first aid organization. In this activism series, she interviews global innovative expressive arts advocates on the power of the arts in healing and restoring communities in the aftermath of trauma. She is also an arts accessibility advocate and partners with Anti-Racist Art Teachers (ARAT) and the Rockland Conservatory of Music (RCM). 

​SHOW TOPICS

• Finding a lifelong allyship with the arts integration for physical and mental health & resilience.
• Breaking down what thinking and living intermodally is to help clients better cultivate their expressive range and process complex emotions
• Using the power of therapeutic play to bring clients into the here-and-now
• Advocating for inclusion and accessibility paths toward the arts

Season 4, Episode 3

Today’s Guest: Dr. Kirsten Ramey, or "Doc," as her clients refer to her, is a board-certified telemental health provider. With a background in entertainment, she used Frank Sinatra's famous line, "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere," to influence her choice for her grad school internship placement with the department of corrections. Although Dr. Ramey has worked within the community, in the department of juvenile justice, in private practice and in academic settings, her most enjoyable work has been with creative folx. As a mother of five, one of whom is a former Broadway star, Doc uses a creative approach to help clients rewrite their own stories.
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SHOW TOPICS

• The connection between filmmaking and therapy, and how Dr. Ramey’s transition between the two made perfect sense
• The concept of bringing everything we are and everything we are not into a client relationship
• Seeing things your client may not be aware of, like an audience often does with characters in a story, and allowing your client to reach their own “aha” moment at the right time

Season 4, Episode 2

Today’s Guest: Ruby Rose Fox is multi-award-winning musical artist who charted #8 on the Heatseeker Billboard charts, has over 2 million Spotify plays, and has music featured in the game Rock Band. Over the past 4 years, Ruby has become a mental health pioneer, starting with her nervous system state-shifting class for performers, based on cutting-edge research by Dr. Stephen Porges, and then with MuscleMusic, the #1 trauma-informed app for artists. Ruby has an Acting BFA from Emerson College and studied jazz and classical singing at both New England Conservatory and Berklee College of Music. She was trained in polyvagal theory from the Polyvagal Institute by Deb Dana. She is also trained in Linklater technique, Alexander Technique, and Qi Gong. She has also coined her own performance training method, The Fox Method, which combines Integral Theory, Polyvagal Theory, and decades of experience on the stage.

SHOW TOPICS

• Peeling back layers of generational shame around mental health
• Bringing polyvagal theory, the science of safety, to the performance art industry
• Is it worth it to suffer for the sake of art? 
• How our relationship with creativity changes once it becomes a job

Season 4, Episode 1

Today’s Guest: Eric Tivers is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and coach who lives in the northern suburbs of Chicago. He is the Founder and CEO of ADHD reWired. Since 2014, he has produced over 500 podcast episodes. Eric has become known for his innovative online group coaching and community programs, Eric's coaching and accountability groups have received international recognition. In 2021, he launched Adult Study Hall, a virtual coworking community for adults with ADHD. Eric holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Social Work. He is a father to a neurodivergent 12-year old. He identifies as bisexual and has recently started taking steps to bring more visibility and decrease stigma for bisexual men. He’s a self-taught musician, live-music enthusiast, and has seen the band Phish over 50 times. He enjoys motorcycle rides, pickleball, ping pong, and frisbee golf in his free time.

SHOW TOPICS

• Leaning into limits, routines, and accommodations as fuel and support for creativity
• Pushing for doctors to truly understand what ADHD is, what its effects are, and how it can be treated
• The downsides of the “superpower” language around ADHD
• Questioning some myths around medication