Destiny: Helen Lavretsky, M.D., Living from the Soul

Summary

UCLA geriatric psychiatrist Dr. Helen Lavretsky discusses her book 'Living from the Soul: The Neuroscience of Spiritual Awakening,' which opens with her own unexpected spiritual awakening. She describes a guided 'soul listening' meditation in which most participants report feeling a physical 'hug' from their soul, and a brain-scan study comparing this experience to viewing nature and art. The conversation also covers Kundalini-induced psychosis, past-life lessons, a death-preparation meditation in which she felt her soul begin to leave her body, ketamine visions, and the rise of death doulas.

Key takeaways

• 1Lavretsky's book is titled 'Living from the Soul: The Neuroscience of Spiritual Awakening'; she is a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and director of research for its Integrative Medicine Collaborative
• 2She met a VA hospital patient with no prior psychiatric history who attributed his psychosis to over-practicing Kundalini yoga, and she cites Carl Jung's writing on Kundalini emergencies
• 3In a brain-scan study of 10 volunteers, the 'soul hug' (prompted with cosmic nebula video) produced a brain signature similar to viewing nature and digital art; the study was published as 'three transcendent human experiences'
• 4She claims each lifetime carries one or two repeating soul lessons that disappear once recognized
• 5She practiced the Kundalini 'Crossing the Hour of Death' meditation at 3 a.m. for 40 days and says on the 40th day she felt her soul leaving her body
• 6She has trained with an urban shaman, 'Eagle Woman,' for 18 years in practices such as soul retrieval; in her ketamine study, some older patients with treatment-resistant depression reported speaking to Jesus

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. We're introducing a new book this week by a psychiatrist who has written a number of books in the past, but nothing this I would say focused intensity, and her name is doctor Helen Lavravski, and the book is Living from the Soul. What makes today's interview important is that, and I've talked about this for a while, when you do subtle changes in your conscious practice, and that can be hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, any kind of yoga where your body is in a pose that is sacred. And the thing about yoga is we don't know where it comes from. We're guessing when we say five thousand years ago, but whoever invented yoga understood human physiology. And when these poses are acted upon and you stay in pose, it triggers energy of the higher self, energy of the spiritual body. And you may not know it when you're doing the post, but when you sit down and you close your eyes, it's activated something. This is the same kind of benefit that you get when you meditate. And as a longtime meditator, I know that if I don't meditate, my day kind of comes apart, and I've talked to a lot of people that meditate, and of course here in the San Francisco Bay area there are meditation centers. There's even the original and I'm surprised to learn this the other day, the original Transcendental Meditation Center or TM, which was launched by the Maharishi Meshyogi from India in the nineteen seventies and they're still teaching people. ...

Excerpt from Earth Ancients, Jul 22, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.