The Finding Zen Podcast
Twelve conversations. Twelve words. Each one a thing you already knew how to live, and forgot.
The series
The Finding Zen podcast is a one-word series. Each episode takes a single word and a single guest, and follows it all the way down. Here is the full season, in the order it aired. Start anywhere. They build on each other.
Episode 01 · with Jeremy Nickel
How VR, AI, and psychedelic-assisted work can become real containers for presence and healing, with the overview effect as the north star.
Jeremy Nickel is a former Unitarian Universalist minister who led community at the VR company TRIPP and now runs the Overview Effect, a VR experience built to give people an astronaut's view of Earth, alongside Kokua, an AI meditation assistant. He's also a licensed facilitator at The Center Origin, Colorado's first state-licensed psilocybin healing center.
Video summary: Jeremy Nickel explores how VR, AI, and psychedelic-assisted settings can become containers for trust, presence, and the overview effect.
"These aren't real people, but they're real people."
Episode 02 · with Sarko Gergerian
A police lieutenant and therapist makes the case for moving policing from a prison pipeline to a public-health one, and for healing the people who carry the badge.
Sarko Gergerian is a Massachusetts police lieutenant and licensed therapist trained by MAPS in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, work built on a police-to-public-health pipeline inside his own department. He's testified before state lawmakers on psychedelic policy and appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience and in Netflix's How to Change Your Mind.
Video summary: Sarko Gergerian connects policing, therapy, PTSD, and public health through the word guardianship.
"If you know and you're a part of the system, you're on the hook to help."
Episode 03 · with Claudia Nanino
From rock bottom to conscious breathwork. Daily practice reframed as devotion rather than discipline, with the body's frequency as the compass.
Claudia Nanino is the Denver-based founder of Amarsi and a master breathwork facilitator with trauma-informed healing training, guiding conscious breathwork journeys and ceremony. After her marriage ended in 2016 she built her own healing practice around breath and frequency, work she now teaches to others.
Video summary: Claudia Nanino reframes practice as devotion and follows breath, frequency, and presence back into the body.
"Devotion feels like love from the heart. Discipline can feel more rigid."
Episode 04 · with Jason Gore
A CEO coach and adventurer connects high-stakes decisions to aligned living, landing on a near-drowning where surrender, not struggle, created presence.
Jason Gore is an executive coach and co-founder of the coaching firm Newberg Gore, and a competitive paraglider, whitewater rafting guide, and pilot who helps CEOs make aligned decisions under pressure. On this episode he traces those lessons to a near-drowning in Costa Rica, the moment he stopped fighting the river and surrendered.
Video summary: Jason Gore talks about alignment, surrender, near-death presence, and the choices that shape a life.
"Trying got in the way of presence and awareness."
Episode 05 · with Dr Christine Smith
Brain-wave states, the cell danger response, and a foundation-first order of operations. You cannot supplement your way out of a dysregulated nervous system.
Dr. Christine Smith, DC runs Depth Wellness in the Denver area, with a Doctorate of Chiropractic and a cognitive neuroscience background from the University of Denver. Her work centers on the cell danger response, the cellular stress state that locks the body out of healing, and on shifting brain states through sensory input and trauma-release work.
Video summary: Dr Christine Smith explains nervous system regulation, brain states, cell danger response, and why baseline comes first.
"You cannot out-supplement a brain state."
Episode 06 · with Yovel Peretz
An Israeli special-forces veteran on safety, self-reliance, and a definition of legacy measured in lives changed, not things owned.
Yovel Peretz is an Israeli-born entrepreneur who served in the Israeli military and was called back to active reserve duty during the recent war, then moved to the Denver-Boulder area to found Let's Do Podcast, a production studio now operating in four cities. His path from combat service to building a business around storytelling gives him firsthand ground for a conversation about resilience and rebuilding after war.
Video summary: Yovel Peretz reflects on resilience, safety, self-reliance, service, and legacy after military experience.
"If you change one person's life, you change the whole world."
Episode 07 · with Bu Nan Brown
Attachment, conflict, grief, and tea, all read through the regulated body. Connection is felt before it is thought.
Bu Nan Brown is a Rinzai Zen priest and somatic attachment coach in Boulder, and co-founder of Boulder Tea Hut, where he leads meditative tea ceremonies rooted in Zen tradition. He blends nervous-system science with contemplative practice, helping people repair insecure attachment patterns through embodied, body-based healing rather than talk alone.
Video summary: Bu Nan Brown brings attachment, conflict, grief, tea, and somatic wisdom into the felt practice of connection.
"The pain is inevitable, the suffering is optional."
Episode 08 · with Orange Peel
Singing, play, and novelty as practical nervous-system medicine. Most people are not short on joy, just short on permission.
Orange Peel Moses is a Denver-based musician and performance artist who has spent more than two decades as one of the city's best-known singing telegram performers, built around a self-chosen stage identity. On this episode he connects singing, novelty, and play to concrete nervous-system mechanics: vagus-nerve stimulation, pattern interruption, and the biology of joy.
Video summary: Orange Peel explores play, singing, novelty, and permission as practical doorways into nervous-system flexibility.
"Most people aren't lacking joy. They're lacking permission to access it."
Episode 09 · with Devon Kerns
Meet the new era, and the new tools, with childlike play instead of fear. A regulated body asks better questions.
Devon Kerns is a Denver-based breathwork facilitator, immersive-event producer, and DJ in Colorado's wellness and creative scene, with event partnerships including Meow Wolf and Levitt Pavilion. A returning Finding Zen guest, he brings a practiced sense of presence and play to this conversation about curiosity, AI, and consciousness.
Video summary: Devon Kerns and Michael talk about curiosity, AI, consciousness, play, and asking better questions from a regulated body.
"Most people aren't lacking answers. They're just moving too fast to hear themselves."
Episode 10 · with Erin Weed
One word can run your whole life. Finding it is remembering the self you came in with, not inventing a new one.
Erin Weed founded Girls Fight Back, a women's self-defense education company, after a college friend was murdered fighting off an attacker in her apartment. She sold the company in 2013, later created The Dig, a process that distills a person's identity into one guiding word, and has coached TEDx speakers for over a decade.
Video summary: Erin Weed explores resonance as remembering the self you came in with, not inventing a new identity.
"It's less about being a brand and more about remembering who you already are."
Episode 11 · with Robert MacNaughton
Insight is cheap. Growth is the gap between knowing and acting, closed. The avoided conversation is the costly one.
Robert MacNaughton is an executive coach who founded Boulder's Integral Center, running it from 2013 to 2018, and is now co-founder of Antelope Recovery, a virtual mental health program for teens and families. His work centers on closing the gap between insight and action, the conversations people avoid that cost them the most.
Video summary: Robert MacNaughton follows integration from insight into action, with special attention to the conversations people avoid.
"The most expensive thing for an entrepreneur is the conversation that they're not having."
Episode 12 · with Tyler Martin
When the old map dies, faith is what lets you keep walking and build the next one. Trust connects, faith holds, imagination builds.
Tyler Martin is a Denver-based strategist, doctoral student in psychology, and co-host of the Good Pain podcast, which explores caregiving, tragedy, and quiet loss. He's been one of Michael's closest personal advisors for years, and his focus on what he calls ‘the valley,’ the space after the peak experience where trust and meaning actually get rebuilt, makes him a fitting voice for this finale on faith and surrender.
Video summary: Tyler Martin and Michael explore faith, imagination, trust, surrender, and what happens when the old map stops working.
"Trust is built through presence, one moment at a time."
Finding Zen is where everyday moments become sacred. Take a breath, settle in, and hear what presence has to say.