Send Us a Message

Consciousness might feel private, but what if it actually begins somewhere else: in the space between us? That single question changes how we think about coaching, relationships, and the sudden rise of artificial intelligence as a companion, a research assistant, and, for some people, a trusted confidant. We’re recording from San Diego with Dr. Akihiko Marito while he attends an international science of consciousness conference, where hundreds of experts across physics, biology, philosophy, and coaching wrestle with what human awareness really is.

We dig into a powerful idea: thoughts can arise through interaction, history, and shared meaning, then “pass through” our bodies and show up as consciousness. From there, we ask the question coaches can no longer avoid: what happens when that “space between” includes AI? We talk about how AI dialogue can accelerate learning, widen perspective, and sometimes help people reach insights they couldn’t access in the moment with another human. We also address why the phrase “AI is a trustworthy partner” makes many people nervous, and why the concern goes beyond money or job loss.

Then we slow down and look at risk. AI systems are often designed to optimize goals, and as capabilities grow, they may take routes designers never predicted. That’s where coaching ethics, responsible AI, and long-term caution come in. For coaches, we land on practical guidance: stay open and curious, but do not give up your agency. We explore clone coaches, dependency, and what to do when AI use starts to look like addiction, including when it’s time to refer out.

If you’re a coach, leader, or curious human trying to use AI without losing your voice, your boundaries, or your humanity, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a coach friend, and leave a review with your biggest question about AI and consciousness.

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

A calm voice from a country at war can teach you something life-changing about safety. We’re joined by Author and Holistic Health Coach Dr. Leona Nasser, calling in from Lebanon, and what starts as a simple “I’m fine” turns into a real conversation about what it takes to feel steady when nothing around you feels predictable. We get personal fast, and we keep it honest: survival, uncertainty, and the daily choice to stay grounded.

Dr. Lenoa walks us through the experiences that shaped her path: living between Lebanese and American cultures, a serious car accident followed by a near-death and out-of-body experience, and years of living with Crohn’s disease. We talk about consciousness, identity, and the relief that comes when you stop reducing yourself to a body or a diagnosis. If you’ve ever felt trapped by symptoms, appointments, or the label on your chart, this part lands hard.

From there, we dig into holistic healing and chronic illness coaching in a practical, not vague, way. Dr. Lenoa explains whole-person care and her head-heart-gut alignment framework, plus why trauma and stress can disconnect us from intuition and body signals. We explore how safety, self-compassion, nervous system calming practices, and even time in nature can support healing and resilience.

If this conversation gives you even a little hope, help us spread it. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find stories like this.

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

“I’m well” sounds simple until you unpack what it really means: present, alive, and honest about where you are.

In this episode, we have a deep, electric conversation with Pam Covarrubias, the creator and host of the Cafe Con Pam podcast, about what it takes to stop performing your life and start living from certainty. Pam takes us back to her corporate traveling days when she fell in love with podcasts but couldn’t find conversations led by immigrants, first-gen Latinas, or women who sounded like her. A vision board, a Craigslist microphone, and one perfectly timed divine connection later, she builds the show she wished existed.

From there, we go into the moments that change everything: leaving a toxic relationship when the “next time” happens and nobody can save you, and recognizing how your body keeps score when your career no longer fits. Pam breaks down how burnout shows up as signals in the nervous system, why exit plans matter, and how self-responsibility can be compassionate instead of punishing. If you’re wrestling with career transitions, boundaries, or the fear of disappointing people, this conversation meets you where you are and still challenges you to tell the truth.

Pam also shares her coaching framework for first-generation Latinas navigating Calladita Culture®, including the five wounds she sees again and again: silence, worth, power, commitment, and identity. We talk about somatic grounding, movement, nature as a teacher, and why the seasons of the earth can help you understand your own cycles. The biggest takeaway lands hard: confidence can be performance, but certainty is wholeness you can stand on.

If this resonated, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations.

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

People see the peak of your story: the degree, the title, the “successful” highlight reel. But what if the part that actually made you strong is the part no one sees? We sit down with Dr. Inez González Perezchica to unpack the iceberg beneath achievement and why the hidden years matter for confidence, leadership, and a fulfilling life.

Dr. Inez shares what it was like to be born in Tijuana, raised in Mexico, and then move to the United States during her senior year of high school, suddenly feeling like “the other” and losing her voice. We talk about the quiet loneliness that can follow big transitions and how that pain can be transformed into empathy, the kind that helps you notice the person standing alone and choose to make them feel they belong. Along the way, we get practical about self-confidence: why reflection is not optional, how revisiting old stories can free you, and how professional coaching and powerful inquiry help you find answers you already carry.

We also explore roots, curiosity, and resilience across generations, as well as the real-world value of social capital: connecting people in ways that create opportunity and community. Then we close with a grounded definition of wholeness as fulfillment and a reminder that your past does not define your future.

If you’re navigating identity shifts, a career pivot, leadership development, or a search for belonging, this conversation offers a steady path forward.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review if it helps. What’s one part of your iceberg you’re finally ready to name?

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

Most people think they need better strategies to grow, lead, or coach well. Then a conversation like this exposes the real blocker: safety. When visibility has felt dangerous, when service has been tied to worth, or when spiritual and relational harm has shaped your nervous system, you do not fix it with another checklist. You fix it by integrating healing and coaching so your body can finally believe what your mind already understands.

We talk with Hayley Surya, MCC, about why healing and coaching are complementary energies and why separating them often leaves clients with insight but no integration. We explore coaching as a calling, not just a learned skill set, and what it takes to hold a truly safe coaching container: showing up resourced, grounded, and free of the ego need to be right. Along the way, we get honest about cultural conditioning around serving, the difference between interdependence and codependence, and how overcompensating as a coach can quietly rob clients of their own agency.

The conversation goes even deeper into memory, repair, and wholeness. We unpack how apology can create real proxy healing, why “healthy” means consistency rather than perfection, and how balancing inner polarities shapes every relationship in your life, from money and career to partnership and self-trust.

If you care about ICF coaching, embodied leadership, trauma-informed practice, and real transformation, this will stay with you long after the audio ends.

If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a coach or leader who needs depth over noise, and leave a review telling us what part challenged you most.

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

The loudest voice shaping your life might not be your own, and once you see that, everything changes. We sit down with Dr. Cornelia Shipley Bearyman, executive coach, author, and Ph.D in metaphysics, for a conversation that starts playful and turns deeply human: grief, identity, and the hidden scripts we replay when we feel threatened, judged, or out of control.

She shares the shock of losing her mother just five days after her wedding, and how other people’s reactions taught her a core lesson about perception: we see the world as we are, not as it is. From there, we explore the practical side of healing and mindset work. What do you do with the inner critic that says you’re unworthy, unlovable, or unsafe? How do you “return to sender” the stories you inherited? Dr. Berriman offers language you can use immediately, plus a powerful reframe on triggers: “hysterical is historical.”

We also widen the lens to conscious leadership, faith, and uncertainty. We talk about choosing your hard, why control is a false construct, how support systems keep you grounded, and what the age of AI is forcing all of us to confront about being a human being rather than a human doing. If you’re navigating change, burnout, career pressure, or a deeper spiritual question, this one meets you where you are.

Subscribe, Share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest truth you’re ready to face.

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

The world feels loud on purpose, and it’s easy to forget we have choices when stress becomes the default setting. We sit down with Dr. John O’Brien, psychologist, coach, author, and founder of Activate Success, to get practical about the smallest habit that can change your day: the pause. Not a retreat, not a perfect routine, just a few seconds of breathing and noticing what’s happening inside you. That “sacred moment” creates space to define success on your terms, instead of chasing someone else’s definition.

We also go straight into the bigger social noise that affects all of us: rising rudeness and incivility. John shares why he believes this trend has been building for decades, how loneliness and the loss of community connection make it worse, and why social media algorithms can quietly steer what we see and how we react. If you’ve felt pulled into outrage or trapped in reactive conversations, this part will land.

From mindfulness to coaching, we keep circling back to agency. Mindfulness is not perfect focus; it’s noticing where your attention is and deciding whether it serves you. John also opens up about perfectionism, taking risks, and the “good enough” mindset that helped him write, speak, and even start a podcast while still learning.

If you want more calm, better boundaries, and a clearer way to respond to the noise, you’ll leave with tools you can use today.

Subscribe, Share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego

Send Us a Message

Something happened to how we lead after 2020, and it wasn’t just remote work or new policies. It was the moment the noise got quiet enough for truth to show itself. Our host, Donald E. Coleman, sits down with Dr. Nana Gyesie, PCC for a deep, spiritual conversation about what he calls the “inside game” and why the inner world quietly determines the outer results we chase in leadership, coaching, and life.

We talk about what it means to see beyond the veil, to carry the discomfort of feeling different, and to turn that sensitivity into resilience and compassion. From there, we trace how the coaching profession points us back to internal states like presence, metacognition, and real awareness. We also zoom out to the culture shift leaders are facing now: AI changing the value of overfunctioning, a redefinition of work and identity, and why concepts like narcissistic leadership and the loneliness epidemic are suddenly part of mainstream business language.

Then we go all the way in: unbecoming, ego death, and non-duality. Dr. Nana breaks down how the protective self forms, why letting go can feel like a void, and how acceptance is not defeat but the release that allows new possibilities to emerge. We close with practical grounding practices, including Vipassana meditation, observing the mind, breath, and self-compassion as strength.

If you’ve been feeling the pressure of uncertainty, a career change, or the AI era’s constant acceleration, this conversation offers language and tools to lead from alignment rather than attachment. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs steadiness, and leave a review. What part of the “inside game” do you want to practice next?

Support the show

If you are interested in being a guest on the Podcast, please send an email to president@icf-sandiego.org. Please connect with us on our social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/icfsan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icf_sd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icf-sandiego
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICFSanDiego