Episodes

Niraj Naik has a highly effective prescription to optimize the health of your mind, body, and spirit. He is a certified UK pharmacist, turned holistic wellness, brain training and breath work expert who launched SOMA Breath. Through SOMA, Niraj has trained thousands of coaches in the powerful, scientifically-backed benefits of breathwork, music, dance, and community. Niraj developed a course called Breathwork for Life that is among the most popular on Mindvalley, a personal transformation platfo...

Julian Guderley is a legacy coach for founders, with a mission to help clients unlock their full potential to become more effective leaders who create positive impact with heart. Originally hailing from Germany, Julian "untethered his life" from a successful corporate career at blue chip firms like Nike and BMW. He pursued the road less travelled, launch a studio space in Canada and journey into the startup world in Silicon Valley and Vancouver Island. He also launched the Green Planet Blue Plan...

Vasavi Kumar is often described as the "Queen of Saying It Out Loud." A first-generation Indian immigrant raised on Long Island, NY, Vasavi has relentlessly searched to find her own voice, access the freedom of her creative spirit, and help others along the way...out loud. When diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 19, she made it her life’s purpose to understand how her mind works, starting with making room to hear herself think. Her mission is to share everything—the good, bad, and ugl...

Gratitude is a topic that gets a great deal of attention in the personal growth space. However, an area that is less discussed is compassion - a subject that this week's guest (Dr. Nilesh Satguru) is very knowledgeable and passionate about. Dr. Nilesh Satguru is a self-mastery coach, compassion expert and medical doctor. After over a decade practicing medicine, Nilesh now coaches entrepreneurs with powerful missions. His client list includes 7 figure serial entrepreneurs, ex-athletes, authors, e...

Of the many issues impacting the South Asian diaspora, one topic we haven't discussed on this show is relations with other minority groups. So I was very excited to connect on this week's episode with Tanya Mitra, one of the most prominent voices on the topic of Blindian (Black and South Asian) relationships. She is a perfect illustration of a life untethered, as she's broken free of numerous templates in the South Asian diaspora - in her choices of career, romantic partner, and strategies for m...

One of the most exciting parts of hosting Untether Your Life is connecting with folks with whom I "vibe" on numerous fronts, such as Neal Bakshi. Like me, Neal's parents came to the US from India, he worked for years in the very stressful financial services industry, and he developed a strong affinity for Eastern wellness modalities of a traditional (i.e., Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship ) and modern (i.e., Niraj Naik's SOMA Breath ) variety. We touched on numerous topics on ...

Are you looking to improve your mental health and overall sense of wellbeing? Focusing on deep breathing and gentle poses through the practice of yoga may help! On this podcast, we love to go beyond medication and cognitive behavioral therapy and other traditional modalities in exploring approaches to managing mental wellness. In this encore episode of Untether Your Life, we discuss yoga as a mental health management tool. To help educate us and our audience, we have invited one of the practice’...

This week's episode features my thoughts on The Life Shift Podcast as well as a trailer for the show, which launched a year ago. One of the things I've loved most about my journey in podcasting is connecting with amazing fellow podcasters such as the show's host, Matt Gilhooly. The Life Shift Podcast features candid conversations with people about the pivotal moments that changed their lives forever. We all have our stories, but through these conversations, we discover communities. We learn that...

The central theme of Untether Your Life is going beyond traditional modalities for managing your mental and physical wellness. What does that actually mean though? It’s a very broad statement, but intuition, inner child work, and energy healing are some of the essential elements of this holistic approach. This week’s guest, Natasha Levinger, is well versed in all of this, and then some. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, she is a professional intuitive reader, energy healer and inner child heal...

Robert Pardi is the founder of Possibility in Action™, "a powerful personal growth philosophy that can help unlock a world of limitless possibilities and potential." Robert embodies the tenets of Untether Your Life: after his young wife passed away of metastatic breast cancer, Robert re-imagined his life and left his comfort zone to achieve new dreams. He now shares the many life lessons he’s learned through his work and fashioned his life as an example of Possibility in Action™. Prior to his dr...

The term “polymath” gets thrown around quite a bit these days, with many people positioning themselves as experts in X, Y, or Z. However, a lot of times it's, as they say, "all hat, no cattle." And then there's Erwin B. Valencia who despite wearing many hats - both literally and figuratively, truly embodies the term. Erwin – (aka “E,” or the “Godfather of Gratitude”) is a professional polymath: Wellness Expert/High-Performance Sports Clinician/ Life Coach / Community Nurturer / Non-Profit Founde...

Jenny Thrasher is on a mission to "shift the mental health narrative from a fear-based, crisis mentality to one of wellness and empowerment." Through her companies All That We Are and Growing Out of Darkness, as well as her writings, she was able to untether herself from the traditionally dire and hopeless approach to navigating the gut-wrenching journey of loss. This is a topic the tireless mental health advocate is all too familiar with, as her father died by suicide, her own daughter nearly t...

Untether Your Life has taken a deep dive into mental health in the South Asian diaspora, inspired by the lived experiences of host Nikhil Torsekar and his wife Shelly Sood. One facet of this that merits further exploration is how it impacts South Asian males, a topic near and dear to Ankur Varma’s heart. Along with serving as Program Director at Northeast Family Services of Illinois, Ankur launched a valuable Instagram-based resource called Brown Man Therapy which is “on a mission to engage more...

This podcast is all about breaking free of traditional templates and barriers placed upon us by society. Today’s guest exemplifies this in spades. Shermin Kruse is a first generation immigrant from Iran, Northwestern University law school professor, Global Transactions Expert, former law firm partner, TEDx Producer, author, and mother of 4. Nikhil Torsekar had a wonderful discussion with Shermin about a broad range of topics, including: Shermin’s interest in Star Trek (dating back to college), a...

Benoit Kim could be seen as the poster boy for the mission of Untether Your Life, as he has broken free of the traditional templates of success for Asian Americans. Further, he’s gone above and beyond in owning his health, exploring the benefits of psychedelic therapies for managing mental illness both in a personal and professional capacity. Benoit is a former policymaker turned therapist, US army veteran, and host of the Discover More Podcast - a show for introspective thinkers with growth min...

Today marks the 50th episode of Untether Your Life. We're commemorating this important milestone by rebroadcasting one of our favorite discussions, with Jason Goldberg. Enjoy! And...enjoy some more! Do personal growth books and podcasts make you roll your eyes? Are you tired of hearing the same story of “infinite inspiration” rehashed again and again? Then the guest on this episode of Untether Your Life may be the perfect alternative solution to the dry and heavy content that you’re used to. On ...

Mike and Teresa Florence have been married for 24 years and have 3 sons and 1 daughter. Mike spent over 25 years in the global financial services and management consulting industry. Teresa earned a degree in early childhood development and spent 15 years working with children before leaving the workforce to focus on their family. Mike and Teresa always had a passion for mental health and through their own experiences have begun a journey to create a community focused on providing support to ca...

Happy New Year! With the start of a new year, kids are likely back to the grind - whether it's at high school, college, or other insitutions of higher learning. So this week's discussion is timely: host Nikhil Torsekar speaks with Jonaed Iqbal, the Founder of NoDegree.com and host of The NoDegree Podcast where he interviews people without college degrees and has them share their stories so others can follow in their path. Jonaed is also a YouMap® certified career coach who has helped hundreds of...

JD Murgolo, aka JD the Jedi, is an author, ACE Certified Health Coach and Personal Trainer, speaker on anxiety and depression, and founder of the mental health community platform Fragile Moments. Host Nikhil Torsekar connected with him to dicuss several topics, including: How JD's background as a middle school Montessori teacher informed his love of helping adults "navigate their emotions"The dubious promise of health and wellness coaches "guaranteeing" elimination of anxiety, or loss of speci...

Spirituality is something that seems quite elusive in a hyper-notified, always-on world where we're glued to our screens, engaged in FOMO, doom-scrolling, or curating our Instagram feed to portray a perfect social and professional life. Justin S. Grant, however, has found a way to artfully blend these two worlds in his book Spirituality for Busy People (an abbreviation of his earlier work Business and Spirituality ). In this episode, the Los Angeles, California-based author, entrepreneur, singer...

Today's episode features a guest appearance by Nikhil Torsekar on an Instagram Live hosted by Shani, a coach based near Lisbon, Portugal who practices breathwork and cold water exposure therapy. After these tools pulled him out of a major depression, he made it his mission to share them with others and help them discover their own power. They touch on numerous topics geared to help you untether your life and break free of "templates," including: The mechanics of methodologies such as SOMA breat...

Today marks a new chapter for this podcast: we launched this initiative a year ago alongside our blog, the book we'd co-authored, as well as an upcoming movie. The core themes are owning your own health - i.e., looking beyond surgery, medication, and cognitive therapy to manage your mental and physical wellness. More broadly, our mission is to help you as the listener "untether your life:" break free of "templates" - professional, cultural, and health-related - that you may have accepted as bein...