The Calming Ground Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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The Calming Ground Podcast

Elizabeth Mintun

Health & Fitness

Frequency: 1 episode/7d. Total Eps: 162

This podcast offers a space for busy people to go to for inspiration, wisdom, to learn from one another's struggles and transformations, as well as to receive actionable steps to relax, gain confidence, and move forward with the life they long to experience.

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https://www.thecalmingground.com/free-guided-meditation
85 shares
https://www.thecalmingground.com/inner-compass
64 shares
https://www.thecalmingground.com/reflection-prompts-selfcare
22 shares

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Score global : 37%

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162 - Three Years of The Calming Ground: Nervous System Calibration, Qigong, & Remembering Our Place in the Wild

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 • Duration 15:20

Ever finally sit down to rest, only to have your mind hand you a to-do list?

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun (psychotherapist, certified qigong teacher, and forest bathing guide), introduces the show’s new intro as The Calming Ground podcast approaches its three-year anniversary this October. Along the way, Elizabeth explores why stillness can feel unsafe to a nervous system that’s been moving fast for a long time, and how she has to come to honor her own people-pleasing (fawn) response. She also shares how nervous system science and ancient body wisdom arrive at the same place, and why coming back again and again is the practice itself. You’ll be guided through two short-in-the-moment practices you can use anywhere, anytime.

Key Takeaways:

Small doses of slowing down help the nervous system settle and feel safe.
Disconnecting from the body is often protective, and gentle check-ins with the jaw, shoulders, feet, and hands can invite us back.
Qigong and nature archetypes can help us remember our place in the wider, wilder world, even when we can’t get outside.

Resources:

Register for the free workshop From People Pleasing to Self-Trust: Reclaim yourself without Burning Bridges: https://go.thecalmingground.com/people-pleasing-to-self-trust

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

Website: https://thecalmingground.com/

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook & Instagram

If this episode offered you a moment of ease, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use some space for slowing down.

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161 - Letting Go This Fall: A Guide Through Five Element Theory and Nervous System Science

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 • Duration 09:03

What if the thing you're struggling to let go of right now is something this season is asking of you?

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun explores the seasonal pull toward letting go that so many people feel each fall through the lens of Five Element theory from Traditional Chinese Medicine. She explains why autumn is governed by the Metal element according to TCM (and what that has to do with your lungs, your grief, and your need to slow down), and connects it to nervous system science. This episode is for anyone who's noticed themselves wanting to slow down, say no more easily, or quietly grieve something as the season turns - and wants to understand a perspective on why.

Key Takeaways:

Five Element theory (Traditional Chinese Medicine) links each season to specific organs, emotions, and energies - autumn is governed by Metal
Shortening daylight and cooling temperatures create real physiological shifts toward parasympathetic (rest and restore) nervous system states
A simple longer-exhale breathing practice can help the body practice release in real time

Resources:

Previous episodes on autumn and the metal element:

Episode 105 - The Metal Element and Fall Self Care: How to Release and Refine
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calming-ground-podcast/id1704337948?i=1000728174111
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5N7TcpFQoMq2AKcrWopz2m?si=da1289b1cb154c8b
Episode 53 - Breath, Balance, and Release: Aligning with Fall through the Metal Element.
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-calming-ground-podcast/id1704337948?i=1000671506561

160 - When the Ground Shifts: What the Polyvagal Theory Debate Teaches Us About Trusting Ourselves

Wednesday, September 16, 2026 • Duration 12:38

There is a scientific debate that's been quietly unfolding for nearly 20 years: researchers have published findings questioning some of the biological claims behind polyvagal theory, the framework that has shaped how trauma-informed therapists and somatic practitioners - Elizabeth included - talk about the nervous system's response to safety and threat.

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun walks through what polyvagal theory says, what the critique actually challenges, and why the debate remains genuinely unresolved between credentialed researchers on both sides.

But this episode is about a much older question: what do we do when the ground shifts under something we've already built our work, our beliefs, or our sense of trust upon? Elizabeth reflects on why presence (not airtight guarantees) is what actually keeps us safe. This episode is for anyone who has ever had to hold a belief, diagnosis, relationship, or decision a little differently than they once did.

Key Takeaways:

Polyvagal theory's claims about the vagus nerve's role in shutdown/freeze responses are being actively debated by researchers - and there's no clear resolution yet.
Certainty held too tightly can close us off from new information and growth; curiosity keeps us in relationship with truth instead of possession of it.
Presence, not certainty, is what's actually available to us, and typically what actually helps the most.

Resources:

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

Conscious Practitioner Collective - monthly gathering for practitioners in Columbus, Ohio: https://thecalmingground.com/conscious-practitioner-collective

159 - The Community We're Taught to Fear

Wednesday, September 9, 2026 • Duration 11:48

A circle of strangers, no rehearsal, no sheet music…Just voices and a guide named Porangui pulling a room of near-strangers into one shared rhythm.

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun reflects on three very different gatherings from the same couple of weeks: a sound circle led by Porangui, a monthly meeting of her Conscious Practitioner Collective, and the first live session of her new program, Finding Your Footing When the Ground Shifts. Underneath their differences, she found the same medicine at work in each one - and traces why that medicine took her so long to trust, starting with a hard lesson learned in a middle school hallway.

Elizabeth explores why so many of us learn to fear community rather than trust it, and how belonging can form in real time between total strangers when a group is given just enough structure and permission. This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like they were standing just outside a circle, wondering if there was room with their name on it.

Key Takeaways:

Community isn't a scarce resource to be chosen for; it's something people can step into together, again and again, the moment they're willing to.
Co-regulation (settling a nervous system in the presence of other regulated nervous systems) can happen in a drum circle, a practitioner gathering, or a Zoom room alike.
Real community includes friction, activation, and disappointment. The goal isn't a frictionless group, but a safe enough one to be vulnerable inside.

Resources:

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

Conscious Practitioner Collective - monthly gathering for practitioners in Columbus, Ohio:

158 - When the World Feels Too Heavy: A Nervous System Guide to Grief, Doomscrolling & Overload

Wednesday, September 2, 2026 • Duration 13:14

Last week, Dolly Parton died. A glacier collapse triggered catastrophic flooding in Nepal. An Ebola outbreak became the deadliest in the Democratic Republic of Congo's history. If you've felt oddly numb to some of the news and unexpectedly gutted by other parts of it, this solo episode is for you.

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun explores why grief tends to land unevenly - why a celebrity we never met can hit harder than a mass tragedy overseas - and what that says about the nervous system. In this exploration, Elizabeth incorporates nervous system science, Five Elements theory of ancient Chinese medicine, and our connection to the natural world. She offers an invitation to choose, on purpose, where your attention and grief go… Instead of letting an algorithm decide for you.

Key Takeaways:

Why parasocial grief is real grief. The neuroscience behind mourning someone you've never met.
Empathy overload and grief numbing. Why your nervous system "dims the switch" on tragedies at scale.
The doomscroll loop. How unresolved sympathetic activation from news consumption tends to accumulate in the body as anxiety and numbness simultaneously.
Reframing self-care as self-discovery. How to use what hits you hardest as information about what you value, rather than something to just numb or push away.

Resources:

For 1:1 coaching and/or to ask any questions or share reflections, contact Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

Follow along: @thecalmingground on Facebook and Instagram

Subscribe to The Calming Ground Podcast so you never miss an episode. If you loved this conversation, please share it with a friend!

157 - Writing Through Grief: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on Poetry, Loss, and the Wonderment of Being Alive

Wednesday, August 26, 2026 • Duration 41:46

Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has written and sent out a poem every single day for decades. These are first drafts, no editing, no safety net. In this conversation, she shares what that practice has taught her about creativity, identity, and the wild, disorienting terrain of grief.

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun sits down with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, a poet, writer, and teacher whose daily poetry practice has become both a spiritual discipline and a public offering - poems sent out into the world unpolished, in service of truth rather than perfection. In this conversation, they talk about how a nightly writing ritual, one she began simply because it was the only quiet time she had as a young mother, became a lifeline after the sudden loss of her seventeen-year-old son to suicide in August 2021. This episode is a beautiful conversation about what it means to live in wonderment.

Key Takeaways:

A daily creative practice is a practice of showing up to presence, and that capacity can become a lifeline in crisis.
Grief itself changes shape over time; writing became a way for Rosemerry to track and integrate that change rather than "get through" it.
The identities we build - mother, wife, runner, baker - can all be taken away. What remains is a simpler, truer sense of what is.

Resources:

Preorder The Wonderment and Get a Signed Copy!

“You can pre-order the book from my local bookstore, Between the Covers, and I will personalize it for you (there's a comments section at the final checkout for you to say who you want the book signed to). Order before September 12 when I go in to sign the books. The bookstore will ship your book to anywhere in the US the next day.” -Rosemerry

156 - Behind the Curtain: How Nature Became My Nervous System Framework

Wednesday, August 19, 2026 • Duration 09:39

We rush toward finished frameworks and polished programs without ever seeing what shaped them. This episode pulls back the curtain on how nature became the language for nervous system work, long before it had a name.

In this solo episode, host Elizabeth Mintun shares the personal roots of the nature archetype framework behind her upcoming program. Drawing on her own childhood spent largely outdoors, and her ongoing work as a psychotherapist, qigong teacher, and mindful life coach, Elizabeth unpacks why frameworks for nervous system work need to live in the body, rather than being something simply of the mind, and why nature's own symbols and archetypes became the doorway for that embodied understanding.

Key takeaways:

Nervous system change happens through the body, not just intellectual understanding. Movement and felt experience matter as much as concept
Nature's symbols and archetypes offer an embodied language for internal states like groundedness, flow, and release, in a way diagrams and definitions can't
Nature can offer us powerful resources to help us navigate times of change

Resources

Free live workshop: "Who Am I Now? Finding Your Footing When Your Life Changes Shape" on August 26th: https://thecalmingground.com/free-workshop

Questions or reflections from this episode?

Email Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

Want to go deeper in your own practice?

155 - Honoring Thresholds: A Nervous System Approach to Endings and Transitions

Wednesday, August 12, 2026 • Duration 10:32

We rush past thresholds constantly - the small daily ones and the big life-chapter ones. This episode is about what it costs to leave transitions unmarked, and what changes when we honor our transitions.

In this episode, host Elizabeth Mintun explores why we so often rush past thresholds, both the small daily ones and the bigger life-chapter ones, and what it costs the nervous system when we do. Drawing on polyvagal-informed work and her own training as a psychotherapist and mindful life coach,

Elizabeth unpacks why unmarked transitions get stored in the body as unfinished business - and shares a personal story from a two-year clinical training program that changed how she understands endings.

Key takeaways:

Thresholds aren't just the big, obvious moments; they're daily, and mostly go unmarked
Unmarked transitions can leave the nervous system in low-grade activation, still "waiting" for closure
Ritual and reflection turn a blur of time into distinct, metabolized chapters

Resources

Free live workshop: “Who Am I Now? Finding Your Footing When Life Changes Shape” on August 26th, 1pm EST: https://thecalmingground.com/free-workshop

Free Guided Meditation: https://thecalmingground.com/free-guided-meditation

Questions or reflections from this episode? Email Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

154 - Nature-Based Rituals for Transition: A Story about Marking What's Ending

Wednesday, August 5, 2026 • Duration 10:48

What do you do when a place that’s held twenty years of your life history is about to be sold? You bury a shell in the sand and say good bye imperfectly, with sand still stuck between your fingers.

In this episode, your host Elizabeth Mintun (licensed psychotherapist, certified qigong teacher, and mindfulness coach), shares the story of saying goodbye to her uncle’s property on Oak Island, a place woven through more than two decades of family life, births, and losses. The episode moves between a literal ending - a beloved property about to be sold - and the constant endings in life we rarely notice. Elizabeth reflects on a “Sacred Pause” retreat she co-led with Ami Peacock just days before this trip and weaves it into a larger question: what does it mean to consciously practice letting go?

Key takeaways:

Creating a simple ritual (finding an object, naming what you’re releasing, marking the moment) can help an ending feel complete, even if imperfectly so.
The body already practices letting go constantly. Every exhale is a small release, happening thousands of times a day.
Bringing conscious attention to small, everyday endings (a season, a day, a breath) builds the same muscle needed for the larger ones.

Resources

Free live workshop: “Who Am I Now? Finding Your Footing When Life Changes Shape” on August 26th, 1pm EST: https://thecalmingground.com/free-workshop

Free Guided Meditation: https://thecalmingground.com/free-guided-meditation

Questions or reflections from this episode? Email Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

153 - The Privilege of Making Mistakes: Self-Forgiveness and Letting Go of the Shoulds

Wednesday, July 29, 2026 • Duration 13:08

She held two things dear: the privilege of making mistakes, and the right to be a “damn fool”.

This episode is a re-air of a conversation between host Elizabeth Mintun and her mother, Margy, who died in January of 2025. They set out to talk about compassionate accountability; how to live aligned with our values without turning that alignment into one more way to fall short. What Margy offers is something roomier. She describes the constriction of inherited shoulds, the moment she saw that her own parameters had shrunk her possibility of living fully, and the slow work of learning her mistakes could be pardoned. It's a short conversation, and a plainspoken one. It may be helpful for anyone carrying a should that was handed to them and would like to feel more grace and love towards themselves.

Key takeaways:

Shoulds are inherited, usually from people trying sincerely to give us direction - and it's adult work to ask of each one whether we actually embrace it.
Rigid parameters of right and wrong don't tend to protect a life; they often shrink it.
Mistakes aren't the failure of growth, they're the mechanism of it.
Self-forgiveness and forgiving others are the same capacity, practiced in two directions.

Resources

Free Guided Meditation: https://thecalmingground.com/free-guided-meditation

Questions or reflections from this episode? Email Elizabeth at elizabethmintun@thecalmingground.com

Want to go deeper in your own practice? Learn more about 1:1 coaching with Elizabeth Mintun