Mastering Change | The trauma, mental health & wellbeing podcast

Anxiety doesn’t begin in your thoughts – it begins in your nervous system. 
In this episode of Mastering Change, breathwork educator Jamie Clements explains how conscious breathing can directly regulate the autonomic nervous system and help shift anxiety at its root. 
Jamie shares how breathwork became central to his own recovery from panic attacks, and why he now teaches a structured approach that distinguishes between micro regulation practices and macro transformational work, including Conscious Connected Breathing. 
He explains how deeper breathwork can intentionally create safe “prediction error” experiences – moments where the body learns it is safe in situations it once perceived as threatening – allowing new neural pathways to form. 
But this isn’t about intensity for its own sake. Jamie emphasises preparation, containment and integration as essential parts of the process. 
We explore: 
How breath influences the autonomic nervous system 
Why anxiety is often a conditioned physiological response 
The role of Conscious Connected Breathing in deeper healing 
The difference between daily grounding and expanded-state work 
Why integration matters as much as the experience itself 
Moment of Care: This episode discusses sensitive episodes related to trauma, mental health and distressing experiences. If you feel triggered at any point, please take a moment to check in with yourself and seek support. 
See Jamie Clements at Transform Trauma Oxford 2026 – Get your Early Bird Tickets here.
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/masteringchangepodcast
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Trauma doesn’t only create fear – it often creates isolation. 
In this episode of Mastering Change, Lucas Casanova explores trauma as a fundamental rupture in safety and belonging. A Buddhist and transpersonal therapist, Lucas integrates secular Buddhist practices with neuroscience and embodied therapy to help people reconnect – not just cognitively, but physically and relationally. 
He explains that belonging and safety are biological needs. When trauma disrupts them, thinking alone cannot restore them. The body must feel safe first. 
“Trauma makes you lose your faith and trauma makes you feel disconnected.” 
Lucas differentiates spirituality from religion – framing spirituality as lived experience rather than belief – and introduces the concept of spiritual safety: the felt sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves. 
Drawing on his work with refugees and displaced communities, he describes how meditation, breath and embodied practices can rebuild connection from the inside out. 
We explore: 
Trauma as disconnection from body, community and self 
Why safety must be embodied before cognitive healing begins 
Spirituality versus religion in therapeutic practice 
Secular Buddhist practices as tools for regulation and reconnection 
Belonging as a core human need 
A powerful conversation about rebuilding safety where trauma once fractured it. 
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/masteringchangepodcast
Follow us on instagram: www.instagram.com/masterseventsltd
Visit mastersevents.com/oxford-2026 for more details.

When trauma takes you out of your body, rebuilding safety and connection can take years. 
In this episode of Mastering Change, Karen Whelan shares her lived experience of sexual abuse and the long, gradual journey of healing that followed. She speaks openly about self-hate, disconnection and the profound loss of safety in her own body – and how therapy, spirituality and embodied practice helped her slowly rebuild trust in herself. 
Karen reflects on a powerful moment of forgiveness that left her feeling “no longer a hostage to my own trauma story.” She is clear that forgiveness was not a shortcut or solution, but part of a much wider process of reclaiming her life. 
Now a psychotherapist and spiritual practitioner, Karen guides others through a 21-day awe-based self-love practice. She describes awe as “the bridge between the human knowing and the divine encountering” – and explains how cultivating awe and gratitude can help people reconnect with their bodies and sense of the sacred. 
We explore: 
Rebuilding safety after sexual trauma 
The relationship between spirituality and embodied healing 
Self-love as an ongoing practice 
The role of awe in shifting self-perception 
How reconnecting to the body supports recovery 
Moment of Care: This episode discusses sensitive episodes related to trauma, mental health and distressing experiences. If you feel triggered at any point, please take a moment to check in with yourself and seek support.  
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/masteringchangepodcast
Follow us on instagram: www.instagram.com/masterseventsltd
Visit mastersevents.com/oxford-2026 for more details.

Many of us weren’t optimally seen, held or supported as children – and the adaptations we made to survive can quietly shape how we relate, connect and protect ourselves as adults. 
This week on Mastering Change, Maya Vaughan, Director of the Trauma Training Institute (TTI), explains the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) – a non-pathologising, relational approach to healing developmental trauma. 
Rather than focusing on diagnosis or “what’s wrong,” Maya describes NARM as “profoundly relational and non pathologizing” and “very kind of present process.” 
In a NARM session, the starting point is deceptively simple: 
“What is it you most want for yourself?” 
From there, the work follows what she calls a red thread – exploring what gets in the way of that longing by tracking what’s happening in the present moment. 
“As they see what they do to themselves, so much agency comes online.” 
If you work with developmental/relational trauma – or recognise its patterns in yourself – this conversation offers a grounded, practical lens on restoring safety, connection and self-regulation. 
We explore 
What makes NARM different from traditional trauma models 
Why starting with “what do you most want?” changes everything 
How fear of attachment loss drives survival adaptations 
Why NARM doesn’t label or pathologise 
How agency returns through present-moment awareness 
Moment of Care: This episode discusses sensitive episodes related to trauma, mental health and distressing experiences. If you feel triggered at any point, please take a moment to check in with yourself and seek support.  
Dr. Laurence Heller, founder of NARM, releases his new book Healing Shame and Guilt on 12 May. Learn more: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/804584/healing-shame-and-guilt-by-laurence-heller-phd-and-stephan-k-niederweiser/
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/masteringchangepodcast
Follow us on instagram: www.instagram.com/masterseventsltd
Visit mastersevents.com/oxford-2026 for more details.

Many of the behaviours we label as “dysfunctional” may actually be attempts to survive.
In this episode of Mastering Change, we’re joined by Mike Niconchuk, whose work is shaped by personal and intergenerational trauma linked to his family’s experience during the Guatemalan civil war, as well as years of humanitarian work in active conflict zones.
Mike did not enter this field through clinical training. Instead, his questions emerged through lived experience and direct exposure to overwhelming pain, where he became deeply interested in how trauma shapes the body, the brain, and our relationships with others.
At the heart of this conversation is a simple but challenging idea:
“The primary goal of the brain is to help us stay alive.”
From this perspective, the brain is not organised around happiness or wellbeing. Behaviours that can appear confusing, harmful or self-defeating often begin to make sense when understood as short-term strategies for safety. Mike explores how trauma interacts with ordinary cognitive and neural processes, including empathy, and how the legacies of war can continue to live on socially and politically long after violence ends.
This episode offers a reframing of trauma that extends beyond the individual, particularly in contexts where there is no clear “after” and no guaranteed space for reflection or healing.
We explore:
Trauma as an embodied, social and political experience
Survival rather than wellbeing as the brain’s organising principle
How trauma can shape empathy and social behaviour
Shame as a powerful and often overlooked factor in PTSD and trauma
What trauma looks like when there is no “post”
Why reflection and healing are not universal privileges
Moment of Care: This episode discusses sensitive episodes related to trauma, mental health and potential distressing experiences. If you feel triggered at any point, please take a moment to check in with yourself and seek support.
See Mike Niconchuk at Transform Trauma Oxford 2026 – Get your Early Bird Tickets here.
Watch this episode on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/masteringchangepodcast
Follow us on instagram: www.instagram.com/masterseventsltd
Visit mastersevents.com/oxford-2026 for more details.