• Prayer is not meant to stay inside the church.

• Prayer is how we speak to Love, and play is how we go live it.

Micro Prompt

Prayer is often treated as something done in a church—from the pews, genuflected, hands clasped, in quiet contemplation. But prayer—private or public—was never intended to stay on the bench or the pre-dawn morning. It was meant to be carried outward: the first choice, the first interaction, or the first conversation. Prayer becomes the gift you give yourself and those around you.

Three Things to Consider

💡 Idea: The word pray and the word play are separated by a single letter. Prayer is how we return to the center of ourselves. Play is how we bring ourselves into the world. Prayer is how we speak to Love, and play is how we go live it.

📖 Read: The Enlightened Heart edited by Stephen Mitchell

This definitive collection of spiritual poetry gathers voices across 2,500 years of spiritual traditions and people—from the Upanishads and Lao-tzu to Walt Whitman and Rainer Maria Rilke. Perhaps prayer is just poetry spoken to and from the heart.

📺 Watch: Discovering the Power of Prayer with Tara Brach

From a psychological and mindfulness-based perspective, this talk beautifully explores the common ground between secular mindfulness and deep spiritual longing. Tara Brach discusses the universal human desire for connection that drives transformational prayer, looking at what we are actually reaching out to when we pray and how to cultivate a practice that feels authentic, regardless of belief system.

Closing Thought

Prayer is not the province of religion. It is the communication vehicle that strengthens the relationship of our choosing. Whether that is God or Love, our orientation can anchor us into a higher intelligence that rises above the tumultuous nature of the human condition.

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• The Lord’s Prayer offers a repeatable framework for honest, intentional communication with a higher power.

• Each movement addresses a different dimension of the human condition.

• You do not have to be religious to pray with intention and depth.

Hook

Most people who grew up in a church know the Lord’s Prayer by heart. In fact, many non-religious likely recognize it as familiar, too. Far fewer have considered what it’s actually teaching us about prayer, and fewer still have tried to make it their own.

Fair warning, we explore religious themes through both a spiritual and secular lens. The straddling of these two experiences is an attempt to find curiosity and respect for both worldviews, building bridges instead of walls.

Context

Jesus did not give his disciples the Lord’s Prayer to glorify Himself. He gave it to them as a model to avoid being a hypocrite, boasting about their piety, or speaking “many words” and “empty phrases”. Speaking to flex your vocabulary or fill rooms with noise is not a demonstration of honest, oriented, humble communication with God. Matthew 6:9-13 maps five distinct movements, each one addressing something the human heart consistently needs regardless of its denomination or orientation. I offer below an analysis for both spiritual (God) and secular (Love) dispositions.

Insight

Pray with confidence and worship. (Matthew 6:9) Begin by orienting yourself toward an ultimate power, not your problem. Worship is reverence for who you are speaking to as well as clarifying why that relationship matters. It is about orienting away from the wound and towards the source of healing.

Pray with peace and seek the wisdom of higher powers. (Matthew 6:10) Before you bring your will and agenda, ask what higher powers would do. This is the movement from self-direction to surrender, from my will to something larger and wiser than my own fear, preference, or limitation.

Pray with faith for what you need. (Matthew 6:11) Bring your actual needs, not the manicured, sanitized, or curated version you think you should want. As a requirement, honesty must precede the practice. Our hearts only open when we risk emotional exposure through both vulnerability and authenticity.

Pray with humility and confession. (Matthew 6:12) Name what you have gotten wrong with these three steps: introspection (take inventory), accountability (take responsibility), and humility (be willing to change). This is not self-flagellation or -punishment, but the clearing of the excuses, rationalizations (rational-lies), or walls erected out of self-preservation. It starts with the self and makes authentic connection possible, bringing accountability to ourselves and our relationships.

Pray with openness for authentic power. (Matthew 6:13) This is not power over our circumstances or other people. It is power with them. It’s the collaborative strength that comes from being in alignment with powers greater than ourselves—call it God or Love.

Application

You do not need to use these exact words. This is not a petition to change the Lord’s Prayer, a movement to avoid scriptural language, or anything other than an attempt to bridge spiritual truths to a wider audience. Focus on the intention behind this ancient wisdom—worship, surrender, honesty, accountability, and openness. These five movements can hold anything you bring and are not the exclusive province of religion. They serve as a relational map—one that works whether you are a lifelong believer, a questioning skeptic, or someone with a different belief system.

A Prayer to Love

Our Love, which flows through all things, hallowed be your nature. Your presence come, your will be done, in my heart as it is in all creation.

Give us this day what we truly need, and forgive us the ways we have withheld love from others, as we forgive those who have withheld it from us.

Lead us away from the smallness of fear, and deliver us from the stories that keep us from you.

For yours is the infinite heart, the boundless light, and the power that holds all things together, now and in every moment we choose it.

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• Fasting is not about abstinence from food, but abstinence from distraction.

• Fasting from distraction creates the inner stillness necessary for honest prayer.

• The quietude of early morning is one of the most accessible and underused spiritual resources available.

Theme

Before you can speak honestly, you must be able to hear clearly.

Mini Teaching

When most people hear the word fasting, they think of food. Or rather, the lack of food. But fasting is more than what we don’t eat. At its root, fasting is the deliberate removal of what competes for our attention so presence, clarity, and receptivity can arrive.

My morning practice begins before the dawn does. There’s no phone, no noise, no lights except the fireplace. The house is quiet in a way it will not be again for hours. That silence is a necessary ingredient for my prayer practice. Stillness is less about the absence of sound than the clear receptivity it allows. It is the threshold that allows honest prayer, honest thought, and honest feeling to become possible. (See also: Stillness Is the Common Path, Activate Your Stillness)

Fasting from distraction is simple in concept, but not always easy to execute. It removes the cacophony of noise that keeps the mind preoccupied—the news, the notifications, other people’s urgencies—and creates a space where something subtly can be felt or heard. Contemplation requires time and space. Receptivity and attunement require presence. Intuition, the kind that actually guides us rather than reacts for us, does not compete well with a crowded mind or a “noisy” room.

Prayer spoken into the noise is still prayer. But prayer spoken from stillness lands different. It may feel more honest, more present, and more open to what is communicated back. The static of our daily lives is not benign. It shapes what we think, how we feel, what we assume we know, and what we believe is possible. Fasting from it, even briefly, allows for something clearer to emerge.

Notice / Reflect / Try

This week, before you pray, meditate, journal, or simply sit with your thoughts, subtract something first.

The phone, the computer, and the electronics are a must—put them or yourself in another room. If you can, sit before the sun comes up. Light a few candles. Avoid playing any music. Give yourself the gift of five minutes of nothing before you ask for or offer anything in your prayers.

Notice what surfaces in that space. It may first be the active mind filling the space with its own internal noise. It may be the thoughts or worries you were trying to avoid. Just because it arrives doesn’t mean you have to follow it. Talk to your higher power—your heart, to God, to the universe—and ask them to take this noise away from you. The discomfort of early stillness is just the beginning; a reminder that you are human—not an indicator that something is wrong. The more you communicate with your higher powers, the more they will conspire to work with you.

Integration

Fasting doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need a retreat, the perfect morning or space, a rocking chair or a fireplace. It only requires that you arrive before the day does and give yourself the quietude that honest prayer benefits from. Creating the proper conditions supports both the work and the intention.

Reflection Question

What do you think you would hear, or feel, if you subtracted the noise before you started speaking?

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• Sacrifice and thanksgiving can create a connection to eternity at any moment.

• Thanksgiving is the hard, private practice of returning to what is true and good even when circumstances are not.

• Prayer is how we carry this covenant outward.

Core Statement

Most of us tend to wait for the right conditions to be fulfilled before we can be grateful. We expect our will to be done before we can appreciate what life offers and delivers. Gratitude is not just the feeling that follows good circumstances, but rather a practice we bring to all circumstances. A heart oriented toward sacrifice (service) and thanksgiving (gratitude) creates ripples of impact that echo into eternity. It is the deliberate and consistent choosing to define itself by faith and action rather than reluctance or passivity.

Why It Matters

Anxiety is the looping prison of a reality that doesn’t exist. A fictional story conjured up in our minds and played on repeat. It happens because of our distress of the unknown or deep care for a specific outcome. When present, it creates tunnel vision, focusing our aperture down to a perceived threat, a gap in knowledge, or a thing that is wrong, missing, or unresolved. Unchecked, it pulls us inward and downward, tightening around the wound or worry until it becomes our whole story.

Philippians 4:6 offers one of the most psychologically precise instructions in scripture: “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” This series is about the power of prayer, but it is worth noting the importance of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving does much of the heavy lifting in the context of prayer.

Thanksgiving is the practice of gratitude. It makes who we are, what we have, or where we are, enough. It asks the mind to hold what is present alongside what is difficult, and in doing so, disrupts the vicious cycle of anxiety. This is not your typical gratitude practice, bulleted journal entry, or hashtag comment. It is the hard, private practice of returning to what is true and good even when circumstances are not, before they are okay, or reveal no indication of ever being okay. The only requirement is to look honestly with intention for peace and right action in what may come.

[Image: eternity tattoo]

I tattooed this on my body as a daily reminder. In every moment, you can create eternity by choosing sacrifice (outward act) and thanksgiving (inward disposition of the heart). Prayer is the carrier to declare this covenant. A practiced reorientation to define ourselves not by our wounds but by the infinite source our wounds have kept us from reaching.

Reflection Prompt

What would change if thanksgiving came before the request, rather than after the relief?

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• A promise is a covenant made to the future.

• To swear is to pledge allegiance and fealty to truth.

• Prayer is how we honestly and humbly communicate both in sacred relationships.

• 💛 Summer promotion: scroll (or read) to bottom 💛

Observation

We were in a Friday Power Sculpt class at Love Yoga in Whitefish. Our teacher Amanda was hyped up, building the room’s energy, and reached for two words at once. She meant to say “promise” and “swear” and what came out instead was “prayer.” She laughed it off as we laid on our backs preparing for the sweat session to start, but the words stuck with me. It kept resurfacing while on the mat, so I turned to my wife and said, “promise plus swear equals prayer. Help me remember that.”

A promise is an intention directed toward the future. To swear is to bind yourself to truth or responsibility. Prayer, as I’ve come to experience, is the act of offering both in communion with something larger than ourselves. It is not just a practice or internal monologue, but the conscious act of building a relationship. And like any meaningful conversation, it requires the right “partner” to converse with as well as honesty, accountability, and a willingness to be changed by what you hear back.

Revelation

My relationship with prayer started shortly after traveling to Uganda. Tami and I spent a week in Kaihura with Will and Sandy Bredberg and the extraordinary community built by Faith Kunihira at Bringing Hope to the Family. What I witnessed there, and what I wrote about in an earlier piece, was joy in the presence of material scarcity. What was abundant was a spiritual richness—gratitude without condition, connection without distraction—that unified the community into a chosen family.

Coming home, I felt the weight of the “modern” world’s discontentedness, insecurity, restlessness, and frenetic anxiety. The insatiable appetite for more alongside a persistent sense of lack felt even more present than it had before. As my pastoral mentor and friend, I asked Will about it and what to do. Our conversations in Uganda and after about life, spirituality, and faith reconnected me to something I had forgotten was absent.

I wanted to talk to God. As much as I was “spiritual,” I hadn’t really bothered to talk to God since I left my inherited Catholic roots. I didn’t want to pray because things were hard or out of desperation, but to try and connect to something absent in my life. Something that brought a level of contentedness, joy, and peace in those with limited material resources. My goal wasn’t to communicate, but to connect. To open a bidirectional line from my heart to His. Like any relationship, what is neglected withers. What is ignored is deprioritized. A relationship without communication weakens.

This was a relationship I had been neglecting without fully realizing it. I wasn’t yearning for religion; I was yearning for connection to a higher power; call it Love or God.

Meaning

My grandfather Emil J. Moos was a pious man. In his recliner in Lincoln, Illinois, next to the TV remote and his book of jokes, he always kept his rosary. The feel of the beads and smell of the leather bag that holds them still brings me back to the living room in his house. He prayed the way some people breathe, steadily, without announcement, as though it were simply what you did when you were alive and paying attention. Fifteen years after my grandpa’s passing, I was fortunate enough to be gifted his rosary by my stepmom who had been using it for her own prayers.

I started praying in the morning. Beginning around 5:00a with a daily devotional, my rosary, a cup of tea, my rocking chair, the fireplace and our dog, Daisy. I pray, about any tensions and joys in my life, my day ahead and those past, what I am grateful for, what I am struggling with, anything. I speak openly, humbly, and honestly—the way you speak to someone you trust or yearn to trust.

Meditation is the yin to prayer’s yang. Meditation is how we listen to God. Prayer is how we speak to Him. Together they complete a conversation that most of us never learned we were allowed to have. Trapped underneath or behind religious doctrine, prayer was a theological ordinance and not something accessible to secular lives.

The research on prayer is consistent: regular prayer reduces anxiety, lessens loneliness, and orients the mind away from rumination and toward presence. I know this firsthand as my existential distress around dying slowly disappeared anchored into a higher power. Similar to last month’s series on “laughter”, prayer changes how we hold what we cannot change. It does not remove suffering, but it can reorient our experience and perspective of it. It can remove our distress around the things in our lives we can and cannot change.

Many of us define Love and God by the traumatic or wounding experiences around it. But these wounds are keeping us from connecting to the higher powers and intelligence available to us all. Prayer is one of the most direct paths back to accessing that sacred wisdom, bypassing the gatekeepers of doctrine or denomination. We need to uncomplicate our path back to a relationship with Love or God. That repair starts with an honest, clear, and humble pouring out of our whole heart.

What to Carry Forward

• Prayer is part of a conversation that most of us never learned we were allowed to have.

• You can pray to God, to Love, to Creation, to whatever you hold as larger than your own fear.

• A regular practice of prayer prepares you for the joys and trials of the human experience.

Reflection Question

Who or what do you speak to when facing fear or uncertainty?

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• Laughter regulates the body and resets the mind.

• Humor interrupts overthinking, catastrophizing, and tunnel vision.

Micro-Prompt
If you’re stuck in your head this week, this is your cue. Laughter is one of the fastest ways out.

Three Things to Consider
💭 Idea: I am a self-proclaimed laughaholic. I laugh at human nature, my own mistakes, my wife’s shenanigans, our kids’ personalities, and just about any joke, including my own. I laugh too loudly at movies—an inherited familial trait I proudly embrace. I love and laugh at bad puns. I never realized it was so healthy. Embrace your inner laughaholic.
📖 Read: Something that once made you laugh uncontrollably. A book, an old text thread, a ridiculous email chain. Yes, even if it’s ridiculous. Calvin and Hobbes would always do this for me.
🎧 Watch: Five minutes of something absurd. No multitasking or background activity. Full commitment—grab the popcorn, turn off your phone, and luxuriate in it.

Closing Thought
Health includes joy, play, and laughter—take the dose!

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Hook
We track biomarkers and habits for predictors of longevity, and yet, no one tracks how often we laugh.

Context
I can tell you my resting heart rate. I cannot tell you how many times I laughed last week. But most people can see the nature of my heart by the kindness of my face, my words, and my smile. Laughter paves the way for the gentleness of my heart to be shared and shown freely.

The research literature shows something quite startling:

1. People who laugh less than once a month have nearly double the mortality risk of those who laugh weekly.

2. Older adults who laugh almost every day have lower rates of functional disability.

3. Watching something genuinely funny improves vascular function.

4. Social laughter improves pain tolerance.

This is not about mood; it’s about longevity. It’s a direct correlation between the dispositions our hearts and our own cardiac morbidity and mortality.

Insight

When we laugh:

· Internally:

o Blood vessels dilate

o Stress hormones drop

o Endorphins rise

o Muscles relax

o Parasympathetic nervous system activation shifts us out of threat mode and into relaxation and flexibility

· Externally:

o Nothing changes.

o Circumstances are undisturbed

o Responsibilities stay the same

o Bills remain

o Diagnoses stand

o Conflicts persist

But the dispositions of our heart become more willing, flexible, and adaptable. Laughter is not about escape; it’s physiological nurturance. Adaptable systems overcome and endure.

Application
If laughter were a health metric, how consistent would you be?

Reflection Question
What would change if you treated laughter like medicine instead of an afterthought?

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• Laughter is spontaneous, but always accessible.

• You do not have to wait for permission to be amused.

• Shared and solo laughter both strengthen resiliency.

Theme

We often treat laughter like an accident. But it can and should be cultivated intentionally.

Mini Teaching

My wife, Tami, talks to herself constantly. Then she smiles. Then she laughs. Then I laugh. She’s completely entertained by herself, and me with her. There is no dialogue, no audience, and no interaction—it is simply the playfulness of the mind and relating to herself positively, purely, and playfully. She is her own best friend, and it’s one of the most endearing things about her. I relish the moments when I spot her lips moving when she thinks no one is looking. “Who you talking to?” I’ll ask. “Myself!” she sweetly replies.

My laughter is as containable as water through a sieve. I laugh at everything, including things that don’t always land for other people. It doesn’t matter. The goal isn’t performance, it’s self-orientation. Laughter signals something to my mind, my heart, my body and to the room: we are safe enough to play. We are unapologetic and unabashed by our humor.

We don’t have to give up our laughter just because we need to grind through something with our full attention. Two things are often true, and the presence of one doesn’t extinguish the other.

Practice

Today, create laughter on purpose. Try one or more of these:

• Text the person who makes you laugh hardest and tell them you want to get silly.

• Rewatch a scene that has made you laugh before—not something new, something historically golden.

• Make a joke in a moment that feels slightly too serious and notice what shifts.

• Laugh out loud at something mildly funny instead of suppressing it.

• Tell a self-deprecating story that is actually safe and playful, not shame based.

• Spend two minutes narrating your own life like a nature documentary.

Give the critical, judging parts of your mind the day off. Invite in the parts of your personality that yearn to play and be seen.

Integration

If nothing else changes this week, let your laughter be more frequent than your restraint.

Reflection Question

The next time you feel tension or seriousness arrive, identify the beliefs that keep you from laughing or reaching out for play. Is there an old story that is keeping you from joy?

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I want to introduce you to someone special, who has joined the Soul Surgeon team and whose work I believe is going to make a real difference for the people we serve.

Deb Zalon is a certified performance coach with a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy, and she is now our Preparation and Integration Specialist. What makes Deb particularly well-suited for this role is a combination that is genuinely rare: she has the relational depth to sit with difficult emotional material and the structured, accountability-driven approach to help people move from insight to durable change. She is especially skilled at identifying the recurring patterns that persist even after breakthrough moments, which is exactly where most healing stalls. She is also a mother of five, and she brings a groundedness to this work that no credential can fully capture.

You can learn more about Deb on the team page at soulsurgeon.com/team.

Why Preparation and Integration Are Not Optional

In my model of care, a psychedelic journey is not a standalone event. It is the middle of a process. What surrounds it determines much of what becomes possible inside it, and nearly everything that becomes lasting after it.

Preparation is not paperwork or a checklist. It is the deliberate work of creating the inner conditions for a meaningful experience. This means clarifying intention, surveying the emotional and relational terrain, building nervous system readiness, and establishing the foundation of safety, transparency, and trust that makes it possible to go inward without bracing against the unknown. The goal is to make the unfamiliar as familiar as it can be, so that when the medicine opens the door, you can step through it rather than stand at the threshold.

A 2025 study in Psychedelic Medicine from Johns Hopkins and NYU examined psilocybin’s effects in professionally trained clergy from four major world religions. These were psychedelic-naïve individuals who had spent decades in spiritual formation, a sustained, intentional practice of self-examination, meaning-making, and deepening their relationship to purpose and connection. After their sessions, the vast majority reported experiences among the most spiritually significant of their lives, with positive changes persisting through 16 months of follow-up. We are not suggesting that result is guaranteed for anyone. What the study implies, and what I believe, is that a prepared mind, one that has already built a flexible and practiced architecture for meaning-making, tends to receive a psychedelic experience more fully and translate it more durably. The medicine met people who had spent years cultivating the very conditions preparation sessions are designed to build. That is not incidental.

Integration is where the journey becomes your life. Research from Gül Dölen’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins, published in Nature in 2023, demonstrated that psychedelics appear to reopen critical learning periods in the brain, windows of heightened neuroplasticity that were previously thought to close in early development. During and after a psychedelic experience, older conditioned patterns of thought and response become more malleable. This window does not stay open indefinitely. Integration is the practice of working skillfully within it, translating what was felt and seen in a non-ordinary state into new choices, new responses, and new ways of moving through your actual life. What I call Post-Psychedelic Embodiment, the deeply felt incorporation of new understanding into who you actually are day to day, requires the right support during this period to take root. Without it, even the most profound journey tends to remain a meaningful memory rather than a lived transformation.

Working with Deb

Deb offers three structured packages designed to support you through the full arc of a psychedelic journey, as well as individual sessions if you need focused support at a specific point in the process.

Foundation Integration — $575 1 preparation session + 2 integration sessions

A focused container for one psychedelic journey. The preparation session orients you to the work ahead: clarifying intention, identifying the emotional and relational material most active in your life, and building steadiness before the experience begins. The two integration sessions help you make sense of what emerged, place it in the context of your daily life, and begin translating insight into action.

Deepening Integration — $950 2 preparation sessions + 3 integration sessions

For those who want more space to work with the emotional, relational, and behavioral patterns that a journey can surface. The additional preparation time allows for more thorough priming and mapping before the experience, creating a stronger foundation to return to afterward. The three integration sessions give the experience room to keep revealing itself across layers, moving between inner understanding and real-world application while the brain’s receptivity is still active.

Full Arc Integration — $1,300 2 preparation sessions + 5 integration sessions

Designed for people who want enough continuity to work with the full impact of a journey, not just the acute experience but the patterns it disturbs, the new responses it makes available, and the gradual process of making those responses feel natural and stable. Five integration sessions provide the repetition and sustained support that durable change actually requires.

Individual Sessions — $200 / 50 minutes If you are not ready for a full package, or need support at a specific moment, preparation and integration sessions are available individually.

To schedule with Deb or ask questions, reach out at heal@soulsurgeon.com.

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• Laughter shifts physiology without denying reality.

• Small daily doses improve resilience, adaptability, and decision-making.

• Laughter is best shared with good company.

Core Statement
If laughter were a supplement, we should all be tracking our daily intake.

Why It Matters
We live in an era where everything is trackable, measurable, and observable: sleep, calories, macros, biomarkers, screen time, and so much more. But rarely—if ever—do we ask: how often did I laugh this week?

Large cohort studies suggest that people who laugh weekly live longer than those who laugh rarely. Daily laughter correlates with lower disability risk. Ten to fifteen minutes of genuine laughter increases heart rate and blood flow in ways comparable to light exercise. In other words, laughter is good medicine. Shared amongst our peers, its relational medicine, too.

But here’s the part we forget; laughter does not require denial. It does not pretend life is easy. We don’t lose permission to laugh when life is sad, serious, or stifling. Instead, it simply softens the grip of seriousness long enough for perspective—and higher cognitive functioning—to return. It is a nervous system reset disguised as silliness and play.

So for the sake of your heart, nervous system, relationships, and overall wellbeing, consider this your prescription: microdose laughter every 15 minutes or as needed for stress, overwhelm, and life’s absurdity.

Give yourself permission to watch something ridiculous. Call the friend who makes you laugh uncontrollably. Let yourself laugh too loudly in public without apologizing or censoring yourself. Notice how your body feels afterward. Notice the sides of your mouth lifting upward like branches of a tree reaching for the light.

The best news, no script, copay, or pharmacy is required for this heart medicine.

Reflection Prompt
What would change if you treated laughter like a daily practice instead of an occasional moment?

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• Laughter disrupts the tension of life’s circumstances without distorting reality.

• Play broadens our perspective and interrupts perfectionism.

• Joy and seriousness are allowed to coexist.

“If necessity is the mother of invention, play is the father.”

- Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative.

“You can learn more about a person in 1 hour of play, then 1 year of conversation”

- anonymous, falsely attributed to Plato.

Observation

I laugh a lot. In fact, it’s a defining characteristic. I am known amongst friends as the person who laughs at all things—bad puns, good jokes, joyful moments, even the terrible ones. I don’t laugh to trivialize the severity of a moment, but to bring levity into the seriousness of life.

When I met my wife, she was smiling and laughing. I have often said, “it’s as if all of the Earth’s joy is surging through her body.” She has a disarming, slightly crooked smile, welcoming eyes, a face that can light up a room, and together, we laugh constantly. Our home is loud, playful, occasionally inappropriate, and rarely solemn for long. We find humor in trivial things—parenting missteps, our own intensity, and even our deepest hurts. Our children often roll their eyes, but they always join in on the fun. It would be easy to mistake that disposition for avoidance or immaturity, but it’s not.

Some of my most meaningful clinical moments were created through laughter. I remember sitting with a dear friend and client in the middle of her profound existential distress. We had moved through grief, fear, questions about purpose and mortality. At one point she paused, and deadpan said, “life doesn’t have to be so serious.” The laughter followed. That deep, freeing laugh that reminds your Spirit that it’s free. We spent the next several hours laughing about the absurdity of being human.

Nothing about her circumstances changed. But everything inside her shifted. She felt lighter, unburdened, and liberated. Her shoulders relaxed, breathing slowed, and vision expanded. In that moment, by inviting in laughter, her life, her perspective, and her vision changed.

That moment—and specifically—that sentence has stayed with me ever since.

Revelation

There is a difference between denial and disruption. Denial distorts reality; laughter interrupts our identification with it.

When we laugh, the body responds—blood vessels dilate, muscles relax, endorphins release, cortisol lowers, social bonds strengthen. Large longitudinal studies have shown that people who laugh regularly have lower rates of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality than those who rarely laugh.

The research validates what I think we all naturally know. Laughter is good medicine. It frees us from the shackles of our perspective, loosens the grip of perfectionism, and unlocks the prison of reputation management. It allows us to see ourselves not as projects to perfect, but as humans participating in something messy and alive.

I often laugh at serious moments, not to trivialize them, but to stay grounded within them. Laughter reminds me that I am not the center of the universe, nor the sole architect of outcomes. It’s the permission that leads us out of catastrophizing, disrupting our vicious cycles before they distort our reality and skew the perspective of our circumstances.

The ancient wisdom of the Old Testament acknowledges this eternal truth, “A cheerful heart is good medicine” (Proverbs 17:22). The New Testament reminds us to “count it all joy” when facing any trial (James 1:2)—not because suffering is amusing, but because endurance forms something deeper within us…resilience.

Meaning

Laughter is play expressed and shared. It’s infectious in the air, spreading faster and further than the cleverest microbe. There is nothing childish about it. In developmental psychology and evolutionary biology alike, play strengthens flexibility, adaptability, and survivability. It is rigidity that causes stress, strain, and fracturing.

Seriousness can quietly harden into self-importance. We begin to believe every misstep is catastrophic, every awkward moment defining, every failure permanent. But laughter breaks that spell.

It allows us to laugh at ourselves instead of worshiping our image. It invites silliness, which keeps us grounded and humble. It creates relational warmth, signaling “everything about this moment is okay.”

As a family culture, we lean into this. We tease kindly, we exaggerate our flaws, and we celebrate ridiculousness. It does not diminish maturity or responsibility but rather humanizes it.

Joy and suffering do not have to be opposites or antidotes. They can sit at the same table because laughter does not betray truth, it helps us bear it.

What to Carry Forward

• You are allowed to laugh in serious times.

• Levity is a practice, a right, and a responsibility.

• Play keeps the heart young, nimble, and adaptable.

Reflection Question

Where can laughter soften tension without losing sight of what matters?

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Key Takeaways

• Every life unfolds in seasons.

• Honoring a season doesn’t mean clinging to it.

Micro-Prompt
We move through eras whether we name them or not. Pausing honors when a season is ending and another is beginning.

Three to Consider
💭 Idea: You can honor a season without trying to stay in it. The friendships, identities, roles, and versions of you that once fit were not mistakes. They were chapters.
📖 Read: Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
🎧 Listen: Taylor Swift, “Never Grow Up.” *Play a song that brings you back to a moment in your life — a first kiss, a first love, the summer before leaving home. Let it surface the nostalgia. Play it and honor it.

Closing Thought
Bless the season that shaped you. Step gently into the next.

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Many of you have been patiently waiting for an update that I promised was coming shortly after the start of the year. But, life had other plans.

In the time since then, we have been fortunate to bring our work to you personally and privately, in your homes, sacred spaces, and temporary habitations. We’ve had the privilege of meeting with you in LA, other cities and states, and in other countries.

And now we are approaching the final few weeks before we welcome our first clients back into the new Sanctuary. This cottage/bungalow is a smaller space, but beautifully designed by my wife, and showcases some familiar comforts. Many of you may recognize the white cloud couch. We are now located in Venice, just a few short steps behind Blue Bottle Café on Abbot Kinney.

If you are interested in our work, we are now finally ready to host clients in our space starting April 13th. My schedule is particularly full over the coming weeks, but we do have availability if you’re interested now or in the future.

Because of the downsize, we are likely going to limit capacity to individuals, couples, and possibly smaller groups. We are just waiting for the final pieces of furniture to look at our capacity. If there are requests for private offerings and groups, we are still able to bring our work and medicine to other spaces, rentals, and private retreats.

If you’re curious, please reach out. Send us an email at heal@soulsurgeon.com, visit our website, or send us a text at (424) 415-9112 using your phone, Signal, or WhatsApp. We’d love to show you the space when we have time. We’d also relish the privilege to participate in or continue to be an ally on your healing path.

With love and light,

John Moos, MD aka Soul Surgeon

Key Takeaways
• Not every relationship is meant to last forever.
• Grief does not mean the connection was a mistake.
• Liberation comes from honoring what was without trying to resurrect it.

Hook
Holding our past lightly gives us space to grow through transitions while still honoring the grief we carry.

Context
I’ve lost entire groups of friends more than once. Childhood friends when I chased something that looked cooler. High school friends when I left for college and told myself I was shedding baggage. Friends through divorce. Friends through sobriety. Each time, I minimized the impact, saying I was better off, convincing myself I didn’t care. But those friendships shaped me. They held versions of me that were trying, failing, and growing.

Insight
Transitions don’t only apply to roles like parent or spouse. They apply to communities and identities. When a season closes, we’re tempted to rewrite it as unnecessary or immature. That instinct protects the ego, but it blocks real integration and compromises integrity. Liberation is not about pretending we’ve outgrown people or places. It is recognizing that each era carried what we needed at the time. When we hold those seasons with gratitude instead of embarrassment, we stop compartmentalizing ourselves. We become whole.

Application
Think of a relationship that ended. Instead of explaining why it had to end, ask what it gave you.

Reflection Question
What past connection deserves acknowledgment rather than denial?

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Key Takeaways

• Transitions require acknowledgment, not more momentum.

• Honoring what is ending helps integrate who we are becoming.

• Pausing through thresholds prevents emotional abandonment.

Theme

We celebrate beginnings but often rush through endings. Most transitions happen without intention, even when they shape us deeply.

Mini Teaching

My daughter will graduate high school this May. There will be photos, lamentations, and plans for what comes next. It will be baked in excitement and possibility. And yet, what quietly passes away is a season of adolescence. A version of me that was needed in a particular way. A rhythm that won’t return in the same form.

Transitions are not a date, a time, a place, or a purpose. They are relational and internal. The shedding of something old and reshaping or reclaiming of something new. When we rush past what mattered, we don’t lose it – we carry it unspoken. Grief is part of every meaningful transition and a mark of something that mattered. When we expect it, we can meet it consciously rather than denying or being surprised by it.

Intentional transitions honor the crossing. They honor the people, the roles, and the humanity expressed in that season. They allow joy and grief to coexist without forcing either away.

Practice

Notice this…
One transition unfolding in your life right now. Where do you feel both anticipation and loss?

Reflect on this…
What is ending? What is expanding? What does your grief reveal about what mattered in that season?

Try this…
Before stepping fully into what’s next, pause. Speak or write three acknowledgments:

This mattered because…
I am grateful for…
I release this season with…

Keep it simple. Let it be human, not polished or perfect. Allow gratitude and grief to sit side by side.

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Key Takeaways

• Joy and grief are complementary and necessary.

• Growth carries both joy and grief quietly nestled inside life’s transitions.

• Naming grief increases our capacity for joy.

Core Statement
Acknowledging grief does not diminish joy; it gives it new permission to bloom.

Why It Matters
We are conditioned to believe that joy cancels sorrow. That if something is good it should feel uncomplicated. But the moments that matter most rarely arrive so cleanly. When a long-awaited opportunity opens, a relationship deepens, or one season gives way to another, gratitude and ache often rise together. The change may be healthy, even desired, and yet something significant is still coming to an end.

That ache is not a sign that the transition is wrong; it’s hidden grief. A reflection of attachment, history, and care. The echo of something that mattered enough to leave a mark.

When we suppress that ache in the pursuit of joy, we silence our heart’s speaking. We trade emotional range for efficiency. Over time, that contraction manifests as numbness or restlessness.

Grief is not a threat to joy. It is telltale that something mattered. When we allow ourselves to feel both, our capacity expands. Joy becomes fuller, not thinner. The heart expands instead of splintering.

Reflection Prompt
Are there any transitions in your life where unacknowledged grief beckons to give way to new joy?

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Key Takeaways

• Witnessing life’s transitions expands our capacity for empathy and meaning.

• Healthy change still carries grief, even when nothing is wrong.

• Transitions are sacred thresholds between who we were and who we are becoming.

Observation

I found myself unexpectedly emotional watching the season finale of Stranger Things. It wasn’t the monsters or the plot twists, but the unfolding of the final scene. Five children, tested by adversity, honoring their innocence one last time before stepping into something more complex. The camera lingered just long enough to sanctify the moment.

Not long after, I watched Taylor Swift’s The End of an Era docuseries move through her Eras tour, consciously honoring each chapter of her life and artistry. Album by album, she revisited former versions of herself. Eras marked by adversity, creativity, and kinship. Themes that feel deeply human: growing up, new love, heartbreak, reinvention.

These were cultural moments, easy to dismiss as entertainment. Yet something in me stirred.

Then I look at my daughter: senior in high school, college applications submitted, anxiously awaiting the letter determining where she spends the next four years. Conversations lean into the future, abandoning the present. My thoughts shift from “when she grows up” to “when she leaves.” Nothing has happened, and yet, everything has changed.

Revelation

What moved me in those moments was not nostalgia, it was witnessing. When we watch people move from adolescence into adulthood, when we watch an artist move from one era into another, when we watch our children stretch toward independence, we are confronted with the fragile, beautiful truth of becoming.

Transitions are thresholds. They mark the space between who we have been and who we are about to become. They hold the past in one hand and the unknown in the other. In witnessing them, we are also returning to ourselves. These thresholds calls us back to our own lived experience.

Even healthy transitions carry grief. Not because something has gone wrong, but because something has mattered. We grieve not only people, but roles and identities. We grieve seasons and their rituals. We grieve places, like the way a house once sounded. We grieve the version of ourselves who was needed in that moment.

Meaning

There is real power in witnessing humanity without trying to control it.

We live in a culture that rushes through thresholds. We are encouraged to optimize and reinvent without looking back. Yet something in us longs to pause at the doorway.

Witnessing is what makes transitions sacred. It transforms change from disruption into meaning. When we allow ourselves to feel joy and ache at the same time, we expand our heart’s capacity. Our empathy deepens. Our understanding of our own story softens with gratitude.

I am reminded of this every time I look at my children. I see the innocence of who they were and the resilience of who they are becoming. I see it when I look in the mirror or at my wife. We were children once, carrying our own stories, hardships, joys, and transitions. We contain multitudes, and hardship can integrate into wisdom. In bearing witness to their growth, we grow. It’s humanity’s beautiful feedback loop ensuring each generation heals and grows with the next.

Our past does not have to imprison us; it can liberate us. When relationships and families hold our stories lightly, with reverence rather than rigidity, we are free to write new chapters without erasing the old ones.

Transitions are not problems to solve. They are invitations to feel.

What to Carry Forward

• Honor the thresholds in your life instead of rushing through them – yours or theirs.

• Allow joy and grief to coexist without interpreting either as a challenge to solve.

Reflection Question

What transition in your life is asking to be witnessed rather than managed?

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Key Takeaways

• Love speaks quietly at times and requires our attention.

• Stillness is how we learn to listen with the heart for what is already speaking.

Micro-Prompt
When we quiet the noise, something larger than the ego becomes audible. Love is the signal, the frequency.

Three Things to Consider
💭 Idea: Love is always being transmitted—internally, externally, and relationally. The problem isn’t absence; it’s interference. Stillness reduces the static so the signal can be heard–or, in many cases, remembered.
📖 Read: Ephesians 3:16-19 — [16] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, [18] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, [19] and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
🎧 Listen: Morning lakeside ambiance

Closing Thought
Stillness helps you attune your antennae to the frequency of love. Tune in, not out.

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Key Takeaways
• Human beings need connection beyond the self.
• Stillness helps us remember what we’re connected to.
• Meaning is sustained through relationship, not effort.

Hook
Most people aren’t really looking for answers, they’re looking for something to believe in and belong to.

Context
We live in a culture that evangelizes self-sufficiency, progress, and control. These priorities can take us far, but they also make contentment exceedingly elusive. For many, it shows up as a vague sense of absence, a pang that something essential has slipped away. I use the term “God-shaped hole” not to indicate a lost belief or rejection of faith, but rather as a hunger for something steadfast, grounding, and infinite.

Insight
Across traditions and throughout history, people have returned to stillness when traditional methods–language and effort–stop working. It is not intended to escape life, but to feel grounded in it. In those moments, something immensely larger becomes present. Some might describe this as God or non-duality. Others might call it love, unity, or the infinite. What matters is not the name, but our experience of being in relationship with something that isn’t limited by our own identity or capacity. That relationship sustains joy when life is generous and steadies us when life delivers suffering.

Application
Reflect back on last week’s The Practice. Take a few minutes today to sit without trying to improve or solve anything. Notice where you feel held when you stop reaching.

Reflection Question
What helps you remember that you’re not carrying life on your own?

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Key Takeaways

• Stillness is an active choice that helps the nervous system settle and restore clarity.

• Insight follows safety; perception widens when the system stops bracing.

• Brief, intentional pauses interrupt compulsive patterns and make room for something deeper.

Theme

Stillness can be mistaken for disengagement or avoidance. In reality, it’s spiritual technology for regulation, peace, and grounding.

Mini Teaching

Nervous systems heal in stillness, through regulation, not constant effort. When things feel uncertain or overwhelming, the impulse and messaging is to speed up, fix, distract, or numb. But clear insight doesn’t emerge under pressure. It blossoms in a system that feels safe enough to stop bracing or performing. Stillness is an active choice that requires prioritization, a sense of value, habit, a place, and a plan. When chosen, it’s the condition that interrupts compulsion and allows clarity to return. Stillness creates the conditions to notice what’s already trying to reach you.

Practice

Notice this…
How often this week you rush, reach for stimulation, or try to solve something immediately.

How you feel when your mind, body, or world is still.

Reflect on this…
What options are you missing by [re]acting too quickly?

Try this…
Once a day, take three minutes of intentional stillness. Set a timer and just observe what arises without judgment. Focus on:

» Externalization: keep your eyes open, breathe, and acknowledge everything your senses tell you about the world, or

» Internalization: close your eyes and check in with your mind, body, and emotions below the surface.

Don’t try to fix, change, or optimize anything. Just sit, breathe, and accept while your system settles.

Integration

The next time a stimulus arises, write down your reaction. Set your clock for three minutes, practice your stillness exercise, and then note your response after settling. Did it change?

CTA

If you want the deeper reflection behind this practice, revisit this week’s Flash.

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