Dr. Leanne Whitney

08/12/2026

We spend much of our lives inside thought. So much so that we rarely stop to ask whether thinking and consciousness are actually the same thing. 😬

In this new conversation with cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Niebauer, we explore his latest book, The Abstract Mind, and the possibility that much of our suffering comes from mistaking our abstractions for reality.

Along the way we discuss William James, Alfred North Whitehead, affective neuroscience, artificial intelligence, contemplative traditions, and why direct experience may offer a way back to ourselves.

If these questions speak to you, I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation.

The full interview is linked below. ✌🏼❤️

08/11/2026

Enjoyed this article. It speaks directly to themes that came up in my conversations with neuroscientist Karl Friston on New Thinking Allowed (linked below). It explores the fascinating overlap between Freud's ideas of projection and transference and the contemporary neuroscience of predictive processing—the notion that the brain is continually predicting rather than simply perceiving reality. It's another reminder of why we so often repeat familiar patterns, and how safety and relationship can create the conditions for something genuinely new to emerge.

A new study finds surprising parallels between Freud’s theories of the mind and modern neuroscience, suggesting the brain may work as a prediction machine.

07/17/2026

Why does it matter how we understand consciousness? 🌌

Because our whole scientific worldview is shaped by that understanding.

The dominant Euro-American scientific worldview has quietly carried a metaphysical commitment all along. Physicalism is not a scientific finding — it is a metaphysics disguised as one!

Recognizing this opens the door to a richer inquiry: one in which consciousness, information, and meaning are not derivative phenomena but central to what reality actually is.

In my latest New Thinking Allowed conversation, complexity scientist Dr. James B. Glattfelder and I explore this recognition and the inquiry that follows.

If you’ve been wondering how to make sense of the cultural moment we are in — or how to live with greater meaning in a world that often seems to have lost it — this conversation may give language to something you have long been sensing.

Full conversation linked below.✌🏼💙

07/09/2026

A dream never speaks in symbols to hide something from us. It speaks in symbols because that’s the only language wide enough to carry it.

Jung understood the dream as a self-portrait of the psyche — spontaneous, honest, and entirely uninterested in flattering the ego. It doesn’t obey our conscious will. It shows us, in the most efficient and evocative way, what we don’t yet dare to realize by daylight.

Which means the image isn’t a code to be cracked into a tidy “meaning.” It’s the psyche making something visible before we can say it out loud — so that, slowly, we can turn and meet it.

Swipe through for a few of Jung’s own words on the dreaming mind 🌙

If you are already a dream tender and want some additional references or if you are ready to start listening to yours, download my free guide to dream interpretation — linked below. ✌🏼🤎

06/10/2026

In my latest New Thinking Allowed conversation, Jungian analyst Murray Stein and I explore the shadow, the problem of evil, and the often-overlooked relationship between shame, resentment, projection, and violence.

One of the themes Murray speaks to, which I find particularly compelling, is that evil rarely begins as evil. More often, it emerges through unexamined wounds, experiences of humiliation, collective resentment, and the tendency to project what we cannot bear to see in ourselves onto others.

As a depth psychologist, I have long been interested in the ways unconscious material shapes both individual lives and collective movements. This conversation felt especially relevant in a cultural moment marked by polarization, scapegoating, certainty, and fear.

Murray reminds us that the task is not simply to identify evil “out there,” but to develop the capacity for self-reflection, discernment, and an ongoing relationship with our own shadow.

If you’ve been trying to make sense of the world we find ourselves in, or of the darker currents that move through human experience, I hope this conversation offers something meaningful.

Wherever you are reading this from, I hope you are well.

The full conversation is linked below. ✌🏼❤️

05/28/2026

Why are we so sure we’re right? 🧠

The left brain doesn’t just tell us stories. It convinces us they’re not stories at all.

In my latest conversation, cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Niebauer and I explore the certainty trap, the suffering it creates, and what it might mean to live from the right brain’s gift of “maybe.”

If this topic speaks to you, or if you’ve found yourself in more heated arguments than you care to be in, this episode is for you. Linked in my bio. ✌🏼💛

05/18/2026

For more than two decades, my work has lived at the meeting place of depth psychology and yoga — two traditions that, in their different idioms, keep returning to the same quiet truth: that psyche and body are not separate, and that what binds us is also what, rightly met, can free us.

My new article, "The Knot and the Complex: Psyche, Soma, and Transformation in Jung and Yoga," is out now in the Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies — Vol. 21, No. 1 (2026), a special issue on Jung and Somatics.

In Jungian psychology, the knot appears as a complex: an emotionally charged bundle of memory, image, and affect that grips psyche and body alike. In yoga, the knot is the granthi: a subtle obstruction in the flow of prāṇa that binds awareness to conditioned patterns. Different lineages, strikingly resonant maps. Both name the places where life energy is bound, where consciousness loops back on itself, and where wholeness waits to be reclaimed.

The essay explores how these traditions illuminate one another and how transformation emerges not through force, but through the gradual softening of what has been held.

I'm grateful to be published in this issue alongside colleagues at the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies, whose work deepens the conversation between psyche, body, and soul. If these themes resonate with your own work or inquiry, I hope the journal serves as a meaningful contribution to the dialogue.

The journal is open access.

This volume is the first of its kind, an issue devoted to the intersection of Jungian approaches to the psyche and somatics. The variety of contributions reflect both the breadth and the depth of a somatic Jungian sensibility, which has been an important thread in the development of depth psychology...

02/21/2026

One of the deepest drivers behind my work as a depth psychologist has always been a love for the places where disciplines meet and begin to speak to one another. Continuing the Jungian legacy of bridging worlds feels deeply alive for me: where neuroscience touches philosophy, where yoga intersects with psychology, and where ancient wisdom and contemporary science begin to share a common language.

Widely ranging scientific disciplines need to dialogue with each other as much as widely ranging political/cultural points of view do 🤓

Only together can we reshape our collective wellbeing.

In this recent conversation, Karl Friston, widely regarded as the most influential neuroscientists of our time, and I explore epistemic trust — how our nervous systems learn who to believe, how belonging influences perception, and how discernment can be cultivated without closing the heart. These questions feel especially relevant right now, and I genuinely loved every moment of our dialogue.

If this topic speaks to you and you decide to watch or listen, I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I did creating it. ✌🏼❤️

A big shout out and deep gratitude to the entire team. We all love this work and it’s an honor to be part of a space that supports thoughtful dialogue, curiosity, and meaningful exploration. 🙏🏼✨

12/27/2025

What if the most powerful medicine is truth and unconditional love?

In this grounded, trauma‑informed conversation with Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro, we explore safety, meaning, and integration over peak experience—plus the COST stance: Curiosity, Openness, Surrender, Trust.

If this topic speaks to you, the full conversation is linked below.

https://youtu.be/ptT4twiFY3E?si=_VQKP9f_aYkjXeVs

And if you resonate deeply with Mike's work, he has an upcoming course on The Shift Network which I have linked in the comments.

psychology

Dr. Michael Ryoshin Sapiro, PsyD, is an ordained Zen Buddhist monk, clinical psychologist, psychedelic psychotherapist, and author of Truth Medicine: Healing...

12/21/2025

I came late to Hawkins. On a close creative friend’s high recommendation, I binged seasons 1–4 to get ready for the Season 5 drop. As someone who has long lived at the crossroads of and the arts, Stranger Things hit a home run touching on some of the deepest themes I’ve spent my life exploring in such a fun way. 🤓

What I especially love about Eleven is how she gives us a living symbol of the Wounded Healer: trauma metabolized into courage, intuition, and service. Her story reminds us that our power emerges from what we’ve walked through and that we rarely heal in isolation but in community. 🎯

As someone who has studied archetypes for decades, it’s engaging to see such a compelling expression of the Wounded Healer brought to life not only in Eleven, but in Hopper and Joyce too.

And taken as a whole, Stranger Things deploys the wounded healer archetype in a modern, ensemble way: characters turn their trauma into relational care—protecting, grounding, and sometimes literally reviving each other. It’s a pattern so many of us eventually walk, and likely one reason the show is such a global sensation.

If you recognize your own journey (or the journey of someone you love or admire) in El—meeting shadow, shedding conditioning, remembering the Self—this carousel is for you. ✌🏼❤️⚡️