Active imagination: Leslie Ellis & Serge Prengel

Active imagination: Leslie Ellis & Serge Prengel

Author: Serge Prengel June 2, 2025 Duration: 37:02
I invited my friend and colleague Leslie Ellis to have a conversation about Active Imagination in therapy and in life.

Serge Prengel hosts Proactive Mindfulness, a space where the concept of personal growth is examined not as a distant goal but as something woven into the fabric of daily life. This podcast moves beyond passive theory, focusing instead on change as an active and mindful practice. Each episode features dialogues with experienced therapists, coaches, and mindfulness practitioners, turning abstract ideas into tangible, relatable conversations. You’ll hear real-world examples of how awareness can be applied to moments of stress, decision-making, and personal challenge, making the principles discussed immediately relevant. The discussions are thoughtful and often meandering, allowing for depth and nuance rather than quick fixes. It’s for anyone who finds that standard self-improvement advice feels disconnected from the messy reality of being human. Through these talks, the podcast builds a practical philosophy-one where mindfulness is a dynamic tool for navigating life’s complexities, not an escape from them. Tune in for a perspective that is both grounding and invigorating, reminding us that growth happens in the process of engaging with our present experience, exactly as it is.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

Proactive Mindfulness
Podcast Episodes
Aziz & Maoz: An Israeli and a Palestinian Refuse to Be Enemies [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:56
After the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took their families, Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah refused to meet loss with revenge. Instead, they chose to engage — with grief, with each other, and with a shared vision for peace.…
Stop Forcing Calm: Experiential Meditation as a Living Process [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:10
Meditation isn’t about forcing calm or suppressing tension—it is a living process. In this episode, Alexandra Pfohlmann and Serge Prengel break down how we move from automatic reactivity and physical tightness into embod…
Healing Systemic Shame & Hidden Trauma: Merete Holm Brantbjerg [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:21
Merete Holm Brantbjerg explores how systemic shame and societal silence turn trauma into an isolating experience. Sharing her own story of female-to-female sexual perpetration, she illustrates how unacknowledged events c…
Healing Trauma & Fragmented Selves | Janina Fisher [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:47
Trauma expert Dr. Janina Fisher discusses her workbook, Embracing Our Fragmented Selves. Moving beyond historical facts, she explores how trauma manifests as implicit feeling memories and bodily dread. Instead of automat…
Scary Does Not Mean Powerful: Mindfulness & Political Outrage [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 13:50
Looking closely at a single photograph interrupted an automatic reaction to political news, revealing the layers of human vulnerability, dukkha, and historical conditioning beneath the surface. Beyond autopilot, mindfuln…
Gentle Presence: Moving from Reaction to Connection (John Amodeo) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:16
In this conversation, psychotherapist John Amodeo explores gentle presence as an embodied mindfulness practice. Rather than trying to eliminate anxiety or defensiveness, gentle presence involves dropping down into our se…