Research Psychology

Why do we love who we love? Why do we stay in unfulfilling relationships, and stray from rewarding ones? Is it ever a good idea to open a relationship? And why do some long-time couples crash and burn while others stay madly in love? Evolutionary biologist, author, and Executive Director of the world-renowned Kinsey Institute, Dr. Justin Garcia examines these questions and more in this conversation on modern mating.   

In this episode Dr. Garcia is joined by Dr. Christopher Walling, chair the Research Psychology program at CIIS, for an illuminating conversation on the science of love and sex. They discuss Dr. Garcia’s book The Intimate Animal, and the lifecycle of a romantic relationship, from the thrill of first attraction to the devotion that can last decades. Dr. Garcia reveals that the need for intimacy, even more than sex drive, is key to our species’ survival and flourishing. But therein lies the challenge. We evolved for social monogamy but not for sexual monogamy, yet these impulses are often at odds. Understanding this tension is the key to aligning our romantic choices with our true desires.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 12th 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Don Hanlon Johnson, founder of the first graduate Somatics program in the U.S., retires after more than four decades at CIIS.

How CIIS honors the Earth through curriculum, retreats, events, and practices that root learning in the living world.

Associate Professor Chris Walling reveals how CIIS' Department of Research Psychology trains scholars to live the wisdom they study — in two doctoral programs at the forefront of somatic and transpersonal psychology.

What if the questions that draw us to learning could also reshape who we become? Across disciplines and life paths, curiosity emerges as sacred work, an opening into connection, healing, and transformation.

Desire on the Couch is a groundbreaking exhibition at CIIS that reexamines a century of debates over sexuality, desire, and identity—bringing rarely seen archival materials and unheard stories into public view.

A $30,000 grant will establish a faculty research fund at CIIS, creating opportunities for innovative studies in Somatic Psychology and Integral and Transpersonal Psychology.

Dr. Thema Bryant is a psychologist and leading mental health expert with more than two decades of experience in clinical psychology and trauma recovery. As a trauma survivor herself, she knows that trauma and everyday challenges can cause us to disconnect and fall into survival mode. In her latest book, Reclaim Yourself, she shares accessible and practical steps toward creating the life you want while processing stress and trauma.

In this episode, Rachel Bryant talks with Dr. Thema Bryant about her life and work and how Dr. Bryant’s approach can help trauma survivors heal their emotions and actively take steps toward growth.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 11th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Talking about death is often deemed morbid or taboo, but to fully embrace life, scientists, psychologists, and spiritual leaders all agree—contemplating death is the key to living a life with meaning. In this episode, Joanna Ebenstein, author and founder of Morbid Anatomy—an organization exploring the spaces between art and medicine, death and culture—is joined in conversation with CIIS faculty and Chicane philosopher Saraliza Anzaldúa exploring how to befriend death.

Sharing insights from her latest book, Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life, Joanna discusses what it means to be mortal and shares how to both come to terms with what death means and live alongside it without fear. In doing so, you can see your own life in a new light and discover what makes life worth living.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 17th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In her latest book, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, activist, counselor, and Buddhist teacher Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde shares ways of creating kinship and community through the metaphor of Indra’s Net—a universal net in which all beings reflect each other like jewels.

In this episode, Ayo is joined by somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez for a heartfelt conversation that is both a call and a primer for community-oriented models of well-being in our age of polarization and turmoil.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 3rd, 2023. We had some technical issues during this event that have resulted in audio quality that is lower than our usual standard, but we felt it was important to share this conversation regardless. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

How do ordinary people with busy lives leverage our actions in support of liberation, justice, and authentic connection? How can activists and social change-makers avoid burning out? How does the body factor into what our social movements might miss? 

Drawing on the somatic arts, trauma-informed psychology, and anti-oppressive movements, scholar/activist Rae Johnson helps us explore and transform the political realities of our everyday lives in a new way: by harnessing the felt experience of our bodies as the sites of our activism. In this episode, vocalist, sacred scholar, and artivist Amber McZeal talks with Rae about their latest book, Embodied Activism, and their perspectives on changing the world, one body at a time.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 23rd, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing Dr. Peter A. Levine changed the way psychologists, doctors, and healers understand and treat the wounds of trauma and abuse.

In this conversation with CIIS professor of Somatic Psychology Rae Johnson, he shares his own experience of severe childhood trauma and how he helped thousands of others before resolving his own trauma. Sharing insights from his recent memoir, An Autobiography of Trauma, Dr. Levine explains how being guided through Somatic Experiencing allowed him to illuminate and untangle his traumatic wounds and shares the history of the Somatic Experiencing method being derived from his studies of wild animals in their natural environments, neurobiology, and more than 50 years of clinical observations.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 16th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Associate Professor Christopher Walling receives the Gina Ogden Curatorial Scholarship for Integrative Approaches to Sex Research and Therapy from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University

Transpersonal Psychology alum Dr. Michele DeMarco's new book offers a transformative new lens for healing from trauma, grief, and loss and building resilience.

NOTE: This episode features guided participatory rest practices that include moments of silence at the beginning and end of the conversation.

Restoring your body, mind, and spirit amid change is an act of courage, empowerment, and hope. Drawing wisdom from yoga philosophy and her many years of teaching experience, yoga teacher and activist Octavia Raheem offers motivation and guidance to restore ourselves through various forms of change in our lives. Her practice comes to life in her latest book, Pause, Rest, Be, where she provides simple restorative yoga poses and offers short teachings and reflections to see us through times of ending and beginning as well as liminal or transitional space.

In this episode, somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez joins Octavia for a conversation on how slowing down, stillness, and deeper connection to our own transitions empowers us to move through personal and collective shifts with more grace as well as what it means to navigate change with presence and courage.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 13th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Don Hanlon Johnson, Ph.D., a long-time professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at CIIS, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. 

Like many Americans, social psychologist Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Dr. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Dr. Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.

Dr. Price began a thorough examination of what they call the “laziness lie”—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough. Their in-depth research revealed that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history, yet most of us still feel we are not doing enough.

In this episode, CIIS Integral and Transpersonal Psychology program director Kendra Diaz-Ford joins Dr. Price in a conversation encouraging us all to let go of guilt, become more attuned to our own limitations and needs, and resist the pressures to meet outdated societal expectations.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 28, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

How can we be more mindful when our world seems broken beyond repair? Tim Desmond—esteemed Buddhist scholar and lecturer on Psychology at Yale Medical School—has fresh, engaging answers to this important question.

Integrative Health Studies expert Megan Lipsett joins Tim for a conversation about his approach to mindfulness practices designed for surviving the sometimes-miserable world we currently live in.

This episode contains explicit language and was recorded during an event on October 17, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. A transcript is available below.

Somatic therapy combines talk therapy and bodywork to treat a wide range of psychological and physiological conditions, ranging from stress and anxiety to depression and PTSD. Nowhere has somatics proven more effective than in the treatment of trauma.

In this episode, author and somatics practitioner Staci Haines is joined in a conversation with therapist and CIIS professor Emily Marinelli. They discuss Staci’s book The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice, and share a restorative justice approach to somatic therapy, integrating mind-body healing with social activism.

This episode was recorded during an event on February 6, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Read about CIIS Professor Glenn Hartelius' research into a method to define and neurally measure waking states of consciousness

In this episode, bioethics professor Osagie K. Obasogie talks with author George Estreich about what he has learned as the father of a young woman with Down syndrome exploring the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 19, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

Join Stanford’s social media expert, Jeff Hancock, and Director of the Trust Project, Sally Lehrman, as they examine the erosion of truth online, how our psychological and social dynamics impact our culture, and what we can do to rebuild our collective grasp on the truth.

This episode was recorded during an event on July 18, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

Author Irshad Manji talks with KQED journalist Kat Snow to discuss her experiences as a refugee from Africa, a Muslim immigrant to the US, and her Moral Courage project.

This episode was recorded during an event on March 5, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Author and Professor of Psychology at CIIS, Dr. Brant Cortright, talks about his work at the cutting edge of neuroscience, clinical psychology, and brain health.

This episode was recorded during an event on October 15, 2015 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this episode, clinical neuropsychologist Mario Martinez is joined by Natalie Metz to discuss his research on aging and longevity.

This episode was recorded during an event on October 26, 2018 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this episode, journalist and poet Minal Hajratwala draws from the realms of creativity and politicized somatics to talk about migration and the body. This event was part of the Haresh and Joan Shah Lecture and Performance Series.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 21, 2018.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Berkeley Professor of Psychology and author Charlan Nemeth is joined by CIIS Provost Liz Beaven to discuss the usefulness of dissent and how we can make better decisions by challenging the status quo.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 2, 2018.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Five CIIS Authors Contribute to the New Issue of the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The American Psychological Association Honors CIIS' Chair of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology

A newly-formed online degree with three focus areas that Hartelius proposed and built