Our guest today is Janine Sagert – intrepid consciousness explorer, film producer, a corporate consultant for some of the largest and most influential companies in America, and a life-long social justice and military veterans advocate.
Our conversation today covers a wide spectrum of cutting edge, paradigm-shifting issues. We discuss her long history living and working with military veterans, the use of psychedelics to successfully treat mental illness and PTSD, the future of mental health in America, her early adoption of meditative practices and yogic techniques in the corporate consulting she pioneered in the mid-1970s, to her favorite ashram in India where she retreats every year.
Her distinctive life has uniquely equipped her to tell the story of combat veterans suffering from suicidal PTSD and their transformative healing journeys with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and medical marijuana. This is the story which is told in the highly acclaimed documentary film, From Shock to Awe which she co-produced with the award-winning cinematographer, Luc Cote, and Kevin Krause. Her remarkable life and cutting-edge achievements embody an uncommon blend of academic and professional education, research, training, and personal on the ground experience with deep spirituality — as well as a huge heart and indomitable spirit.
Commenting on what prompted her to take on a project of this magnitude she said, "It broke my heart to learn that so many of our veterans are experiencing PTSD and that most of them are not getting relief from their suffering. Twenty-two veteran suicides a day! This is truly a national disgrace. I had to do something to help, especially knowing that in the course of my life I had accumulated the skills, experience, and knowledge to do so."
Janine is a modern-day polymath and a polyglot who speaks five languages, (Spanish, Marathi, Hindi, German, and English) and world traveler, her own backstory provides many points of connection and empathy with military veterans. Janine is a self-described “army brat” who grew up on military bases around the world. She's a psychologist whose extensive academic career focused on clinical psychology and anthropology and how various elements of culture influence mental health. Her profoundly transformative experiences with psychedelics, lead her to a lifelong dedication to exploring and expanding her own consciousness through spiritual practices such as self-inquiry and meditation. Going where precious few Western women have gone, she traveled more times than she can remember to India and remote areas in the Himalayas to live and study with a variety of yogis and mystics, further deepening her direct experience of higher states of consciousness.
Academically, Dr. Sagert earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in “Culture and Mental Health” with a specialty in Altered States of Consciousness and Psychological Resilience. She also spent two years as part of a Harvard University School of Public Health research team investigating stress factors around the world.
Professionally, she founded Time Out, Inc. in 1976 and subsequently provided pioneering consulting and coaching services to a wide spectrum of organizations in the areas of stress management, leadership, and optimal performance. She conducted more than 1,000 seminars and coached more than 500 executives in companies throughout the U. S., Europe, and Asia.
This is a remarkably candid conversation with an incredibly down-to-earth and compassionate person who has a life-long career of pioneering consciousness work that has changed the way we look at ourselves and how we live and work with each other in the world. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.
To directly contact our hosts, visit their respective websites:
https://www.meditatenow.net/ - S
