Ep 352: Habits of a Whole Heart with Arnie Herz and guest Julie Mayer P1 on hmTv

Ep. 352: Habits of a Whole Heart with Arnie Herz & Julie Mayer (Part 1)

In this deeply insightful episode of Habits of a Whole Heart on hmTv, host Arnie Herz welcomes longtime friend and healer Julie Mayer for a rich conversation about yoga, energy work, hypnosis, and the universal journey toward inner wholeness.

Julie shares her remarkable path—from economics and law to becoming a yoga and meditation teacher, energy healer, and certified hypnotherapist. She explains how grounding, breath, and awareness help us shift from fragmentation into coherence, and how healing reconnects us to our true essence.

Together, Arnie and Julie explore:

• What energy healing really is—and isn’t
• How grounding practices create calm in a chaotic world
• Why inner spaciousness is the doorway to feeling the vastness of the soul
• The difference between being at the effect of life and becoming the cause
• Why so many people today are experiencing anxiety, upheaval, and rapid growth
• The rise of collective consciousness—and why chaos often comes with it

Arnie shares his own daily grounding practice through tefillin meditation, and Julie explains how hypnosis can quiet the critical mind and open a pathway to inner peace.

This episode sets the stage for Part 2, where Julie will guide Arnie—and listeners—through a real hypnosis experience.

A beautiful, thoughtful conversation for anyone seeking calm, clarity, and a deeper connection with themselves.

Transcript

Episode 353

Host: Arnie Herz
Guest: Julie Mayer (Part 1)
hmTv / Humanity Matters Series

Arnie: Welcome. My name is Arnie Herz, and welcome to Habits of a Whole Heart. I’m here today with a longtime friend from our University of Michigan days, Julie Mayer, and Julie, I am thrilled that you’re here with us today.

This show is part of the Humanity Matters series on HMTV.

Julie’s path is a fascinating one. She went from studying economics at Michigan… to law school… to parenting… and then made a profound shift into the world of healing. She became a certified yoga and meditation teacher, then went on to learn neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis. She now carries a remarkable toolbox of modalities—and it’s been incredible watching her evolution from economics to law to deep human healing.

Julie, we’re grateful you’re here. Please tell us a little bit about your journey and how you arrived where you are today.

Julie: Well first of all, Arnie, thank you so much for having me. It’s really such a joy to be with you—and thank you for that very kind introduction.

My path really started with yoga. I came to it as a way to ground my energy because I always felt like I was living “up here”—in the realm of ideas, thoughts, and constant seeking. Yoga brought me back into my body. It helped me be present. It quieted my mind.

From there, the mindfulness of yoga, the breath, meditation—it opened a huge amount of curiosity in me. I became fascinated by energy. I started reading books, learning from healers, and eventually went through a full training in energy healing. I still practice that—both hands-on work and distance healing.

And I was always looking for more ways to help people heal and transform, so I found hypnosis. And now I am fascinated by hypnosis because I find it so incredibly effective in helping people move forward and make the changes they truly want to make in their lives.

Arnie: That’s great, Julie. Thank you so much.

For our listeners, we’re doing two episodes together. In the second episode, Julie is actually going to take me through a hypnosis therapy process. This will be the first time in my life that I’ve ever experienced hypnosis, so it should be really cool.

I shared this with a number of people who asked about upcoming guests, and when I mentioned hypnosis, the reaction was immediate—“Oh, I need that. I need that in my life.”

Before we dive deeper, I have to say—since we’re both University of Michigan alums—begrudging congratulations to Ohio State on their recent victory. As we said, we have to let them win every now and then just to keep the rivalry going. Here we are a few days later, still recovering from that one.

Julie: I agree. I agree.

Arnie: So let’s go back to energy healing for a moment. We live in such a concrete, tangible world that when someone talks about “energy,” people aren’t always sure what that means. Can you talk a little about energy—what it is, what healing means, and how you understand it?

Julie: Sure. Maybe I’ll start with what healing means to me.

I see healing as a movement toward wholeness. You talk about wholeness a lot on this podcast, and I think it’s exactly that: moving from fragmentation—where we feel separate from ourselves or from others—back into a sense of inner unity.

We often fragment parts of ourselves away. Healing brings them back home.

Energetically, I see it as a shift from a disorganized or blocked energy system into a more coherent one—where energy flows naturally and easily through the body.

And collectively, on a humanity level, I think we’re in a moment of huge transformation. Some people call it “ascension.” Some call it a rise in consciousness. But I think we’re beginning to understand that we are not separate beings—we’re part of one ecosystem. Our internal states affect everyone around us. What happens inside one person ripples outward.

As for energy itself: I believe we’re multi-dimensional beings. We have the physical parts of us that we can see… and then we have the parts we feel. Like when you walk into a room and you instantly sense, “This feels warm and safe,” or “I don’t feel comfortable here.” That’s energy. And when someone is open, they can become aware of these other dimensions of being.

Arnie: I love that. You talked about fragmentation and energy dissipating, and it reminds me of something I experience every morning.

Each day I put on tefillin—Jewish phylacteries that men have been wrapping for thousands of years. For me, it’s a meditation. There are two straps—one around the head, one around the non-dominant arm—and there’s something about it that is incredibly grounding. Very similar, actually, to kundalini practices.

When I put on tefillin, I feel the energy coming in. I sit quietly and notice my thoughts—everything swirling at the start of the day. The to-do lists, the concerns, all the mental noise. Then I take a deep breath… and I feel the shift. The grounding. My breath changes. My energy system calms. Fewer thoughts. A place of inner stillness.

And in that stillness, there’s a feeling of well-being and “everything is okay.” From there, I begin my day.

Is what I’m describing part of the process you’re talking about?

Julie: Yes—absolutely. It’s beautiful, the way you describe bringing the energy in, grounding it through your body, and finding presence and calm. That’s exactly it.

Energy healing is very similar. It’s grounding ourselves into the earth and connecting with the light of source energy—God, the divine, however one names it. We bring that energy down through the body and into the physical. I believe we are individual expressions of source energy—of God energy—here to express it in our unique ways.

We’re bridges between the spiritual and the physical. And what you experience with tefillin is very similar to what I feel when I work with clients.

Arnie: That’s lovely. You know, one theme that has come up in many of these episodes is that healing—across many different traditions—helps people return to themselves. When we’re anxious or frantic, it’s usually because we’re reacting to the outside. Something external triggers something internal.

Different modalities—whether healing, psychology, yoga, meditation, Judaism, spirituality—they all point us inward, back to a place of groundedness and centeredness. They all acknowledge a larger energy, a godly energy, a source energy… and that we are intermediaries for it.

So when you talk about source energy—what does that mean? And how is it relevant to us?

Julie: For me, source energy is the energy of creation—the force that created everything. It’s mysterious, and I don’t have a perfect definition, but I feel it’s something every one of us can tap into.

It’s the greater part of ourselves. It’s where our souls are connected. It’s where our higher selves live.

We’re here in these individual bodies, but our souls and energies are vast. We can’t see that dimension, but we can feel it.

Arnie: For someone dealing with daily stress—work, family, health—how does this idea of a “vast soul” help them? How do they understand what that means?

Julie: It starts by going inward. Always.

There’s a concept I use with clients: we want to be at cause in our lives—not at the effect of the outer world.

When we feel agitation or stress from something outside of us, we can turn inward. We can place a hand over the heart and the belly, take a breath, and notice where the disorganized energy sits in the body.

When we breathe with it, make space for it, the body starts to open. We begin to feel inner spaciousness. Once someone feels that spaciousness, it becomes easier to conceive of the vastness of the soul—because you’ve already tasted the spaciousness within.

Arnie: I love that answer—and I love the distinction between cause and effect. Most of us live as the effect. A driver honks and we react. A coworker snaps and we react. We’re pulled like puppets on strings.

But what you’re describing is that when we get centered, we become the cause. We’re no longer blowing in the wind—we’re directing the sails.

And the second thing you highlighted is that this isn’t abstract spirituality. It’s a tangible physical experience—breath, awareness, presence—that anyone can access.

Julie: Yes—exactly.

Arnie: And this ties to meditation too. As you know, I spent years in India studying yoga and meditation before reconnecting with Judaism. Meditation isn’t about reaching some distant God—it’s about connecting to the essence within ourselves, which is far greater than we imagine. Our human soul, yes—but also our godly soul. Our core essence.

Julie: Absolutely.

Arnie: So tell me about hypnosis. How does it help people access that wholeness?

Julie: Hypnosis is a beautiful way to drop into that state. It’s deep relaxation and focused concentration. The critical, judging ego mind steps aside for a moment, and we can access that same wholeness and centeredness you described with tefillin.

It opens us to our true nature. To the part of us that’s bigger than the thinking mind. That’s why I love hypnotherapy.

Arnie: Well, I’m looking forward to sampling it in the next episode.

What I find so powerful is that all these tools—energy healing, yoga, meditation, therapy, hypnosis—are ways to turn from outer focus to inner focus. To find real peace and wholeness within.

Even high-level athletes use these practices. JJ McCarthy, Michigan’s quarterback during the championship run, meditated under the goalpost before each game. So many elite performers use grounding techniques so they can be in the flow—where they’re the cause, not the effect.

That idea—cause vs. effect—is going to be one of the big takeaways for me from today.

Julie: Yes, I love that. And it’s good for us—and good for everyone we encounter. When we show up centered, present, and regulated, it’s a gift we give others. Our true light can shine. It helps everyone.

Arnie: You mentioned earlier that collectively we’re going through an ascension—a rising of consciousness. At the same time, there’s tremendous chaos and conflict in the world. Do the two coexist? And if so—why?

Julie: I think they absolutely coexist.

As individuals evolve—and as humanity evolves—things buried under the surface come up to be healed. That’s true personally and collectively. Technology is accelerating everything. Our nervous systems are overwhelmed by speed and data.

Healing brings things up. And right now, a lot is coming up—anxiety, old wounds, collective trauma. The chaos is part of the process.

Whether people are consciously on a path of healing or not, the rising energy affects everyone. It just expresses differently in different people.

Arnie: That’s beautiful—and compassionate.

It reminds me of one of the most profound meetings of my life. Through the American Jewish Committee, I met the former head of the neo-Nazi Party in East Germany. When I learned about his early life—his father, his environment, how he was taught—I understood how he fell into that ideology.

Through deep inner work, he realized that wasn’t who he truly was. He completely transformed and now helps de-radicalize others. It showed me how chaos inside a person can spill into their family, their community, their society. And how healing inside a person can ripple outward too.

What you’re doing gives people tools to move from anxiety to calm, from fragmentation to wholeness. And I don’t think there’s work more important than that right now.

Believe it or not, this brings us to the close of our first episode.

In our next episode, Julie will lead us through an actual hypnosis experience—and you’ll be able to follow along at home. We’ll talk about what to expect and explore the process more deeply.

Julie, thank you so much for being here for Part One of your appearance on Habits of a Whole Heart, part of the Humanity Matters podcast series on HMTV—now over 350 episodes since early 2025.

You can find Julie’s website and contact information in the show notes:
 JulieMayerCoaching.com
Email: Julie@JulieMayerCoaching.com

And Mayer is spelled M-A-Y-E-R.

Thank you, Julie—and I’m looking forward to Episode Two in just a moment.