Podcast artwork thumbnail for Opening Minds, Opening Hearts

Opening Minds, Opening Hearts

Colleen Thomas, Mark Dannenfelser

Booking Overview

This is a spirituality-focused interview show centered on Centering Prayer, contemplative Christianity, interior transformation, and social action, with recurring conversations featuring spiritual teachers, ministry leaders, authors, and practitioners. Credible pitches include contemplative authors, ordained ministers, spiritual directors, somatic or therapeutic practitioners, prison-ministry leaders, and experts connecting prayer with healing or social engagement; booking difficulty is likely low because guests are generally specialized practitioners rather than highly prominent public figures.

Metrics

Episodes: 39

Frequency: Biweekly

Rating: 4.8/5.0

Estimated listeners: 1k-10k

Gender skew: Unknown

Location: USA

Instagram: 4.0k followers

Contact Information

Publicly listed emails

podcast@coutreach.org

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Host

Colleen Thomas - Co-host of a podcast exploring Centering Prayer, contemplation, interior life, and the application of contemplative practice in the world.

Mark Dannenfelser - Co-host of a podcast exploring Centering Prayer, contemplation, interior life, and the application of contemplative practice in the world.

Booking Intelligence

Booking Requirements

low
Typical Credentials:  
Contemplative teachers, ordained ministers, spiritual directors, authors, somatic or therapeutic practitioners, and leaders of spiritual or prison-ministry initiatives with meaningful experience connecting contemplative practice to personal healing or social engagement.
Required Achievements:  
Published books or other substantial work on contemplative spirituality or personal transformation, Founded or led contemplative, ministry, recovery, or spiritual-development programs, Professional practice in spiritual direction, somatic work, ministry, or prison outreach

Recent Guest Discussions

Heather Ruce - Somatic Healing, The Nervous System, Body-based Practices, Pleasure, And Their Relationship To Centering Prayer And Contemplative Practice.

Lawrence Hamilton - Trauma, Prison Ministry, Centering Prayer, The Dark Night Of The Soul, And Spiritual Transformation.

Reverend Nhien Vuong - The Enneagram, Centering Prayer, Divine Therapy, Wholeness, And Personal Transformation.

Recent Topics

Religion, Christianity, Contemplative Prayer, Meditation, Spiritual Formation

Episodes

Here's the recent few episodes on
Opening Minds, Opening Hearts
:

S4 EP7: All of You is Welcome with Jim McElroy

October 04, 2026

When 12-Step recovery meets the contemplative tradition, something profoundly practical emerges. Jim McElroy has spent decades at that intersection, sharing how Centering Prayer and the Welcoming Prayer offer those in recovery a new relationship to pain, not an escape from it. In this conversation, through vulnerable storytelling and the wisdom of Thomas Keating, Jim explores healing as integration rather than elimination, and how both practices bridge the language of 12-Step powerlessness wi...

S4 EP6: Healing Happens in the Body with Heather Ruce

September 20, 2026

In this episode, we are joined by Heather Ruce, a spiritual director and somatic practitioner, to explore how healing truly happens in the body. Heather shares how understanding the nervous system and integrating somatic practices deepen rather than compete with Centering Prayer. Together, we explore what it means to include our whole self in the divine therapy, how the body holds unintegrated material waiting to be processed, and why practices like orienting to our senses and opening to plea...

S4 EP5: We Are Always Returning

September 06, 2026

We're back after a short break, and we're now at the mid-season mark of season four. In this episode, we step back from guest conversations to reflect on what we've been learning and the themes that have emerged so far.We explore what it means to bring our pain into the light, reflecting on suffering as a kind of fracture and separation, and unpacking the paradox that we are already whole while also needing to do the patient work of dismantling the false self. And at the heart of it all, we c...

Publicly listed emails

podcast@coutreach.org

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