75: Healing Through Connection: Chris Warner’s Journey

⚠️Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussion of suicidal ideation

In this episode of the BRN podcast, host Beth Herzig speaks with Chris Warner, a therapist and board member of the Buddhist Recovery Network. Chris shares her personal journey of recovery from addiction, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness, trauma awareness, and community support. She discusses how her spiritual practices have intertwined with her recovery process and the role of compassion in therapy. Chris encourages listeners to explore their own sacred paths and take actionable steps towards healing and connection.

Chris Warner Chris Warner, M.Ed., CYT, ISTT, works as an international trauma therapist and addiction recovery specialist and is a longtime dharma, meditation, breathwork, and yoga teacher. Chris is also an adoptee and a recovered person, thriving on a lifelong path of discovery, and her daily life, her practice, her teaching and service work, and her professional psychotherapeutic efforts are all grounded in compassionately upholding the innate dignity and rights of all people, in guarding the preciousness of this planet, and with the deep wish that all beings be protected and safe, that all beings know contentment, and well-being, that all beings live in peace, with ease.

In private practice, Chris offers adult individual, couples, and group trauma therapy worldwide online, and she also facilitates mindfulness-based psychoeducational, skills, and processing groups open to the public, as well as in residential addiction treatment facilities and with incarcerated persons in corrections facilities. Additionally, Chris leads a weekly Sangha for mindful recovery on select Sunday mornings, offers online sitting groups at various times throughout the year, teaches meditation, breathwork, and yoga classes, and hosts a variety of recovery meetings. She is also a wife, a Japanese Chin mama, a sister and aunt, a cousin and niece, a daughter and a granddaughter, a friend and neighbor, an art-lover, a chef, gardener, poet, writer, beach-walker, nonviolent activist, and an avid reader and lifelong learner.

Chris’s Buddhist trainings include taking Refuge and the Mindfulness Trainings from her root teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, in 2009, as well as participating in retreats and working with beloved teachers Pema Chödrön, Sylvia Boorstein, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Larry Rosenberg, Matthew Daniel, Matthew Brensilver, and Kevin Griffin. Chris is not a lineage holder, and, while she has no current ordination plans, etc., she open-heartedly awaits further unfolding and continues her studies and daily practice. In addition to serving as a current BRN board member, Chris also serves on the Ethics Council for EK (Evolving Kundalini), and she continues to serve as an intern for a variety of Compassionate Inquiry© groups dedicated to bringing compassionate practice to the world scaffolded by the work of Dr. Gabor Matѐ. Chris offers complimentary Consult & Connection calls for anyone considering therapy, and she can be reached through her website, where you’ll also find Zoom links for Sunday Sangha and information on other public offerings: ⁠https://www.chriswarnertherapy.com/⁠