About Us
We have all gone through our own Phoenix Eras and can help you navigate yours.
Mona Sobhani, PhD
I am a cognitive neuroscientist, author, and entrepreneur. I completed a Doctorate in neuroscience from USC and a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. My harrowing personal transformation took me from being a diehard scientific materialist to a spiritual seeker, and it culminated in a spontaneous Kundalini awakening. Not realizing I was going through a Kundalini awakening, I felt lost and deeply confused, thinking something was seriously wrong. In my search for relief during the most intense challenge of my life, I explored many healing practices — anything to ease the chaos. Along the way, I discovered my own ability to do energetic healing. Now, I'm passionate about sharing tools and wisdom to help others integrate profound transformation with more grace. I detail my transformation in my award-winning book Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe (Park City Press). In Cosmos, Coffee, & Consciousness, I write about these topics and the “Dark Night of the Soul,” which I renamed as the more hopeful “The Phoenix Era.” I am also co-founder of Exploring Consciousness, a community of consciousness-curious scientists. My work has been featured in the New York Times, VOX, and other media outlets.
Allison Paradise, MS
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I am a guide, public speaker, author, entrepreneur, explorer, and adventurer with degrees in neuroscience from Brown and Harvard. As the founder and CEO of The Epicenter, I support the well-being of young people and their families through attentive presence, self-reflection, and creative self-expression. I also work as an intuitive guide and energy healer in private practice. Prior to founding The Epicenter, I founded and was the CEO of My Green Lab, a non-profit organization with a mission to create a culture of sustainability through science. Under my leadership, My Green Lab became a global leader in sustainability whose guidelines have been adopted by the United Nations. I was invited to give a TED talk about my work at My Green Lab in 2019.
As a young child I had many experiences that I could not explain. I was told that these experiences were allergy-induced hallucinations and over time I learned to discredit them. My scientific training reinforced the idea that these experiences were not real and by the time I graduated college I was quick to discount anything that was classified as spiritual. However, despite trying to suppress the experiences I had as a child, they came back. For the last decade I have been studying myself and others to better understand the nature of our reality and how we can both heal and empower ourselves in a way that feels truly aligned with human potential.
Laura Garcia, PhD
I am a psychologist, healthcare innovation leader, and executive coach. I completed a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from USC where I specialized in the use of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality for mental health care. I led the research and innovation functions of different start-ups developing VR treatments for chronic pain and digital tools for weight loss and maternal mental health. I've also supported a variety of start-ups through consulting and advising roles, which led me to extend my support for leaders through executive coaching. I currently design wellness programs that merge wisdom and intuitive healing in natural settings or through collaborations like The Phoenix Era.
While my career harnessed transformational health experiences, personally I sought to make meaning of these through my own spiritual journey. A faith crisis in my twenties led me to explore a variety of transcendent practices. After jokingly asking to witness miracles, I experienced profound spiritual events that brought me to acknowledge something beyond thought. Some of what I consider miracles included my daughter's birth, which instilled in me a belief in a loving creator. Later, losing my home to the Altadena fires and my grandmother's passing deepened my sense of interconnectedness with all and reconnected me with my Christian heritage to continue exploring that which I consider metaphysical and a source of beautiful wisdom.
