A June 2025 conversation between me and Philipp Kobald, a podcaster with a startlingly similar background to my own: business, spirituality, mountaineering, psychology, and education.
We talk about all of these things incidentally, but float above them on a layer of spiritual concern. This is as it should be. All things should have spiritual foundations.
What the video version on YouTube:
Philipp was impressed with our conversation and wrote a lengthy summary of it. Here’s what he said, which is posted on his website.
A Raw Look at Inner Exploration with Lincoln Stoller
By Philipp Kobald in cooperation with AI
www.HolisticCircle.org
©2025 HolisticCircle
Don’t Try This at Home, Unless You’re Ready to Change Your Life
If your idea of self-work involves scented candles and journaling prompts, Lincoln Stoller might make you feel like you’ve brought a foam sword to a gladiator match. Here is a man who free-soloed cliffs, consumed ayahuasca in the Americas, studied quantum physics, and now — presumably with both feet firmly back on the ground — helps people explore their inner landscapes as a psychotherapist and brain trainer.
And yet, despite his death-defying CV, what Stoller champions is not adrenaline. It’s honesty. Brutal, inconvenient, edge-of-the-precipice honesty. The kind that tells you your brain’s trying to communicate via dreams, and you’re ghosting it.
Early in the episode, host Philipp Kobald finds unexpected common ground with Stoller. Both grew up immersed in the raw beauty of high-altitude landscapes, and their mutual love for mountaineering becomes more than a metaphor — it’s a shared language. As Philipp puts it, mountains teach you honesty in a way no therapist ever could. One wrong move, one dishonest thought about your limits, and nature will remind you who’s really in charge. It’s not just a nice bonding moment — it’s a grounding force for everything that follows.
This was no spiritual sugar cube of a chat. Hosted with his usual gentle mischief by Kobald, Spiritual Conversation (produced by HolisticCircle) went spelunking into the caverns of mountaineering, neuroscience, psychedelics, and the weird nightly theatre of dreams. Spoiler: you’ll never look at that one recurring dream about losing your teeth the same way again.
The Mountaineer Who Fell Into the Mind
Stoller’s journey from cliffs to counseling reads like an indie film that wins awards in Berlin. After scaling literal mountains, he took a nosedive into physics, then fell sideways into shamanism and psychedelics. Somewhere between salvia and neurofeedback therapy, he stumbled upon the realization that the biggest climbs are internal.
His spiritual awakening didn’t arrive via incense or a perfectly curated yoga playlist. It came via the moment he realized that free-soloing thousands of feet up a mountain without a rope was not only inadvisable — it was stupid. Or in his words, “If everyone did what I did, half the planet would be gone.”
Now, instead of chasing summits, he helps others descend into themselves, one deeply uncomfortable truth at a time. Yes, there are ropes involved. Emotional ones. Tension lines strong enough to support people tumbling through grief, depression, anxiety — or just the existential swamp we call modern life.
Dreams Are Not Oracles, They’re Audits
If you’re still clinging to the notion that dreams are cute little metaphors for your waking life (“I was flying — so I must be seeking freedom!”), Stoller is here to torch your dream dictionary. To him, dreams are not messages. They’re more like audit reports from your subconscious: overwhelming, disjointed, and rarely flattering.
Dreams, he explains, are your mind’s attempt to stitch together nonsense into a meaningful pattern. It’s your internal cartographer mapping chaos. And no, that flying dream doesn’t mean you’re destined for greatness — it probably means you’re about to nosedive into your own limitations.
Rather than decode dreams like horoscopes, Stoller suggests experiencing them — like stormy weather. Forget searching for meaning in a talking rabbit. Ask instead: where am I holding back? What am I unwilling to see?
Healers, Beware the Enlightenment Industrial Complex
Stoller doesn’t mince words when it comes to healers and seekers outsourcing their intuition to institutions — especially educational ones. Take his view on bringing “spirituality” into classrooms. It sounds like a lovely idea until you realize, as he says, that schools already do a marvellous job of crushing curiosity without getting their hands on your dreams too.
The push to include dreamwork and introspection in schools? He calls it out for what it could become: another bureaucratic attempt to standardize the ineffable. A therapist, he argues, earns your trust through honesty, not a state-approved certificate. Especially when working with children.
For healers, it’s a sobering reminder: your gift isn’t data-driven. It’s soul-driven. And it doesn’t need to be approved by a panel of government-funded mindfulness consultants.
Brains, Rewired and Rebellious
No, you can’t rewire your personality in 90 days, despite what the neuroscience influencers with unnaturally white teeth might promise. Stoller dismantles that claim with the same steady conviction he used to dismantle crampons after risky climbs.
He explains the brain not as a machine to be programmed but as a living ecosystem. Sure, you can improve focus, reduce anxiety, and enhance sensitivity using neurofeedback (which he’s done for a decade). But change isn’t a vending machine. You don’t insert affirmations and expect enlightenment to drop out the bottom.
Instead, he urges clients to work with what’s real: their own perception, dreams, and failings. Particularly the failings. Those are gold mines — if you dare to dig.
If You Survive, You’re a Better Therapist
The most jaw-dropping moment? Stoller comparing counseling to mountaineering. Yes, therapy, too, can be a high-risk sport. The emotional terrain is jagged. The people you’re trying to help will, eventually, shoot their worst at you. And your job, as a healer, isn’t to flinch.
“You want to be hurt,” he says. Not in a martyrdom way, but because if you can’t be moved, you can’t be useful.
The goal isn’t detachment. It’s resilience. If you can take emotional bullets, process them, and still help someone climb their own inner cliff, you’re not just a healer — you’re a bloody miracle.
A Word to the Would-Be Dream Warriors
Stoller’s book on dreaming isn’t some fluffy guide to decoding your inner unicorn. It’s more like a firestarter for your unconscious. He offers a four-part method: incubate the dream, wake with intention, practice lucid dreaming with humility, and use daydreams consciously like emotional reconnaissance.
But mostly, he warns: be prepared. Dreams aren’t cute. They’re not safe. They will drag you through hell if that’s what your psyche needs. And if you’re doing it right, you won’t just wake up remembering them — you’ll wake up changed.
There’s No Finish Line—Just Deeper Honesty
The conversation ends where all good quests do: not with answers, but with better questions. How do we become honest enough to heal? How do we climb the mountains within without losing our footing — or worse, becoming unbearable?
Lincoln Stoller doesn’t offer a branded solution. What he offers is a challenge. To go further. Think deeper. Feel more. And maybe — just maybe — ditch the rope and trust yourself for once.
If you’re curious to watch the full descent into mountaintops, dreams, and mental jungles, the Spiritual Conversation with Philipp Kobald and Lincoln Stoller is waiting for you on the @HolisticCircle YouTube channel. Wear a helmet. And maybe bring a notebook.
By Philipp Kobald in cooperation with AI
www.HolisticCircle.org
@2025 HolisticCircle by Philipp Kobald
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