Navigating our Perception Box
The Perception Box™️ Framework
We each experience the world through our own Perception Box, a framework to understand our subjective experience of reality shaped by our unique history, beliefs, and experiences. By becoming more aware of the assumptions that influence it, we can broaden what’s possible for ourselves. In moments of challenge, this awareness opens the door to new perspectives and growth.
Join us as we explore ways to thrive as our Perception Box expands.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Medicinal Media Perception Box Playlist
Neuroplasticity • The Science of Glimmers and Gratitude •: Rewriting Your Story • Conquering Shame • Emotional Pain and the Somatic Response
PERCEPTION BOX PROJECT:
Neuroplasticity:
How to rewire your brain
Our brains are designed to learn, but sometimes the patterns we inherit, from trauma, fear, genetics, or elsewhere can keep us stuck. The Neuroplasticity Project explores how shifting perception and nurturing curiosity can open new pathways for growth, connection, and emotional resilience.
“You always have the potential to induce neuroplasticity. This is something you should be considering throughout the journey of life…
I think that some people will, after taking a psychedelic, claim that they are forever changed. Perhaps on some level, they're actually forever un-changed.”
Rewiring a pharmacist’s brain: Discovering the therapeutic potential of psychedelics
A pharmacist reflects on burnout, mental health, and emerging plant-based therapies, tracing a profound shift in perception about healing, medicine, and what it means to truly get well.
Written by Sarah Myers • Illustrations by Maggie Stephenson • Managing Editor Jessi Cape
“I realized I wasn’t reacting to my child—I was reacting to the story my nervous system had learned long before I became a parent… my brain wasn’t fixed in fear; it was trained there—and that meant it could change.”
Exploring how shifting perception—from punishment and control to trust and connection—can rewire not only children’s brains, but our own. Blending neuroscience, trauma awareness, and lived parenting moments, the piece demonstrates how neuroplasticity enables individuals to break inherited patterns, build safer relationships, and grow together with compassion rather than fear.
Written by Annette Walters • Illustrations by Sonny Ross
Managing Editor Jessi Cape
DOCUMENTARYThe traumatized brain isn’t broken—it’s patterned. With insights by Dr. Jennifer Mitchell, we discover how trauma and treatment-resistant depression shape neural pathways, and how neuroplasticity and psilocybin-assisted therapy can foster healing, perspective, and emotional growth.
Exec Producer/Camera Rob VanAlkemade • Series Producer Erika Paige Barnette • Associate Producer Nahima Shaffer • Series Editor Jae Shim • Creative Director Jennymarie Jemsion • Music by East Forest
“Neuroplasticity is occurring when you’re outside of that very stuck, contracted experience of life…
Self-compassion radically shifts everything for clients.”
—River Jenkins, Bendable Therapy
PERCEPTION BOX PROJECT:
The Science of Glimmers and Gratitude
Authors, artists, a neuroscientist, and a wellness mentor explore glimmers—the small, subtle moments of joy, safety, or calm that act as the opposite of trauma triggers.
How Small Moments Rewire the Brain for Resilience
Research shows that noticing small, everyday wonders can reshape our brain, strengthen emotional resilience, and deepen our sense of meaning. Dr. Modupe Abidakun shares how one powerful moment changed her understanding of gratitude.
Written by Dr. Modupe Abidakun • Illustrations by Alissa Thaler
Noticing glimmers can help regulate the nervous system, support recovery from trauma, and rebuild self-compassion. Writer Karen Fischer shares how rediscovering a beloved voice changed her healing journey.
Written by Karen Fischer • Illustrations by Paula Rodriguez • Managing Editor Jessi Cape
DOCUMENTARYA short documentary exploring glimmers—micro-moments of regulation that foster feelings of well-being—and the science of gratitude, featuring neuroscientist Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and global wellness guide Adriene Mishler.
Produced with a grant by Unlikely Collaborators • Exec Producer/Camera Rob VanAlkemade • Series Producer Erika Paige Barnette • Associate Producer Nahima Shaffer • Series Editor Jae Shim • Creative Director Jennymarie Jemsion • Music by East Forest
"The brain and the body are incredibly tightly coupled. A single quiet moment can shift how the whole body feels. Noticing glimmers in the world is potentially a really important path forward to wellbeing.”
— Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
PERCEPTION BOX PROJECT:
Reframing Our Stories
Through documentary, podcasts, articles, illustrations, and animations, this Perception Box project examines reframing and rewriting our stuck stories into unique, exceptional new ones.
After a cancer diagnosis layered on years of medical trauma and personal loss, Lisa Keefauver realized that pursuing constant happiness was an impossible—and harmful—standard. Instead, she turns toward aliveness, embracing the full spectrum of human emotion as a more truthful, healing path.
Written by Lisa Keefauver • Illustrations by Chau Luong
Journal role-playing games offer adults a way to reconnect with imagination, creativity, and a sense of wonder we often lose to daily life. By blending storytelling, escapism, and self-reflection, they become powerful tools for emotional resilience and personal growth.
Written by Summer Tao • Illustrations by Lev Fielding • Managing Editor Jessi Cape
DOCUMENTARYProduced with a grant by Unlikely Collaborators • Exec Producer/Camera Rob VanAlkemade • Series Producer Erika Paige Barnette • Associate Producer Nahima Shaffer • Gaffer/Camera: Amy Hoang • Sound: Caleb Mose • Series Editor Jae Shim • Creative Director Jennymarie Jemsion • Animations John McCormack and Mevaki • Music by East Forest
⚠️ Mature Themes • What if the stories we tell ourselves could change our lives? Join Lisa Keefauver, MSW, author, grief activist, and podcast host of Grief Is A Sneaky Bitch, as she explores how narrative therapy helps us reclaim our agency, reframe grief, and discover resilience.
From surviving trauma to facing profound loss and navigating her own cancer diagnosis, Lisa shares how language shapes our identity—and how we can rewrite the “stuck stories” that hold us back.
Also featuring Dr. Sunita Puri, Hui-wen Sato, Lisa Paul, Cyndie Spiegel, Colin Campbell, Steph Jagger and Michelle Hord
“We are not the problem. The problem is the problem.”
-Lisa Keefauver, MSW
PERCEPTION BOX PROJECT:
Conquering Shame
How self-awareness, self-expression, and creative therapy can transform self-image and foster healing, as told through powerful stories of recovery.
Unmasking truth and healing through art
Art therapy can offer a unique, liberating path in eating disorder treatment, helping clients express emotions, rebuild self-esteem, and find joy in creation—even when words can’t do justice. For many, like writer Summer Tao, it's not just therapy—it's a way to reconnect with hope.
Written by Summer Tao • Illustrations by Sasha Bakinovskaja
What happens when both parent and teen have ADHD? One mom shares how self-awareness helped heal their home.
Written by Managing Editor Jessi Cape • Illustrations by Annie B. McCall
DOCUMENTARY
Produced with a grant by Unlikely Collaborators • Exec Producer/Camera Rob VanAlkemade • Series Producer Erika Paige Barnette • Associate Producer Nahima Shaffer • Series Editor Jae Shim • UC Editor Yvette Dubin • UC Consultant Gina Gonzales • Creative Director Jennymarie Jemsion
⚠️ Mature Themes • Exploring self-image through art can be terrifying, and rewarding. Artist and mental health advocate Leigh de Vries shares her journey using exposure therapy for self-discovery and healing, while psychologist Dr. Lauren Stutman, a BDD expert who also suffers from it, defines and contextualizes the disorder and treatments.
“Oscar Wilde said, ‘Give a man a mask and he can tell the truth’. I feel like art, in a way, helps us take the mask off. Honesty is all I really have.”
PERCEPTION BOX PROJECT:
Emotional Pain and the Somatic Response
This Perception Box project highlights how emotional pain can be intertwined with the physical and what we can learn from both as we navigate through it.
Getting aquainted with your nervous system
Feeling stuck in fight-or-flight? Your body may be trying to talk to you—here’s how to start listening.
Written by Sonia Chien • Illustrated by Olga Kurkina
A nurse reexamines her migraines and self-blame, and discovers how childhood trauma reshapes the body, brain, and beliefs.
Written by Laura Onstot • llustrations by Jon McCormack
Managing Editor Jessi Cape
DOCUMENTARYAs children, we held our emotional pain however we had to at the time. As adults, we can revisit that pain, and feel how it has affected our bodies, to move forward with self-compassion. Explained and demonstrated by somatic psychotherapist Gabriela Ucros, LMFT.
Produced with a grant by Unlikely Collaborators • Exec Producer/Camera Rob VanAlkemade • Series Producer Erika Paige Barnette • Associate Producer Nahima Shaffer • Series Editor Jae Shim • Animations by Michael Hadwin and Jon McCormack • Creative Director Jennymarie Jemsion • Music by East Forest
