In this episode, I’m joined by Laurie Lazar, founder of the Realness Project, a nonprofit bringing authentic relating practices into prisons. Laurie shares what she discovered when she stepped inside these systems—places where therapy is nearly nonexistent, and where people are often left alone with their pain, their stories, and the patterns that have helped them survive.
What she brings into these spaces is not traditional therapy. It’s something more fundamental: Human connection.
We talk about what happens when people who have been dehumanized are met in real relationship—without hierarchy, without fixing, without an agenda. Just presence, honesty, and contact. Laurie shares the core practices of authentic relating, including welcoming one’s experience and revealing what is true in the moment, and how these practices begin to shift not only individuals, but the entire relational field. When what’s implicit is spoken and brought into awareness, something changes—inside the person, and between people.
This conversation invites a deeper question about what healing actually is. If therapy isn’t available, what heals? If no one is trying to change you, what becomes possible? What emerges here is that connection itself becomes the intervention. Not as a strategy, but as a way of being with another human being.
Laurie also speaks to the ripple effect of this work—the way one moment of real contact extends beyond the room, shaping how people relate to themselves and others long after the circle ends. What comes forward is not just insight, but dignity. A return to something essential.
About Laurie Lazar
Laurie Lazar is a relational leadership facilitator and founder of the Realness Project, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking cycles of violence and incarceration through connection-centered education. For the past seven years, she has led experiential, trauma-informed programs inside maximum-security prisons, creating spaces where nervous systems settle, shame loosens, and dignity is reclaimed.
The reality inside prisons is stark: the need for therapeutic support is immense, and the supply is painfully limited. Realness Project was built to help fill that gap—not by replacing licensed clinicians, but by offering structured, community-based healing grounded in human connection practices, inner child work, and nervous system regulation.
Laurie’s work bridges spirituality and neuroscience in practical, embodied ways. Drawing from authentic relating and trauma-informed facilitation, she guides participants beyond survival patterns—beyond posturing, numbing, or dominance—and toward emotional literacy, accountability, and relational repair.
Whether inside prison walls or in broader community spaces, Laurie invites people to move out of isolation and into courageous connection. Her work demonstrates that even in environments shaped by trauma and violence, relational healing is possible—and urgently needed.
Learn more about Realness Project here: https://www.realnessproject.org/
About Harmony Kwiker
Harmony Kwiker is a psychotherapist, author, and educator, and the founder of The Awakened Therapist Approach. She serves as Lead Gestalt Faculty at Naropa University in the Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling program and has trained clinicians around the world in relational, somatic, and transpersonal approaches to healing. Her work integrates Gestalt therapy, nervous system regulation, and spiritual awareness, with an emphasis on client sovereignty and the therapist’s presence as the primary instrument of change. She is the author of multiple books, including The Awakened Therapist and Holistic Co-Regulation, and the host of The Awakened Therapist Podcast.
Train with Harmony
If you’re a therapist or practitioner wanting to deepen your capacity to hold space in this way, you’re invited to train with me.
Inside The Awakened Therapist trainings, we move beyond technique and into direct experience. You’ll learn how to track the relational field, work with polarities, support nervous system regulation, and trust the client’s sovereign capacity for healing. This is experiential, depth-oriented training that changes how you practice and how you show up.
You can explore current trainings, courses, and supervision opportunities at awakenedtherapist.com.