I Wish You Heartbreak - An Exploration of the 19 Ways with Deena Metzger   We’re so grateful and honored to begin the 3rd season of the Embodiment Matters podcast by sharing with you this rich conversation with wise elder Deena Metzger.    A poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over fifty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies which creatively address life threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration.   Deena has spent a lifetime investigating Story as a form of knowing and healing.  She conducts training groups on the spiritual, creative, political and ethical aspects of healing and peacemaking, individual, community and global, drawing deeply on alliance with spirit, indigenous teachings and the many wisdom traditions. You can read a longer story about Deena’s extraordinary life here http://deenametzger.net/bio/   Deena teaches powerfully through asking challenging questions, and we have been grateful to be her students for several years.   Her current work is envisioning a new future for all beings. Considering new forms of peacemaking, healing, and sanctuary for all beings is encoded in the 19 Ways to a Viable Future for All Beings. Essential to the 19 Ways are respecting and restoring Indigenous ways, the Pathless Path, and the No Enemy Way. Deena works with writers to develop the literary voices essential for this time and she is a mentor to those who are seeking their own paths to be healing presences for the future. For many years Deena has lived at the end of the road at the edge of the wild in Topanga, California, with various animal companions.    In this conversation we explore Deena’s articulation of the 19 Ways. We talk about working with dreams not in a personal, psychological way, but in a communal way. We talk about what she wishes for all of us - and the answer might surprise you. We explore illness as a messenger - through her own personal history with cancer as well as the covid 19 pandemic. I also share a powerful story of an experience with Deena many years ago which changed my life in a powerful way and which had both of us in tears. We hope you enjoy this clarion call from a wise elder to live differently and to meet these times with courage, community, and heart.    Some relevant links:  Deena’s Website: http://deenametzger.net/ The 19 Ways: http://deenametzger.net/19-ways/ This powerful poster of Deena made decades ago http://deenametzger.net/the-poster/ A list of Deena’s published works: http://deenametzger.net/published-works-3/ Deena mentions this book, Blackfoot Physics, in our conversation  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110248.Blackfoot_Physics

Greetings Listener friends,    We are delighted to share with you our recent conversation with Langston Kahn.   Langston Kahn is a black, queer teacher and shamanic practitioner who specializes in radical human transformation, ancestral healing, and restoring an authentic relationship with our emotions. He stands firmly at the crossroads; his practice informed by somatic modalities, contemporary shamanic traditions, initiations into traditions of the African diaspora, and his helping spirits and ancestors weaving it all together. Langston gives workshops and lectures internationally, in person and online. He serves in the leadership by council of the Last Mask Community, a collective of people striving to live in alignment with ancient shamanic principles in service of personal and collective liberation. He is the author of Deep Liberation: Shamanic Teachings for Reclaiming Wholeness in a Culture of Trauma.  Langston lives in the ancestral lands of the Lenape, Rockaway and Canarsie also known as New York City.  In our conversation we dive into a wide range of topics: We speak about embodiment, and Langston’s perspective of embodiment as the willingness to be in a state of flux, and change, and to not get stuck on one story of who we are.  We explore the practice of Focusing, the method of somatic inquiry developed by Gene Gendlin, (which Langston learned from his mom,) and how the principles of Focusing support Langston in being in relationship with the more than human world in shamanic practice.  We discuss shamanism, and the challenges around appropriation and capitalism. We explore healing, animism, trauma, ancestral work, ritual and much more.  Langston is a radiant human being and teacher who has a deep foundation of practice.  We hope you enjoy the conversation, and we highly recommend  checking out his book and his work.  You can find out more about his work at his website: LangstonKahn.com.  

We’re so grateful to be able to share this inspired conversation with the amazing Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset. We absolutely love her book, Sacred Instructions, and highly recommend it! While we only touched on a fraction of the questions we wanted to ask Sherri, we did explore many rich topics together, including  Her beautiful perspective on embodiment How we come to recognize our power and how this can get confused in a capitalist culture (and what the Law of Attraction gets right and wrong) on living in a time of prophecy and what that entails The sources of her strength The need to examine and change the stories we’re telling- for example, the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. which celebrates colonizing and killing indigenous pagans in Ireland Indigenous values as compared to Euro-centric values and the resulting differences in culture and experience.  Her incredible, visionary, 21-year ceremony dedicated toward Healing Turtle Island, and more.  And wondering together: Will we exit the planet or change our course??      What a powerful conversation with a wise visionary for our times. We’re so grateful to Sherri for this conversation and her work and way in the world. Please explore more at her websites:  https://sacredinstructions.life/ https://www.healingturtleisland.org/   Sherri was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation (Penawahpskek).  She speaks and teaches around the world on issues of Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and spiritual change. Her broad base of knowledge allows her to synthesize many subjects into a cohesive whole, weaving together a multitude of complex issues and articulating them in a way that both satisfies the mind and heals the heart. Sherri received her Juris Doctorate and a certificate in Indigenous People’s Law and Policy from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. She is an alumna of the American Indian Ambassador program, and the Udall Native American Congressional Internship program. Sherri is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. Prior to forming the Land Peace Foundation, Sherri served as a law clerk to the Solicitor of the United States Department of Interior; as an Associate with Fredericks, Peebles and Morgan Law Firm; as a civil rights educator for the Maine Attorney General’s Office, and; as the Staff Attorney for the Native American Unit of Pine Tree Legal. She has been actively involved with Indigenous rights and environmental justice work for more than 25 years. In 2010, she received the Mahoney Dunn International Human Rights and Humanitarian Award, for research into Human Rights violations against Indigenous Peoples. In 2015, she received the Spirit of Maine Award, for commitment and excellence in the field of International Human Rights. In 2016, Sherri’s portrait was added to the esteemed portrait series, Americans Who Tell the Truth, by artist Robert Shetterly. And, she is the recipient of the 2017 Hands of Hope Award from the Peace and Justice Center. Sherri has been deeply committed to cultivating and renewing the traditional and ceremonial practices of her people. She has worked in many capacities over the past 30 years helping to highlight and advance the position of Wabanaki peoples.  In addition to helping her own people, Sherri has been a longtime advisor to the American Indian Institute’s Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth and was a program coordinator for their Healing the Future Program. She also served as an advisor to the Indigenous Elders and Medicine People’s Council of North and South America for the past 20 years. In this role, she has worked with Indigenous spiritual leaders from across the Americas, helping to ensure that their voices are heard within the larger society. This has included bringing their messages to political leaders in the U.S., and Canada and the Indigenous Peoples Forum at the United Nations. Sherri is the visionary behind “Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island,” a global healing ceremony that has brought people together from all corners of the world. The ceremony is designed to heal our relationships with one another as human beings, and then to heal the relationship between human beings and the rest of Creation.  It has been attended by people from every continent (except Antarctica), who have come together to pray with one heart and one mind for the healing of all life on Mother Earth. 

Embodiment & Social Justice We shared such a potent and enlivening conversation with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Dr. Scott Lyons. In this conversation we talk about an upcoming training they are hosting called the Embodied Social Justice Certification Program. So of course, we talked about some of our favorite topics - embodiment, social justice, soft-bellies, the highly contagious nature of reactivity, spiritual bypassing, ways of perceiving our world as influenced by our conditioning and our language, and the skills that support us in doing the deep and necessary work of becoming embodied and co-creating a better world for all. We dive into talking about liberation, cancel culture, minding our own business, and the essential foundation of contemplative/somatic practice for doing any kind of racial healing work. These are two wonderful human beings and skilled teachers and we think you’ll love this rich conversation as much as we did.    Learn more about the training here https://www.theembodylab.com/embodied-social-justice-certificate     Dr. Scott Lyons is dedicated to teaching embodiment as a way of exploring human development, healing, growth and transformation. Scott’s deep passion is to integrate somatic practices, transpersonal inquiry and scholarly research into the creative and healing arts. Scott is a Clinical Psychologist, Osteopath, and Mind-Body Medicine practitioner who specializes in therapies for infants, youth and adults.   Scott is the founder of The Embody Lab DrScottLyons.com  TheEmbodyLab.com IG@Drscottlyons   Rev. angel Kyodo williams is a writer, activist, ordained Zen priest and the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, published by Viking Press in 2000, and the co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation , published by North Atlantic Books.   You can find out more at:   http://angelkyodowilliams.com/ http://transformativechange.org/ https://radicaldharma.org

What a powerful conversation we shared, exploring Plotkin’s new book, the Journey of Soul Initiation as well as his vast body of work.  Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural regeneration. As founder of western Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of seekers through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision fast. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. In 1979, on a solo winter ascent of an Adirondack peak, Bill experienced a call to adventure, leading him to abandon academia in search of his true calling. Bill is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (an experiential guidebook), Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (a nature-based stage model of human development through the entire lifespan), Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (an ecocentric map of the psyche — for healing, growing whole, and cultural transformation), and The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries (an experiential guidebook for the descent to soul). He has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. You can dive into the rich world of his work at www.animas.org    We explored so many rich topics in this conversation, beginning, of course, with embodiment, as well as how humans can become life-enhancing partners with Earth and Cosmos. We talk about Bill’s framing of adulthood and maturity and his powerful sentiment, that 90% of older people in modern culture haven’t reached beyond late adolescence. We talk about how to understand where you are on his map of maturity and the process of soul descent, as well as what makes a true adult (and it’s not age-based!) We talk about the beautiful image of adults and elders as imaginal cells in culture, as well as what he calls the four facets of wholeness and ways of cultivating these. Bill shares comments on working with mature urgency in relation to our times and his admiration for Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects. We talk about the history of initiated elders and initiatory customs and rituals being what dominating cultures have continually wiped out in the partnership-based cultures they colonized, and what a great loss this has been around the globe. We talk about why rites of passage are so important personally and culturally. This whole conversation is so powerful and is rooted in the rare depth and comprehensive framework of his life’s work and evolving understanding of human development. We hope you enjoy this one as much as we did!

I’m so thrilled to share this episode with you, dear listeners, in which I have the privilege of interviewing one of my hero-writers, Kathleen Dean Moore, whose 2016 book Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Changewas life-changing for me. In this moving conversation, we explore the extinction crisis, what love really means, the importance of facing grief directly; about the necessity of locking the door to despair; and the importance of maintaining outrage as a measure of love and conscience. I’ve long loved the way Kathleen weaves a rich multiplicity of perspectives into her writing: that of mother, grandmother, naturalist, philosopher, professor, and earth-lover. Kathleen speaks about moral courage, about the shift in her writing from praising the beauty of the natural world to a fierce call to defend it. We explore how to speak to children about the climate crisis, and the big question: What can one person do? (I love her answer to this!) We discuss some favorite passages from Great Tide Rising as well as from her beautiful new book, Earth’s Wild Music. I find her work and her words so simultaneously heartening, sobering, and a powerful spur to caring action. I hope you enjoy her as much as I did. I can’t recommend her books highly enough. Please also check out Music to Save Earth’s Songs, a project she’s developed as part of the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University which includes 20 4-minute concerts weaving music and spoken word. Detaisls are below on that as well as where to find her beautiful books. Kathleen Dean Moore, Ph.D., served as Distinguished Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Oregon State University, where she wrote award-winning books about our cultural and moral relations to the wet, wild world and to one another. But her increasing concern about the climate and extinction crises led her to leave the university, so she could write and speak full-time about the moral urgency of climate action. Since then, she has spoken out across the country, publishing Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, a collection of short essays by the world’s moral leaders about our obligations to the future. That is followed byGreat Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change (2016); Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World (February 2021); and Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change(April 2021). Her work on the extinction crisis includes a film, “The Extinction Variations,” a collaboration with a classical pianist. She writes from Corvallis, Oregon and from an off-the-grid cabin where two creeks and a bear trail meet a coastal inlet in Alaska. Find Kathleen’s wonderful books here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/371383.Kathleen_Dean_Moore Here are details about an upcoming book launch party online for Earth’s Wild Music https://events.oregonstate.edu/event/earths_wild_music_book_launch_party And here are details and a link to the wonderful project Music to Save Earth’s Songs:  https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/feature-story/music-save-earth-s-songs In a series called “Music to Save Earth’s Songs,” the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University will offer twenty, four-minute concerts that weave music and the spoken word to celebrate the creatures that fill the air with sound – frogs, wolves, songbirds, growling grizzly bears – and to inspire action to save them. Videos will be released online on Mondays and Thursdays at 6 pm, from now through March. The series is inspired by a new book by Kathleen Dean Moore, Earth’s Wild Music.

Friends, we are thrilled to be able to share our recent interview with the incredible  Cynthia Jurs with you.    Before sharing her official bio, I want to tell you that I find Cynthia to be one of the most moving human beings I’ve met in a very long time. Her humility, her wisdom, her bone-deep dedication to healing the Earth and fostering awakening in herself and others is truly awe-inspiring. I adore her so much it’s almost painful! Carl and I have had the good fortune to learn and practice with her this past year and it’s been such a timely gift.    Cynthia is a Lama in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition and a Dharmacharya in the Order of Interbeing of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. In 1990 she made a life-changing pilgrimage to meet a 106-year-old hermit and meditation master living in a cave in Nepal, from whom she received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases. She is the guiding teacher of the Gaia Mandala Sangha in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she teaches a unique blend of engaged buddhism and sacred activism in response to the call of the Earth. Cynthia’s nonprofit, Alliance for the Earth is dedicated to facilitating a global community committed to planetary healing and collective awakening through the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project. She has partnered with indigenous elders and young activists around the world and for ten years has carried out a peace building program in Liberia, West Africa. Cynthia is currently at work on a book and film entitled, Summoned By The Earth.    In this conversation, Cynthia tells the story of meeting and asking a potent question of a 106-year old meditation master in a cave in Nepal and the life-changing consequences she’s still living out today, 30 years later. We explore the topic of sacred activism, subtle activism, and engaged Buddhism, and Cynthia’s incredible project of burying sacred Earth Treasure Vases, little clay vessels filled with prayers for healing the Earth, on every continent around the globe. Cynthia shares about where she’s drawn strength to continue to persevere in her dedication and her practice. We talk about collective awakening and Thich Nhat Hanh’s prediction that the future Buddha will not be a human being, but rather a sangha, a community of beings awakening together. We talk about so many juicy topics, from the practice of listening to the Earth to the distinction between belief and faith; from the potent teachings in the breath to experiencing Gaia in our own bodies and minds. Cynthia shares a passionate invitation to not close our eyes before suffering, but to stay awake and engaged with what is happening in our world. Cynthia also shares briefly about an incredible practice of Tara Gaia. We’ve been lucky enough to be at the first two transmissions of the practice. We close the conversation with a beautiful prayer Cynthia shares about taking refuge in the Earth as the embodiment of teacher, teachings and community. We hope you enjoy this wise and touching conversation as much as we did!!    Some links you’ll likely enjoy exploring:    Cynthia’s website: https://gaiamandala.net    The monthly newsletter: https://gaiamandala.net/contact-us/ which keeps people informed about all offerings including the full moon meditation.    Full Moon Full Moon Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Meditation:   https://mailchi.mp/earthtreasurevase/full-moon-global-healing-meditation   The link to register for the Tara Gaia Teachings:   https://mailchi.mp/ff4def15a264/tara-gaia-online   

In this episode, Carl speaks with Ian MacKenzie, host of the Mythic Masculine Podcast.  Ian MacKenzie is a filmmaker, speaker, and writer who lives on the Salish Sea with his partner and son.  His films include Lost Nation Road, Amplify Her, Sacred Economics, Prayer to the Earth, an Indigenous Response to These Times. For more than decade, Ian has been tracking the global emergence of new culture. From the desert of Burning Man to the heart of Occupy Wall St, he has sought and amplified the voices of visionaries, artists and activists who have been working toward planetary system change. In our conversation, we explore several of the rich themes that have woven through the conversations on the Mythic Masculine Podcast. We explore dynamics of power, and what can shift in the experience of masculine and feminine polarities outside of a power-over structure. We look at the loss of wildness, and the domestication that many modern men experience. We also speak about embodiment, ritual, and rites of passage.  We weave through many essential themes and inquires about what it means to be a man in these times.  For more information about Ian and his work you can visit ianmack.com or themythicmasculine.com

Uncommon Considerations in the Anthropocene An Interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe   Friends, we’re thrilled to share with you this most recent interview with our dear friend, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo is a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor, proud diaper changer, and passionate about the preposterous. He’s a thinker and speaker unlike any you’ve met before. Born and raised in Nigeria, Bayo currently lives with his wife and two children in Chennai, India, and pre-pandemic, spent much time traveling the world teaching on transraciality, emergence, postactivism and more. He is a widely appreciated speaker, teacher, public intellectual, author and facilitator, globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. He is the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network (A Post-Activist Project] and host of the online writing course, ‘We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence’  Erin first met Bayo while taking this class in 2017, and we’re both thrilled to hear that this life-changing course will be offered again in Fall of 2020. Read more about Bayo and explore his unconventional and refreshing perspectives through his website www.bayoakomolafe.net, including this recent essay, which Erin refers to in our interview. https://bayoakomolafe.net/project/i-coronavirus-mother-monster-activist/     A friend recently said it so well: “I feel if I can relax and let go of a certain part of my mind and just fall in with Bayo’s words, I always grow.” In this conversation, we explore Bayo’s ideas about making sanctuary. He shares Yoruba proverbs, including “In order to find your way, you must become lost,” and “May your road be rough.” We explore white supremacy, colonial mind, and modernity and the unfortunate“flattening of the sacred.” We talk about control, queering binaries, resisting “simple and neat” stories or explanations, and relaxing into our entanglement with the world and each other. Holding the tensions of paradox are a necessary skill. Bayo talks about the necessity of making way for grief, what he calls “the vocational project of touching loss,” and the possibility of decorating these wounds as a way of making sacred.    We also explore topics of justice, fugitivity, bodies as becomings, and explore some musings on how Bayo learned to think in these unique ways. We also speak about the beauty of bewilderment. There’s so much richness in this conversation! We hope you can relax certain parts of your mind and grow as you listen to Bayo “shock you into noticing the world differently.”    You can listen to our first conversation with Bayo in 2018 here: The Light Longs for the Dark: A Conversation with Bayo Akómoláfé - Embodiment Matters

In this enlightening conversation, Michael Meade, a seasoned teacher and storyteller, shares his insights on innate genius and its connection to healing societal wounds. He discusses how honoring our unique gifts fosters equality across various divides. The conversation delves into the role of community in initiating personal transformation and the significance of rituals in healing cultural trauma. Meade highlights the potential of protests as rituals and emphasizes that personal change is essential for broader societal shifts.