Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Podcast

Asis Aviv is one of a kind, and the newest faculty member of the International School of Temple Arts. A self-described “rich witch, radical faerie, love priestexx, and shy-ning diva,” they are here for falling back in love with being humxn. In this conversation with Simon Marvell, Asis–a name which means “JUICE!” in Hebrew–shares their reflections on a vast array of topics, all anchored in the idea that we are so much more than our identity, whether influenced by parents, society or anything else.Gender and identity fluidity has nothing to do with some ‘woke agenda,’ but rather is about letting ourselves experience all that we are and all that we can be. Exploring all our inner parts/ selves/ voices, especially when they challenge the norms we grew up with is a wonderful way to free ourselves of our limiting beliefs and prejudices that keep us from living in love and acceptance. Asis shares how they work to embrace their shyness, how grief can be a transforming factor in dealing with issues of self-worth, and how they navigate the complexities of queer existence in a world that often demands performance and perfection. Through the lens of  Somatic Shamanic Voice Dialogue (SSVD), Asis invites us to explore the concept of "binge-watching"  our inner selves  and our identifcation with them, encouraging a deeper understanding of the ever-evolving nature of identity and personality. Asis shares insights on collapsing conventional binaries of masculine and feminine (and more), examining the walls we erect around ourselves, and a way to find peace through surrender and self-exploration. They offer a powerful message of empowerment and liberation, encouraging listeners to embrace their unique expression and celebrate the colourful tapestry of humxn existence.To learn more about Asis, follow them on Instagram: @goddexxfactorTo learn more about ISTA, follow us on social media: @ista.communityOr visit our website: https://ista.life/

It has become common to talk about creating safer spaces for healing work. And this is a good thing. Everyone in the field of conscious sensuality, embodiment, and healing work should be looking to improve their practice and rise to higher standards of care, support, awareness, and sensitivity.At the same time, it has also become common to resist this advancement in favour of the idea that self-development spaces should reflect the level of safety in the outside world. And sometimes, for some people, the world can feel really dangerous. People who take this view might say that this is how we learn resilience, or how we can turn difficulty into growth. But for our guest in this episode, somatic psychotherapist Shelby Leigh, if we are interested in the resolution of the trauma that affects so many of our lives, the spaces we enter for healing simply must be environments grounded in values of connection, responsibility, and trust. For Leigh, trauma is anything that overwhelms us, and it can stay with us if we never have a chance to naturally complete our body’s survival response to that overwhelming thing. The feeling of overwhelm can stay with us, separating us from our sense of belonging in the world, and inhibiting our capacity for healthy relationships. In her conversation with ISTA facilitator, Usha Rose, Leigh speaks about just how important it is to learn skills of self-regulation, stillness, and boundaries in a safe environment. It is then that we are in a great position to step into the revolutionary practice of taking those skills into the dynamic, playful, and perhaps riskier outside world. Some of the topics covered in this episode are: Relating with others as the medicine we need.Understanding your ‘attachment style.’Growing up with narcissistic parents. When complex trauma gets misdiagnosed as ADHD or anxiety. Protocols for people working in healing spaces.Not pushing past your ‘no.’ Stepping slowly into healing spaces. Nervous system regulation as meditation. You can learn more about Shelby at her website: https://www.shelby-leigh.com/And to learn more about ISTA, visit our website: https://ista.life/Or follow us on social media: @ista.community

Over the last couple of years, Dave Boda has been really critical of ISTA. He’s composed blog-posts and spoken openly about how some of the people involved need to improve, and how some of the ways ISTA approaches its work need to fall away. In this episode, he talks with ISTA facilitator, the podcast founder, and his old friend, Ria Yoshida, about how important it is to not only have these frank conversations about improving the sacred sexuality space, but to do it in an engaged and loving way. Although Dave has not attended an ISTA experience himself, he has  facilitated hundreds of events in the spiritual self-development space and draws, here, on his experience there. He has also been through an extended mediation process with ISTA in his role with the group, Safer Sex Positive and Spiritual Communities. For him, it is crucial for communities to acknowledge when it is time to shift with the times, and grow along with those who form them. Dave and Ria cover many points of wisdom that have arrived for both of them in their journeys of self-exploration, like: How important it is to take breaks from going to workshops or festivals and integrate what you’ve learned into ordinary life. How we need to take accountability for what happens in our lives, and for when we’ve made mistakes. How important it is to really listen to feedback. How we often stay working on projects that no longer serve us because it’s what we get rewarded for. How it is really difficult to genuinely do the work of taking responsibility. We hope you enjoy this frank, and very real, conversation. To learn more about Dave, visit his website: https://boodaism.com/To learn more about Safer Sex Positive and Spiritual Communities, visit their website: https://3sc.community/To learn more about ISTA, visit our website: https://ista.life/Or follow us on social media: @ista.community

There’s a lot of hot debate about the ethics of transformational spaces right now, driven by questions of how power should be held in these spaces. Who should be responsible if something goes wrong? Just what are the limits of what gets taught?Maybe it would be easier not to create spaces for transformational work, for looking at shadows and how power moves. Maybe making such spaces, if they are still to exist, should be made so anodyne as to neutralize whatever challenges people might feel around these issues (including sexuality).Our guest, Elica Lorde-Syzygy, a transpersonal counsellor and Internal Family Systems therapist, is on today’s show to discuss these questions. In this conversation Elica explains how we can be so accustomed to pointing the finger at others that we miss many opportunities to pass over the threshold of responsibility to a more sovereign and resilient selfhood. The reasons we do this are understandable. We don’t want to be exiled from the groups that support our thriving. We’re part of a larger culture that perhaps wants us to remain attached to archetypal figures of the mother and the father. But if we stay like that, we remain dependent! We might find ourselves getting to a place, in ourselves and in the groups we are part of, where these kinds of subconsciously dependent relations are just simply not working any more, and are causing more harm than good. It’s at this point, Elica explains, that we can get to work…To learn more about Elica, visit her website: https://www.b-inghuman.com/our-story-1If you loved this episode, share it with a friend! To learn more about the International School of Temple Arts, visit our website or follow us on social media: ista.life@ista.community

In this episode, Ria talks with Dr. Jen Howk about the collision of science and mysticism in the field of evolutionary psychology. With her feet planted firmly in both worlds, Dr. Jen delves into the how and why of our psychological quirks, revealing some of the mysteries of our development as a species.In particular, she tackles the intriguing phenomenon of cancel culture. In doing so, she explores the historical roots of our collective drive to create ‘in’-groups and ‘out’-groups, explaining that it was a crucial strategy in ancient communities for protecting against threats.Conformity, she argues, often stems from a deep-seated fear of being relegated to one of these 'out'-groups—a survival instinct that persists, even when it may no longer be necessary.It turns out that there are many unhelpful characteristics of contemporary culture which derive from our instinct to survive and reproduce. According to Dr. Jen, we can feel a sense of freedom, and find compassion for ourselves and others, when we understand that it might be these instincts pushing us towards behaving in one way or another. We can feel similar feelings when we acknowledge our ability to choose alternatives. In this conversation, Ria and Jen also cover: Coercion as a defining mark of cultsThe ‘Big Five’ personality characteristicsHow our behaviour can often be explained by what evolutionary goals we are trying to achieveThe problems with ‘blank slate’ thinkingThe importance of connecting with natureIf you love this episode, share it with your friends! And if you want to learn more about ISTA’s retreats and workshops, check out our website, ista.lifeGo follow us on social media @ista.community

Do you ever feel like you’re being held back in life by events and circumstances that are out of your control? Maybe you find yourself in uncomfortable, even terrible, circumstances thinking to yourself: how did I even get here? And, how do I get out? These are questions that arrived powerfully in the life of Carolyn Elliot, transformational guide and author of the book, Existential Kink. We won’t give too much away, but as she explains in this episode, she was really in a bind. And then, almost by accident, she had the realisation that ‘having is evidence of wanting.’ Elliot had to come to terms with the idea that some part of her had wanted to be in the difficult, unpleasant situation she was in. Maybe not on the surface, but deeper down. Her journey was then about being able to unravel what she has come to call her ‘existential kink,’ which she defines as a desire for something that others might think too edgy, or outright bad. It’s ‘existential’ because the kink is about life, not just sexy stuff. For her, the key is to bring consciousness to what we enjoy in even the ‘bad’ parts of our lives. This can help release their hold over us. Stay tuned all the way to the end of this lively and fascinating conversation to be guided through the existential kink practice that Elliot details in her runaway classic book of the same name! To learn more about Carolyn, please visit her website and join her email list: https://carolynlovewell.com/ If you love this episode, share it with your friends! And if it want to follow ISTA on social media, you can find us @ista.community on all good platforms. 

In this, his third episode with the Spiritual, Sexual, Shamanic Podcast, ISTA Lead Facilitator and member of ISTA’s governing council, Raffaello Manacorda, speaks about shamanic leadership. What is shamanic leadership? Raffa explains that it’s an essential component of taking responsibility within groups of people. Instead of competing for powerful positions within organizations and then ruling through domination and manipulation, he says, what we can do is understand the role of the leader as similar to that of the shaman. A shamanic leader has the capacity to sense and respond to the subtle energy moving within a group, and to make decisions based on a felt sense of what needs to occur. This, Raffa says, is only possible when those called into leadership are able to bring the power in their own bodies along for the ride. Shamanic leadership is also based on a fundamentally different leadership culture than many of us are used to. Raffa paints the picture of a ‘cloud’ roving over a group of people, a cloud which will stop above the head of the person who is being called into leadership and strike them with shamanic lightning. An investment of great power indeed, and often only for a temporary period of time...If you're a practitioner, facilitator, or entrepreneur who's leading a group of people (or sees a future in it), this is especially for you. Join us for this deep and enlightening conversation, where Simon and Raffa explore the benefits and inevitable dangers of this kind of leadership.If you love this episode, please rate it and share it with others who need to hear it! And if you want to learn more about ISTA, visit our website: ista.life Or follow us on social media: @ista.community

ISTA Facilitator Nimai Sun Ra grew up without a father. As a result, he has felt, perhaps more urgently than most, the need to become his own father figure. To provide himself stability, guidance, and the strength that a biological father might often provide. In recent years, he has been on a journey of extending that experience of fatherhood from himself to his own two young sons. As he tells us in this conversation with Usha, the journey of fatherhood has been the best, most important, thing he has ever done. Every initiation he has been through in his life, he says, has been a preparation for the initiation of fatherhood. And it has been an initiation, with wonderful new realisations mixed in with unavoidable difficulties. In this episode Nimai talks about how his relationship with his beloved, the mother of his children, shifted dramatically, how he could not get through it without the support of other, older brothers, and how he had to deal with failure. And he reflects deeply on the spiritual journey of fatherhood, on how important a role it is to be able to play in the world, whether it is with your own children, other’s, or in a more symbolic way. Nimai also covers: Navigating fatherhood and open relatingThe value of focussing on fatherhood without distractionHow becoming a father can shifts romantic relationshipsThe importance of community when kids come alongThe role of your inner parentDistortions in the role of the fatherHow the father is often the one called on to set boundariesIf you loved this episode, share it with your friends!You can learn more about ISTA at www.ista.lifeAnd via our social media channels: @ista.community

Growing up in rural Austria, ISTA facilitator Ashisha Arpana’s favorite toy was her imagination. She gleefully played with it, eventually turning what happened in her mind's eye into a career in film and media. The imagination, she tells us in this deep and exploratory episode, is one of the most important keys for us in letting go of the old, disempowering stories we tell ourselves and getting back into currency with life as it moves through us. Ashisha explains that we can spark our imagination—our vision of an amazing, vibrant present—through mythology. This is not just a collection of stories from ancient cultures, but living, breathing codes for tapping into the source of our inner worlds. It is where the pulse of life comes from. And there are some simple things we can do to allow this source of our inner life to pour through us into the world, allowing us to shape-shift and, ultimately, choose how our future will go.Simon and Ashisha also discuss:how we often out-source our imagination to Hollywoodhow myths are always evolving. They’re not for copywriting!coming back to the child-like sense of wonder in each of usour bodies as instruments of the soulwhat a soul is and how to communicate with itcollective dreaming and shaping culture from therethe imagination of the heart in the Sufi traditionhow to reclaim your own story, step-by-step, without judgementIf you love this episode, why not leave a review and share it with your friends!And if you want to learn more about ISTA, follow us on social media: @ista.tribeOr visit our website: ista.life

In this episode, Usha talks with ISTA Facilitator Aya Kamānakai about reclaiming sexuality as a pathway to personal empowerment and spiritual connection.Growing up in the Christian church, Aya was taught to shut down her sexuality. As she moved into adulthood, she found herself unable to access pleasure in her body and had resigned herself to a life without it. This was until, in desperation, she sought out a sexual healer who guided her into releasing her full, orgasmic potential. Almost immediately, she was able to allow this release of repressed energy to literally pour out into other areas of her life: her relationships, her business, and her visions for cultural evolution. Sex magic, as she explains in this episode, is possible when we use pleasure as a doorway to whatever wants to be expressed. We can use the power that comes with this deep freedom of expression to bring what we dream into reality. Some of the topics Aya and Usha discuss are: The profound significance of Aya’s first time squirtingThe connection between sexual energy and purposeHow self-pleasure works best when we don’t feel like itFinding our easiest access points to pleasureHow you can transform any aspect of your sexuality, even physiological onesHow to access your sexual energy by yourselfAnd, as a delicious extra, at the end of the episode, Aya leads a beautiful meditation into connecting with life-force (44:00-49:00). About Aya:Allured by the wild and the beauty within us, Aya Kamānakai is a passionate advocate for embracing pleasure and reclaiming our sexual energy. With a deep reverence for ancient wisdom and a belief in the intelligence stored inside our bodies, Aya calls upon all beings, but especially women, to reconnect with their innate power and unlock their highest potential.