This podcast features Shannon Algeo, author, meditation teacher, therapist and my neighbor :-) In our conversation, we get personal and reflect on our experience of living together and surviving the many pandemics of the last few years and what it looks like to really look out and care for each other through uncertain times. We talked about how having hard conversations and giving critical feedback is actually a radical form of care. It affirms that we matter to each other. And it’s how we build...
Dec 20, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 46
Jacoby Ballard (he/they) is a social justice educator, yoga teacher and author of the new book A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation. Jacoby defines Queer dharma as “a practice that interrogates systems of power and seeks liberation for all”. In our conversation, we talk about the intersections of yoga and capitalism and white supremacy and cultural appropriation while also returning to the wisdom of yoga - that the yoga practice as it was intended provides a visionary pathway forw...
Nov 24, 2021•58 min•Season 4Ep. 45
Vivette Jeffries Logan is a lot of things AND she is a force of nature. She’s a powerful and seasoned facilitator of race equity work. And she’s a mother, a chef, a mentor and a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. This podcast with her is a whole journey of joy and laughter AND asking really hard questions about who we are and how we heal? Together we explore what it means to be curious and critical of how we’ve been shaped by a toxic dominant culture AND how we hold space for o...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 4Ep. 44
Kate Johnson is a buddhist meditation teacher and author of the book Radical Friendship which makes a case for friendship as a radical practice of love, courage and trust, and a path that paves the way for profound social change Relationship as spiritual practice is often a mirror for what we cannot see or know in isolation. Through each other, deeper truths are revealed that make growth possible. On this podcast, you’ll hear Kate and I talk about navigating our own messy experience of conflict ...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 4Ep. 43
This week’s courageous conversation is with Hala Khouri, a brilliant yoga teacher and somatic counselor specializing in trauma. In the podcast, Hala asks “how good are we at repair? Because unless we get good at that, we can't be in this messiness and stay united” This podcast is about trauma and anxiety, but it is also about how we take care of ourselves and one another, how we navigate the chaos of this moment with creativity, and how we practice change in small and big ways. Connect with Hala...
Aug 24, 2021•57 min•Season 4Ep. 42
This week, my dear friend, Michelle Cassandra Johnson is back to help us tend to the shattered parts of ourselves so that we can embrace our wholeness and do the work of healing the collective heart. In the podcast, she says, what's needed in this moment isn’t to get back to normal or to get back to work or to get back being busy and productive. What's needed is to acknowledge what we’ve gone through and what has been lost. We must feel in order to heal. Her new book, Finding Refuge: Heartwork f...
Aug 03, 2021•58 min•Season 4Ep. 41
Kicking off this season is the powerful Tracee Stanley , yoga teacher, author and who’s new book Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation & Awakened Clarity , has been a lifeline for me in the last couple months. In the book, Tracee says that rest is our birthright, and when we are able to embrace that - we begin to see how we have been asleep in our lives. It is an essential practice in a moment when dominant culture is telling us to get back to normal and perform being woke. We practic...
Jul 27, 2021•57 min•Season 4Ep. 40
This conversation is really timely as it explores how we reach for each other across distance so that we can build beloved communities in these unique times. It features Minister Lauren Cunningham, Francisca Porchas Coronado, Rev Brandon Wrencher and Minister leea allen and offers a really cool behind the scenes perspective by leaders who are innovating and adapting community spaces for healing and grieving and transformation. One of the things Lauren reminds us of is that “there is no end to wh...
Dec 17, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 3Ep. 39
This episode is from a three-part series called “How We Get Through: Collective Resilience in a World on Fire ” from our friends at Faith Matters Network. It aired in the Fall of 2020 which was a time in our country where we were literally on fire - California and other parts of the country were raging during the time of this series. But we were also amidst many pandemics at once - the pandemic of covid, the pandemic that is structural and cultural racism, the pandemic of record inequality and o...
Dec 10, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Season 3Ep. 38
This episode comes from a series hosted by our friends at Faith Matters Network called How to Get Through: collective resilience in a world on fire . It was designed to prepare social justice movements to weave healing and care into our lives and work before, during and after crises and big “movement moments” like this one. This first conversation with Sidney Morgan, adrienne maree brown , Prentis Hemphill and Micky Scottbey Jones is about how we actually do the work of being human together - fl...
Dec 03, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 3Ep. 37
This conversation has been a long time coming for all of us who are navigating both wellness practice and social justice. Because it is not enough to just do the right thing in this moment, we have to go back to the roots to heal and repair what has been broken and violated. And we have with us today a true teacher in that work. Susanna Barkataki is an Indian yoga practitioner, teacher, and now author of the recent book Embrace Yoga’s Roots: Courageous Ways to Deepen Your Yoga Practice . In this...
Nov 26, 2020•1 hr 43 min•Season 3Ep. 36
This episode on practicing politics features Nelini Stamp from Working Families Party, Rev angel Kyodo williams author of Radical Dharma, Anasa Troutman of the Big We and Carinne Luck, a well known organizer and activist. What I learned from this conversation is that building a politics of care is multidimensional. It’s telling a new story of who we are and who we are becoming, it’s building community depth and power wherever you are, it’s going up against old systems of oppression even while we...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Season 3Ep. 35
This podcast was a part of our 2020 CTZN Summit about how to meet his moment with love and justice and build a politics of care that doesn't leave anyone behind. And this conversation is really special. It features Ruby Sales, a deeply committed grassroots activist, eloquent theologen and veteran of the southern freedom movement, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis who is a nationally sought after preacher, activist and author and Micky Scottbey Jones, also known as the justice doula and creator of brave spac...
Oct 15, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Season 3Ep. 34
This conversation was a part of the 2020 CTZN Summit, a gathering of courageous conversation to explore how to navigate this moment and create a politics of community care. And this episode with Prentis Hemphill and Francisca Porchas Coronado really challenges us to dig deep and reckon with how we got here and how we can show up for one another. Prentis Hemphill is movement facilitator, Somatics teacher and practitioner, and writer living and working at the convergence of healing, individual and...
Oct 07, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 3Ep. 33
In the wake of the 2016 election, our guest, Jenna Arnold, hosted listening circles around the country to understand why 53% of white women voted for Trump. She wrote a book that captured those learnings called Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines . This podcast is particularly for white women who are reckoning with their complicity and how to show up in this critical political moment to ...
Aug 19, 2020•49 min•Season 3Ep. 32
So often we hear about safe space—the promise of a judgement and harm-free environment. But is that even possible? Micky Scottbey Jones is calling us to a different practice—one where we can bravely risk mistakes, call each other to more truth and love, and co-create a space where we each have room to grow as activists while still being accountable to one another. In our conversation, she talks about how, if we want to work towards the abolition of systems of harm and oppression, we actually nee...
Aug 05, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 3Ep. 31
This interview was a part of our inaugural CTZN Live event—a new monthly live broadcast of the podcast that invites YOU the community to join the conversation...and we were so blessed to feature Lama Rod Owens, author of two of our favorite books at CTZN WELL: the newly released Love & Rage and Radical Dharma , which he co-authored with Rev angel Kyodo williams and Dr. Jasmine Syedullah. Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist minister, author, activist, yoga instructor, and generational leader who is ...
Jul 15, 2020•Season 3Ep. 31
This recording is from a live event featuring mi Michelle Cassandra Johnson on Juneteenth 2019. Michelle has been a regular on CTZN Podcast . She has been an antiracist trainer for over 20 years, the author of the must read book skill in action and my co-conspirator in the work of Race & Resilience. This conversation isn’t just about Juneteenth and the history of racism in America, it's not just about how white supremacy is at work on our bodies and minds, it's not just about reparations and...
Jun 19, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 31
Valarie Kaur says that Revolutionary Love is the call of our time - a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know. That is exactly how Valarie and i met: two unlikely allies who found one another across time and space and difference. And while it was our suffering that united us, it was our relationship that transformed us. She ...
Jun 15, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 3Ep. 30
Wellness Beyond Whiteness is one of our favorite conversations we've ever had at CTZNWELL - exploring how we perpetuate a culture of exclusion in wellness spaces, how to move beyond #DiversityAndInclusion, and what the cost of whiteness is on our collective wellness. Kerri recorded this panel with Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Michelle Cassandra Johnson, Seane Corn, and Anasa Troutman at the 2018 Wellspring Conference hosted by Wanderlust, and we’re dropping it today to give you a taste of the deep...
May 20, 2020•52 min•Season 3Ep. 29
There’s a strange reference right now about how being in isolation is akin to being locked up. We’re seeing that narrative replicated around the country in the many white-led riots against the stay-at-home rules. Let’s be clear: this quarantine is NOTHING like what people experience in prison. In fact, the outbreaks in prisons around the country reveal that incarcerated people are both more exposed and less able to protect themselves. But beyond the current circumstances, many are questioning th...
May 10, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 28
In this episode. we talk about how power works in group gatherings and how to facilitate without getting in the way of the magic. Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters and host of the new Together Apart Podcast, says in every group there is a beautiful conversation that could actually change people, you just have to find out what that is. She is inviting us into an inquiry about how to unleash the unique and necessary conversations that we are meant to have...
Apr 23, 2020•53 min•Season 3Ep. 27
Today we're talking about righteous anger and indignation with writer and activist Soraya Chemaly. Her book Rage Becomes Her explores how women's expressions of anger are vital to their own health, freedom, and wellbeing. Despite the fact that we women have plenty of things to be mad about - unequal pay, unchecked sexual harassment and abuse, just to name a few - anger is still considered a taboo emotion around the world. We're called emotional, hysterical, irrational, and yet Soraya argues that...
Apr 09, 2020•47 min•Season 3Ep. 26
This virus is exposing our inequities, leaving some people more physically and economically vulnerable than others. In the absence of systems that protect people in times like these, it’s up to us to respond. In this special CTZN Podcast in a time of Coronavirus, we’re checking in with two of our favorite people about what we can do to show up right now. Nicole Cardoza is a wellness leader and founder of Reclamation Ventures , a venture fund dedicated to closing the wellness gap, and has quickly...
Apr 01, 2020•38 min•Season 3Ep. 25
This week, we're talking to Justin Michael Williams , a pop star, meditation teacher, and author of the new book, Stay Woke: A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us. In our conversation, he talks about how we need a different kind of meditation for these times, one that doesn't pretend the struggle doesn't exist. Instead, he's challenging us to stay woke. “Staying woke,” he says, “isn't just about knowledge, it is a call to action, and it matters most when you feel like giving up.” But Justin isn'...
Mar 12, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 24
Today, we're talking to Layla Saad, author, speaker and teacher on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change, and the author of Me and White Supremacy. -Get Layla’s Book, Me and White Supremacy - Follow Layla on Instagram -Join Layla’s Patreon community If this episode resonates for you, we’d love for you to take a screenshot add tag us on Instagram stories @ctznwell and @laylafsaad, and click below to tweet: “The humility is that you, an individual pers...
Feb 25, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Season 3Ep. 23
We’re talking with writer, producer, and entrepreneur Anasa Troutman, who besides being a well-known cultural disruptor and love activist, is challenging us to go beyond justice and towards sustainable joy for all. - Tune in to The BIG We Podcast - Follow Anasa on Instagram - Check out Anasa’s other offerings If this episode resonates for you, we’d love for you to take a screenshot add tag us on Instagram stories @ctznwell and @anasatroutman, and click below to tweet: "You can't transform someth...
Dec 05, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Season 3Ep. 21
Perhaps the most frequent question I get asked is, “How do I show up in this moment?” To help us answer that is the amazing Katie Loncke of Buddhist Peace Fellowship , one of the most throw-down, committed activists I know. But what makes her unique is that she’s as committed to who she’s being as to what she’s doing. Katie helped create “Build Block Be,” a holistic framework for how we respond that acknowledges and celebrates all of our unique roles, strategies, and medicine as necessary and es...
Nov 21, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 21
This is the first podcast we’ve ever recorded on a school bus, which felt appropriate given it was a conversation with the Nicole Cardoza, the founder of Yoga Foster, which is focused on making yoga in schools elementary. Nicole is a disruptor, a creator, and a connector who is constantly moving the line forward of what’s possible in wellness. She recently launched Reclamation Ventures, an impact fund dedicated to investing in underestimated entrepreneurs closing the wellness gap, and is innovat...
Sep 19, 2019•56 min•Season 2Ep. 20
In this episode, we're talking to the writer, runner and recovering addict, Charlie Engle, who I met many years ago over our shared love for running, but whose story blew me away. Known to many as "The Running Man,” Charlie managed to go from rock bottom to resilience many times over. And he continues to push the limits of what is possible for the human body and for human kind. More about Charlie Follow his adventure through the 5.8 Buy his book If this episode resonates for you, we’d love for y...
Aug 22, 2019•51 min•Season 2Ep. 19
