Greetings listener friends! We are excited to share this conversation with Dr. Jaiya John . This is the second episode in the Men of Depth and Soul series that Carl is hosting with our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun. Jaiya is an incredible poet, writer, teacher, and human being and the founder of Soul Water Rising press. as he writes on his website: "My lifelong calling and work is freedom from the sickness of supremacy and inferiority. Freedom from oppression. Freedom to live a beau...
Mar 11, 2025•1 hr 26 min
In this conversation, we begin a new sub-series of the Embodiment Matters podcast, Men of Depth and Soul , where Carl and our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun will be hosting interviews around what is being asked of men in these times. We begin the series with our friend and mentor, Francis Weller. Francis is a psychotherapist, soul-activist, and author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. Our conversation moves through many topics: men and grief...
Jan 30, 2025•56 min
We are so excited to share this podcast with the amazing poet and human, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. As Erin mentions in the intro, you might want to have some tissues handy, as we dive right into the deep end, and the conversation is filled with tenderness and beauty. In our conversation, Rosemerry reads some of her gorgeous poems, and we move through many rich themes including grief and gratitude, ways to be with someone who is grieving, holding paradox and the stretch of the human heart, and b...
Jan 10, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 62
Friends, we are delighted to share this conversation with two beautiful Earth-loving humans, John Seed and Skye Cielita Flor. John is a long-time Earth activist, writer, teacher, musician, who, along side Joanna Macy, helped to grow the body of work called Experiential Deep Ecology or The Work that Reconnects. Skye is a teacher, folk herbalist, plant medicine ritualist, mama, and friend with whom we have connected for several years in online spaces with Francis Weller, Bayo Akomolafe and Josh Sc...
Jan 10, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 61
In this conversation, we speak with our friend and teacher, Cynthia Jurs, along with our dear friend and cohost, Leilani Navar, of The Turning Season Podcast. Cynthia recently published Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing our World , which is a wisdom book for our times. As both of us have shared, this book is an extraordinary weaving of spiritual biography, riveting travel adventures, essential Dharma instructions, sacred activism, deep ecology, indigenous wisdom, and an o...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 60
Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, Body as Sacred Land In this conversation between dear friends Erin of Embodiment Matters & Leilani Navar of Turning Season https://turningseason.com/ we dive into rich topics which we’ll be exploring in some upcoming online offerings. Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, and Body as Sacred Land. We also delve into the 5 Vows of the Great turning as articulated by Joanna Macy (see below.) To find out more about our 3-Sunday series, click here. https://embodime...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 7Ep. 59
In this conversation/ transmission we were so honored to hear Dr. Jaiya John pour forth from the depths of his heart and soul in a way that can’t help but touch your own. We were blessed to hear from Jaiya about his background and how he went from being shy and voiceless to a fully-dilated voice for Love. We were blessed to hear him read passages from several of his extraordinary books including Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution ; All These Rivers and You Chose Love ; and Dear Ar...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 58
Dear friends, It is such a pleasure to share this conversation with Zuza Gonçalves. I met Zuza at the Bobby McFerrin Circlesongs School, and was so moved by his presence, his kindness, the way he moved around the room, and how he led us in movement, song and body-percussion. It felt to me like original human music. Zuza has been exploring alternative ways to collective music making for more than 20 years, integrating vocal improvisation, body percussion, movement, dialogue, cooperative practices...
May 15, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 5Ep. 61
Embodying Maitri: The Essential Ingredient with Erin Geesaman Rabke We’re delighted to share with you this podcast where Erin speaks about the practice of Maitri. Maitri is a Sanskrit word often translated as “lovingkindness” but several teachers in our lineage have gone further, naming it “courageous unconditional friendliness,” or “brave warmheartedness.” In this episode, Erin speaks about the importance of this practice in living a healing life. Traditional Buddhist teachings suggest beginnin...
Feb 12, 2023•50 min•Season 4Ep. 55
In this conversation, Carl speaks with John Wolfstone. John is third-generation settler, working on the Traditional and Unceded territory of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok Peoples. His blood and bones hold Hebraic, Norse and Celtic ancestry, and his spirit is from the Stars. As a wilderness rites-of-passage guide, ritualist, community consultant, relationship coach, and transmedia story-teller, John is on a mission to reclamate adulthood initiation rites-of-passage. Holding space for the grea...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 54
Embodying Reverent Relationship with Marika Heinrichs What a pleasure to speak with Marika Heinrichs of Wildbody.ca about somatics, lineages, respect and repair - and what a delight to have such a rich and tender conversation in Rumi’s field that sits outside of any rigid and fixed ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing. I hope you enjoy this important conversation. Marika Heinrichs is the granddaughter of German Mennonite, British, and Irish settlers to the part of Turtle Island colonially know as ...
Sep 13, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 60
Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients. In a favorite audio program called How to be an Elder, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes says: “”What makes ...
Apr 21, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Animal Body, Deep Time and The Thing We All Long For: A Conversation with Josh Schrei Friends, we are delighted to share this recent conversation with Josh Schrei. Joshua Michael Schrei is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast. The Emerald combines evocative narrative, soul-stirring music, and interviews with award-winning authors and luminaries to explore the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. The Emerald draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and my...
Mar 23, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Tipping The Scales Toward Love & Goodness In this beautiful conversation with poet, writer, and teacher Mark Nepo, we begin exploring Mark’s beautiful take on what it means to be embodied. Throughout the conversation, we were blessed with Mark’s soulful readings of several of our favorites of his poems. We discuss how care can erase the walls we keep building between us, and how using our imagination in service of a more beautiful world is so needed in a time of polarized divisiveness. It’s ...
Jan 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Embodying Prayer and Soul Activism In this beautiful conversation, I speak to poet, facilitator and soul activist Nan Seymour, who also happens to be one of my dearest friends. We take as a springboard for our conversation Nan’s recently published book of poems called prayers not meant for heaven. Nan weaves several of her poems throughout the conversation and they’re beautiful. We talk about bio-cultural restoration, about the importance of writing and reading during these times, about the impo...
Jan 17, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Liam Bowler is a teacher, writer, father, bodyworker and hosts the Body Awake Podcast. He is the author of A Creator’s Companion, a beautiful book that explores the many elements of the process of creativity. In our conversation, we speak about embodiment, and embodiment as relationship, and how each of our understandings of embodiment has evolved over the years. We reflect together about creativity, and the necessity of courtship with the creative process. We speak about how creativity is not l...
Jan 05, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Ariella is a beekeeper, writer, teacher, musician and mother living in Northern California. Her work with honey bees came through a lifelong interest in human connection with the non-human world. She is a graduate of the Lyceum, a European shamanic pathway with the bee and the serpent as its central motifs. Within this tradition, she is trained in the healing and seership modality known as the Pollen Method. Her work is a fusion of her love for the natural world and embodied, womb-centric practi...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 6 min
We Were Made For These Times : A conversation with Kaira Jewel Lingo In this conversation with Kaira, we explore many rich topics including: embodiment and mindfulness as not separate her new book We Were Made For These Times the practice of coming home to ourselves applying these teachings in the mess of real life rather than just a monastic situation social justice and mindfulness and how each of these need each other the mantras of True Love from Thich Nhat Hanh powerful teachings from 2 monk...
Nov 28, 2021•1 hr 2 min
In this rich conversation with wise woman Pat McCabe we explore many topics including embodiment as a core practice of decolonization and her trouble with the word “decolonizing” healing after cultural severance through Indian boarding schools in family history and the power of growing a multi-faceted identity the importance of including the body in prayer (in her case through sweat lodge ceremony) The question: How do human beings live in such a way that we can support other life to thrive - as...
Nov 27, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Embodying Spontaneity: A Conversation With Jozef Frucek of Fighting Monkey In conversation, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Jozef Frucek. He and Linda Kapetanea are the creators of Fighting Monkey, which is a beautiful system that weaves together movement, learning, communication, creativity, improvisation and a re-imagination of the process and experience of aging. Jozef has studied deeply in Chinese medicine and martial arts along with having advanced degrees in voice and movement. H...
Nov 23, 2021•59 min
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...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 3Ep. 45
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 ance...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 7 min
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 an...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 34
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...
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Season 3Ep. 2
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 psycholog...
Mar 20, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 2
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: T oward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change was 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 outrag...
Feb 08, 2021•57 min•Season 3Ep. 1
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 ...
Sep 04, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 19
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 voi...
Aug 23, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 18
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 tra...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 17
A Mythic Response to Our Times In this profoundly deep and freewheeling conversation we cover so much soulful ground. We begin with one of our favorite topics that Michael Meade has been teaching on for years: Your innate genius. He tells of the origins of his teaching about genius with severely at-risk youth, and about how in honoring our unique genius we are all equal, across race, class, and other categories. We also explore the ancient notion that “the genius hides behind the wound,” made po...
Jun 28, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 16
