Alixa García is a Colombian born, globally-raised, multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and cultural activator whose work is imbued in ritual, spirit, and deep reverence for our Great Mother, Great Lover, our Earth. She is an award-winning activist, poet, and filmmaker. She is also a professional writer, visual artist, musician, and facilitator. Her work has been published by Whit Press, AK Press, Hatchett, & Daraja Press. Instagram and Linktree Alixa’s upcoming course on A Course on the Ima...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 34 min
Today on the show, we welcome Scott Kiloby and Toshi Matsunaga, authors of Awake But Sick, to explore the hidden emotional pain that can persist even after profound spiritual awakening. Their work challenges the common myths of nonduality and mindfulness, offering a deeper path through emotional repression, physical illness, and the illusion of immediate freedom. In this conversation, we explore the gap between awakening and true healing, the dangers of spiritual bypassing, and how to reconnect ...
Jun 12, 2025•57 min
Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen is a Historian of Religion, Ph.d from Uppsala University in Sweden. His research into Afro-diasporic strategies for maintaining animist reality in the modern world has lead him towards reading North European cultural history from the perspective of rejected animist knowledge and practice. The objective is to recover Euro-traditioanl forms of landconnectedness ecological knowledge and kinship with the greater community of beings. Rune has lived in a number of countries in Eu...
May 29, 2025•51 min
Wendy Elisheva Somerson (wes) is a non-binary Jewish somatic healer, writer, visual artist, and activist who helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. They facilitate Ruach, body-based Jewish healing groups held in an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, and feminist framework. As part of a movement of anti-Zionist Jews, they support Jewish healing from historical trauma and promote a liberatory future for Judaism and Jewishness beyond Zionism that includes a free Palestine. Today on the...
May 22, 2025•41 min
Join SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo in conversation with Aboriginal elders and authors Uncle Paul Callaghan and Uncle Paul Gordon for a powerful SAND Community Gathering (2023), “The Dreaming Path,” where they explored some of the profound Aboriginal teachings. Connect with Uncle Paul Gordon and dozens of other Indigenous speakers at the 7-Day The Eternal Song Gathering hosted live by SAND June 3-9 2025. “Our stories are not myths or legends or fables, they aren’t about dreams either...
May 15, 2025•1 hr
Abigail Rose Clarke is a somatic educator, writer, and creator of The Embodied Life Method. Her new book, Returning Home to Our Bodies: Reimagining the Relationship Between Our Bodies and the World, challenges the dominant narratives that treat our bodies as machines. Instead, she invites readers into a deeper relationship with the body as part of the living world. In this conversation, we explore embodiment as a political and spiritual practice, embodiment as a framework for systemic change, an...
May 08, 2025•54 min
This episode is a live recording from a recent SAND Community Gathering (April 2025) facilitated by Jungwon Kim. Join Buddhist scholars and activists Rev. Duncan Ryūken Williams, Ph.D. and Funie Hsu/Chhî, Ph.D. for an illuminating dialogue exploring the intersection of Buddhist practice and social transformation. This conversation weaves together Buddhism, remembrance, healing, and liberation, examining how the dharma offers both a path to personal awakening and Social-Spiritual Liberation. Our ...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Elizabeth Philipose, PhD has a lifelong passion for transformational arts and the expansion of consciousness. She has pursued this as an academic studying the causes and consequences of violence. Her focus is on healing relations between masculine and feminine, humans and nature, races, and nations. As a spiritual guide, she offers programs in decolonial wellness, spiritual principle, embodiment, meditation, and prayer. Elizabeth has been on her own journey to heal gender/racial traumas, old chu...
Apr 17, 2025•42 min
Today, we present a wild and flowering conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers, and theobiologians Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand . This conversation is from a 2022 SAND Community Gathering. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it here (with SAND Membership). In Greek Mythology, the Titan Kronos eats an indigestible stone and vomits up the new Olympic pantheon of gods. In our current time, people planted in stratigraphic layers of shared t...
Apr 10, 2025•57 min
From a recent SAND Community Gathering (March 2025) At a time when our world can feel increasingly divided, and many are retreating into isolation, civil rights scholar john a. powell offers a transformative approach to building connections across differences. Drawing from his groundbreaking work with the Othering & Belonging Institute and his own journey, john shows how to stop perceiving differences as threats and instead use them as opportunities for deeper understanding and collective gr...
Apr 03, 2025•54 min
From a recent SAND Community Gathering (March 2025) Join mental health clinician Linda Thai and writer Jungwon Kim for an in-depth conversation on intergenerational trauma, historical grief, and healing in community. Together, they explored psychological, spiritual, and communal reverberations of historical violence, framed within the context of U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, yet deeply relevant to other conflicts, past and present. They shared their experiences and observations of the complex ...
Mar 27, 2025•55 min
John J. Prendergast, PhD , is a spiritual teacher, author, retired psychotherapist, and retired adjunct professor of psychology who has taught at Esalen and Kripalu and online. He studied for many years with the sage Dr. Jean Klein as well as with the spiritual teacher Adyashanti. He is the author of the books In Touch, The Deep Heart and Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality ( SoundsTrue ). Topics: 00:00 Introduction 02:25 The Origin of 'Listening from Silence' 04:48 Exploring t...
Mar 20, 2025•54 min
From a recent SAND Community Gathering (Feb 2025) hosted by SAND co-founders, Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. Deep Medicine Circle (DMC), a collective of healers, farmers, artists, and storytellers, is challenging colonial structures by redefining health and wellbeing through practices that heal communities and restore connections to land. Led by Dr. Rupa Marya, Charlene Eigen-Vasquez, and Walter Riley, this visionary group is creating a holistic food and wellbeing model that nourishes both people an...
Mar 13, 2025•55 min
Today we present an anthology episode with SAND speaker, Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris (1936-2024) who passed in December 2024. Internationally known as a dynamic speaker, Dr. Sahtouris was an evolution biologist, futurist, professor, author and consultant on Living Systems Design. She taught the relevance of biological systems to organisational design in business, government and society. She was a Fellow of the World Business Academy, an advisor to EthicalMarkets.com and the Masters in Business progra...
Mar 06, 2025•44 min
This is a recording from the 2022 Community Conversation between with guest Iya Affo and SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo . Very few people are aware of the impact of historical trauma. Historical trauma is trauma so deeply rooted in the subconscious we may not even know it is there. It can leave us feeling anxious, irritable, sad, and hopeless… and we have no idea why. But once we begin to see the larger context of our trauma, then a more holistic healing can begin. Iya Affo is a Cult...
Feb 27, 2025•54 min
In this episode, Isa Gucciardi discusses depth hypnosis , combining shamanic practices, Buddhist psychology, transpersonal psychology, and energy medicine to assist individuals in healing from issues such as depression, anxiety, trauma, and more. Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. holds degrees in cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, and transpersonal psychology. She is the creator of Depth Hypnosis™, a groundbreaking therapeutic model that blends elements of ancient wisdom and contempo...
Feb 20, 2025•51 min
In this episode, our guest, Jeremy Lent, discusses the profound global upheaval in early 2025. We explore themes of hope and grief amid political, cultural, and environmental crises. Lent provides deep insights into systems thinking, emphasizing the importance of interconnectedness and unpredictability in complex systems. The conversation also holds space for the impact of reductionist thinking, the power of technology, and the potential for societal transformation through integrated intelligenc...
Feb 13, 2025•54 min
Today we explore the story of the Buddha’s awakening through a mythic lens with Buddhist writer and teacher, John Tarrant. We touch into topics like Zen koan, grief, death, art, and how this timeless parable of the Buddh’s story still resonants for thousands of years. John Tarrant is a Zen teacher, writer, and poet who has studied koans for over forty years. He is director of the Pacific Zen Institute and teaches culture change in organizations. Tarrant holds degrees in human sciences and Englis...
Feb 06, 2025•59 min
In this SAND Community Gathering (January 2025), journalist Naomi Klein and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté explored the complex intersection of collective trauma, political power, and memory in a discussion moderated by Cecilie Surasky. Drawing from Naomi’s recent analysis of how trauma has been weaponized in current conflicts, and Gabor’s deep understanding of trauma’s psychological impacts, their conversation examined how media narratives and political rhetoric weaponize fear and trauma to gain ...
Jan 30, 2025•1 hr 22 min
Rawan Roshni is in conversation to discuss the recent ceasefire announcement affecting Palestine and offers a poignant and emotional reflection on the situation. She shares stories from her displaced Palestinian heritage, detailing her family's survival and the ongoing trauma faced by Palestinians. We explore the healing modalities of sound, music, and the human voice and listen to two of her newest live pieces of music and poetry, “Al-Tuyoor: Messages from the Birds” and “Prophecy of Remembranc...
Jan 23, 2025•1 hr 4 min
In this live SAND Community Gathering (January 2025), SAND co-founders Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo welcome Darcia Narvaez, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, to discuss her interdisciplinary research on evolved morality, child development, and human flourishing. Narvaez shares insights from her book, The Evolved Nest, and explores the impact of modern parenting practices, the benefits of communal child-rearing, and the neurological and emotional development of childr...
Jan 16, 2025•55 min
Recorded live at a SAND Community Gathering (December 2024) hosted by Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. In this intimate conversation with poet and philosopher David Whyte and his wife, cultural architect Gayle Karen Young, explore the tender territories of grief, belonging and rest. Drawing from David’s new book Consolations II, this unique dialogue offers a glimpse into how two lives intertwine in both understanding and living these essential human experiences and how loss and heartbreak can become d...
Jan 09, 2025•56 min
Join us as we journey into the depths of winter’s sacred darkness with renowned wisdom keepers Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) and Francis Weller. Recorded on December 21, 2024, at SAND’s Winter Solstice gathering, this episode invites you into a virtual ceremonial space that honors the winter solstice as a powerful moment of transition and transformation. Through poetry, storytelling, and profound dialogue, McCabe and Weller guide us in exploring the sacred landscapes of loss and regeneration...
Dec 26, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Today we are in conversation with Ayurvedic doctor Dr. Avanti Kumar-Singh where we discuss longevity through the lens of intergenerational trauma, colonization, ecological collapse, and how the ancient practice of Ayurvedic medicine might contain remidies for what ails our modern health crises. Avanti Kumar-Singh, MD , is an internationally recognized Ayurveda and integrative medicine practitioner, certified yoga therapist, and former ER doctor. Her approach blends Western medicine with the anci...
Dec 19, 2024•51 min
Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo host this captivating conversation into divine and personal love with two modern-day mystics, held dear by SAND from a SAND Community Gaterhing from July 2023. Love, a powerful catalyst for transformation on the spiritual path, resonates at the core of our being. Through this dialogue, we will transcend the limitations of a narrow, individualized perception of love, immersing ourselves in the boundless realm of our true nature—a universal expression of pure love. Episco...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 4 min
In this important conversation examining the vital role of journalists and documentarians in conflict zones, Palestinian journalist, Mariam Barghouti and Jenin resident, Rawand Arqawi share their firsthand experiences with Palestinian trauma healer, Ashira Darwish, cutting through the fog of misinformation to reveal the human realities often obscured in Western mainstream narratives. Our guests shared first-hand experiences on reporting from Jenin and the broader region, exploring both the cruci...
Dec 05, 2024•51 min
“We are not walking through the world; we are interwoven with it. In everything we do, we participate in complexity.” –Neil Theise Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr. Theise’s studies in complexity theory have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields such as integrative medicine, consciousness studies, and scien...
Nov 28, 2024•53 min
Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology, who draws from his study of archetypal myths, ancestral wisdom and cross-cultural rituals to interpret our remarkable moment in human history. While many of us are attempting to recognize our own self-terminating patterns and inhabit new ways of being human, Michael helps us to see the stories we are living, and the new stories that are calling us. He is the author of many books, including The Genius ...
Nov 21, 2024•56 min
Standing for Collective Liberation “No one will be free if the others live under occupation. No one will be safe unless everyone is safe.” In this live SAND Community Gathering (November 2024) Zaya and Maurizio were in discussion with Palestinian and Israeli peace activists Osama lliwat & Rotem Levin who share their personal stories, describe the reality on the ground, and explain their vision for a path toward collective liberation. Osama lliwat was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Jericho,...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 10 min
Manda Scott is an award-winning novelist and host of the acclaimed Accidental Gods podcast. Best known for the Boudica: Dreaming series, her previous novels have been short-listed for the Orange Prize, the Edgar, Wilbur Smith and Saltire Awards and won the McIllvanney Prize. Her latest novel ANY HUMAN POWER is a Mytho-Political thriller which lays out a Thrutopian road map to a flourishing future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. With degrees in veterinary medicine an...
Nov 07, 2024•51 min
