Humans and Earth: Recent Episodes
Chara Armon
The Humans and Earth Podcast offers inspiration and practical resources for healing our planet and ourselves. We interview environmental regeneration experts, Earth-oriented wellness mentors, and spiritual teachers. It's time for humanity to collaborate with Earth to restore her flourishing and our own. Listen to gain support for your contributions to regeneration.
Dr. Saskia von Diest teaches and facilitates nature communication. She holds a PhD in plant pathology from Stellenbosch University in South Africa and has deep experience communicating with plants and animals. In 2025 her organization, Ecofluency, won a Gold Award for Innovation from the EcoLogic Awards. Learn more about Ecofluency at www.ecofluency.org
Hear us discuss:
- How we can open our hearts to deeply interacting with all life on Earth and gracefully support other people who are considering these methods yet drawing back in fear.
- Nature communication as a critical skill for future resilience and harmonious relationships.
- How nature communication offers a sense of belonging and relationship in a time of epidemic loneliness.
- Current researchers bringing nature communication into scientific research.
- Why “This world does not need the absence of humans: it needs our full human presence.”
- What it means for us to be a keystone species that is beneficial and even crucial on Earth.
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After a health diagnosis prompted him to transition from working as a personal trainer and dietician to serving as a life coach and Conscious BioExistence Practitioner, Gonzalo Corts became an expert in decoding the body’s messages. As a coach and healer he specializes in helping clients discover the subconscious programs and ancestral root causes that limit their health, relationships, and finances. Hear him discuss:
- The bio-logical side of things: why symptoms make sense and how they’re guiding us.
- German New Medicine—how it developed and has influenced his work.
- What to do if you want to engage in self-development but are holding back.
- Benefits you can experience from mind-body healing focused on root causes.
- How to persist on your healing or self-development path for your own empowerment. “You can’t hire someone to do your push-ups for you.”
www.gonzalocorts.com
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Therapist, sound healer, and somatics expert Paula Scatoloni merges her conventional and holistic expertise to help students in her programs find integration and wholeness. She uses science-based sound protocols, along with shamanic, embodiment, and energy healing approaches, to support her students’ soul alignment and purposeful contributions to the world.
Hear Paula share why:
- You want to learn somatics (body-centered awareness) if you’re facing any big decisions or transitions: “your embodied wisdom is really where the answers are.”
- “You are a tuning fork--you’re emanating a frequency and it’s time for us to become more aware of what that frequency is that we’re emanating and how it affects other people.”
- “To be a heart-centered leader, helper, change-agent, or parent at this time, we start with the body, we get to know ourselves, and as healing happens our capacity increases.”
Find Paula's courses and programs at www.paulascatoloni.com
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From working in corporate to photographing child factory labor in Asia before beginning a longtime career as a psychotherapist, then becoming a channel of Earth and Sun through her company Vast Earth, Rachel Pfotenhauer now develops channeled herbal facial products and perfumes through her new company, Sun Raya.
Hear Rachel discuss these aspects of her path of soulful authenticity thus far:
- A major recent identity shift involving collapse of ego and ancestral patterning, nervous system renewal, and stepping into deep present-moment awareness.
- How this major shift is changing her nervous system and bringing her into embodiment of her soul gifts and helping others discover theirs.
- What has enabled her to stay on her soulful path.
- The alignment process that helps you see your biggest or next purpose and how to bring it into reality.
- Her ceremonial process of making channeled, energy-infused facial products and perfumes imprinted with Earth, Sun, and Love energies.
For a discount on Sun Raya products, use code ALIGHT20.
https://sunrayaperfumes.com/ https://vast-earth.com/about/
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How did a fashion designer trained in Italy and a lacrosse coach/urban composting activist become married farmers stewarding a historic farm in collaboration with land, sheep, and plants?
Tune in to hear Anne and David Darling’s extraordinary story of:
- Serendipity, guidance, collaborations with nature and spirit, and life-changing decision points.
- The amazing process of David being partially gifted a large historic farm, then meeting Anne in a surprising way.
- Their journey of land restoration in partnership with Spirit and “gathering celestial light.”
- How even a dream come true can start with no kitchen and septic problems!
Find the Farm’s offerings at https://www.thefarmatcatawissacreek.com/
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Hear clinical herbalist Rabia Jones discuss her understanding of why “people really want to be able to heal themselves, more than ever,” and how this connects to self-empowerment and sovereignty. Rabia shares about her training with Dr. Tieraona Low Dog and:
· How growing and preparing your own herbal medicine can be easier and more empowering than people realize.
· Why working with the plants that grow around you is your birthright.
· Her clear knowing as a teen that training as an herbalist was all she wanted to do, and how that early loyalty to her intuition has impacted her life for the good.
· Why that inner compass and intuition matter for the world around you and its necessary shifts or healings.
Find Rabia’s online herbal consultations and Philadelphia-area courses at www.rabiasremedies.com
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Are you feeling guided to make a transition of some kind? Hear Shan Massucco discuss how.
- After two MBA degrees, a successful career in the beauty industry, a stroke in her 30s, and an eventual transition to working as a healer and shaman, Shan affirms: “Every human being has these abilities; it’s just, how much are you paying attention?”
- What happened when she said ‘yes’ to a new chapter in her life, using all her gifts? “It was terrifying…I jumped off a big ledge, but it’s a funny thing when you start listening to your inner guidance: you land in a better place than you ever could have imagined.”
- “When you’re urged, it’s because there IS a better place for you to land; you don’t have to stay in the thing you were in for so long.”
- How to find people you can talk to about how your life is unfolding.
- Why your big leaps benefit others through a ripple effect.
Find Shan’s sessions, retreats, and group offerings at www.shandivinehealing.com
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Hear Dr. Dalia Elimam, an Egyptian pediatrician turned energy medicine expert, speak about the wholeness she feels as she practices both conventional medicine and energy medicine. Listen to Dr. Dalia describe:
- Her path of high-level conventional medicine training
- The surprising circumstance that led her to explore energy medicine
- Energy medicine from a physician's perspective
- Simple techniques you can use to calm your nervous system
Find Dr. Elimam's work at https://www.blissenergymedicinellc.com/
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How can your intuition transform your work & life?
Janet Doerr is a Medical Intuitive, Master Energy Healer, and Ascension Guide who uses her multidimensional gifts of perception, connection with the Company of Heaven, and range of healing techniques to provide transformative results for her clients.
Hear Janet describe:
- Her transition from a corporate career to her work as a medical intuitive and energy healer.
- How her own self-healing experiences were a catalyst for her new type of work.
- Ways to listen to your intuition as you shape your life.
- A question that can light your way out of feeling stuck or confused.
- Why compassion for other people is more of an active contribution than you might think.
- Why so many people are feeling emotional tumult right now.
Find Janet's free gift at https://bit.ly/Transform-Your-Energy
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Welcome to the launch of the Alight Podcast! Our episodes bolster your optimism and clarity, offer you practical skills for soulful self-care and conscious creativity, and encourage you to know and be your authentic, soulful self.
We’re living in a time of great shift for people and Earth, so many of us feel the urge to contribute something distinctive, bright, and beautiful.
*New interview series launching in October 2025*
Learn how to:
- Contribute to the world from your wholeness: expand your well-being so you offer your service, of whatever type, from the strongest place possible.
- Transform our world with your light by trusting your heart’s guidance.
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Hear an update on the podcast, why the podcast has been on pause, and what my new offering is.
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Whether Rachael Te Wano is in sessions with clients or leading travel to sacred lands, she shares tools of embodiment and self-activation. She helps her clients align with their highest potential, unravel the threads of their destiny, heal at the origin, and activate the inherent wisdom within their DNA. She loves to say, “a grounded women will change the world.” Find her work at www.rachaeltewano.com
Rachael is a deeply grounded, peaceful, and empowered healer, teacher, and guide. In our conversation, she shares:
- Why grounding to your own Earth Star Chakra is your solid foundation. “To be embodied, stable, and deeply connected opens up a space for us to vibrate at a higher frequency and be aligned to our inner voice.”
- How grounding to your Earth Star Chakra helps if you’re feeling resistant to life on Earth, and teaches you about authentic connection.
- How to ground to your own Earth Star Chakra. “This is our birthright: to receive this beautiful re-weaving of connection to Mother.”
- It’s an exercise in receiving, which for many of us isn’t a strong area.
- She’s seen grounding to the Earth Star Chakra help people heal mentally and physically and heighten their creativity and empowerment.
- Why embodied spirituality is important: if it’s not enhancing your everyday reality, what’s the point?
- How she learned about self-transformation by healing her finger that was scheduled for amputation.
- What Ocean taught her this year about our relationship with Earth’s waters.
- What happens when you live as a custodian of the land you inhabit.
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Can we create our reality? Hear renowned coach Abiola Abrams and Chara discuss:
- Why it matters for us to take full responsibility for our lives and manifest consciously, not unconsciously.
- Why it’s important to realize that the mindset and manifestation approaches taught in recent decades actually are age-old and global and connect to neuroscience.
- The new discovery that some of the past century’s prominent mindset teachings originated from a black Ethiopian rabbi who taught in New York in the 1920s.
- 3 simple tools for being a conscious co-creator and a conscious receiver of what you desire to experience.
- Why this isn’t spiritual bypassing or toxic positivity.
- How your self-transformation can help heal and re-story the world
- What to do if you’re having trouble believing in what you desire to create.
“The shift I want to invite everyone to make is to realize that we all are infinitely powerful …and allow ourselves the expansiveness to think about possibilities…” Abiola Abrams
ABIOLA ABRAMS is an award-winning author of FROM IMAGINATION TO REALITY and AFRICAN GODDESS INITIATION, in addition to being an intuitive coach, keynote speaker and columnist, creator of goddess oracle cards, and faculty member of The Omega Institute, The Shift Network, and Hay House Summits. Abiola studied sociology at Sarah Lawrence College and has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Abiola is mommy to Ruby and the first-generation American daughter of multi-generational healers, seers, and farmers in Guyana, South America, who are descended from several West African nations. She is passionate about midwifing conscious leaders to breakthrough and using her gifts to inspire, uplift, and transform. Learn more about her work at womanifesting.com and on social media at @abiolaTV. Find a free gift from Abiola at https://u.womanifesting.com/p/free-goddess-receiving-workbook
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Hear about the miracles, acts of kindness, and learning I've experienced recently with the passing of my dog...and about the wild animal babies showing me life's renewal.
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After giving presentations on the dangers of climate change, Leah Rampy became convinced that something was missing from the conversations. With experience as a teacher, professor, corporate and nonprofit executive, and leadership consultant, she began a decades-long journey to understand what lies beneath our unwillingness to change our interactions with the natural world. Her growing commitment to re-weaving soul and Earth has been informed by leading pilgrimages and retreats, extensive reading and research, her contemplative practice, and the wisdom of the living world. She is the author of the new book, Earth and Soul: Reconnecting Amid Climate Chaos.
Listen to hear Leah’s insights on how:
- Presenting people with facts about climate change usually isn’t enough to shift behavior.
- Welcoming people into relationality and kinship works much better.
- Dealing with your overwhelm and discerning what you can contribute will bring you ease.
- Nature models interdependent sharing of resources, showing us how to think not in terms of scarcity and competition, but abundance and mutual benefit.
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Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate ActionNetwork (WECAN). She works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. She is the author of the award-winning book Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature, and her new book, The Story Is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. Learn more at https://ospreyoriellelake.earth
In our conversation, Osprey shares:
- When systems are crumbling, as they are now, we must decide what we want to create instead.
- We’re in a process of composting systems of oppression and co-creating with the web of life the world that we want to live in.
- Why it’s crucial to listen to women and Indigenous and black and brown communities if we want to lift everyone up and support the web of life.
- Why “we need community as we tend to the world.”
- How to be aware of your ancestral connection to land.
- How to engage in solution-building so you feel less overwhelmed.
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Find Humans & Earth on Instagram at @schoolhumansearth https://www.instagram.com/schoolhumansearth/
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Kate Neligan is an equine-partnered life and business coach, healer, and animal communicator who is devoted to the human-animal bond. Kate pairs her intuitive gifts with those of horses and goats to help people access their own inner power and life purpose. She works with both high-performing women and companies in developing mindful cultures through team-building and leadership retreats. Kate has a Master’s in Spiritual Psychology and is certified in equine experiential education. She is the creator of Awakening With Equines, a first-if-its kind certification program for equine-partnered facilitators, and an Awakening With Equines card deck that highlights horse wisdom qualities. Find her at www.kateneligan.com
Tune in to hear Kate discuss:
- What it’s like to experience animal-partnered coaching.
- How horses, donkeys, and goats offer us unique types of support, including energy work.
- The higher way for us to treat animals and how we can dismantle speciesism and outgrow old patterns of domination of animals.
- How animals and plants are waiting for our next-level collaboration.
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Find Humans & Earth on Instagram at @schoolhumansearth https://www.instagram.com/schoolhumansearth/
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Do you ever think about how all cultures have important myths and stories about transformation? Tune in to hear:
- Why transformation is core to who we are as humans
- Signs of transformation already occurring in our world
- Why transformation is something we have to choose
- Why individual transformation leads the way for collective transformation
- How to craft your own transformative story about what humans and nature accomplish together in the 21st century
Hear the story of Sedna and why it's important for you to design your own transformative story that will help guide us forward as humans on Earth.
The natural world is waiting for us to choose transformation.
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What does it mean to be part of the democracy of frequency?
We all get to choose, in any moment, what frequency we are holding: rage or despair, joy or peace; fear or irritation, love or inspiration, discontent or gratitude. As we can learn from wise voices such as recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nargess Mohammadi, or others such as Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, and Immaculee Ilibagiza, even when we are imprisoned in dire circumstances, we have a choice about what our internal energetic and emotional state is, and what we are then able to offer to the world.
Tune in to hear how:
- Choosing our energetic state may be our highest contribution to healing our planet and harmonizing the human-Earth relationship. This is because life on Earth operates as a democracy of interconnected lives, or a grand symbiotic system in which countless lives are intertwined, continually influencing one another via their frequency, decisions, and actions.
- Each of us gets to choose whether we are emitting muddy or dim light, or bright, vibrant, light that brings greater beauty and regenerative creativity to the world.
- You can curate your frequency and contributions through a 4-step process.
- This can be easy at times, and an uphill climb at others, yet it's not spiritual bypassing. I offer examples.
- The democracy of frequency and the options it offers you are likely going to be make or break in what happens here on Earth. Those who believe there’s still plenty of hope for humanity and the Earth are the ones who are opening pathway after pathway for us to live in harmony with one another and the Earth.
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Whether you believe our world is healing or floundering toward disaster depends on which evidence you notice.
In this episode, hear me discuss the views of the climate experts I recently heard advocating for perspectives of hopelessness.
This episode helps you consider whether you want to wilt or stand tall in the face of all that’s occurring in our world. Tune in to hear the two options, then explore suggestions of how you can make the choice you feel is wisest and most helpful.
You'll then hear why I think it's crucial right now to distinguish between 20th c. sustainability viewpoints that are now outmoded and 21st. c. regenerative viewpoints that are deeper, more inclusive, and have the potential to transform life on this planet into tremendous flourishing.
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Find Humans & Earth on Instagram at @schoolhumansearth https://www.instagram.com/schoolhumansearth/
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In this episode, hear inspiring 'good news' stories and how courage is contagious in the best way.
Hear whose courage has lit my path.
Then join me in reflecting on whose courage influences you, and how you want your acts of courage and regeneration to spread beneficially to others as we care for one another and our planet.
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Paul Moss is co-founder and executive director of The Plant Initiative https://plantinitiative.org a nonprofit organization started in 2020 that works collaboratively with others to advance respectful treatment of plants. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota in the department of Geography, Environment and Society, where he is focusing on the relationship between people and plants. He has an undergraduate degree in biology, and masters' degrees in agronomy and marketing.
Paul speaks about:
- His life-long connection with plants and respect for their sophistication.
- Plants as intelligent, responsive, and sentient beings, not objects, and the ethical issues these discoveries raise for human treatment of plants.
- The need for more people and organizations to advocate for the respectful treatment of plants, including in agriculture and the human diet.
- When we harm plants we harm ourselves, and when we help them, we help ourselves.
- How new scientific discoveries are leading us beyond our tendency to objectify and devalue plants, and books and talks to explore if you want to know more.
- Intuitive communication with plants.
- How cultural assumptions are way behind our actual scientific and intuitive insights about plants’ complexity and intelligence.
- Practical ways we can treat plants with respect, care, reciprocity, and gratitude and work toward creating a “worldwide democracy of all beings.”
Thanks for listening! Kindly leave us a review so more people can discover the show.
Find Humans & Earth on Instagram at @schoolhumansearth https://www.instagram.com/schoolhumansearth/
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In this sequel to Episode 44, Regenerative Collaboration in Science & Spirituality, I talk about how we can see the story of Regenerative Collaboration gaining strength in today’s world.
Tune in to:
Consider 4 Principles of Regenerative Collaboration.
Learn 3 ways to participate: there are many things you can do if you want to help humanity move more into Regenerative Collaboration.
Hear how you can help others see that living in collaboration with other people and with the natural world brings flourishing, not loss.
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- What does it mean to you to contribute to regeneration for people and planet?
- Are you contributing in the ways you want to?
- And are you thriving at the level you desire?
- How can you translate what our podcast speakers say into your own life so that you and Earth both benefit?
In this episode, I talk about the importance of letting go of the blocks that prevent us from making the contributions we desire to make in the world. I share some of what I’ve learned about how resolving trauma and claiming your authenticity affect your readiness to offer your talents or compassion to the world.
This matters because your individual transformations impact planetary healing.
Your transition beyond what’s blocking you can be a collaboration with global transformations occurring for humanity and the natural world.
Your healing or upleveling is part of humanity’s healing and upleveling.
I also talk about the new Guide to Healing: Resources for Self-Empowerment now available on the Humans & Earth website.
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Do you feel discouraged about our future on Earth but want to feel optimistic?
Listen to hear good news about people around the world who are supporting one another and restoring Earth. Experience how your outlook changes when you're informed about signs of well-being and regeneration.
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Reverend Rhetta Morgan is an interfaith minister, facilitator, artist and healer. Her work encompasses the intersections of spirituality, creativity and activism, all rooted in an intention to work and live in a more just world. She currently facilitates Anti-Bias work for the Anti-Defamation League, leads The Ecclesia Fortify Circle, a group that supports activists to develop spiritual practices, and recently returned from South Africa working as facilitator and healer with Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity. Find her at www.reverendrhetta.com
If you want to be in service to love on this planet at this time, what can that look like?In this interview, Rhetta Morgan discusses how to do the inner work needed so you can face domination in a potent way:
In this tough time in our culture, it’s easy to lose touch with our vision for what we desire instead. Touching on awe can be regenerative for those who are feeling exhausted. “There is a way in which we can infuse the most difficult circumstances with a sense of power, awe, and sacredness.”
We can face exactly where we are and how we feel, yet also take an empowered, compassionate, and visionary stance. This involves working with all of our identities, from victim to awe-maker, change-maker, and community nurturer.
Wholeness and oneness are the lenses she finds most powerful: “It’s not about winning. The ‘right side’ is the ‘whole side,’ as healthy as we can get it.”
It's time to believe in the legitimacy of your sense of mission or calling. “You’ve got to have a declaration: I am here to support this time! I am here to do what I can in this time.” Our ancestors and the planet require it. We must ask, “Who do I need to become so that I can answer that heart call?”
“I like to imagine the electromagnetic field of Earth claiming me so that as I move, I move in service to her.”
“I like to live as if it is possible for justice to be the way of the world…I am in the ‘yes’ of what is possible…We are called to stand before the ways culture works now and offer a different way.”
Thanks for listening! Kindly leave us a review so more people can discover the show.
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Deborah Eden Tull is a Zen meditation and mindfulness teacher, author, activist, and sustainability educator. She spent seven years training as a Buddhist monk and has been living in sustainable communities for over 25 years. She teaches engaged awareness practice, which emphasizes the connection between personal awakening and global engagement. Eden draws upon teachings from the natural world and an embodied understanding of animism. She is the author of Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown and other books. Eden offers retreats, online courses, and consultations internationally. To learn more, go to DeborahEdenTull.com.
If you’re an activist or a spiritual person, do you need ‘endarkenment’ as much as ‘enlightenment’? Hear Eden Tull explain in this interview why her answer is a resounding ‘yes.’
In this conversation, Eden and I discuss:
- Why our ‘outer work’ of activism or contribution needs to be supported by ‘inner work’ that feeds compassion, resilience, and purpose. We are wildly creative beings who are meant to experience darkness “as the field of absolute rest and regeneration” that inspires our creativity.
- A ‘dark time’ can be a personal experience or an experience a people or culture are going through. It can be ‘dark’ as in ‘unpleasant,’ or ‘dark’ as in ‘mysterious, uncertain or visionary.’
- It’s counter-cultural to embrace darkness. But darkness includes beautiful halves of our reality such as the night, sleep, rest, interiority, sadness, wisdom, crisis, and fertile soil.
- Ignoring darkness within and without can be a mistake because suppressing or ignoring our grief or horror at the world’s suffering prevents us from acting in healing ways.
- Darkness can be a fertile space where we listen and discover creative solutions that are based in fierce compassion. “It’s in metabolizing our grief that we’re freed up to act in more constructive and creative ways.”
- How her book offers a structure for going into ‘dark’ spaces—whether meditation, open inquiry, or grief for a planet in crisis—and letting them be fertile instead of without life. Endarkenment can be a process of transmuting pain into vision and vitality.
- “We need to wake up more fully to our partnership with nature”—not by seeing ourselves as separate, but “by recognizing our innate oneness with the more than human world and Gaia consciousness…when we do this, we receive guidance and information.”
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Nina Simons is the co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer at Bioneers and leads its Everywoman’s Leadership program. Bioneers is a nonprofit that uses media, convening, and connecting to lift up visionary and practical solutions for many of our most pressing social and ecological challenges, revealing a regenerative and equitable future that’s within our reach today. Nina is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about reinventing leadership, restoring the feminine, and co-creating a healthy, peaceful, and equitable world for all. Throughout her career spanning the nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, corporate, and philanthropic sectors, Nina has worked with nearly a thousand diverse women leaders across disciplines, race, class, age, orientation, and more to create conditions for mutual learning and leadership development. She is the author of Nature, Culture, & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, and of Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart.
Hear Nina discuss:
- “We are in a paradigm shift from an ‘I’ culture to a ‘we’ culture.” “We are collectively co-creating a new world.”
- “The Earth needs us all to be leaders now.” And hierarchical models of leadership won’t provide the restoration that is needed.
- Her experience of redefining leadership as non-hierarchical and collaborative so that it became a role she could accept. What humans and Earth need is a “full-spectrum leadership” that departs from patriarchal values and instead values both feminine and masculine strengths and contributions. This leadership honors bodily and emotional wisdom as much as rational thought.
- We need to recognize that vital forms of leadership include parenting, art-making, teaching…”There are probably as many expressions of leadership as we are human beings.”
- “The most inspiring leaders I know are those that can show up with vulnerability and not knowing, turn to each other for help, and exercise what I call relational intelligence. They’re helping create a culture where transformation is possible.” We all become leaders by supporting these skills in ourselves and others.
- Our whole culture is up for review and renewal. We need to nurture this within models of regeneration, not depletion of self, others, and our planet. “It’s not really our power we’re reclaiming, it’s actually the power of life’s energy coming through us.”
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Hear David Nicol, Ph.D. eloquently describe the big picture of humanity's long journey of relationship with Earth and how we're now ready to create dynamic transformation to benefit all life.
David discusses how those of us alive today are undergoing the personal and collective initiation of releasing outmoded patterns of hierarchy and stepping into co-creating new ways of collaborating with one another and our planet. The inner soulful journey many are experiencing is mirrored by the social, political, and environmental transformations we are endeavoring to co-create.
He notes how this is an egalitarian, inclusive process of transformation that welcomes each person's or being's sovereignty, individuality, and unique insights and abilities. He also explains how he sees a consciousness of healing and peace growing world-wide.
This conversation originally aired on the NEO Network in 2022.
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Listen to Rachel Pfotenhauer discuss how you can directly connect to Earth to strengthen your well-being and hers.
This interview originally aired on the New Earth One Network in February of 2022 and is now available here on the Humans and Earth podcast.
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We’re experiencing a revolution in our understandings about how life on planet Earth really works. Hear why collaboration is actually how things are meant to function on Earth, and why that’s good news for anyone who cares about healing our planet and human well-being. I talk about what this means for your sense of hope, your own thriving, and your experience of connection to the people, plants, and animals with whom you co-exist on this lovely planet we call Earth.
In this episode I cover:
- New scientific findings that are identifying collaboration as perhaps the most vital aspect of how life on Earth thrives
- Evidence of how human cultures have been leaning more into collaboration for the past three centuries
- What this means for your well-being and for our joint work of restoring our planet and human well-being.
Despite the messiness occurring on planet Earth, there’s evidence everywhere that we’re outgrowing mistaken stories of domination and hierarchy. This is a thrilling time to be alive as science and spirituality converge in conversations about how we can renew life on Earth by witnessing and encouraging the collaborations that are fundamental to how Earth’s systems function.
Collaboration is a key to turning life on Earth from foundering to flourishing.
It’s up to us which story we choose, and which story we live inside.
Life on Earth is complex right now! Whether you are alert to refugee crises, signs of environmental damage and climate change, severe storms, health effects from air and water pollution, or social and political turmoil, you could make a list of a lot of things that worry you or even lead you to feel despair.
But are the anxiety and eco-anxiety that have become normal our best response to the crises we face? Neuroscience and the history of activism suggest an alternative approach that’s more beneficial for us as individuals, and far more effective for healing our world. We’re learning that:
· Anxiety creates a freeze response in our brains that shuts down the optimism and innovation needed to solve crises.
· People who bemoan social problems or environmental problems often make few or no contributions to solutions.
· Neuroscientist Rick Hanson describes the human brain’s state of anxiety, stress, and pessimism as the activity of our reactive (and more primitive) ‘red brain.’ Conversely, our ‘green brain’ state is our responsive (and more evolved) mode of confidently meeting challenges and enjoying life’s pleasures without getting stuck in the stress response.
· We can see the effects of red brain and green brain play out in human history and the work of current activists such as Wangari Maathai and Boyan Slat.
· It may be fashionable to moan and complain in ‘red brain’ and talk about our dystopian future, but I challenge you to realize that actually we are designed to respond creatively to our world, not sit frozen in despair.
· If you want to suffer less and help a lot more, learn to curate your ‘green brain.’ Listen in to learn how.
· Living as much as possible in green brain allows you to be someone who assists with regeneration for people and planet, rather than someone who holds us back.
Karen Lorre helps people release unconscious blocks so they can have priceless results. She is the best-selling author of three books, Chronic Pleasure, Effortless Enchantment, and Chronic Pleasure in Relationships. Karen’s work has been endorsed by Deepak Chopra, Bruce Lipton, and Gay Hendricks. She has had a lifelong interest in epigenetics, neuroscience, health, and spirituality. Karen is also an actress who has done over a thousand hours of TV, films and commercials. Earlier in her life, Karen went through intense emotional and physical challenges that doctors could not seem to heal. This led her to discover ways to transform her fatigue and pain into vibrant energy and chronic pleasure. She now lives a life of magnetism and miracles and teaches others how to do the same. You can access her books for free at https://www.karenlorrecoaching.com/book-downloads
Hear Karen discuss:
- How she went from feeling that the world was too troubled for her to want to stay in it, to realizing that a focus on problems holds them in our reality.
- Her discovery that when you are solutions-focused, you continually encounter people who are bringing next-level solutions to the world and you see how you can contribute.
- Her exploration of sustainable and regenerative agriculture’s benefits and how she supports local farmers.
- How Blissipline took her out of serious chronic illness to her current state of thriving, joy, and mentoring others. “Blissipline creates a momentum” that lets you create from your desire rather than responding to the world from worry or fear.
- The best contributions arise out of love. People think worry and stress lead to creativity, but actually, if you’re feeling good, that’s when your opportunities appear. “I think, I love this planet. I love nature and want to support it any way that I can. I love seeing nature thriving.” And as you focus in this way, opportunities for your contribution become clear.
- How you can choose to be influenced by either the world’s ‘bad news’ or ‘good news,’ and how this affects your brain’s reticular activating system, your neuroplasticity, and your perceptions of life.
- What to do if this kind of conversation doesn’t feel ‘realistic’ to you.
Do you know what plant essences are, how they differ from essential oils, and how to use them? And are you aware that energy or frequency medicine of this type is increasingly being documented by scientific research?
Tune in to hear:
- Definitions of what plant essences are and how we can understand their medicine.
- How plant essences are helpful, and how they often come into our lives serendipitously.
- 3 stories about my recent experiences with plant essences.
- Suggestions about how you can benefit from plant essences and how to buy or make them.
- How working with plant essences is part of our collaboration with nature and part of how we can heal and empower ourselves.
Dr Saskia von Diest has been communicating with various forms of nature for the last ten years, much of which she spent researching how intuitive interspecies communication can be used in agriculture. She holds a PhD in plant pathology from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and her research has investigated subtle agricultural techniques and technologies that use sound, electromagnetics, catalytic substances and human intuitive abilities in decision making on farms. In 2021, she founded Ecofluency to consult, teach, and facilitate nature communication. As a South African of Caucasian and Indian descent, she is committed to healing the internal, ancestral and socio-cultural damage that privilege, sexism and racism cause in the world through her work of helping people connect to their more-than-human relations in the natural world. Find her at www.ecofluency.org
Hear us discuss:
- Saskia’s definition of Ecofluency as “the science, the art, and the magic of communicating with nature” in ways that benefit all beings.
- Saskia discovery: “I’ve not met a single person who can’t do it: it’s just a matter of willingness…all of us are born with this ancient skill of two-way dialogue with more-than-human nature.” Our intuitive abilities are just as much a part of us as our physical senses.
- How to have a collaborative and respectful conversation with an other-than-human being with Saskia\s signature focus on ethics, boundaries, and safety for all participants.
- The support a person can gain from communicating with other-than-human beings, who often are “bigger, older, wiser, stronger, cleverer, and kinder” than we are and very willing to uphold us in our growth and contributions. The first insight she gained when she first experienced nature communication was “I don’t have to feel alone anymore.”
- Nature communication invites stepping away from the over-stimulation of our world, calming your nervous system, and allowing yourself to lean on powers that are greater than your conscious self. Nature communication is grounding and centering as it connects you to the network of life, which can feel especially good if you are experiencing loneliness.
- How hearing nature’s voices can alleviate your pain about the state of things in our world.
- How nature communication carried her through a spiritual/mental health crisis, and how it is an act of cultural repair.
This is a story about a way to respond when you feel helpless to assist the natural world but want to feel more empowered. It’s about an endeavor to save a small turtle trapped in traffic, and how to proceed when your efforts to help don’t go as planned. Listen to hear how to respond to the world with your intention and frequency as well as your actions.
You can feel empowered knowing that you’re placing your energy and time in the service of your love for Earth.
This is about more than practical action: it’s also about ‘voting’ with your energy and your frequency by aligning with the intention of supporting life.
This interview is for anyone who is a change-maker, anyone who wonders why conflict resolution in our world seems stuck, anyone who has experienced trauma, or anyone who feels held back in your own process of inner shift.
Dr. Cathleen King is an expert on trauma recovery, inner healing, and how consciousness shifts create personal and collective transformation. She has the rare combination of in-depth doctoral-level education and training, over 20 years coaching others in the health field, and having gone through her own heroine’s journey of spending two decades of her life navigating debilitating illness. She speaks to transformation based on deep personal experience. In her youth she lived with poverty, family addiction and illiteracy, homelessness, and violence. In young adulthood serious illnesses kept her bed-bound for years. She is now living out her calling as an Oracle of Primal Trust to liberate others from trauma consciousness. She holds a doctorate degree in Physical Therapy with post-graduate training in orthopedic manual therapy and somatic movement and neuroscience. Her additional training has focused primarily on neuroplasticity-based healing methods and numerous brain limbic system rewiring programs. Find her at www.primaltrust.org and on Instagram at primaltrust_drcat
Hear us discuss:
- Why do humans have a hard time treating one another and Earth with loving kindness? One reason is the emotional dysregulation most of us experience because we were never taught to care for our own nervous systems. Planetary healing depends on individuals regulating their nervous systems because creative solutions emerge from serene, regulated nervous systems, not panicked ones.
- If you are having difficulty stepping into your calling, desired work, or goals, you likely have a dysregulated nervous system. Hear about ways to orient your nervous system toward stability and optimal functioning.
- If we were all self-regulated adults, able to calm our nervous systems and respond instead of react, the way we would interact with one another and society would be completely different. “Peace on Earth begins in our own nervous system.”
- How to work with neuroplasticity, brain retraining and somatics as tools for personal transformation and world transformation.
- How do we move beyond us vs. them perspectives that maintain conflict among people, and go beyond the victim consciousness that underlies that oppositional view?
- ‘Yelling at people about how wrong they are does nothing to create change…your nervous system needs to create a field of coherence to be able to have a conversation with someone with an opposing view.” We’re observing people with incoherent nervous systems yelling at one another without listening or reaching resolution. What’s needed is for people to feel safe internally in order to handle others’ different views and then look for solutions to conflict.
- Anyone who seeks to be a transformative presence in the world needs to cultivate nervous system safety.
John Lockley is a shaman trained in the Xhosa tradition of South African shamanic culture. He is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated sangoma in the Xhosa lineage. He is the author of the book Leopard Warrior. Find him at johnlockley.com
Hear John discuss:
- How he experienced the invitation to shamanism, why the path opens through invitation, not choice, and why his training was essential for the recovery of his health after years of illness. “Part of taking your power back is realizing, I am in complete control of my own healing.”
- How apartheid delayed his training, and what it has meant to be a white man trained in the Xhosa tradition.
- His Xhosa shamanic name and its indication of his role as a bridge between the spirit and physical worlds, and between the Xhosa African and western worlds.
- How he distinguishes between shamanic illness and soul sickness, why he believes soul sickness is now so common in the western world, and how he believes it can be healed.
- Ubuntu: ‘I am who I am because of who we all are.’ And what it means now for humans and Earth, given ubuntu's presence in world religions, not only African understanding.
- “We as human beings are the custodians of mother Earth—we have a responsibility to look after the plants, the soil…”
- “We have to learn the language of the wilderness in order to save the wilderness, and the language of the wilderness is the language of the heart.”
Do you ever have the experience of suggesting a restorative, healing, or otherwise helpful idea and hearing someone tell you it sounds good but isn’t practical?
We don’t need to let our sense of what’s practical limit our creation of solutions to the problems people and planet are facing.
We are in a position right now on planet Earth where solutions are badly needed.
- If you care about bringing solutions into being, it’s important to not let yourself feel shut down when others meet your ideas with the statement that they don’t sound practical.
- People are probably mistaken when they discount a visionary idea as ‘impractical.’
- Inspiration is valid: one of the main points of spirituality is to inspire us to bring into existence that which we value most highly.
If you feel a spark of inspiration, don’t feel discouraged if others don’t understand your brilliance and claim you’re not being practical. Inventors, visionaries, changemakers, humanitarians, geniuses, and the quiet local-scale contributors and leaders who make things better in the world around them are NOT practical first and foremost. They are visionary and inspired first, and then they seek the ways to bring their inspired vision into practical existence.
We’re living in a time that needs YOUR inspired contributions. Believe in your inspiration and share your vision with those who are open to believing it with you.
Hear why and how to go on retreat with Earth. Whether you have half a day or a week available, you can retreat with Earth in your back yard, a city park, or a more distant location.
Use your retreat with Earth to:
- Vision the regeneration you desire to see on our planet
- Inquire how you can contribute
- Find calm in this time of rapid change
If you would like to access the Co-create New Earth online conference from February, the talks remain available here: https://newearthone.com/courses/register-chara-retreat/
I've created a new online conference: “Co-create New Earth to Renew Yourself & Our Planet”
You can learn about it in this episode of Humans and Earth.
The conference offers insights and tools for creating flourishing for yourself, humanity, and all beings in the natural world.
Our speakers range from spiritual teachers and plant and animal communication specialists to experts in soil regeneration, community revitalization, mentoring youth, and connecting directly with Earth’s consciousness.
We are entering a new age of flourishing for all life. We’re all here for the united purpose of up-leveling our own thriving AND the thriving of every person, plant, animal, and ecosystem on Earth.
Join us and step more actively into co-creating regeneration for yourself and our planet.
You can gain access in the post on my Instagram page, @schoolhumansearth or at https://newearthone.com/courses/register-chara-retreat/
As we emerge from the recent climate talks, enter the holiday season, continue to deal with the pandemic, and observe our world continually shifting, you can turn to Earth as a source of stability. In this episode I discuss:
- Why historians will view our current times as extraordinary.
- How even beneficial change can feel unstable.
- A technique for accessing Earth as a source of stability as the world shifts.
I also share that the podcast is going on hiatus for 2-3 months while I produce an online conference that will be available to you free of charge in February. Make sure you're on the Humans and Earth mailing list at www.humansandearth.com for updates!
You’re likely already contributing to the current consciousness shifts that are creating regenerative solutions for people and planet. This episode talks about the old types of consciousness we are outgrowing and the new types of consciousness that favor regeneration and well-being for all life. Hear about three key aspects of consciousness shift and specific things you can do to participate:
- We are growing beyond beliefs in hierarchy to embrace the Unity and equality of all life
- The well-being of individual people and humanity as a whole is intricately intertwined with the well-being of the natural world.
- We create through positive visions of what we desire, not through fear or despair.
As you participate in the aspects of consciousness shift that feel wise, welcoming, and aligned to you, you contribute to the collective consciousness shift that is leading us into an era of co-creative regeneration for people and planet. Despite the troubles and turmoil we’re encountering on planet Earth, it’s a truly amazing time to be here. You are needed. You are included. You can help co-create a regenerative shift.
Are you living according to your heart's and soul’s priorities or are you caught in the busyness buzz? It happens to most of us. It’s a cultural problem of workaholism that strains our minds and bodies and causes us to ignore the needs of Earth, our life support system. In this episode, I share insights on:
- Why it’s worth pausing to re-assess whether you’re living in alignment with your soul and Earth
- How being overly busy and out of alignment can harm both you and the natural world
- Global experiments favoring slowing down and living more deliberately and lightly on the planet
- Choices you may make when you assess how you’re spending your time and resources
- 3 things to try if you are feeling drawn to a more Earth-connected and soulful life
Sam Pfotenhauer is a Human Design reader and intuitive guide. Through her business Wild River, she facilitates spaces for inner inquiry and connecting to earth, body, and intuition. Sam is also an environmental lawyer. After graduating from Tulane Law School in 2017, she practiced as a securities litigator in New York City, but left that role in August 2020 to pursue her environmental and spiritual interests. Sam currently works on a range of environmental issues, both in the private sector and in public service, but focuses on water-related issues and urban farming. She currently lives in Burlington, VT with her long-time partner and her cat, Dino. Find her at www. https://www.wildriver.live/
Sam opens our interview with a meditation to help you root into Earth. Then she offers thoughts on:
- How she 1st introduced spiritual practices into her law firm workplace, then left to create a more spacious life. She is now living her dream of practicing law half time.
- The subway epiphany that led her to realize how unsustainable her fast-paced life was. “The lifestyle that I wanted to live needed time.”
- What it’s like to be living her dream life of half-time intellectual work in law and half-time spiritually based coaching and mentoring.
- How Human Design helped her give herself permission to create the blend of types of work she craved.
- How Human Design can help us understand and cooperate with other people in a time when cooperation is needed to solve our planetary problems.
- A theory about how the Earth may need us to help generate energy for life along with her, but if we are depleted, we can’t fulfill that role. “It’s very difficult to have the space to advocate [for the natural world] when you yourself are overwhelmed in the way that you live.”
- Her practice for fitting time in nature into every day, and how connecting to Earth can be as simple as a tea ceremony, spending time with your houseplants, or appreciating the vegetables you are eating.
- The more space you are holding for your own, other people’s, and Earth’s transformations, the more you need to be giving yourself time to ground, rest, and center. We talk about how our workaholism is tied to our abuse of the planet.
- A brilliant question for helping yourself move forward: “How would a higher version of myself feel empowered, and what’s standing in the way?”
As I enjoy the late summer and early fall abundance of fruit in my garden, I’m reflecting that those of us who are not directly experiencing crisis right now need to hold a space of peace, love, and gratitude to uphold all who are experiencing crisis. Like most of us, I've had my share of crisis and tumult, but currently there is peace in my life.
As challenging weather and other national and global emergencies occur, it’s important to not stay endlessly in a space of upset. The biochemistry of anxiety and fear is toxic for our bodies over the long-term, and also inhibits our creative responses to what the world needs.
When the world is tumultuous, there is a tremendous need for gratitude and peace. Gratitude and peace and being in love with the Earth nurture us and create the kind of energetic environment that fosters creativity, healing, and regeneration, both within us and in our actions.
I believe you owe it to those who are in crisis to maintain as much peace as you can.
We can pause and remember that it’s possible to be in love with Earth and feel vast appreciation for being here. I recommend two ways to fall in love or be in love with Earth:
- Notice that you are surrounded by beings you can appreciate
- Notice that you are surrounded by beings who need our protection. (Hear about the assistance I recently provided to a baby bunny.)
Whether you are experiencing ease and peace in your life right now, or tumult, you can take comfort and delight in being in love with Earth. No matter where you live you can probably see the sky, feel the breezes, and touch the ground. What if this is heaven or some kind of paradise and we forgot that was the case?
For more updates from The School for Humans and Earth, follow us on Instagram @schoolhumansearth
Find a new free offering, 5 Steps to Shift from Eco-Anxiety to Eco-Inspiration, at our website.
Amy Dempster teaches about the healing power of the earth. Her blog, Following Hawks, is a resource for learning how to communicate with nature and share healing gifts with the earth. Together with the Spirits of the Land in the mountains of northwest Montana, she tends seven portals on the land where she lives, along with any grid keeping work she is assigned. She also leads the Earth Tenders Academy, an immersive online journey to help others re-establish their connection with their ancient ancestors, learn to communicate with seen and unseen forces in their environment, and respectfully offer their healing energy to places in need. Amy is also the host of the podcast The Earth Keepers. Find her at https://followinghawks.com/
In our conversation, Amy offers her views on:
- Strategies for tending Earth’s well-being, from portal-keeping to toning.
- Bringing intuition rather than intellect to working with Earth’s spaces and needs.
- How to use your own body as an instrument for bringing balance or healing to the natural world.
- Why swimming pool water, tap water, and creek, river, or spring water are different and feel different to your body.
- A piece we miss when we focus on the benefits of Earthing or touching natural water is that the benefit is not only for us. When we touch the Earth, we affect her, and we can do so consciously. It’s a healing exchange that goes both ways: “everything feels me and I feel everything else.” Amy offers tips on how to watch and listen for the information being shared with you.
- How to see our Earth tending less as an exhausting and gigantic task and more as a reciprocal, mutually supportive exchange between you and Earth.
- Accepting the ways things are on planet Earth is a path to a very uncomfortable future, yet daring to imagine the world you desire to live in is the path toward creating a healthier, more joyous world because “our reality is a lot more flexible than we’ve been led to believe.”
You may know me through the Humans and Earth podcast as Helen Claire Harmon. It's a pseudonym I adopted when I launched the podcast in August of 2020 to differentiate my work in The School for Humans and Earth from my work in higher education. This brief episode explains why I've decided to return to using my real name, Chara Armon, in this work, and how that's related to bringing together 'conventional' and 'holistic' conversations. I also tell you what's coming up from The School for Humans and Earth.
Ameya is the Founder of the Woman Rising Mystery School, an international school for women to re-member earth wisdom, ancient mysteries, and walk the Path of the Rose. Through Ameya's extensive training and embodiment, she expertly guides women to activate their Soul essence and awaken the Grail codes within. She is also the founder of Gaia’s Wisdom, a line of plant essences. She first fell in love with plant medicine as an environmental studies major in Vermont. After writing a thesis on plant spirit medicine, she continued to follow the calling of the plants. They led her to studying plant spirit medicine, shamanic journeywork, and other spiritually healing modalities. Twenty years later, her journey with the plants has allowed her to support hundreds of clients as a Flower Essence practitioner, train hundreds of practitioners in her certification program, including Helen Harmon, and serve thousands of plant lovers through Gaia’s Wisdom’s Flower Essences. Find her at https://womanrisingmysteryschool.com/ and https://gaiaswisdom.com/
Ameya discusses:
- When we have trauma, “we’re seeing through the imprint of pain. And that gets inflicted on the Earth” because “we’ve never been taught to put the Earth as primary in our decision making.” “Our biggest trauma, I think, is our disconnect from the Earth”
- Her curiosity now in this time of tumult: “What are we being fine-tuned for?” And are we undergoing a huge clearing of humanity’s past traumas? Now “we are inviting a restoration and a re-connection.”
- “Our return and connection to the Earth has to happen in order to create any kind of world that’s sustainable or thriving or serves the all and many.”
- How flower essences work and why they support your true nature. “They are a gentle, beautiful way to work with the Earth and yourself. Every flower and every tree has specific wisdom that may relate to exactly what you are wanting to heal or expand into.”
- How many of us have experiences of communicating with plants but then believe we have to shut the ability down or make a joke about it.
- A story of watching two people simultaneously hear the same message from a tree and being moved to amazed tears that they could experience that connection and its affirmation.
- Her own vivid experience of making a flower essence in Hawai’i, ‘losing’ the flower and her essence bowl in the forest when she returned to find it after a hike, and then learning that this orchid teaches that “truth is so often overlooked—we will walk right past it because what truth actually asks us to do makes us really scared.”
- How she has raised her young son with plant essences.
In this episode, Helen Claire Harmon discusses:
- Who nature spirits are.
- Why discussing them is an edgy or even forbidden topic due to the Scientific Revolution’s split of spirituality and science.
- How it's possible to acknowledge the reality of things both 'proven' and 'unproven' by science.
- What the nature spirits want us to know about their role on Earth and what we have in common with them.
- Why we are meant to be in communication with them as our neighbors, friends, and co-creators.
- 3 ways you can acknowledge, experience, and communicate with nature spirits.
- What’s coming in the human-nature spirit relationship.
Doniga Markegard is a mother, rancher, author, and naturalist. She has a background in nature and permaculture. In her youth she was mentored by leading wildlife trackers, naturalists and Native spiritual elders. She spent years alone and with a small group of passionate youth in the Western Washington Wilderness learning the ways of the ancestors, immersing in nature, bird language, survival skills and wildlife tracking. Along with her husband and four children, Doniga owns and operates Markegard Family Grass-Fed, raising grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured pork, chicken and dairy and supplying the Bay Area with local, nutrient dense foods. She is dedicated to finding ways to regenerate lands and community through ranching practices that build soil, sequester carbon, capture and purify water, and enhance habitat. Doniga is featured at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francicso and in the film, Kiss the Ground. Find her at https://www.markegardfamily.com and https://www.donigamarkegard.com/
In this interview, Doniga and I discuss how:
- She raises nutrient-dense foods by mimicking the way nature does things. “The root of all of our solutions is that connection and that relationship with nature.”
- Agriculture can provide ecosystem services rather than damage, and can draw down carbon rather than releasing it. Agriculture has the potential to reverse climate change.
- Grasslands are meant to be supported by ruminant animals, whether wild bison or elk, or domesticated cattle. “There is no ecologically intact ecosystem devoid of animals” and their beneficial impact on soil. “There is even more life when we bring in the cattle than when the cattle aren’t there…you have more species diversity when cattle are managed well.”
- She addresses the topic of whether our diets should include animal products.
- Her books, Dawn Again and Wolf Girl, outline her journey of finding herself through connecting with nature.
- She felt helpless at one point, seeing so much environmental destruction and not knowing what to do. “I wanted to run into the woods because I couldn’t face what was happening, the destruction of my relatives” in the natural world. “That’s when I found that we can have an agriculture system that is aligned with nature.”
- She was mentored throughout her youth by Lakota elders, including Gilbert Walking Bull, who adopted her.
- She is inspired now by the number of people, organizations, and corporations realizing that regenerative agriculture is the #1 solution for healing the planet. “If you are always thinking about what could go wrong in the world, then you create that,” so it’s crucial to focus on solutions.
To learn more about regenerative agriculture, explore: https://rodaleinstitute.org/education/resources/, the book Fertile Ground by Steve Brescia, and https://www.groundswellinternational.org/
Ray Anthony James, Ph.D. is an Organic Chemist, Nutritional Supplement Product Developer, researcher, educator, author, and speaker, with over 28 years in the pharmaceutical industry and at the FDA. He has over 30 patents and peer-reviewed scientific publications combined. As a Lead Investigator at Pharmacopeia and Ligand Pharmaceuticals and Principal Scientist at Intrexon Corporation from 1998 until 2015, he was involved in designing drugs for cancer and inflammation. He quit all the farce in 2016 to pursue his lifelong dream of BEING on EARTH and serving the soil and humanity. Today, Ray is a partner / founder of The Moringa Group, Gleeful Monkey, TMG Omega Limited, Soil Biotica, and Kissing Tadpoles Publishing Company, and a backyard Organic Farmer. He is the author of the children’s nutrition book, Veggie Rhapsody: I want you in my Lunch!.
Our conversation covers:
- His childhood in rural Jamaica with no plumbing on his home farm, frugal use of food, free roaming in nature, and not knowing he was ‘poor.’ As a teen he dreamed of a university education in the U.S. as he became fascinated with studying science and understanding why his ‘impoverished’ lifestyle with simple foods and herbs led to such good health.
- How he became enmeshed in the ‘expected’ path of a pharmaceutical career and the stresses of conventional life but saw his interests shifting as he and his wife studied nutrition and herbs. His time at the FDA led to a personal crisis and serious consideration of more holistic alternatives to pharmaceuticals. He recalled the role of Moringa in health in his childhood in Jamaica, began finding research studies on Moringa and helped a friend reverse diabetes with Moringa, and his company was born.
- Now in his holistic life and business, “my problems are light… my spirit has changed, my breathing has changed, my life has changed, I feel like I’m getting younger, I’m becoming this new wholesome person that is giving and accepting love.”
- Moringa is native to India and is a ‘miracle tree’ that requires no pesticides and can turn deserts into forests. It prevents malnutrition and has been scientifically evaluated for its ability to improve immunity, GI health, skin, hair, stress response, blood sugar, liver and kidney diseases, diabetes, and high cholesterol. It is very high in antioxidants and nutrients for cellular regeneration.
- He is setting up a regenerative Moringa farm in Jamaica on the model of multi-story forest agriculture, letting native plants flourish via intercropping of the Moringa trees for soil health and native species flourishing. The farm will provide local employment and a sustainable agriculture learning center for flourishing of people, plants, animals, insects, and soil.
- Ray and I both tear up talking about how human existence is dependent on soil microbes, and how plants and soil microbes cooperate in a way that is humbling for humans. As Ray says, “the plants themselves, they know what they want, and I just have to be the steward… the plant determines what nutrients it wants and tells the microbes and attracts them to its root system…it’s a whole conversation going on below the soil.”
- With all the sustainable and regenerative options now available, it’s clear that we get to choose whether we want to live in ‘chemical soup’ or in life-enhancing ways.
Have you had the experience of expressing compassion and being told you are being unrealistic or irrational? Have you expressed care for a plant or animal and been called a ‘tree hugger’ or ‘bleeding heart’? Our culture over-values intellectual judgement and under-values the compassion of our hearts, but we can shift this together. Letting our compassion be valid is crucial for healing ourselves and our planet.
In this episode, Helen Claire Harmon discusses how:
- You may need to practice re-opening your compassion if it’s often been shut down by you or others.
- The global movement honoring compassion and reverence for life is strengthening.
- Compassion honors life, interdependence, and the right of each being to thrive in a sovereign way without being harmed by others.
- You can practice 3 Steps for discovering the validity of your compassion: Discerning what ignites your compassion; Acting with Compassionate Conviction; and Cultivating Reverent Relationship with yourself and other beings so you remain in compassion.
- We can change the global conversation around what counts as ‘realistic,’ ‘intelligent’ responses to the world. Your compassion is valid.
The most exciting thing occurring in our world right now is that we are learning how to change from being harmful to harmless beings. We are choosing to repair the world’s ills by creating new structures of reality. We are a creative species who can make life on planet Earth more joyful, inclusive, just and flourishing for all people and all species. You get to participate, and that is literally the privilege of many lifetimes. What is the concept of ‘New Earth,’ and how do you want to contribute?
In this episode, Helen Claire Harmon discusses how:
· We now understand how our lifestyles are damaging Earth’s systems and our own health. We have ample evidence that what we do to the air, soil, water, animals, and plants, we do to our own bodies and minds. We also have many tools for repairing this damage.
· We now understand that all humans and all species deserve equality, justice, peace, and the means to survive and thrive.
· People all over the planet--millions of us, and probably billions--are endeavoring to create healing and regeneration in all areas.
· We have ample evidence that we’re moving in this regenerative direction that we can call “New Earth.” Helen shares numerous examples.
· Three things to do if you want to be a New Earth Co-Creator.
· An upcoming free webinar, Collaboration with Earth: How to Nurture Regeneration for the Planet and Yourself. The webinar will offer guidance on how to transform your desire to help heal people & planet into regenerative contributions that nourish both you and the natural world. Sign up at www.humansandearth.com/webinars
Kalani Souza is founding director of the Olohana Foundation. Olohana focuses on building community capacity, cohesiveness, resilience, and emergency preparedness around food, energy, water, and knowledge systems. Kalani is a storyteller, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker. A Hawaiian practitioner and cross-cultural facilitator, he has experience in promoting social justice through conflict resolution. Kalani’s native roots allow him a unique perspective of the collision of two worlds: one steeped in traditional culture and the other a juggernaut of new morality and changing economic and political persuasion. He is a messenger of integration and collaboration in a world normally rife with exclusion, oppression, and hopelessness. His work in behavior modification research, leadership, team-building, and political strategy gives him generous insights into group dynamics and systems of governance. He is a Coastal Community Resilience Trainer, a cultural competency consultant to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Services Center, a consultant to the Presidents Ocean Policy Task Force, and has taught Conflict Resolution at the University of Hawaii. Find him at www.http://olohana.org
In this conversation focused on relationships and re-localization, Kalani speaks about how:
- In a multi-faceted life, his center is “the community, the home, the children—the relationships…I work right here, within arm’s reach.” You have an impact by doing what you do in your local place.
- The simplest way to ensure a community’s well-being is to: “make sure the children are fed, the old people are comfortable, and the women unafraid”—these achievements require solid infrastructure, healthy relationships, access to resources, healthy sources of energy, and a healthy environment.
- “Since we’re going to have adjustments [with climate change], we should strengthen our communities with food, fresh water, energy, shelter…gather our people in place and create real regional place-based capacity that is micro-sized and focuses on women and children’s well-being in their place.” “We do this thing as family, deeply in relationship with each other.” We talk about how permaculture and Transition are crafting re-localization.
- We are now able to contrast the colonialist “Doctrine of Discovery” focused on ownership with the “doctrine of relationships” among people and between people and nature. Kalani speaks to economic injustice and our priorities as nations, questioning why we are not acting more forcefully.
- A prayer he recently composed acknowledges our relationships with nature. He speaks it in Hawaiian and then English, explaining its focus on “the relational aspect” of our existence with the natural world, who is The Family You’re Never Without.
- “We are spirits having a physical awakening, so to me, the coffee is sacred, the red wine, these very physical things”
- “I believe conflict is the opportunity for positive change. We need the conflict to change; it doesn’t have to lead to war or violence; it can lead to a sharing of needs and desires for the future…The answer must work for everyone!”
Kate Solisti, President of Kinship Enterprises, has been dedicated to nurturing animal-human understanding and wellness since 1992. Her purpose is to give “voice to all members of the animal kingdom so they can participate with human beings in improving their own health and well-being as well as that of all species and the planet.” As a facilitator of interspecies communication, Kate works with both wild animals and companion animals. She is a recognized expert in dog and cat care, behavioral counseling, nutrition, Flower Essence therapy, and energy healing. She is the author of six books and has been featured nationally and internationally on stage, radio, and television. Find her at Katesolisti.com
Have you ever lost a beloved animal and found that the loss changed your life? In this interview, animal communicator Kate Solisti shares how:
- Her early childhood relationship with her cat, Dusty, taught her how to communicate with animals, though the pain of losing him then caused her to shut down her ability.
- The “double-edged sword” of being very sensitive gave her many listening abilities as a child but led to her being told her abilities were not real.
- She re-integrated her intuitive abilities in young adulthood. As she began to make her intuition feel safe again, she started to hear plants’ and animals’ messages. “It felt like I was becoming whole again.”
- We can all learn to communicate with animals: “it’s not magic, it’s just practice….The ability to connect with other species is a birthright….[it is] about learning to trust yourself.”
- Trauma, people telling you it’s your imagination, or the loss of a beloved animal can get in the way. But “we need people to remember. The animals need people to remember. The Earth needs us to remember.”
- The animals in your local area are often the best ones to connect to since you share the same home. Kate sees humanity going forward in making heart connections to our local animals, plants, and natural systems and thus realizing we desire to protect their well-being.
- A message from a surprising wild animal in the forest outside Kate’s home offers a view on how to balance interdependence and independence, and the good of the whole community with the good of the individual.
Is it possible that your thoughts about regenerating our planet and human well-being matter more than your actions?
Tune in to this episode to hear how:
- Neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality are showing that we create what we focus on. Discouragement and despair do not foster creative solutions. Guided by the science of neuroplasticity, we can choose where we focus and how our focus leads us to feel and act.
- If we want to repair and regenerate the natural world, we need to begin with how we are thinking and what we are focusing on. I call this Wise Focus.
- We’re learning to counter-act our tendency to see the negative by choosing Wise Focus instead: seeing the parts of reality that inspire hope and creative action more than we see the parts that promote discouragement.
- Spiritual teachers and mindset mentors across time have taught what modern neuroscience is now confirming: where we place our focus is crucially important, especially if we desire to create something impactful, beautiful, healing, or regenerative.
- What this means for your life: I offer examples of how to practice Wise Focus when looking at the environmental and human problems we’re facing. It’s a matter of choosing to see and co-create solutions rather than mourn devastation. Out story on the planet right now is either one of decline or rebirth, depending on what you choose to focus on.
- 4 steps you can take to explore Wise Focus and the ways it leads to Regenerative Vision and Regenerative Outcomes.
- An upcoming course from The School for Humans and Earth will support you if you want to explore Wise Focus and regenerative action: Collaboration with Earth: Support & Strategies for Your Reverent, Regenerative Service
**Due to an audio track flaw, the full episode is available on video at www.humansandearth.com/podcast
Leonie Dawson is an internationally best-selling author of the Goal Getter workbooks & planners which have been used by over 400,000 people worldwide. A multi-passionate entrepreneur, Leonie has generated over $10 million in revenue while only working 10 hours a week. Leonie has been recognized for her business acumen by winning Ausmumpreneur’s People’s Choice Business Coach, Global Brand & Businesses Making A Difference Awards. She is also a philanthropist, blogger, and podcast host, describes herself as a ‘highly-sensitive oddball,’ and is proudly neuro-diverse. Leonie has spent the last 10 years living in some of the most beautiful places around Australia. She currently lives with her two daughters and husband on the Sunshine Coast. Find her at www.leoniedawson.com
In our interview, Leonie reflects on how:
- Growing up on a cattle farm created her rich relationship with nature and animals. "There's something quite ecstatic about the natural world."
- People who are true to themselves and their inner wisdom are much less likely to harm Earth. Leonie points out that "Being yourself is about the most fun you can have!" and describes how her authenticity promotes creativity. "My brain is a festival ground, a happy place; it just thinks about what I want to create next."
- Zebras don’t wish their stripes were differently shaped in order to feel more worthy and lovable. Animals model self-acceptance and authentic being. It doesn’t make sense for other animals to be happy within themselves but not humans. We can choose to be present, joyful in self-loving acceptance, and true to ourselves.
- Her philanthropy supports the Australian Wildlife Conservancy due to their focus on purchase and protection of wild lands, and Australia's Wilderness Society, which takes legal action to protect wild land.
- Her home-based life of quarantine “like our ancestors experienced,” with quiet, children playing at home, gardening, the magic of composting, and thoughtful management of local food brought her gladness, bliss, and presence. “It was a sweet and a kind time, living more in partnership with the seasons and your local community and the Earth around you.”
- Sustainability is “not about restricting ourselves to less, but it’s about embracing more depth, more value, more connection to the land around us.”
- Ultimately, “your relationship with yourself is the one that will sustain you.” When we feel lacking we turn outward and do things like buying. But having a relationship with yourself and your creativity is the real blessing.
How do you become a whole and wild human being? Listen to this episode of Humans and Earth to find out.
Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural evolution. 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 quest. He has been a research psychologist, professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. 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 just published in January of 2021. Find him at www.animas.org
The premise of Bill’s new book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, is that the root cause of our human and ecological problems is failure of individual development. Our aim, he believes, is to develop so that we may be life-enhancing for Earth and ourselves.
Hear Bill discuss:
- Soul initiation: a life passage most people long for but do not reach because our cultures don’t support this much maturation. It is an initiatory process into true adulthood, where one lives one’s real purpose of contribution to the life community. It is the adventure of wholeness and authenticity we all yearn for.
- Soul: he defines it as an ecological concept—"the soul of a thing is its unique ecological niche.”
- Foundational steps to soul initiation include recognizing which life stage you are in: early adolescence, late adolescence, adult, or elder.
- How a society that encourages soul initiation and contribution to the life community will support people on this journey. Bill defines how childrearing, education, and religious and business institutions can shift as a society learns to promote the whole human development process into the soul initiation, true adult, and true elder phases.
- The role of true elders is to ensure that the relationship between the human community and the larger Earth community is a good one, and to support the soul initiations of people emerging from early adolescence to give their gifts to the world.
- “A healthy ego is one that is life-serving—this is who we are” until it’s suppressed. Healthy cultures raise people who want to contribute to the community. The ego is good at planning and is meant to be in service to the soul, which provides the vision. Soul initiation involves the right relationship between ego and soul.
Fay Johnstone is a ‘plant whisperer’ and shamanic herbalist. Fay combines 20 years of reiki practice with herbal and shamanic training to connect us with nature for personal transformation. Following an awakening to the spirit of plants while running a flower farm in Nova Scotia, Fay wrote her first book, Plants that Speak Souls that Sing, and now offers training on reiki, plant spirit connection and shamanism online and from her home in Scotland. Fay is also the founder of Plant Spirit Reiki, a therapy which connects Reiki healing to the power of plants, as detailed in her second book, Plant Spirit Reiki. It's Fay's mission to help people find their unique way to connect with the natural world and come into alignment with their true nature. Find her at https://fayjohnstone.com/
In our conversation, Fay describes how:
- In her former career she felt stressed and disconnected: “I was going through life wobbly, not very grounded or rooted in a sense of who I am and my belonging. I found my sense of belonging through this connection with nature.”
- Moving out of the head space and into “the heart space which feels its way” was her major turning point.
- Knowing she is part of the sacred natural web reminds her we are not alone. This is “a more collaborative way of life. It’s not just about me and what I thought success meant.”
- Globally we are trying to work out the question of life pace and inner inspiration vs. conventional decisions. Fay recommends: “invite nature into your heart and it will do its own growing…we all find our own unique way that nature flows through us.” She suggests starting with local food, intuitive nature walks (she describes how), and sharing breath with plants.
- She developed Plant Spirit Reiki as a collaboration with plants. She talks about the power of bringing plants into our learning, healing or living spaces for “a healing exchange with the natural world”
- A practice for connecting with plants even during cold weather when you may be indoors: plant prayers. And how she now experiences winter with welcome, as a time for relaxation and quiet.
Dr. Anita Sanchez, Aztecan Tribe and Mexican-American, is a board member of the Pachamama Alliance and Bioneers. Anita inspires people to discover and trust their gifts so that they become a life-giving connection to people and to the earth. She has trained thousands of leaders in global corporations and non-profits. Using indigenous wisdom and modern science, Anita guides leaders in creating caring and inclusive workplaces and communities. TedX presenter of Humanity’s Hope, Anita is an author of four books, including The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times. Learn more atwww.FourSacredGifts.com and receive notifications about Anita’s upcoming course on The Four Sacred Gifts.
Tune in to hear Anita discuss:
- Her childhood learning from her indigenous tradition that living beings impact one another powerfully. “We really are quite powerful, but that power isn’t a reason to beat our chests. How can we be a life-giving member in this one hoop of life?”
- How she sees violence to one another based on race or gender, and violence to ourselves by separating head and heart, now giving way to awareness of our interconnections. “The footprint we’re putting on the Earth is the same footprint we’re putting on other people, is the same footprint we’re putting on ourselves.” “I don’t understand it in terms that we are bad, but rather that we’ve forgotten and now we get to remember…and what is urgent is that we ALL remember…”
- A “big awakening for all of us is that we are not alone, we are not just an individual, we are part of this amazing, amazing thing called life, and home is everything, and everything in this home is sacred!”
- “Good medicine is anyone who puts into alignment the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.”
- The meanings of the Four Sacred Gifts: the power to forgive the unforgivable, the power of unity, the power of healing, and the power of hope.
- How her trauma around the race-related murder of her father was triggered by events of 2020, and how she re-aligned to respond to the here and now to “create what is life-giving in this world.” Forgiving is not to forget, but to create something different for today.
For support in being ‘good medicine for the world,’ visit www.humansandearth.com/mentoring
Kerri Lake supports others in recognizing themselves as the clarity of love. Whether working with individuals or facilitating groups, she assists people to generate a way of being that honors their heart and brightens their world. Kerri has a degree in Animal Science and also collaborates with animals. Her podcast is Animals of a New Earth. Find her at www.kerrilake.com
With her soothing voice and calm presence, Kerri shares with us:
· Extraordinary stories of how she created healing outcomes with two dangerous horses: “I was really wanting people to see what listening, and love, and compassion, can do.”
· Her insights on the ‘domination approach’ that has governed human actions for millennia, and how we are shifting into a different motivation. We discuss how domination is portrayed as making us feel safe, yet we don’t in fact feel safe because dominating the planet and one another has created depletion and woundedness.
· A 10-second practice for testing out a more heart-based, open, vulnerable way of living. A more heart-centered way may feel unfamiliar, but as we have the courage to explore it, we are “revitalizing: creating a new way of being human.”
· Her view that “the systems that perpetuate domination are going to crumble under their own weight, because domination is not going to work: it’s not how nature is designed.” We talk about how new systems are already in place. We simply need more people waking up and “taking the chance that feeling good and healthy and worthy and abundant and nourished might actually be ok.”
Aaron William Perry is a writer, public speaker, impact entrepreneur, consultant, and father. The author of Y on Earth: Get Smarter, Feel Better, Heal the Planet, Aaron works with the Y on Earth Community team and Impact Ambassadors to inform and inspire diverse communities through unique thriving and sustainability messages of hope, empowerment and action. He has launched and owned companies in the recycling, renewable energy, and local/organic food industries and consults to dozens of innovative organizations, companies and entrepreneurs. An experienced business and literary writer, Aaron holds an MA from the University of Colorado, and has studied Permaculture and Indigenous Wisdom throughout the Rocky Mountain region. He resides in Colorado where he is in awe of the weather, appreciative of the singing birds, and entertained by the antics of his backyard chickens.
Find him at www.yonearth.org, where you can use the discount code HUMANSANDEARTH for a 33% discount on unlimited downloads of all ebook and audiobook resources (including children's books) at https://yonearth.org/market/
In this episode, hear Aaron discuss:
- How his lifelong nature connection merges with his business expertise to create a loving, heartfelt experience of working in the sustainability field.
- Why caring for nature is caring for yourself. In fact, gratitude releases brain chemicals that benefit mental, emotional, and physical well-being. We actually “become stewards of our neuro-biochemistry” by interacting with nature. “When we say, ‘Get Smarter, Feel Better,’ that’s literal—it’s not a joke, it’s not a metaphor, it’s literal.”
- One of the messages of his book Y on Earth is that we can easily engage in practices that restore well-being for ourselves and the planet. Little things like washing the dishes let us connect with gratitude with water and “develop a more humble, more sanctified type of relationship.”
- Why he wrote his Soil Stewardship Handbook: to invite anyone and everyone to be aware that it’s with soil and the regeneration of soil that we get to help our communities and our ecosystems, AND stabilize our climate. A 10% increase in soil carbon world-wide is equivalent to sequestering out of the atmosphere all of the fossil carbon we’ve released since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.” As we’re doing more gardening, permaculture, and biodynamic soil care, we collaborate with microorganisms and plants to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. “We literally have the opportunity to take atmosphere carbon levels back to pre-Industrial levels and heal our world.”
- Suggestions of books and websites he finds inspiring…and his thoughts on why the biodynamic movement offers us one of our most wonderful sets of solutions of “medicine for the land and us” and cultivating a life of meaning, purpose, balance, joy.
- Why “envisioning may be one of the most potent superpowers we have as humans.”
- Plus, Aaron offers a discount code for book purchases at the marvelous Chelsea Green Publishers, home of inspiring books on all things sustainability!
Joy Baker specializes in helping her clients release trapped emotions that can result from trauma. Because most of us are not taught strong skills for processing trauma, its effects become stored in our bodies and can influence our actions, experiences, emotions, and physical health. Joy has herself been on a lengthy journey of choosing the courage to resolve trauma. She has developed a level of understanding and acceptance that allows her clients to feel supported and empowered to break through their self-imposed limitations and recognize their value. Find Joy’s work at www.courageinaction.com
Listen to Joy describe her journey of becoming a healer with close connections to the natural world. She experienced a painful childhood involving abuse, epilepsy, a speech impediment, and bullying. Going down the ‘rabbit hole of pain’ allowed her to clear past trauma and free herself, and become lovingly aware of other people and the planet.
Hear Joy discuss:
Why healing personal and collective trauma is a requirement for us to be able to heal Earth and live on Earth in harmless ways. “As I healed, I also healed my relationship with the Earth…. Earth is the reason we are here.”
How love of self relates to love of Earth, but if self-love is painful or confusing for you, you can work with appreciation as a foundation. For those with backgrounds of abuse or trauma, the connection between love of self and love of nature can feel confusing. Joy offers an exercise for self-appreciation that can be part of this process.
A guided process for connecting to your own well-being and to the larger well-being of the life community on Earth, supporting both. The process addresses the anger and grief we can feel when we see nature being mistreated, and the resulting overwhelm, then helps us acknowledge these emotions so we can access our healthy power, committing to creative solutions in which we all support one another.
Reconceptualizing ‘power’ by claiming the power of your compassion. “We can hold the Earth, ourselves, humanity in a space of healing…Whether it’s Earth, animals, plants, or an individual person, hold them in a higher frequency. That’s when healing takes place.” “The more people who start caring about themselves, having compassion for themselves, that extends to the Earth, the animals, the plant life, that starts the healing process.”
“What we focus on, we give energy to. So if you’re focusing on what’s wrong, you’re actually giving energy to the very thing you’re against. Instead, give energy to what you want to see. That’s how we can all create a healthier Earth.”
Riue Melvina Brown holds an MBA in business and a doctoral degree in educational leadership. She is an Angelic Shaman, Karuna Usui Holy Fire Reiki Master, Quantum Healer, Sound Healer, Spiritual Advisor, Permaculture Designer/Teacher, Licensed Massage Therapist, beekeeper, and herbalist. Her heritage is African-American and Cherokee Indian and she has studied under Native American Medicine People. She is the owner of InnerSource Wellness Center and Lemu Sacred Regenerative Urban Farm. She is as connected to the celestial realms as to the earth, and feels it is our time to express reverence for all beings.
Find her offerings at http://innersourcewellnesscenter.com
Tune in to this warm conversation to hear Riue discuss:
- The purpose we all share of being inter-connected with people, plants, animals, and all life.
- How we’re a lot bigger than the societal structures we’ve put into place. We see some of the old systems breaking down currently “because we as beings are waking up, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
- The current ‘unwinding’ of outmoded cultural assumptions occurring now in a process some refer to as the spiritual growth experience of Ascension.
- How she listens to her bees and plants on her permaculture homestead. “Nature has always been here to try to teach us not only who we are, but about our greater and broader connection and how we should be in community with one another.
- How as a shaman, she experiences nature as a gateway or throughway to other dimensions and realities, and facilitates healing for others as the practices connect Earth and the heavens.
- Her permaculture homestead with its bees, mushrooms, native plants, high tunnel for winter growing, community nursery, community garden with volunteer opportunities, and participation in a food hub in Wilmington, DE with other urban farms.
- Her vision of a future in which we no longer separate ourselves according to our differences: “I think this is a time of bringing back the reverence and the sacredness for everything.”
Mindset coach and spiritual alignment expert Lana Shlafer discusses in this episode how her connection to the natural world supports her, why aligning with solutions is more empowering and effective than focusing on problems, and why ‘realism’ isn’t a good standard.
Tune in to hear Lana’s vibrant thoughts on:
- Why we need to create a feeling of safety within ourselves in order to feel safe being optimistic about the human future on planet Earth.
- Why she recommends asking, “what about the future pains you? Now use that as a portal into changing things in your own life. It’s easy to have hope when you are already taking action and already aligning with the solutions. It’s harder to have hope when you are aligning with the problems and taking no action to resolve them.”
- How “it doesn’t cost you anything to change your pattern of thought. Think of the plastic in the ocean and how it’s suffocating the turtles…or go out to the ocean and thank it for the life it provides. It doesn’t cost me anything to choose one thought over the other. One adds more momentum and impact, it makes me value the ocean so much I will go and do the clean-ups...and the other one leaves me powerless and hopeless. And I think we each have a choice in how we approach our mindset and our life.”
- Why realism isn’t a good standard. “Realism is taking past experience and making an assumption that it will continue…All of the most impactful people have been unrealistic because they dared to look at what is happening and then inspire themselves and everyone around them to move toward what they want to be happening. It’s ‘be the change you want to see,’ not ‘sit here and complain about the fact that things are the way they are.’ "
- How viewing pessimism as the more intellectual stance may be self-delusion: “It’s a defense mechanism, where you think you’re smarter than hope, but it ends up costing you more than anyone else.”
- Why she recommends not seeing our creative, change-making efforts as counter-cultural, which is a view based in resistance to something: “no great person … created change by trying to be counter anything. They created it because they were pro something so strongly that that’s all they saw, all they did, all they focused on. That’s what creates the kind of focused flow of energy that can move mountains…If you’re spending your energy fighting, you’re not using that energy to create.”
- Why your activism needs to be “additive and life enhancing for you. If it isn’t, then for you to delude yourself by thinking this will be life-enhancing for the planet is inaccurate.”
- Her childhood in Siberia. Having grown up atheist before she developed her spirituality, the only paths she knew into comfort and grace were seeking connection with other people and seeking connection in nature, so nature has always been an important presence in her life. Lana asks, “If you’re not connected to nature, how could you be connected to yourself?”
Find Lana at www.lanashlafer.com and her new book at www.manifestthatmiracle.com
Kevan Ryon is a healer who connects with a 12th dimensional Lemurian collective to facilitate the healing of others. His Cerebral Palsy and his focused spiritual path have been driving forces that have allowed him to overcome many challenges and limitations. Through the connection with his spirit guides and masters, Kevan discovered that his purpose is to help people integrate and hold a 5th dimensional consciousness by teaching them that they are their own self-healer. Kevan offers group and private healing sessions that allow others to raise their level of awareness and step into an expansive space of peace, love, and joy where they can take an active role in their healing process.
www.kevanryon.org Find his Monthly Healing Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/231596768017842
Tune in to this episode to hear Kevan discuss:
- How having Cerebral Palsy was the catalyst for him to discover his skill as a healer.
- The chance we have collectively now to let outmoded systems decline and create new ones that feel more aligned with how we now understand the human story on Earth. As we realize how we create the reality we experience, we become better at creating the realities we truly desire, such as healing technologies.
- Why looking for our “empowerment in the present moment is one of the biggest things that we can do right now.”
- Why he thinks it’s okay to be afraid at times as the world shifts: “you don’t have to have everything figured out.” And why it’s important to take breaks from the introvert bubble, if that’s your tendency, to connect with others and share stories and support.
- What he would say to someone who feels discouraged during this time of tumult and change. As someone who lives with the challenges of Cerebral Palsy, Kevan speaks with authority on how to see challenges as temporary, and low days as just one type of experience that can be used to take us higher in our vibration, outlook, and co-creation with life.
- How we long for authenticity because we are meant to be people without constraints.
- Why he thinks we’re making progress in becoming more holistic in our understanding of areas such as healthcare and communication with plants and animals as we energetically advance as human beings. We are consciously learning to become more synergistic with other species and respect their synergy with one another, recognizing that “Animals and plants really are our equals.” Kevan shares a story about dolphins arriving at a family ceremony.
“As we shift our understanding of what consciousness is, we can develop a conscious relationship that can heal Earth, plants, animals, and everything.” Kevan Ryon
“When you see environmental problems, don’t be in despair. The Earth is a strong being! It knows how to correct itself. That doesn’t mean we should keep polluting, but it means the Earth is ready for us to heal, and the Earth is ready to heal.” Kevan Ryon
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) is Chief Curator and Executive Director of The Emergence Network. Author, lecturer, speaker, father, and rogue planet saved by the gravitational pull of his wife Ej, Bayo hopes to inspire a diffractive network of sharing within an ethos of new responsivity – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise’. Born into a Yoruba family, Bayo graduated summa cum laude in psychology in 2006 at Covenant University (Nigeria). Bayo conducted doctoral research into Yoruba indigenous healing systems as part of his inner struggle to regain a sense of rootedness to his community. Bayo understands he is on a shared decolonial journey with his family to live a small, intense life. He often refuses to share pictures of himself that do not include his wife, Ej, who is (everyone can assure you) the more interesting part of their entanglement. He is an ecstatic (and often exhausted, but grateful) father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden. Learn more about his work at www.Bayoakomolafe.net
In this episode, Dr. Akomolafe and I discuss:
- The wisdom of slowing down in response to climate change. He shares the Yoruba and feminist insight that our response to a crisis is often part of the crisis—solutions that seem to make sense within our current understanding can reinforce the problem. Slowing down is an invitation to a different way of thinking, of noticing and appreciating nature, and of framing or re-framing what it means to be human.
- How unschooling his children is part of his response to climate change and the cultural structures that created it. When unschooling, he meets his children not as inadequate and requiring ‘schooling’ but as philosophers in their own right, ready for dialogue and exploratory learning.
- Post-activism and the dismantling of whiteness in conversation with indigenous perspectives and post-modernist thought. How can we transition our focus beyond colonial oppressive structures and toward a broader sense of agency for all beings? This can involve re-naturalizing ourselves via new alliances and viewpoints in which humans are not necessarily central or dominant. “We are learning that we are part of the world and maybe that is a powerful riddle.”
- Why making sanctuary feels crucial to him now. It is an invitation to inquire into the world in new ways, seeking types of power beyond whiteness and the nation-state, “trying to acknowledge a world that is animated and vital and alive as an ally in these times, in the Anthropocene.” “Maybe we need sanctuaries today. Places of unlearning mastery. We don’t know what kind of futures are in front of us, but not knowing is part of sanctuary and losing our sense of mastery, outside of the colonial project.” Bayo shares his thoughts on grief as activism, loss as an invitation to new ways of being, and hopelessness as a resource.
- How Yoruba healers and plant medicine teach us to humbly see “the world as alive through and through, each component containing agency” and none complete on its own. This differs from the western scientific project of controlling the natural world. The more we pursue supremacy the more we discover that it is not attainable because the natural world within us and outside of us is more complex than we can conceive or dominate. Bayo advocates the work of “unlearning mastery, unlearning our domineering and dominating and control perspective” that has led us to try to control other humans and the natural world, to our detriment.
- Why “a world full of play” might be the best we can imagine for the human future on Earth. A way to freedom, authenticity, and “the liveliness of the world at large.”
Healer and channel Jeilene Tracey is a Vibrational Geneticist who channels Earth beings, sound, and energy to balance the emotional, mental, and physical bodies. She developed the modality Vibrational Genetics with guidance from the inner-Earth Mantis Collective and drawing on her training in molecular biology, Reiki, BodyTalk, ThetaHealing, and Shamanism. Combining the guidance of her Mantis guide, Maree, with aspects of each of these methods, Jeilene offers a healing experience focused on the human experience of being embodied on planet Earth. Learn more at www.lightvibesnetwork.com
In this conversation, Jeilene and Helen Claire Harmon discuss:
- How Jeilene moved from a conventional background in the sciences to working with Earth beings as a healer.
- Why connecting with Earth is part of being embodied in physical form, and how to do it daily for peace, present-moment focus, and health. “If we are to carry out our purpose here, then we must do it in continual collaboration with Earth.”
- How the Mantis beings, stewards of Earth, can teach us about supporting well-being for all life on Earth and collaborating with Earth, and how we can work with the Mantis if we wish.
- How to manage your own microbiome for overall health.
- How activism and the pursuit of justice fit with our human journey on Earth.
“Although it may seem like connecting into the Earth will not solve global problems, I think it’s a necessary place for us to start.” Jeilene Tracey
Akilah Martin, Ph.D., is first and foremost in partnership with soil and water. Akilah earned her BS degree in Soil Science from Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University and her Doctorate from Purdue University in Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Her professional interests include enhancing relationships of individuals and communities to natural resources. Her teaching and scholarly/research interests are centered in soil and water quality in urban communities. Current projects involve food sovereignty, Chicago Grows Food, Advocates for Urban Ag, life expectancy and health inequalities, installing rain gardens to create a "sponge town", and building container gardens for "growing your own groceries." Akilah is abundantly living life through two core values: Freedom and Joy. To that end, she is a certified coach specializing in building vibrant relationships. Her website is www.amrootbuilders.com Find her on Instagram at amrootbuilders.
In our conversation Akilah discusses:
- How growing up with a science teacher mother and studying science in her youth, then plant science in college, took her to soil science, a PhD at Purdue, a successful academic career, and now a full-time focus on community development with an emphasis on soil and urban agriculture.
- How the concept of ‘freedom’ guides her life, her coaching, and her community development work.
- The overwhelm she can feel as someone trying to address suffering in her community, and the damage to people’s bodies that she witnesses in communities experiencing layers of environmental contamination.
- How empowering messages can build more momentum than suffering-based messages.
- Why being synergistic in her contributions keeps her from feeling pulled in too many directions, and what kind of self-care practices sustain her.
- How her urban agriculture advocacy is supporting urban water access, food access, nutrition, and Chicago Grows Food, which has been offering Grow Kits to residents as part of their Grow Your Groceries Campaign. Assessing and addressing contaminated soil from industrial urban uses.
- How people can break away from food insecurity and into food sovereignty. “People are getting more interested in that because they see how their food really impacts their health. And honestly it impacts your mental health at the top—what your brain is able to do.”
To hear more from Akilah, find another interview on Humans & Nature at https://www.humansandnature.org/recovering-indigeneity-a-conversation-about-food-health-and-wellbeing
Stephan Harding Ph.D., is the Resident Ecologist at Schumacher College and the author of Animate Earth: Science, Intuition, and Gaia and the app, Deep Time Walk. Stephan understands Earth, or Gaia, as an organism whose systems and inter-relationships we can know both scientifically and intuitively. We need a loving relationship with Gaia in order to restore her and ourselves, and we need to switch from control to awe, he explains. He advocates that we view ourselves as participants “in a cosmos suffused with intelligence, beauty, intrinsic value and profound meaning.” His concept of holistic science reveals how we can approach the natural world through not only a scientific lens as typically understood, but also the lenses of intuition, feeling, and sensing.
Hear Stephan’s thoughts on:
· How to find your ‘center’ so you can live a life friendly to yourself, your neighbor, and the planet as a whole. “There is a deep center in ourselves and in nature. We can allow that to grow in us, and that’s what makes us happy, and what helps nature.”
· Why he recommends finding your own Gaia Place: “It’s very important to have a Gaia Place where I can just go to be with Gaia and look and listen…What is going on all around me? How is it connected to my self or center? … If everyone has a Gaia Place, we can have a real ecological society.”
· Why it is not an irrational act to connect emotionally or spiritually with Gaia. Connecting with nature feels good, and feeling good is objectively healthy. “If you deny that, you’re hurting yourself as well as hurting the world…We are nature, so nature has to be good for us.” “We are a multi-variant organism: we haven’t just got thinking: we’ve got our feeling, our sensing, our intuition. We need to feel all those in relation to Gaia.”
· “I love science, but we [scientists] do treat the world like it’s dead, a machine. That’s wrong—because it makes you feel awful!” “A deep knowledge of what it means to be connected to Gaia is what we’ve been missing in our culture for 400 years.”
· How being ‘spiritual’ is to have some sense of “where all this is going and how it could turn out really well, for us and for Gaia.”
· His current work on bringing psyche, science, and alchemy into conversation together.
“Gaia needs us to be humble and simple”--Stephan Harding
Dr. Cara Gubbins is a scientist, intuitive, and global thought leader for a new way for people and animals to live together in harmony. She is the best-selling and award-winning author of 5 books about the natural history of animals, animal wisdom, and personal growth. For nearly a decade she has been a successful animal communicator, connecting people more deeply to the animals that they love most.
She is also the creator of how to Talk to Your Pet, the proven 4-step system that teaches anyone and everyone how to communicate intuitively with their pets or with any animal. Each month in the Animal Wisdom Circle, she guides members to receive spiritual guidance from all kinds of animals, helping everyone become the best versions of themselves that they can be. Twice a year, she hosts online summits, bringing together experts from around the world to share their wisdom on animal communication and healing, conservation, and spiritual growth and evolution.
Cara's mission is to inspire our global community to live the lives they're here to live by connecting with animals, nature, and Spirit; saying "yes" to themselves and their dreams; and remembering that there is always time to play. Learn more about her work at CaraGubbins.com
In this episode, Cara Gubbins shares her journey to becoming an animal communicator who works with companion animals and wild animals and teaches others this skill:
· How she transitioned from a conventional career as an ecologist, feeling she couldn’t bring her intuitive and spiritual abilities into her work, to a career where she blends science, intuition, and spirituality and no longer feels divided.
· How she asks animals questions such as “What do you need? How can we help you?” “What is important to you and how do we honor your process?”
· Why this skill is teachable and learnable, with tools that make it easier, and what her process of learning was like. “I had this ability inside myself all along; I just didn’t give myself permission to access it. Once the blocks were removed I could refine and practice that ability.”
· “The science, the biology, is showing me that we [humans and animals] are exactly the same. So why do we think we’re different?...What I hear from animals is that they are beings on all these levels just like we are.”
· How our scientific measurement and new advances in science are helping us see animals in their fullness, understand their likeness to us, and understand the concept of ‘energy.’ We discussed how now our culture needs to catch up with scientific and spiritual advancements in understanding.
· What she learns from companion animals with health issues and those at the end of their lives, and how this has influenced her spiritual viewpoint. “There is a bigger experience than just the three-dimensional physical world we live in.”
This podcast is for you if you believe in, or want to believe in, regenerative transformation for humans & Earth.
In this opening episode, Helen Claire Harmon discusses why now is the time for sacred co-creation between humans and Earth. Hear how this podcast supports your desire to contribute to a new era of thriving for people and planet. Humans & Earth episodes allow you to:
- Find your contribution to well-being for people & Earth
- Hear from experts in ecological regeneration & teachers of Earth-based spirituality
- Receive insights & practices to implement
- Experience guests' visions of how wonderful life can be as we repair Earth & co-create with her for our own healing & thriving.
This is the time to cultivate your brightest, most exciting, most nourishing ideas about how gorgeous life can be for humans, plants, animals, ecosystems, and the Earth as we humans learn to live responsibly and regeneratively. Tune in to Humans & Earth for inspiration & practical resources.
Rachel Pfotenhauer holds an M.A. in Counseling and is a Licensed Professional Counselor, as well as a channel of Earth. She channels Earth’s healing energy to assist clients with health problems such as anxiety, PTSD, and chronic infections. She offers classes and retreats that mentor participants in connecting to Earth energy and consciousness. Her website is www.vast-earth.com
In this episode, Rachel and Helen Claire Harmon discuss:
- How you can easily connect directly to Earth
- Why we’re meant to live in partnership with Earth
- Why connecting to Earth improves your well-being & hers
- How connecting to Earth is a source of heightened intuition, self-awareness, and immunity
- How acknowledging Earth as your life partner & a source of healing can bring you clarity about your life & awareness of how to contribute to Earth's regeneration.
"You can connect to Earth anywhere. She wants to build an intimate relationship with you. When you really recognize that you're meant to be here in relationship with your soul and Earth as one, it gives you meaning and is a beacon of guidance for you."--Rachel Pfotenhauer