Wild Sacred Journey Podcast

Happy Autumn Equinox!

Our modern cultures often view things like progress as being very linear. One of the side effects of this is swinging between extremes like a pendulum - in the case of cycles of burnout, we swing between being full on and being shut down… with very little space in between.

But our long-ago ancestors understood cycles very differently, in part because they observed the seasons - they practiced noticing the subtle shifts and transitions. And they viewed cycles as spiral or more circular. This allows us to be in a rhythm, rather than feeling ourselves at the mercy of extremes.

If we can reclaim these practices and seasonal celebrations, perhaps we can notice the seasons of our own lives with more richness and complexity… and catch the signs it’s time to rest before burnout has to take us out completely.

This episode uses the story of The Descent of Persephone, to muse about shifting from linear pendulum arcs to spiral cycles. I also offer some self-inquiry prompts to perhaps hold lightly as you attend to the seasonal themes of clearing space and harvest.

Although most of the episode is geared towards the Northern Hemisphere, I offer some brief thoughts for those in the Southern Hemisphere at this point of your Spring Equinox, too.

Many blessings for this harvest season and the shadow of the eclipses,

Kate

P.S. If you’d like more info in working with me 1:1, you can email me - that webpage is under construction. And if considering joining Sanctuary, you can find that info: www.wildsarecjourney.com/sanctuary.

_________________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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As a shadow moves across the moon today, I offer you my perspective on shadow work - what it is and how it connects to burnout.

The term shadow work is getting thrown around a lot these days, so if you’re someone who:

is curious to hear how I understand it;
struggles with feeling hijacked by younger versions of you seemingly out of the blue;
can’t quite seem to bridge the gap between knowing better and doing better;
wants to know how soul retrievals and codependency are linked;
or feels deeply empty and can’t figure out why a few days of rest don’t seem to be enough to bring you back from burnout…

this is an episode you may want to tune in to.

What stood out to you most in this episode? Did any of it “ping”?

If so, I’d love to hear.

And if you’d like to explore 1:1 work, I’m in the process of updating that page on my website so best right now is to email me and we can discern if we’re a fit.

If you think you’d like to join Sanctuary, we start Sun Sep 29th and you can find more info: https://www.wildsacredjourney.com/sanctuary

Blessings for this time of change,

Kate

__________________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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Have you found yourself thinking, “I can either burn it all down or die,” yet both of those options feel too costly?

While that may feel like an incredibly uncomfortable and desperate, or even hopeless, moment (I know, I’ve been there); I offer it’s actually a pivotal and precious one. It’s aliveness inviting you back.

In this episode I share what I see as being the case in those moments, the nervous system and whole soulful-human context, and what I believe the best next step is so you can set yourself up to engage with the gifts of this crossroads, this realignment.

What do you think? Is this accurate to your experience? Does creating space make sense? Does it leave you with more questions? If so, I’d love to hear.

And if you’d like some more direct coaching or engagement with me around this topic - Wisdom Wednesdays happens the first Wednesday of each month and you’re welcome there.

And in September 2024, we’re enrolling our second cohort for Sanctuary - six months of spacious, low-urgency monthly gatherings. It might not move the needle on getting you more space, but it offers a place to connect in low-pressure, come-as-you-are ways… which might feel like a really significant little bit of nourishment. Find more about both of these through my website.

With appreciation,

Kate

________________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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“Am I doing enough?”

How often do you find yourself wondering that? As you look at the pain of the world, in moments of challenges in your close relationships, about your own growth journey? And how does that question leave you feeling?

If you’re like me, or a lot of the clients I see, or many of my friends… you probably ask this pretty often. And it probably leaves you feeling more stressed, paralyzed and overwhelmed, burnt out.

But there’s a beautiful invitation hidden in that question, once we get past the fear and the truth that we might not be.

So this episode is my take on how we can let that question bring us home to ourselves and back to more aliveness.

I cover:

what’s happening in your nervous system when you find yourself asking it;
how you can use the discomfort of the question for good;
a simple (and maybe even kind of fun way) to stop measuring your answer with outside metrics and instead start playing and exploring;
and why this might actually help you create the world you want to see - in the life you already have.

Did you give the steps/ reframe a try? If so, I’d love to hear how it went.

With appreciation,

Kate

__________________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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When people are skeptical about “animal guides” or “plant teachers,” part of the criticism usually revolves around the question: “how do you know you’re not just making it up to justify things?”

Answer: You don’t. Not really.

But we are meaning-making creatures. And we are observant.

Much of our scientific and academic knowledge pursuits are based around the idea of being an impartial observer. As though we could somehow separate ourselves from the world we are observing. As if we aren’t all innately and intimately interconnected. As if we are somehow a problem or a contamination of Life, rather than a piece of it. As if we don’t belong.

How exhausting, to try and maintain that level of separation between ourselves and our environment. How lonely, too.

Could this be part of our modern epidemic of burnout?

And what might happen if we let our observations of a plant or an animal bring us a message or some wisdom? Would that leave us feeling emptier than we were before? Or more alive?

In my experience, it’s almost always the second.

Today’s podcast episode is an example of how beyond-human kin, science, and folk tales can be teachers and inspire curiosity and insight into how to be alive.

Note: I’m no scientist, although I feel deep love, wonder and curiosity for the natural world. So please be patient with any misspeaks that may be present in this episode. I’m relating to the natural world in the way most natural to me. It’s not the only way, and it is valid.

I’ve always loved moss and recently I’ve been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, “Gathering Moss”. So you’ll get to hear my current moss-prompted musings on burnout, feeling somewhere between death and life, surviving, thriving, and little glimmers of nourishment.

Woven in with the book-inspired musings is a synopsis of the old English tale “Mossycoat” - a Cinderella-like story of initiation, but with the magic of moss at the center.

Anything that particularly stood out to you from this episode? Anything you’d like to hear more on? I’d love to hear.

With appreciation,

Kate

P.S. If you have questions, want to chat about this more, or had an aha come up you would be interested in processing a little further, you might want to consider joining me for Wisdom Wednesday (next one is August 7th). It’s a PWYC ‘office hours’-style gathering just for your questions. You can find out more or register: https://www.wildsacredjourney.com/wisdom-wednesdays

_______________________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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This bonus episode explores the ancestral harvest holidays, like Lammas and Lughnasadh, generally celebrated on August 1st, and marking the beginning of the harvest of storage crops and the subtle shift towards Fall.

I muse on what the practice of these holidays, the themes and perspectives they invite, might have to show us about burnout. And I share some agricultural context for the season and some questions you might want to sit with to guide your decisions about how and where to dig deep and spend your energy in preparation for fallow cycles in your own life.

Although most of the episode is geared towards the Northern Hemisphere, I offer some brief thoughts for those in the Southern Hemisphere, too.

Did this illuminate anything for you? If so, feel free to share.

With appreciation,

Kate

_______________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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This episode marks a shift (at least for now) in the format of these podcast episodes.

Instead of sitting around the fire, we’re moving through the world.

Instead of longer and deeper, we’re aiming for more bite-sized (hopefully without losing nuance).

And, at least for now, you’ll mostly just be hearing from me.

These changes are prompted in part by the needs of my own life, and in part as a response to the world and what it seems like we’re all needing in these times. We need more movement, more time outside (walk with me as you listen, perhaps?). And we need less of pretty much everything else when it comes to consumption and taking in.

As you’ll hear me share in the episode, part of my post-pilgrimage integration has been continuing to reflect on burnout - the causes, cost, and antidote. I started my trip depleted, I ended up alive. And I’ve been curiously tracking that within myself since to see what the causes were, how our lives seem to predispose us to burnout, and what the possibilities might be if we can end that cycle.

While there’s a lot I could say on the subject (and you’ll continue to hear me explore), in this episode I focus more on:

burnout vs aliveness as questions of energetic balance;
my suspicion that burnout is a modern ‘ailment’;
noticing and responding to a cycle of burnout before it gets too bad;
linear progress vs cycles as two rhythms - and only one allows for aliveness;
and why this matters for the world.

Let me know if this stirred any thoughts. I’d also love to hear initial impressions on this new format.

And if you know another sensitive, soulful human who struggles with burnout from trying to fit into the middle when they belong on the edges, and you think they might like this episode, feel free to share this.

May we stay human. May we create worlds of vibrant aliveness.

With care,

Kate

You can find me:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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If we assume that because we’ve been born and are not yet dead, we’re alive… is there a cost? What is aliveness, after all? And how many times will I eat soap?

This is an episode about aliveness. An episode about cycles of rupture and repair. An episode where I share a silly story about me eating soap (multiple times, to date!) and some of my own journey from being unaware to being more in rhythm with life.

A few months shy of this podcast’s second birthday, and inspired in a few ways by my conversation with Tad Hargrave (ep 38) and work I’m doing in his Marketing for Hippies Membership, this is an episode where I tune back into the question these conversation coalesce around: what does it mean to be human… and what if being human, being alive, isn’t inevitable?

You’ll hear:

how decreasing aliveness and interrupted rupture-repair cycles seem connected to me;
the way I see aliveness trying to manifest itself through us now;
the three planes of existence and the three main alchemical ingredients I see as necessary for repair after rupture (and in any attempt to align ourselves again with life);
why certain modalities may only take us so far… and more.

Since much of this conversation seems to land squarely at the heart of how I see the world (and my work within it), I would love to hear from you: what pinged? What do you disagree with or have more questions about? Any thoughts/ impressions? You can email me: kate@wildsacredjourney.com. I’d love to hear.

May we find again our rhythm in the cycles of rupture and repair - in moments when that’s easy and in moments when we have a lot of skin in the game. May we see our aliveness as a precious gift to be stewarded with care. May we remember Love as the necessary ingredient in all things. And may we learn our lessons so we don’t have to keep eating soap… or at the very least, eat less of it each time.

______________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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How do we say ‘yes’ to life, without saying ‘no’ to death? How do we “rise to the occasion” and “wrestle something good” from the heartbreak of a terminal diagnosis? What does it look like to “become familiar with grief and uncertainty in intimate ways”?

Today’s virtual fire-side conversation about being human and being alive is with Duncan Passmore - husband, father, writer, and woodworker of 20 years - as he shares his story and the story of his son, Torin, diagnosed at a young age with Pearson syndrome, a rare and incurable mitochondrial disorder.

It’s a story of life and death, grief and beauty; punctuated with the power of story, the mystery of ceremony, the practice of craft and community… and the building of boats.

It’s also a way of inviting you, if you feel able and called to, to weave into the community Torin has inspired and contribute to Duncan’s family’s GoFundMe; raising the funds to support them spending six months with Torin’s presence and his memory as they build a boat and sail it on Lake Windermere - a request of Torin’s he didn’t live to see fulfilled.

As someone grappling in my own ways (as most of us are) with fears, griefs, and the way life laughs at plans; as someone who believes in the power of community, of cultures devoted to full-spectrum aliveness, mystery, story, and ceremony; this feels like a deeply worthy story to share and a deeply worthy endeavor to support.

Join us around the fire? You’re most welcome here.

May we shed the armor which keeps us trying to hold off what is. May we become vulnerable enough and brave enough to share our stories so community might find us and, when the time comes, hold us. May we use our hands and heart to craft beauty from grief so we might fully embody at least some small part of what it seems to mean to be human and to be alive. May Torin’s presence and memory live on through the ripples of his story and the way it disarms us and invites us to rise to the occasion of our own lives.

You can find out more about the project and become a part of the prayerful building of the boat through Duncan’s GoFundMe:

https://gofund.me/9983ec87

Please also consider sharing the GoFundMe so we can continue casting the net wider and weaving more people into this story. They’re at 50% as of the recording/ publishing of this episode and have until June 9th to make it the rest of the way.

P.S. My Zoom seems to have finally caught up to the version with the floating reaction videos - so please excuse the random thumbs up and balloons which seem to pop up at strange and slightly inappropriate times.

_____________________

And if you've come for Duncan, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that aim to awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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What if the very things which challenge our ability to ‘fix’ or ‘produce’ in the ways we’re used to are the things which bring us closer to sacredness?

I recorded this episode a month ago, right after I recorded the ‘Sacredness: Part 1’ episode and while grief and uncertainty were right under the surface of my skin. Like with Sacredness Part 1, I ended up adding in some updates and edits as I was prepping to release. Like with Sacredness Part 1, my wonderings are raw and full of prevarication. You won’t find many sound bites or clear-cut answers here. Instead you’ll hear me drawing threads of understanding and insight together in real time, while being a mouthpiece for something that might be wisdom (or maybe not?) to come through.

You’ll hear me muse further on:

What we should perhaps be looking for in our guides and mentors;
A saying I heard in a yoga class and why I think it’s short-sighted as far as a spiritual and cultural approach goes;
My understanding of the term ‘shaman’ and why it might help us to stop thinking we all can or should be one;
How language can affect our ability to be in right relationship with ceremony, with the sacred, with the medicine we each carry;
The language of energy as our birthright;
The role of the messy and uncomfortable in our initiations and becoming;
Ceremony vs navel-gazing;
And a part of my journey I don’t speak about much, but which seems to be pointing me to…. something.

When the road of words and doing and fixes runs out, may we arrive at the profound and terrifying silence. And in this silence, may we meet ourselves stripped bare. And when we find ourselves stripped bare, may we hold the present of what really matters in our hands and heart. And may we realize we were only ever beautiful and worthy. May we finally realize what it is to be alive.

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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If we held up a laugh-meter (like the one from Monsters, Inc) what would our laugh levels be? and Why do we just feel drawn to certain places? and Do our ancestors matter? and Is it possible to befriend crows while being a nomad?

These are the types of questions (serious and silly) you’ll hear around today’s fire where I’m joined by the ever-optimistic, comedy-loving Kate Graham - a shamanic oracle and creator of the Empath Energetics intuition development and archetypal healing program. With training in hypnotherapy, yin and restorative yoga, thai yoga massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and shamanism, Kate uses her experiences to teach people how to trust their own bodies and hearts. She has also worked on an alpaca farm, lived nomadically in a van, and moved to manage a retreat in the Scottish Highlands, all in the name of intuition.

So for those of you familiar with my story (goatherd turned organic farmer turned yoga teacher turned shamanic practitioner turned nomad… etc) you can imagine that we have a lot of shared conversation topics… and they will wander through territory deep, wise, irreverent, visionary, and most likely sort of meaningless, too.

Topics like:

tuning into the energy of lands and locations;
how we might be selling our long-ago ancestors short;
the beauty of it taking all kinds;
why did we put structures which hold us in place into place?;
moving from hopelessness to optimism;
what remembering ancestral ways of meaning-making, healing, celebrating, and integrating have meant for us personally;
the balance of light and dark;
the role of tricksters, crows, and comedians in society;
the difference between healers who put things back together and healers who walk the edges with you;
why healing work can feel so hard and exhausting sometimes and some shifts in approach which might make it easier;
how love and abolition are teaching us right now…

and more.

This is a longer conversation because we just kept riffing off each other. But watching it back as I was preparing these notes, I kept finding myself laughing and wondering about things all over again.

Join us around the fire? You’re most welcome here.

May we each find the gift of our part in things and the places, people, and rituals to nurture those sparks. May we laugh more than we think we should and be free to flow where our medicine is most useful and our hearts feel most alive. May we have the courage and trust to come undone and rediscover something of even greater beauty. May we love our boundaries and therefore be able to love everyone. May we befriend the crows.

You can find Kate G:

Heartsfrontier.com

YouTube @heartsfrontier

Instagram @shamanicoraclekate

And if you've come for Kate G, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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Can we be human and not believe in sacredness? What does ‘sacred’ even mean?

The energy of these times in this moment of full moon, Spring equinox, and lunar eclipse feels deeply challenging, beautiful, and initiatory. And I had a message come through as I meditated one night about what sacredness actually is:

“Sacredness is not what we do, or even what we feel - it’s a quality of presence and listening which allows for some magic, some alchemy and potential for relationship to occur.”

So in honor of the challenge, hungers, hopes and dreams of this moment, I offer you my musings on sacredness and what that message means.

You’ll hear about:

intuition vs illusion;
a colonial mindset about our relationship with the land and the animist alternative;
why witnessing is one of the greatest gifts we can give;
how we struggle to recognize the sacred and now how to be with it;
ritual vs ceremony;
trauma vs initiation;

… and more.

What does sacred mean to you? And do you think you can be human without some sense of the sacred? I’d love to hear your perspective.

May we be changed by the process of our lives and our loves. May we let wonder guide us deeper. May we trust the unfolding of our journey and have people around us who see the intact innocence of hearts and help us stand for that in ourselves and others. Always.

P.S. This episode constitutes a first because the theme of sacredness has been working me since I recorded it and showing me some places where I remain out of alignment with what I say I’m standing for. So I’ve gone back in to cut out a few small parts I originally shared. They deserve more gatekeeping (not as a power move, but as relational discernment) than I had given them. So thanks for being with me as I put what I preach into action. <3

_________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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The Spring Equinox (referred to in several European countries as some version of ‘Ostara’) is midway between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice and a day of equal dark and light - the day and night are the same length. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, this is a time of blossoming, of unfurling, of tending the soil and placing new seeds. (The Southern Hemisphere celebrates the Fall Equinox and the equal light and dark on the way to endings and the shorter days of winter).

We’re also beginning the astrological new year as the sun moves from Pisces into Aries and begins its next cycle through the zodiac. And we’re entering eclipse season which symbolically can be seen as a time to let the shadows show us new perspectives on the natural order of things.

It’s a potent time of fiery energies and, possibly, deep wounds and griefs. So can we remember that the dark soil is fruitful for growth and all new life springs forth from what has decayed? That the quickening which began in February may now be in labor contractions and that we have to surrender the outcomes and allow ourselves to be changed to fully live the mystery of rebirth and initiatory portals. This is as much a time of unbecoming as it is a time to celebrate new life.

Gather with me around this virtual fire and you’ll hear me flesh these ideas out more (and give you an embodied breath practice to explore your relationship to these times); as well as offer some ways you can celebrate, honor, or otherwise align yourself with the season.

And I'd love to keep hearing from you: How are you celebrating this brief moment of equilibrium on our way to longer days? How are you noticing or honoring the endings necessary for beginnings and tending the soil in which you’re entrusting your new seeds?

May we find the rest and the down cycles as we stretch toward the light. May the soils we tend nurture the seeds of compassion, connection, and freedom in ourselves, our communities, and the wider world. May we not forget that a life is just one piece of the greater churning of Aliveness and may we be in service to the holy tension of opposites, as Love.

** Photo of the Sheela Na Gig carving is by Graham Hobster.

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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It’s been a while since I’ve had a guest around the fire for a host of reasons but today, for this new moon, I’m joined by Tad Hargrave of Marketing for Hippies (among other culture-making endeavors).

I got to meet Tad back in October in Edinburgh where we were both in town for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and enjoyed our post-story session conversations around mutual interests of culture, myths, ancestral wisdom, and being human and humane.

I’m delighted to be able to invite you into conversation with him, too.

Tad currently lives in Duncan, BC, though he hails from Edmonton, AB (traditionally known, in the local indigenous language of the Cree, as Amiskwaciy (Beaver Hill) and later Amiskwaciwaskihegan (Beaver Hill House) and his ancestors come primarily from Scotland with some from the Ukraine as well.

His bio page on his website has several different versions and is a testament to what I would name as the meeting point of wandering, wondering curiosity and depth of connection. At the core, it seems Tad has always been interested in stories, craft, music, leadership, building community around positive change, and creating events for people to come together to make good things happen. He’s also an accomplished sleight of hand magician and speaks Scottish Gaelic with conversational fluency!

So what will you hear in this conversation?

Join us for our musings around:

moving beyond the individual to a reverent acknowledgement of the line we came from;
ancestral wisdom, preserved with us in mind, and encoded in stories and other folklore;
why stories had to be changed to survive and how we can flesh the bones back out again to find the deeper meaning;
the difference between stories and spells;
the cultural wealth still present in Europe in spite of rupture and colonization;
what it might mean to be more human, especially as our ancestors might have conceived of it;
what the function of culture is and how it’s created;
the difference between how empire views evolution and how nature seems to view it;
how ethical marketing ties in with it all…

and more.

There’s a lot packed into this conversation - with some wisdom, curiosity, grief, and gratitude.

And, to paraphrase the Martín Prechtel quote Tad shares towards the end of the conversation, an attempt to be beautiful on the way to some answers.

What does being more human mean to you? We'd love to hear.

You’re welcome here with us around the fire.

May we fall in love with the world around us and let ourselves be moved by that love into beautiful action.

You can find Tad:

Website – https://marketingforhippies.com/

Substack - https://tadhargrave.substack.com/

And if you've come for Tad, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
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consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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I’m not going to pretend I think this is one of my best episodes. In fact, it feels like it’s one of my most rambling and least ‘helpful’. But it’s my birthday today and sometimes we get to just be human, not a’ helpful’ ‘resource’.

Sometimes good enough is just that.

So join me around the fire for a short and sweet episode and to hear my raw, unpolished wonderings about ritual; ceremony; thresholds; grieving and celebrating - both alone and together; and the absolute miracle of being alive.

I also offer you a game, if you will, you can join me in playing as a way of celebrating my birthday. If you do, let me know how it goes.

I’d love to hear.

May we explore and let the Great Mystery guide us into unplanned play from time to time. May we honor our grief as well as our dreams. May we experience and receive the nourishment of belonging to ourselves, each other, and the wider web of kin and aliveness. May we know where we are through gratitude for exactly who and what we are. In times of darkness and despair, may we come home again to Love.

Here’s to another turn around the sun. (And yes, that's me as a baby in the cover art for this episode)

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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What do you think of when you think of violence and peace? Antidote? Opposite sides of a coin?

As you’re probably aware, the through-thread of my wonderings and conversations in this podcast is a question: in the face of the dehumanizing forces of the world, how do we devote ourselves to more humanity?

And in these times, questions around peace, violence, and justice feel deeply relevant and urgent to questions of humanity.

So on this new moon, join me around the fire for some of my heartfelt musings around:

violence, peace, culture;
what I think many wellness spaces are missing;
and what I view as the orienting principle we need as we navigate a world of both dualism and non-dualism.

You’ll hear my take on four ‘messy’ emotions we often vilify within ourselves and how we can begin to shift our inner cultures of punishment, rupture, and exile to ones more aligned with our values of peace, love, and harmony (spoiler alert: it’s not by training ourselves away from these emotions!).

The creation of anything starts in the head as an idea and vision, then it has to move through the heart to the hands and legs. We have to be it, move as it, in order to create it.

What do you think? Did this episode shift your perspective or experience? Is there anything I missed? I'd love to keep hearing from you.

May we be the change we want to see. May we liberate ourselves to liberate others and vice versa. May abolition begin with our wounded, exiled selves. May we come to know the difference between shame and loving accountability. May we see it, feel it, be it. May Love be our North Star.

_____________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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Imbolc is a Cross Quarter celebration - midway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox; widely celebrated on February 1st each year, although in 2024 the astrologically-derived date is Feb 4 or 5. But at its heart, it tells us we are at the beginning of the beginning of Spring and invites us to take note of the subtle shifts which herald a larger transition, the tension of opposites and contradictions which exist uncomfortably side by side in any threshold. “Use this time to close and prepare, change is happening.”

I’ve been speaking a lot recently about transitions and integrations as I continue to metabolize my massively expansive experience of a four-month pilgrimage and stay open to what feels like big changes coming. And in this bonus episode, I continue that: using this nature-based celebratory marker and deep-lineage tradition to remind me (and you) that there is nothing in nature which moves abruptly from one thing to another and that sometimes we just need to be ‘in retrograde’ ourselves.

After all, we are each innately and unavoidably the meeting point of innumerable threads of what has been, what is, what could be, and what will be. And to be alive, wholly and fully alive, is to dance back and forth between those. The trajectory of a journey isn’t linear.

Case and point? This episode: which is still working me, even after I finished recording, and which is just one snapshot of an understanding which has continued to grow since yesterday. Heraclitus wasn’t lying when he said we can never step in the same river twice.

So, if you’re at a threshold and finding yourself annoyed, discouraged, frustrated, disheartened, flailing, “back where you started”, and generally “failing to move forward”, “get on with it”, etc… join me around the fire.

We’ll be messy and find proof that we’re designed to be so, together.

And I'd love to keep hearing from you: Did this shift anything for you in your perspective or relationship with a threshold or transition you’re navigating right now? How are you noticing or honoring the gradual shift from Winter to Spring?

May we remember that just enough tension on the warp threads, the underlying architecture of our own selves, allows us to weave new beauty. May we remember the aesthetic pleasure of irregular rhythms, trustworthy not in their linearity but in their roving cycles. May we look to Nature, not to reinforce what we think we know, but to be eldered and continually taught of the perfection of complex designs. May we not make too comfortable a home in either where we’ve been or where we hope to go, but rather recognize each moment as arrival-pause-and-departure. May we hold our own seasons of retrograde with as much honor, reverence, curiosity, wonder, and fiercely accountable compassion as we do our direct lines. And may we hold steady in our courage and willingness to be unmade and reshaped again and again by the life unfurling beneath our feet.

_______________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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Integration often takes longer than we think it will - the space between what’s here and what we now know to be possible is a place of healthy tension, heartbreak, creativity, imagination… hopefully leading to more wholeness and vibrant human-spirit expression.

As my post-pilgrimage integration journey continues, I share with you some John O’Donohue-inspired musings around Absence as creative force and soul-home.

You’ll hear a breath meditation and synopsis of the Slavic story of Vasilisa (plus an image from the story which feels potent to me right now); as well as some of my wonderings on:

wholeness;
presence and absence;
our fear around ‘nothingness’;
the crux of the tension inherent in being a soul and a human;
and being ‘in rhythm’ vs ‘vacancy’.

I continue exploring the perfection of our messy designs and share with you an invitation to be kinder to ourselves when going through a rough patch.

And I'd love to keep hearing from you: What do you think? Where do you find rhythm between your own Presence, Absence, and vacancy? Does any of this land for you? Or do you see it all as something else?

May we know each moment to be the threshold it is because we honor both our body-self and our invisible self. And may both those selves have places to retreat into rest. May we treat ourselves to absence when the time is now. May we befriend our hunger and longing so it becomes the instigating spark of our creativity and imagination. May our many pieces come home to wholeness. And may we be able to sort the dreams from the dirt to find the treasures of possibility in all our peak experiences.

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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Today around the fire I let you in a little more to some of my journey from deep disconnect and depression back to a lighter and more full-bodied experience of my life, prompted by the dark spiral I’ve found myself in over the past few weeks.

I talk about the tension we often feel in those places between needing others and needing to go inward. And I share about big emotions and why those of us who feel them often struggle to know how to tend them without throwing them around or having them come out sideways.

I also talk about Love and fear and a surprising (to me anyway) perspective shift I had around my own heartbreaks and ‘weaknesses’.

So where does your heart seem to break repeatedly? And did this perspective shift land or illuminate something for you?

I’d love to hear.

May we find the holiness in the hurts so we can be more alive.

May we get ever more graceful in navigating our big feels and tender places, in the quiet of our own experience and with each other.

May we grow our capacity to hold more Love before it turns to fear.

May we trust the innocent perfection of our own hearts to guide us home.

_____________________

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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Welcome back around the fire where today I’m modeling showing up as I am, fresh from being sick and the rawness of landing back in the United States.

It’s a pretty common phenomenon to get sick after a really expansive time. And while there are plenty of physical, immune system reasons for this, there is also an energetic and spiritual component, going often unrecognized.

This component, when tended to, can help us integrate and metabolize our peak experience in powerful ways. It may even help us plan for our integration periods in ways that minimize our body’s need to get sick and shut down.

So gather with me around our virtual (and germ-free!) fire while I share my thoughts and experiences with why the sickness happens (energetically and spiritually) and how we can work with it.

Plus:

what I mean by ‘peak experience’;
the differences between escapism experiences and transformative ones;
why integration is critical in being a more intact and alive human;
how ritual can help us in that space (and a little plug for my Insight 2024 (Tarot) offering currently happening);

… and more.

Jokes on me for thinking this would be a short little episode… I have a LOT to say on the subject (and find my mind still circling hours later: “..and another thing!”).

But stay with me through my rough voice, a coughing fit or two, and you may hear something to support you after your next peak experience.

Have you experienced being sick this way before? I’d love to hear.

P.S.

The people credited with authoring the piece where I first read about “safe vs brave spaces” are: Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens.

You can find out more about the tarot offering mentioned at the end here: https://www.wildsacredjourney.com/tarot-for-2024

May we honor the tender aliveness of our hearts as the darkness begins its slow turning towards light. And may we be available to honor the tender aliveness of the hearts of those around us. In sickness and in health.

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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In my head and, at times out loud, I’ve been calling this trip I’ve been on in Ireland and Scotland an ancestral pilgrimage. While it has and is turning out to be so much more, the instigating spark first grew out of a journey of wanting to know who my people were, where were they from, and what they believed… before they became a colonizing presence in the United States, before they became ‘white’, before many of the broken systems of our world became our over-culture.

As a true ‘North American, mixing-pot mutt,’ I have many lines of lineage and ancestral culture I could explore but my Celtic Isles line has been the one calling to me first. So what a coincidence, or perhaps not, that about a month into my time in Scotland, I got an email from my mom saying our cousins, who have been doing genealogy research on the Byrne/ O’Byrne side of the family, discovered a third cousin in Ireland and he’d be happy to meet with me.

In a time when so many of us seem to be hungry for a connection to place, to people; for a deeper sense of belonging and family; I really lucked out and hit the jackpot.

This episode is the story of how it felt to meet these cousins and my musings around:

why do we long to know more about our ancestors?
was I always interested?
why do we lose contact with these memories?
what are the repercussions?
What do we do with the wounds and traumas in the lineage?
what was it like to encounter their memories again?
did it change my life?
what if we don’t know where we’re from or the threads are too interrupted to trace?

You’ll also hear me drop a seed of a potential offering and an invitation to hear from you about your experience, questions, challenges around this subject.

So here, on the dark night of a new moon, nearing the darkest day of the year, let’s gather around the fire to dream and hold tenderly our hearts and their hungers.

May we feel how deeply we belong and how many ancestors, alive and long gone, dreamed the preciousness of our lives into being, in the best way they knew how.

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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In the past when I’ve traveled, I’d have had a steady commentary running through my mind, as if I was evaluating myself and what I was experiencing from the outside, while planning what silly things I was going to write about it to friends back home.

This trip is proving to be different. Which means, I find myself with less to say and more immersion into the stream of experiences.

But I still want to invite you along. So here is part two of my musings. Recorded solo, after a short break from recording new conversations and a whole lot of mileage, challenges, and small and big joys. You’ll hear me share some of the themes and intentions I’ve been tending to as I’m opened up by being out of my normal routines.

Themes like:

coming back alive;
trying too hard;
choosing to trust in benevolence;
grief;
unlearning comfort as the goal;
using my own social nervous system as a weapon against myself;

… and probably some more.

Let’s gather around the fire.

Fairly short and sweet, I hope you feel the lightness in it. I hope you find something inspiring. I hope you find it says something of importance and also a whole lot of nothing, at the same time. And I hope, when the time comes to just be in silence together, you feel it too, your own enoughness, wherever and whenever you find yourself tuning in.

You can find Kate:

Website: www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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When Erik and I recorded this episode, we intended it to be a bonus episode… and yet I’ve kept putting off listening to it. Honestly, I think I expected to find it super cringe (and it is a little, though not as much as I feared). But now here we are, approximately 1.5 months after recording it. Travel hasn’t allowed me to record many new episodes with guests and the moon moves through its phases… and I can’t keep hiding anymore.

Some context: August 23, I left the US and flew to Scotland to begin four months of living on the road here and in Ireland. This episode was recorded at the end of August, less than a week after my arrival. Thousands of miles of journeying are between the Kate who writes this and the Kate you’re about to listen to. And yet, I still don’t totally know what this journey is about. I suspect most of it won’t come clear until after the trip.

But in this episode, you’ll hear my initial musings on:

why I’m in Scotland and Ireland;
ruptures in my ancestral roots;
tending inner wounds of oppressor and oppressed;
layers of culture;
choosing to build skill and capacity for healthy conflict;
healing backwards and forwards;
feeling the land calling me;
the gap between my expectations and reality;
a reactivated ‘witch wound’;
my why behind the podcast and the surprising (to me) revelation that starting it was also connected to this trip;
letting stories be alive;
knowledge, wisdom, and stories in community;
when myths become propaganda;
waiting for heroes to come save us;
learning how to receive stories so we can more intentionally engage with them

…. and more.

As I say at the end, I hope this episode gives you a little more sense of who I am. I hope it inspires you or allows you to find something that allows you to feel you belong around this fire.

I hope it reflects how stepping away from what’s familiar and onto another land can open us, humble us, enliven us.

I hope it avoids completely interpreting another culture through my own lens. And where I inevitably have, I hope you can hold the tension of my own interpretation with the differing ones you have or have heard. After all, conversations like this walk the line between facts, stories, and possibilities. And that’s why we gather around the fire.

You can find Kate (me):

Website- www.wildsacredjourney.com

Email – kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

And I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations like this:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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Today’s session around the fire was recorded about 10 days into my time in Scotland and watching it back for these notes, I’m aware of how ‘fizzy’ and ‘unsettled’ my system feels; how old meaning-making patterns were being stirred and and challenged and I was in the place of being unmade. Perhaps you’ll see something different in me, too. Or perhaps that’s how it always was and it looks and feels different now, later, after more shifts and settlings.

But one thing today’s guest, Dougie Mackay, and I share is a living inquiry into how to be a more natural human. And so, here we are, me at the start of a trip and him in between journeys, telling stories, sharing points of connection and curiosities, enjoying being human, together.

Dougie Mackay is a storyteller hailing from the Scottish Highlands, who weaves his background in Community Education with his love of the natural world, bushcraft, primitive skills and other regenerative practices, into a storytelling practice often done outdoors or in unusual settings, and used for group-work facilitation, development, connection, and empowerment.

He’s renowned for his warm demeanor and engaging style and all of that comes through in our conversation as we explore some his favorite topics, like: stories as tools for entertainment, education, and connection to culture and landscape; the functionality of storytelling in modern times; how can we use stories to enrich our personal lives; and what can we glean about an older animistic culture through the stories they told…

as well as:

our personal quests for meaning and cultures of substance (and how Dougie finally discovered meaningful culture at home in Scotland);
following the trail of ancestral severance;
the instinctive human impulse to be curious about the horizon;
how travel can help us see our own homes, what’s local, and what’s universal;
Scottish Ceilidh culture as a cultural template for hospitality and connection;
the overlapping skills for storytelling and traveling well;
how he got into stories and storytelling;
generational events like the Highland Clearances and how they can continue to impact a cultural psyche;
the ability of stories to bring things alive in our bodies and help us make sense of where we are;
the three types of stories in the Scottish seanachie tradition;
holding stories with reverence to find more richness;
the practice of ‘leaving something out for the fairies’...

and more.

He also shares two, beautiful stories with us around this digital hearthfire. So if you love to travel, love stories, and are curious about how we continue to be more natural humans - join us. I think you’ll find we have much in common.

You can find Dougie:

Website – https://storyconnection.org/

Instagram - @dougie.mackay.story

Podcast - https://storyconnection.org/tales-for-our-times/ (available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

And if you've come for Dougie, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/messageSupport this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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We all need a certain level of containment - some boundaries and understandings to help guide us. However, things get sticky when we confuse certainty with containment. And when we (often unconsciously) try to avoid our fear of uncertainty.

Today, I’m joined at the fire by Erik Eging - a PR and Communications specialist, photographer, and no stranger to medicine spaces; as well as a human now supporting this podcast.

He shares his personal story of leaving a “high-demand” religion; what it looked like for him to discover he still needed some sort of spiritual meaning-making system; and how he moved into authorship of that for himself.

Whether you identify with having left a cult or other high-demand community; have concerns about some of the power-over dynamics you see being perpetuated in spiritual and medicine spaces; or have gone through some sort of initiation where your sense of certainty and security was lost and you had to find a new way forward… join us around this fire.

We don’t shy away from things like:

the erasing and rewriting of our own histories;
ancestral healing and not wanting to look back at the pain;
where our spirituality and anti-racism journeys can overlap and inform each other;
certainty being fragile even though it feels like confidence;
how do we recognize ‘truth’?;
the real culprit isn’t the belief system but the lack of room for doubt;
containment without rigidity;
cultivating inner authority or authorship over life;
the wounds of self-betrayal;
how to recognize cult-like dynamics at play around us (and some of the varied and perhaps unexpected) places they can show up;
when the Savior complex appears and how to stop taking, giving away, or accepting other’s power;

… and more.

And all of you is welcome here.

You can find Erik:

Instagram - @eging.erik

And if you've come for Erik, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

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What happens if you take two humans, both with some sort of calling to catalyze change, sit them down together during the Lion’s Gate Portal while spiders spin webs overhead, and then release that recording into the world on a Full Moon in Pisces???

A helluva magical, fiery, and loving conversation.

Pull up your chair, your log, your rock; get your tea, your hot cocoa, your popcorn - whatever you need to get comfortable because joining me around the fire today is Katharine (Kat) Hargreaves: “the woman in the boat who meets others on the threshold,” a shamanic practitioner, ceremonial guide, and initiated medicine womxn who provides spiritual mentorship, apprenticeship programs, and psychedelic integration support for those on the healing path.

And when it comes to many of the big questions we face on spiritual journeys, within the plant medicine world, as soulful entrepreneurs, or as humans in ‘white’ bodies aiming to ‘do better’… we don’t hold back.

You’ll hear our thoughts on things like:

finding friends and relationships with the wild ones, our non-human kin;
tending the earth means tending the body;
definitions of ‘medicine’ beyond something we put in our bodies;
humans are not a scourge, nor are they supreme;
Kate’s shift from being in service to the wounds to being in service to the old ways;
Kat’s experience learning to hold her own medicine and the medicine of “you’re not ready yet”;
what plants can offer us, as teachers in their own right;
colonialism, ‘white’ culture, and being rootless;
ritual, divination, and accessing the wider web of wisdom;
unlearning greed and power-over hierarchies to find initiations and integrations as natural gatekeepers;
taking more responsibility (in healthy ways)
the challenges and process of ‘finding your medicine’ and living your purpose…

and so much more.

This conversation, while potent for any listener who loves complexity and spirituality, will probably feel especially powerful for you if you spend a lot of time in spiritual and wellness spaces or consider yourself a healer, yoga teacher, herbalist or server of plant medicines, etc; and especially if you hold those sacred roles while navigating the world within a ‘white’ body and grappling with questions of doing it the honorable and ‘right’ way.

If so, or even if you’re called for another reason, let yourself be moved into place around this fire. I think you’ll find something awakening, grounding, challenging and affirming here.

You can find Kat:

Website – www.wildalive.co

Experience an Ancestral Divination – www.wildalive.co/divination

Newsletter – wildalive.substack.com

Instagram – www.instagram.com/katakhann

Linkt.ree – https://linktr.ee/katakhann

And if you've come for Kat, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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Freedom. Birth. God.

These are all words that have become quite loaded and contentious topics of conversation… and yet, in this episode, we dive in.

Joining me around the fire is Stella Udeozor - a first-generation Nigerian-American, mother of two, digital content Creator, storyteller, photographer, and birthkeeper backed out of Cincinnati, Ohio; who, through her business, Freedom Birth Story, aims to capture the true, and free, essence of every story, especially those of birth and motherhood.

Neither of us expected this conversation to go where it did, but, as you’ll hear Stella say, that’s what happens when you gather around the fire!

Join us and you’ll hear us lovingly question the stories we’ve been told to find stories that feel more free (and other musings) on subjects like:

shifting from dogma to a personally-aligned relationship with spirituality;
looking through the systems to find the heart and integrity untouched by corruption;
language, place, and belief as as sites of freedom and sites of oppression;
storytelling as medicine;
the complexities of allowing stories to be living processes while making sure you’re writing your own (not someone else writing it for you);
God not as fixed entity but as myriad faces and aspects;
how honoring our ancestors and praying to saints can be the same thing;
discernment, embodiment, and not outsourcing our power when it comes to birth, death, and everything in between;
what ‘freedom’ means to each of us…

and much more.

While these subjects can, in some situations, feel large and heavy, there’s a lightness and joy pervading every moment of this conversation; reminding us curiosity and wonder are key, unlearning can be fun, and, in the end, it’s all about the stories we believe and the ones we tell.

If you’re in a place of unlearning or deconditioning from a system or identity you didn’t choose or grew to find oppressive; if you’re feeling trapped and wondering how to feel more free; if you’re tired of living stories of wounds and limitations and want to write stories of possibility… join us around this fire. I think you’ll find something grounding, touching, inspiring, and reparative.

You can find Stella:

Website: https://www.freedombirthstory.com/

Instagram - @stellasfreedomstory; @freedombirthstory

And if you've come for Stella, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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I love starting each episode by asking the guest about the forces that shaped them because it drops us right into their unique tapestry of places, ancestors, languages, religions, beliefs, wounds, and victories - in short, the truest stuff of our individual and shared humanity.

In a world where ‘trauma’ has become a buzzword and the pendulum seems to have swung from sweeping things under the rug to memeing about our tenderest hurts and armchair psychology in online public forms, we can find ourselves surrounded by stories of not receiving love in the ways we needed, of feeling trapped or controlled, of being taught to be someone else instead of ourselves (all important conversations)... often without the nuance and depth guidance to help us move towards what’s next.

Today’s conversation with Claudia Olivos - an artist, mystic and curandera who weaves art with myth, nature, the cosmos, intuition and the magic of Spirit as she channels energies of the Divine Feminine through Sacred Mothers and Goddesses from around the world - bravely wades into her wounds around her relationship with her mother and fundamentalist belief systems… and then opens up about the gifts she found within the wounds and how they led her to create her Sacred Mothers and Goddesses Oracle deck and shaped her into the self-proclaimed “Shamanic-Witchy-Priestess’ she is today.

You’ll hear us explore:

Claudia’s childhood conversion from Catholicism to Evangelicalism;
the hidden symbolism nestled within modern religious movements;
channeling and the creative process;
how Mother Mary acted as Claudia’s conduit to accessing the goddess archetypes and helped her heal her mother wound;
the Universe as a playful place;
reclaiming power and joy in the face of grief and hurt;
destruction in service of creation;
polytheism as different access points into the Unnameable Mystery…

and so much more.

If you’re someone who moved away from the religion of your youth and has grappled with finding your way with belief and faith; if you’re someone who has yearned for a connection with the Feminine you’re not finding in our culture; if you want to find the wounds in your gifts and let them open you to magic and possibility, or even just hear more about the process of channeling different aspects of the Mystery… join us around this fire. I think you’ll find something nurturing, uplifting, and empowering in this conversation.

You can find Claudia:

Website: https://olivosartstudio.com/

Instagram: @olivosartstudio

TikTok: @claudia.olivosartstudio

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@olivosARTstudio

And if you've come for Claudia, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too. On Apple Podcast, please consider rating and leaving a review.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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One aspect of being human is toggling back and forth between the stories and experiences of our personality self or our smaller, 3D, human self… and our Soul self, or the parts of us who can zoom way out and be open to (even if we can’t grasp completely) a vaster understanding of the larger Cosmos and web of life.

This conversation with Kari Hohne - a dream analyst, artist, and expert on the eastern and western archetypes that inspire our dreams and oracles; including ancient astrology, Tarot's archetypes, and the Tao te Ching and I Ching - explores what it means to live joyfully through zooming out and tapping into a deeper, broader, and more universal wisdom and story.

All that Kari has studied and experienced leads her to consider this wider, ‘second’ vision the more objective of the visions and perspectives available to us as we seek to navigate being one of many organisms alive on this planet. And from the lens of this river of wisdom and the language of symbolism, we explore:

what shamanism means to Kari;
the idea that our world is not worse, but rather the best possible expression available at this moment;
the ‘24-hr mind’ and dreams (including nightmares) as tools for awakening;
how ancient wisdom traditions like Daoism and the I Ching guide us to Nature as a teacher;
non-linear time;
the role of wonder in living joyfully;
technology and expanded consciousness;
fear and creativity;
the language of symbolism…

and much more.

Author Robin Wall Kimmerer says in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, that “even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

Kari, too, chooses joy. And she invites us to step into wonder and joy, and give it back.

Gather with us? Step into the Great River with us? Choose joy with us?

I hope you will.

_______________

You can find Kari -

Website http://www.cafeausoul.com

Wellness Videos http://youtube.com/natureisaguru

Books https://www.amazon.com/Kari-Hohne/e/B0030V73B0

Music https://open.spotify.com/artist/1pX44YkVsIQ1JesGyUKyMV

And if you've come for Kari, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

P.S. The Velveteen rabbit quote I butcher in this episode:

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

_________________

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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Cultures of survival rely on labels for stability - they want to know if a, then b; and in general, it’s an approach that works for us for a while. But eventually, we hit a moment when we can’t continue as we are. When the frameworks and approaches we’ve been taught can’t get us to the next step in our lives. When we realize it’s how we see things that may be part of the problem. To unlearn those ways and find our next one takes courage, compassion, and patience. We have to be willing to be with our discomfort, uncertainty, and (sometimes) skepticism.

Today’s conversation with Dahlia Rose (founder of The Conduit School and a healer, teacher, guide, and conduit for high vibrational energies within her in-person and online communities) explores what it takes to build our unique bridge from survival to thriving, from prescription to intuition, from limitations to expansion.

You’ll hear us wonder through the threads of:

the forces that shaped Dahlia;
how she got into working with crystals;
invitations to grow through neurodivergence and queerness;
tapping into our otherworldly senses through our physical ones;
the connection between fascia and karma;
taking a multidimensional approach to life;
becoming your own guide;
star nations…

and more.

If you’ve been wanting to explore working with crystals beyond a prescriptive approach; if you’ve been wanting to hear more about multidimensional reality and star nations in a way that doesn’t avoid or negate the body; if you’re feeling alone at a threshold between the known and the uncertain… join us around this fire. I think you’ll find something reassuring, inspiring, and reparative in this conversation.

You can find Dahlia:

Email: pleiadiancouncils@gmail.com

Website: https://www.theconduitschool.com/

Instagram - @dahliasdiscourse

Facebook: Dahlia Rose

And if you've come for Dahlia Rose, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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“I don’t teach voice because I think I’m a great singer. I teach voice because it’s one of my favorite ways to commune with my own heart and life and to move energy and pray.”

This is one of the last things today’s guest, Hanna Leigh - a ceremonial musician, voice doula, weaver, visionary and founder of a budding organization called "Weaving Remembrance" - says in our conversation. And I think it sums up perfectly so many of the threads you’ll hear us weave.

From Hanna’s path with devotional songs in church, then mantras, then icharos; to her passion for traveling and immersing herself in cultures and languages; to her desire to live places with no machines and remember ancestral craft; to her playful exploration of the full range of human expression through singing with nature and the elements; you’ll hear us wonder about:

balancing being human and spirit;
the magic of manifestation;
the possibilities opened through ancestral remembering;
intimacy and deep connection with nature;
bridging the worlds of AI and hand-made;
shaping and being shaped by culture…

and more.

Whether you’re someone who considers yourself a singer or not: if you’ve ever dreamed of living off grid, if you’ve yearned for more time to wander and expand, if you’ve faced a sobering reality that’s made you appreciate the messiness of being human, if you wonder what else is possible… I think you’ll find something of resonance in this conversation.

Gather with us? Expand your heart and voice with us? Stand at the portal between what may have been, what could be, and what is with us?

I hope you will.

And then, let’s sing it.

________________

You can find Hanna Leigh and Weaving Remembrance:

Personal Website: https://www.hannaleigh.org/

Weaving Remembrance Website: https://weavingremembrance.org/

Instagram - @hannaleighsong

And if you've come for Hanna Leigh, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

__________________________________________

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

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The more of these conversations I have, the deeper I understand why we’re gathering here around the fire - answering a whispered call. Sometimes the ‘why’ is in the guest’s personal wisdom, earned and shared through a life fully lived. Other times, it’s because their life and studies offer us a cultural framework different from our current one, often richer in wisdom and spirit.

Today’s conversation with Jen Murphy, an Irish woman descended from a lineage of storytellers and wisdom keepers on her maternal line; and creator of Celtic Embodiment, a cutting-edge modality that fuses the ancient wisdom of Celtic Mythology with the emerging field of Feminine Embodiment Coaching to transform modern life for women; is the later.

Jen’s fascination with the natural coalescence between our ancestral myths and our bodies as a potent brew to reclaim our sovereign power, brings forth musings on culture, story, language, mythical ancestors, and place.

We explore:

the indispensability of story and arts in early Irish society;
the differences between oral and written traditions and what that means for culture;
language as a means of accessing the lore stored in the land;
place vs non-place and broader issues of cultural displacement;
the Irish understanding of the three cauldrons of the body;
our bodies as sites of reclamation and eldering;
what the Irish sovereignty goddess and mature king have to teach us about personal and collective right relationship…

and more.

If you’re someone who sees how we got here, knows things need to change, and is curiously looking around for examples, recipes, threads to alchemize into new possibilities for our culture and our future, join us around this fire. You’re in for a potent, enlightening, and inspiring conversation.

May it spark a remembering from within your own body and the wisdom of your mythical ancestors.

You can find Jen:

Website: https://www.celticembodiment.com/

Instagram - @celticembodiment

And if you've come for Jen, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

To further support the podcast and conversations that awaken, inspire, repair, and evolve something deep within us and serve as good medicine for our wild, tender personal and collective hearts:

Please ‘follow’, ‘like’ or ‘subscribe’ where you listen so you stay up-to-date on all our conversations and help others find them, too.
share widely
consider joining the new Patreon community! For as little as $1/ month, patrons get access to community gatherings and get to play a more interactive role in the growth of the podcast. ⁠https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney⁠

Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kate-powell-wsjp/support

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Our guest around the fire this episode is Amana Mayfield-Faulkner, supportive sister and guide for women who are motivated to deepen their understanding of themselves. Through her life, her work, and her own podcast (The Heart of the Soul), Amana is an explorer of pregnancy, birth, death, mothering, sociology, culture, nature, nursing, midwifery, reiki & mediumship… among other things.

And you’ll feel Amana’s curious, courageous, open heart in this conversation which begins with an exploration of initiations (hers have come at times in the form of travel, the death of her first love at a young age, and then motherhood and child loss). And from there it meanders through archetypes, culture, and mediumship.

We get curious about what it takes to get comfortable in the experiences that stretch us, that grow us, that are, by their very nature and design, uncomfortable.

We wonder about safety and belonging and what it takes for our hunger for those to feel met.

We weave our conversation through the cycles of life and death, through the risk and reward of rebirth, all to grieve and celebrate the magic of being human.

Gather with us? Be gently and courageously curious with us? Be a willing ‘yes’ to the adventure of life with us?

I hope you will.

The wheel of life is turning, we’d love to have you along for the ride.

You can find Amana:

Her website: https://www.birthingnova.love/

The Heart of the Soul Podcast: https://www.birthingnova.love/podcast-theheartofthesoul

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ljFiZ4fgTqhdU9bG4DRFJ?si=8421969531344ccf

On Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-heart-of-the-soul-with-amana-be-love/id1555599589

And if you've come for Amana, welcome! I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

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Today, on the astrological day of Beltane, Bealtaine ‘as Gaeilge’ (in Irish), we gather around the fire with Sionnáin, a musician, songstress, quantum therapist and water carrier from the West of Ireland, whose path is devoted to honouring, celebrating & remembering with the Tuatha Dé Danann, the mythical tribe of Shining Ones.

You’ll hear tales from her journey through personal and ancestral wounds around lineage, language, loneliness, and disconnection from homeland and place; and how she found herself on a path woven with and in service to the awakening of the songlines of Ireland.

Woven through her personal stories, you’ll hear threads of Irish cultural rememberings, rooted in the land and language, like:

the Irish name for Ireland (Éire) and it’s connection to the sovereignty goddess Éiriú;
the power of names;
the ancient practice of Imbas Forosnai;
the Goddess Brigit and the Tuatha Dé Danann;
visiting sacred sites (and how you can start engaging with that practice in a good way);
and two medicine songs/ invocations she has channeled through in Gaeilge, the Irish language.

Together, we discuss looking beyond our family tree to our mythical lineages for ancestors to guide us; how we need stories that still reflect the land; the power of grief and forgiveness in opening us to deeper paths and the worlds that overlap with this one; and our hunger for these wisdoms in these times.

Whether you have direct ancestral connection to the lands of Éire or not, may this conversation serve as an awakening to the ancient rememberings of land, lineage, and language in your bones.

May we all experience the love, blessings, and gratitude for those we meet along the way.

May we all find our guides in these journeys of remembrance.

May your heart and body know safety, belonging, and the blessing of communion.

May it be so.

And from Sionnáin: “my deep grá and buíochas to all those who I have been blessed to meet along the way. Especially to those who have guided and supported this journey of remembrance.”

You can find Sionnáin on Instagram: @shannonsoulsounds

And if you've come for Sionnáin, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

Please feel free to share these conversations widely. Rate or subscribe/ follow where you listen to stay up-to-date on new episodes and to help others discover them.

You can become a supporting member of the podcast community by joining us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney

Thank you! Go raibh míle maith agat!

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Today’s guest around the fire, the charismatic and loving Dan McNeil, self-proclaimed teacher, brother, husband, and father; has taken a winding route to get to where he is today, but as he says early on in the episode, while life has taken him many places, the voice of spirit has always been the same.

And you’ll feel that in our conversation - a conversation that dances between:

the despair of the world and laughter;
the practice of mindfulness;
what real heroism may be;
finding our callings;
plenty of stories and parables;
… and through it all, a voice of spirit that stays steady and loving and hopeful.

If you, like us have found yourself feeling overwhelmed and heart broken; if you like us, have found yourself wanting to fix or save the world; if you, like us, wonder sometimes why you’re here and what’s your purpose; if you, like us, believe in the power of love… pull up a chair and join us.

I think you’ll feel in good company.

(And it may feel like the perfect conversation for the beginning of eclipse season and the invitation to introspection and new beginnings of a new moon and solar eclipse)

You can find Dan’s blog/ website here:

https://danmcneil14.wixsite.com/graceandgratitude

You can find the “Meditate Like Christ” story he referenced here: https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=973

The Skeleton Woman story I referenced can be found in “Women Who Run With Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

If you've come for Dan, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

P.S. As a community medicine space, this podcast is relational - it weaves webs of connection and mutual respect and care across time and space.

If you appreciate and support the future we’re seeding here, you can support the weaving of this web in a few ways:

Share episodes with friends and family or online with your community. It also helps the podcast immensely if you like, rate, subscribe to or follow the podcast where you watch or listen so you get notified when new episodes drop and new listeners find us as they search.
Join us on Patreon! Doing so supports conversations like the one you just heard and allows you access to live community gatherings and medicine circles… and more, as we continue to grow. It also helps me keep this space advertisement-free so the conversations stay intact as they are. https://patreon.com/wildsacredjourney

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What does it mean to be a full-spectrum human? What are all the pieces that weave together to form our experience and how do we distill them down into something that holds deep resonance for us?

These questions lay at the heart of the conversation that unfolded when I got together with Dajé James, aka the Story Doula, a storyteller, flower essence practitioner, and space-holder for wild-hearted leaders and creative entrepreneurs, who supports creatives in owning their voices and waging beauty with their unique medicine.

Our explorations of:

ancestral connection;
distinguishing instinct from intuition;
the roles of ritual, initiation, and elderhood in our development;
and what’s meant by “finding your medicine”

are all interwoven with Daje’s own story - from running away from a cult to go to college, to the visceral intensity of experiencing her first big spiritual awakening and initiation, and what she’s passionate about cultivating in the world now.

If you’re someone who is curious what else might be possible for our culture and our future; if you’re someone with a deep spiritual connection; if you’re someone who wants to open your intuition and develop your capacity for subtle communication… I think you’ll find something of resonance in this conversation.

Gather with us? Open to the Great Mystery with us? Welcome your full-spectrum experience with us?

I hope you will.

Your medicine is wild, unique, and necessary.

(Please note: per Dajé’s request, this episode is audio-only)

You can find Dajé:

On Instagram - @thestorydoula

On her website: https://www.thestorydoula.co/

On Substack: www.thestorydoula.substack.com

And if you've come for Daje, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

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What's left when all else melts away? When you find yourself at a threshold; in the middle of an initiation; grappling with the things you would never have consciously chosen? In a moment or many when you’re stripped of your accomplishments, or people you love, or the things you thought you knew?

Who are you then? And what really matters?

One of my first spiritual teachers and long-time friend, Dr. Christen Scott aka the Yoga Shrink, has been on a journey of unlearning ‘doing and accomplishing from a place of inadequacy’ to find deeper presence and acceptance her whole life. From getting the doctorate, to running marathons, to a thriving clinical psychology practice, she has always gone for it. And then a new devotion to the practice of yoga started showing her another, more love-centered and body-centered, possibility.

Not one to do anything with half her heart, Christen and her husband Preston went all in on living, teaching, leading, and serving from the principle that there is Love or there is Fear - and they choose Love. This episode is the story of how her understanding of Love has been tested and deepened in the year and change since Preston’s unexpected and sudden death the day after Thanksgiving 2021.

Through laughter and tears, you’ll hear us explore:

how the wilderness of bereavement makes it impossible to go along with the aspects of society that run counter to full humanity and aliveness;
sacred and ancestral approaches to grief and loss;
how Christen learned to tend her grief and some ways we, as a society, could support grief better;
the inquiry - what if loss, although challenging, isn’t a wound or a problem? What if we are, in fact, perfectly designed for it?… and more

Having spent the last year+ with my own primary and secondary grief in the wake of Preston's transition, this episode feels particularly poignant. If you’re watching this episode, you’ll see how much of it I spend with tears in my eyes. And yet, somehow, this is not a sad or heavy episode - it’s a deeply loving and reparative one.

Gather with us? Celebrate life with us? Sit in the full expression of humanity, including the commonality of loss, with us?

I hope you will.

The world needs us heart-broken-open, fully alive, and available for more Love.

You can find Christen here: https://www.yogashrinks.com/

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Sometimes it feels like there’s an assumption that to shift our current exploitative and divided relationship with the land, we have to be different than we are, adopt a certain lifestyle aesthetic… so I’m super excited for this conversation with winemaker Jason Murray and artist Sandy Gray-Murray of Arterra Wines and Hawkmoth Arts, two people who epitomize lifestyle, not as aesthetic but as conscious choice; as act of reverence for the land and beauty - all by staying true to what they feel is theirs to do and be in the world.

In a nod to my earlier conversation (ep 5) with Dr. Shanequa Smith, Jason says, “we feel we are trying to build new systems. It’s not easy.” And it's true. This conversation is both inspiring and sobering - honoring the beauty of life without shying away from the challenges we face as humans at this time, and particularly as humans trying to be the change we want to see in the world.

In it you’ll hear us explore:

the difference between art, craft, and artisan - between product, process, and consumption;
how staying on your path requires shutting out the noise (and one of the most helpful tools for when the noise gets loud);
making tough, imperfect choices when it comes to sustainability and finding your ‘right’ way;
concrete examples of how Jason and Sandy live their values through the craft and process of their work;
why sourcing your choices from beauty and the land is such a revolutionary act… and more.

You may hear things you agree with, you may hear things that challenge you. You may hear things that are out of your daily experience and don’t slot easily into your current understanding. But as Jason says towards the end of the episode: “If you don’t, are you even talking?”

Gather with us?

Forge a new path with us?

Celebrate beauty with us?

I hope you will.

The world needs the biodiversity that is all of us.

You can find Jason and Sandy, the winery and the art at:

https://www.arterrawines.com/;

https://www.hawkmotharts.com/

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This episode, like a healthy nervous system, oscillates between the personal and the collective; between our individual stories and how that informs what we see as being ‘up’ for us as humans: what’s being asked of us, what we’re yearning for, and what evolution might, or even must, be possible.

How perfect then that I’m joined by Kristin Urbanus, a Professional Certified Coach, Spiritual Psychology and Somatic Touch practitioner, and yoga and meditation teacher - someone skilled in a multidimensional approach to transformation and evolution; who can both hear the body and hear the subtle and larger currents we humans ride.

The first thread you’ll hear us follow is an exploration of the difference between ‘knowing’ something and ‘experiencing’ it and that seems to come full circle when we wrap up by exploring how we recognize ‘truth’ from mirage; what ‘rightness’ feels like in our bodies.

Along the way, we also wend our way through :

where orienting around “I think therefore I am” seems to have gotten us and some alternatives that might open up new possibilities for humanity;
the role spaciousness, animism, body, and a sense of belonging to the wider world can play in making healing less scary;
where ‘modern modalities’ seem to fall short in effectiveness, why, and what role old ways of knowing and relating might play in modern evolution;
what we yearn for, why we distract ourselves;
finding the part of ourselves we trust… and so much more.

There are a couple of moments Kristin flips the questions back around on me, continuing the trend of this podcast being less about interviews and more about conversations - two humans exploring the known and unknown, together.

Gather with us? Awaken with us? Be moved with us?

I hope you will.

There is plenty of room for all of you here.

You can find Kristin:

Website: https://www.kristinurbanus.com/

Instagram @lifecoachyoga

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For this powerful and moving episode I’m joined by one of my teachers, an amazing human who has had a profound impact on my life and journey, Tammy LaDrew. Tammy is a Life Artist, Writer & Personal Development Coach who teaches people how to live better lives through The Art of Awakening, Wayfinding and Conscious Creation - the art of connecting with their inner inspiration, reclaiming their Spirit, and delivering their creative presence into the world.

The experience of being struck by lightning at the age of 17 initiated Tammy into her journey of sensing energy and the subtle world. The deviations and challenges of that path, and the way she both chose and learned to engage with them, have ultimately brought her into a wisdom journey - one where she can both nurture and hold others (like me!) in loving accountability.

She’s a heart-felt and natural addition to our village fire. And so, here we are.

A rich episode, you’ll hear us explore:

recognizing the full expression of yourself from the conditioned one;
a structural framework for understanding how to meet the world soul-soul, not role-to-role;
why we often end up repelling the things we long for;
the ‘rules’ of Conscious Wayfinding and how they help us create our lives;
when your spiritual tools become hypervigilance;
the privilege, power, and responsibility of being human and creating a world we want to live in;
what’s actually at stake for us in these conversations;
the surprising thing that might save humanity…and more.

Gather with us? Awaken with us? Be moved with us?

I hope you will.

All of you matters here.

You can find Tammy at: https://www.tammyladrew.com/

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For this curious, wise, and earth-paced episode I’m joined by Tish Linstrom - a friend, peer, and guide, with a passion for providing women deeply transformative, nourishing, and empowering spaces in which to experience their bone-deep knowing and aliveness in order to claim more soul-rooted + authentic expressions of their innate wild natures and belonging.

I first met Tish when she reached out, after years of being deep in the bone cave of menopause while still closely mothering, looking for someone to hold some space for her while she integrated the profound personal and spiritual shifts. Along the way, we both discovered a kindred soulship and love for conversations exploring archetypes, ancient wisdom, and Earth-held, wild journeys of becoming.

Of course I wanted to bring one of those conversations to you. And so, here we are.

You’ll hear us explore:

the journey to elderhood (no, it’s not inevitable - it’s a practice and a role);
menopause and powerful feminine rites of passage;
perpetual “daughterhood” and how it affects our growth as women;
the role mystery plays in healthy individuals and societies;
the power of archetypes to guide and support us;
and how perhaps it’s more effective to be deliberate in what we care about rather than seeking to not care at all…

I show up to this conversation a little raw and tender and through being together, around our virtual fire, listening to receive… something in me shifts. (Which is the point of this project after all - a reminder, an exploration, a practice of finding nourishment and repair through gathering each others’ stories).

Gather with us? Listen with us? Be curious and moved with us?

I hope you will.

All of you is welcome here.

You can find Tish at: https://www.wisewomanroots.com/

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Here in both the 11th episode and the first episode of 2023, I reflect on what I’m aiming to do with these conversations - namely to explore, in dehumanizing times and an increasingly virtual world, what it means to be human. Asking: how do we use our innate human ability to be able to walk with a foot in each world (the physical and the imaginal) in powerful and constructive ways?

Through reflections and some of my own story, I explore what reweaving ‘animism’ - the cosmology of a living, breathing, soul-infused world - has gifted me and how it supports an embodied and deeply sacred sense of kinship with myself and life around me.

In this episode, you’ll hear my ruminations on:

what animism is as a cosmology;
the culture we’re currently swimming in;
how a more animistic worldview might help us change the trajectory our species seems to be on;
how without animism and a more rooted and embodied relationship to ourselves and our lives, we risk using wellness tools to perpetuate or simply put bandaids on our modern ‘illnesses’;

… and more.

This feels like a vulnerable conversation for me for some reason - probably because it feels so important. I’m glad you’re here.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on animism, our current cultural trajectory, or something that helped you recognize and hold things as sacred - I welcome it.

If you’d like to hear me in conversation with someone, connect me with someone, or ask me about something you’d like to hear me talk about, I welcome that, too.

You can connect with me on Instagram (@wildsacredjourney_kp), or, better yet, email me: kate@wildsacredjourney.com

Happy New Year.

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For this deeply moving and thought-provoking conversation, I’m joined by the tender, honest, and fierce Evelyn Deming - someone who, through deep soul calling and her colorful and sometimes challenging past, found herself comfortable in the sacred and messy space of death. Evelyn has tended the dying as a former hospice nurse, board certified nurse coach, and death doula; and has plans to support people with life-limiting diagnoses as an end of life coach.

Though currently on a professional break to concentrate on her own healing, she continues to challenge us all to answer the question: if death is our birthright, what do you want to do with the time you have left?

I’m thrilled to have this conversation because, in the last few years particularly, I’ve come to see how deeply interwoven grief is with what it means to be human… and how deeply grief- and death- avoidant our culture is, at least here in the U.S.

But we know we’re not actually getting out of here alive, so what becomes possible when we acknowledge that fact and live accordingly?

This episode sits firmly in that question, while also exploring:

what it is to live well and die well?
is grief the price of love?
do you have to be spiritual or religious or believe in some afterlife to engage with death in a holistic sense?
do we have any say in the legacy we leave?
can the practice of letting go help us practice for our final breath?
how can having wants and knowing what they are help you feel complete at the end of your life?
can you hold the healthy boundaries you need with someone and repair rupture when they pass?

Join us. Join us in mess, in grief, in laughter, in letting go, in being curious, in being resilient. Join us in a powerful conversation about being human.

And let’s keep the conversation going. What are your answers to the questions we pose here? Where has grief touched your life and how has that opened you? Where has acknowledging the inevitability of your own passing gifted you something? As Mary Oliver asks: “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

We’d love to hear.

You can reach Evelyn at her email: towardbliss@gmail.com

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This episode I’m joined in friendship and conversation by the gentle-and-fierce visionary, Anna Carapetyan- a birth and postpartum doula, educator and coach; who provides care and support while promoting an orientation toward process, growth, autonomy and interdependence; all so you thrive through your transformative life events.

This is an episode of curiosity where we slow down and ask: what’s actually going on here?

We explore questions like:

What does it mean to ‘mother’?
Do we need freedom?
What stories or assumptions of what’s possible have we inherited? And what trajectories are we setting up for the ones who come after us?
When it comes to giving birth or entering into a transformational experience, is there a ‘right’ way to go about it? How do we set ourselves up to thrive and what do we even mean when we talk about thriving?
In a world where we don’t get to choose how things will change us, what does it mean to have vision?

We hope you’ll join us in curiosity. And if there’s anything you leave with, we hope it’s the desire to question even your own assumptions about what’s possible for you and the world; and the permission to pursue paths that help you build trust in yourself and our collective deep wisdom, rather than the prescriptive approaches that would have you believe the answer is outside you and lies in doing more.

What are your answers to the questions we pose here? What new stories are you writing through your life?

We’d love to hear.

You can find Anna on Instagram at: @annacarapetyan

Or find out more about her offerings and how to work with her through her website: http://www.heartandmindbirth.com/

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In this conversation I’m joined by the powerful and radiant Amy Rachelle Taylor - an Intuitive Soul Guide and licensed mental health clinician who coaches people in shadow work, inner child healing, and ancestral & inter-dimensional alchemy for more love, clarity, and personal power.

This is a conversation that really roots into what it means to be a unique human expression and a quantum frequency of Love; a drop in the sea and the sea itself.

Through our explorations of:

ancestry and lineage;
labels and identities;
being judgemental;
words as imperfect starting places;
what ‘Divine Feminine’ and ‘Divine Masculine’ actually means;
(and more)...

you'll hear the common thread of integrating and alchemizing the messy and challenging aspects of ourselves and our lives to liberate the deeper truths of who and what we are - an ongoing expression of life itself (and, perhaps, a mushroom).

I thought about naming this episode ‘What Was, What Is, and What Could Be’ as a nod to the breadth of our conversation and the breadcrumbs we drop, aiming you to possible starting points and a spectrum of where your journey of remembering wholeness might take you.. all of it a reminder of how powerful we are when we can be present with ourselves and our context with immense compassion.

What stirred within you during this conversation? What have you inherited and what are you creating? What sparked an alchemical moment?

We’d love to hear.

You can find Amy on Instagram at: @amyrachelleintuitive

Or find out more about her offerings and how to work with her through her website: https://www.amyrachelle.net/

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In this conversation I’m joined by the amazing and effervescent Micah Peterson - a human whose joy, love, and depth of compassion I’ve had the privilege of knowing since we were 14 years old. I wanted to have Micah on to share about his life and story because of his passion for village and community care, and also because I wanted to hear his perspectives as someone with identities that intersect in Blackness, queerness, and maleness.

One of the things I found in this conversation is a testament to how much more we can learn about another by pausing to ask them, no matter how long you’ve known them, “and how was that for you?”

This conversation is powerful, in large part, for the vulnerability and transparency Micah brings in sharing his journey. Beginning, as many of us do, with feelings of unworthiness and ‘Otherness’ from a young age; Micah then takes us through the discomfort of recognizing how that shaped him; the process of coming into a different relationship with himself; and finally, the testing of his relationship with self and community through a recent tragic and traumatic experience within his family. In sharing about that recent experience, Micah generously allows us to witness his emergent and relatable process of repair, including:

realizing how much the tools he developed earlier support him now;
mistakes he’s made and new lessons he’s learning;
and places where he’s still actively exploring and curious - letting tragedy lead him to gifts and the full complexity of being more human.

We cover a lot of territory in this conversation and there may be moments in it that stretch your capacity as you listen. This, too, is part of journeys of repair and being more human and we give some space for this in the conversation, but I always encourage you listening to your body and what it needs to feel whole.

Did you recognize something of yourself in this conversation? What was most impactful? We’d love to hear.

You can find Micah on Instagram at: @micahhasthefloor

And if you’d like to support Mississippi in their water crisis, here’s one place you can: https://formississippi.org/ways-to-help-jackson-water-crisis/

P.S. Fact check: I was unable to find anything about bagpipes replacing a keening practice, so that may be false or misremembered.

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In this conversation I’m joined by the lovely, wise, and endlessly curious Lindsey Melton - a former dancer, Gyrotonic Method practitioner, and a breathwork facilitator with a gift for bringing clarity and elegant simplicity to the muddy experience of being humans in bodies.

Through the lens of breathwork and compassionate relationship with our bodies, we explore:

learning to listen to the wisdom of our bodies (and children!);
all the ways we can use breath to meet ourselves and the world around us as we are;
feeling connected in a technological world;
individuality, codependency, and interconnectivity;
how breathwork can fuel our activism;
the power of healing in groups…

and so much more.

How did this conversation leave you feeling? Did you learn anything new or find yourself curious about anything? We’d love to hear.

You can email Lindsey with questions: burkela@gmail.com or follow along with her occasional post on Instagram (@lindsey_melton_).

You can also join Lindsey in Our Breath Collective (https://ourbreathcollective.com/?coupon-code=LINDSEY&obc=14 ) and have access to online group breath practices and trainings.

You can email me (Kate): kate@wildsacredjourney.com

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In this conversation I’m joined by the compassionate, wise, and fierce Dr. Shanequa Smith; a Restorative Practitioner with a passion for decolonizing inwardly - healing from systemic and sociohistorical inequity and generational traumas to better build new cultures and systems, rooted in joy and opportunity.

In this episode, you’ll hear Shanequa’s story from the hoods of Harlem, NY to Charleston, WV. She shares how pursuing education and listening to Spirit helped her realize that while economic poverty can be hard to shake, inner poverty is something she could get free from, and something she is passionate about helping other Black and marginalized community members also find opportunities to heal from. All so that we can build new, less exploitative, systems that work for everyone.

Through her experiences and our conversation around it, you’ll hear threads circling topics like:

intergenerational trauma and how that affects development of individuals, groups, and cultures;
how easy it is for our own experiences to limit our expectations and vision, and how challenging it can be to shift those;
a powerful analogy for those of us in white bodies who struggle with shame and inner conflict when it comes to the subject of racial inequity;
the role awareness and joy play in making the necessary transition from ‘fighting against’ to ‘building something new’;
a more nuanced and challenging idea of what true community is and can be
the pitfalls of a well-intentioned desire to “help” and some things to think about as we approach “charity”
a critique of white-dominated wellness and spirituality spaces and some things to consider when bringing restorative/ reparative justice in.

How did this conversation leave you feeling? Did you learn anything new or find yourself curious about anything? We’d love to hear.

You can email Shanequa with questions or to find out how to support her booklist, her girl scout troop, and other community efforts she spearheads: drshanequasmith@gmail.com

You can also check out her website: https://drshanequasmith.com/

You can email me (Kate): kate@wildsacredjourney.com

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In this conversation I’m joined by the endlessly curious and deeply wise Emma Sartwell; whose spiritual journey leads to the impressive resume of: interfaith chaplain, ordained Buddhist minister, author, and student and skilled practitioner of a diverse variety of healing modalities like: yoga, meditation, energy healing, shamanism, Somatic Experiencing, psychodynamics, and mystical Judaism (to name a few).

Who better to sit with in the question: with access to seemingly endless different paradigms, what does it mean to pursue paths of spirit and tradition in this time and place?

In our winding inquiry, you’ll hear us explore:

‘Spiritual Shopping’ vs ‘Depth and Apprenticeship’ - pros, cons, and ways to discern whether it’s helping or hurting us;
what becomes possible when we allow the things we’re trying to ‘fix’ to become the path - when our own, lived, human experience becomes the sacred text and the temple;
where our own journeys began and how they’ve evolved;
a possible framework to help if you’re beginning your journey or are feeling like you’re grasping after your next path;
the different modes of knowing offered by head, heart, and body… and how they inform us being more human.

What are you finding about pursuing paths of Spirit in these times?

How has your journey led you to be more human?

Did what you hear today open up any new wisdom or awareness?

We’d love to hear.

You can email me (Kate): kate@wildsacredjourney.com

You can email Emma: emma@somaticspiritualcounseling.com;

Find more about Emma and her team’s work and offerings here: https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/ ;

Or connect with them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somaticspiritual

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In this conversation with energy healer, Conscious Transformation mentor, and plant medicine guide, Jaime Lehner, we follow threads of curiosity and wisdom while exploring:

plants as consciousness and teachers;
how, in an era of disconnection and distraction, working with plants can bring us back to our bodies and hearts - our true natures;
the rise in popularity of plant medicines and some pros and cons;
the courage and willingness it takes to let ourselves be transformed by encounters with plant teachers and our own interconnectedness;
what to do with the pain of activism - paths of medicine and paths of poison
finding an internal navigation system
slowing down our transformative journeys
tips for discerning if you’re called to work with plant medicines and where and with whom
ways to connect with your body, heart, and nature even if you’re not called to work with plant medicines… and more

What threads of wisdom or curiosity did this conversation open for you? We’d love to hear.

You can find more about Jaime’s work and offerings here: http://www.wankawi.com/

Or connect with her on Instagram:

Personal: https://www.instagram.com/jaime.lehner/

Business:https://www.instagram.com/wankawi_wisdomoftheearth/

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Feeling dissatisfied is an uncomfortable and very normal part of our human experience.

In this bonus solo episode we explore:

how we can harness the gifts of dissatisfaction;
the link between dissatisfaction and creativity (and how that might point to ways we misunderstand creativity);
and the bridge between where we are and where we want to be

There's also an announcement for an offering coming up on Tues September 20, 2022 specifically for those of you:

feeling frustrated or let down by your close relationships or your work;
grieving lost dreams or a sense of purposelessness;
or looking to the future and just feeling bleak

Tired of venting but nothing changes? Join us to develop a new relationship with dissatisfaction, creativity, and grief. Join us to 'Bitch Better' (https://pages.wildsacredjourney.com/products/bitchin-better)

As always, thanks for being here.

You can find me at www.wildsacredjourney.com or email me with questions or takeaways: kate@wildsacredjourney.com.

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In this conversation with poet, creativity coach, and dance instructor, Ellis Elliott, we explore:

the people and places that shape us;
writing to escape and writing to connect;
things that challenge our notions of what it is to be human;
myths about creativity;
how regular creative practices can help us be more human... and more.

What's your takeaway? We'd love to hear.

You can find more about Ellis and ways to work with her at https://bewildernesswriting.com/

(HINT: the next round of Bewilderness Writing starts September 13th, 2022 and there are a few spots left!)

or connect with her on:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bewildernesswriting/

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/pg/elliselliott2020/posts/

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What's a "Wild Sacred Journey" as an approach and a mindset?

What possibilities does that approach hold for us?

Why is it important?

And what are some skills and practices to help us move through life, more whole and powerful? More human? On a wisdom path?

In this intro episode, Kate talks about what she means when she she says "wild, sacred journey," and gives you a sense of some of the types of conversations and topics you can expect to come.

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An introduction to this:

A new podcast full of real conversation, mystery, and humanity.

An experiment in bringing community ritual and story medicine into public spaces.

A way to explore what it means to be more human in these times.

and me, your host, Kate Powell.

www.wildsacredjourney.com

Instagram: @wildsacredjourney_kp

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Wild Sacred Journey Podcast: Recent Episodes

Kate Powell