I sat down with John Christian Phifer, the founder and director of Larkspur Conservation where he now practices natural burial after spending a decade as a funeral director in the corporatized funeral industry.

We talk about how the unnatural process of embalming and burying bodies in concrete vaults got started (kind of by a fluke of history) in the Civil War, how it's become corporatized, and an expensive affair. We, of course, talk all about natural burial, the alternative which has been the way most humans have been buried for 99.9% of our history and how we can give our bodies back as a gift to the earth. We talk about his story in the funeral industry and how he found natural burial and founded Larkspur Conservation. And, we talk all about our fear and avoidance of death, the importance of learning to face it, death meditations he's found useful, and much more.

This one is a big one, because, let's face it- we're all going to die. And facing the inevitability of our own impermanence can free us to live life fully in the present moment.

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