Today I’m spending time with Nicole Derseweh. Nicole is a plant medicine practitioner, author and healer. On this episode she tells me about her initiation into energy healing, the ways in which religious trauma affected her and how she found her way back to spirituality after leaving the church. She talks abut her bout with severe depression and what pulled her out of it. We also talk about receiving the call and showing up for it. Come on in. 

Ezra Goh returns for a second exploration on the podcast. Ezra is a somatic movement coach. He uses movement as a language to create spaces and containers for people to have conversations with their bodies, especially when there’s fear in the body or fear of the body. On this episode we delve into the world of meaning and how one can get lost in a maze while seeking it. We look at who is making the maze and why. We also talk about the connection between the mind and body when it comes to communication. Join us on the journey through Ezra’s maze.

Today I’m spending time with Lisa Gaub. Lisa has been practicing as a licensed clinical therapist for 20 years. She also owns and operates Sugar and Fire Baking Company creating super delicious vegan cookies. Highly recommended. On this episode we talk about her current clinical work as the supervisor of the transitional foster care program in Philadelphia, the challenges she’s been having navigating some tricky waters, and she experiences energy healing for the first time. As we’re about to wrap up, she turns the tables on me and I answer questions that help guide me to another level of compassion for my parents. Come on in.

My guest is Brenna Carswell. She’s the executive director of Collective Prana, a nonprofit focused on bridging the gap of mental wellness so people can have access to changing unproductive thought and behavior patterns. Together we discuss corrective experiences, meditation, hypnotic states, and finding compassion for our parents. We share some of our formative experiences and how the path to healing them has been laid with certain stepping stones to get us where we are and where we are going. I also experience an energetic shift in my own journey. Come on in. 

Delia shares her experience of becoming a mother. She talks about the ways it has changed her, as well as the challenges and opportunities the process has afforded her to learn and grow. We move from conception, through the pregnancy, and into the emotions of birth. She also gives me a little insight into the super powers a mother's body receives to be able to take this incredibly important job.

In the ever-changing world of feelings and emotions, expansion and contraction, pleasure and pain, comings and goings, what are you attached to - the loss or the gain? We talk about that as well as embodying ideas and thoughts, allowing what wants to come to come, and letting the discomfort happen. I wasn't feeling up to giving an energy healing, so John offered to give me a reiki session. Check out this impromptu episode.

Schuyler is a writer/poet, trauma healer, and tantric teacher among other things. In this episode she shares an intimate view of the menopausal transition. She highlights the discomfort, challenges, and the grief that comes with it, as well as the beauty, wisdom and celebration of the process. She offers a mystical perspective on the journey and shares ways in which perimenopause has affected her relationship with her partner. What a joy to be a witness to her experience. So much to learn, so much to honor.

Schuyler returns to hold space for me. As I experience joy we work to ground me into the sensation. We find that my capacity to hold the joyful energy is not quite expansive enough. So we begin to exercise that part of me. We delve deep into the tantric world where the full emotional range can be experienced. I touch on fear as I sink deeper into my root. We titrate the joy into my lower chakras. Happiness takes work, too.

The tables are turned on this episode. Robin Kidder returns to hold space for me. I dig into my attachment to a deep trauma I experienced in my life. The goal is to release my grip on identifying as the trauma. The part of me that is holding on definitely puts up a fight. Robin stays steady while I deflect, block, fog up the path and fight for my victimhood. After a journey, something moves. Thank you, Robin. (Video version recommended)

Robin and I enjoy a potent conversation about embodiment, dissociation (both conscious and unconscious), and the responsibility that comes with being a medicine guide. After her session she grapples with the challenges of receiving.