Alight

Listen to Rachel Pfotenhauer discuss how you can directly connect to Earth to strengthen your well-being and hers.

This interview originally aired on the New Earth One Network in February of 2022 and is now available here on the Humans and Earth podcast.

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We’re experiencing a revolution in our understandings about how life on planet Earth really works. Hear why collaboration is actually how things are meant to function on Earth, and why that’s good news for anyone who cares about healing our planet and human well-being. I talk about what this means for your sense of hope, your own thriving, and your experience of connection to the people, plants, and animals with whom you co-exist on this lovely planet we call Earth.

In this episode I cover:

• New scientific findings that are identifying collaboration as perhaps the most vital aspect of how life on Earth thrives
• Evidence of how human cultures have been leaning more into collaboration for the past three centuries
• What this means for your well-being and for our joint work of restoring our planet and human well-being.

Despite the messiness occurring on planet Earth, there’s evidence everywhere that we’re outgrowing mistaken stories of domination and hierarchy. This is a thrilling time to be alive as science and spirituality converge in conversations about how we can renew life on Earth by witnessing and encouraging the collaborations that are fundamental to how Earth’s systems function. 

Collaboration is a key to turning life on Earth from foundering to flourishing.

It’s up to us which story we choose, and which story we live inside.

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Life on Earth is complex right now! Whether you are alert to refugee crises, signs of environmental damage and climate change, severe storms, health effects from air and water pollution, or social and political turmoil, you could make a list of a lot of things that worry you or even lead you to feel despair.

But are the anxiety and eco-anxiety that have become normal our best response to the crises we face? Neuroscience and the history of activism suggest an alternative approach that’s more beneficial for us as individuals, and far more effective for healing our world. We’re learning that:

·       Anxiety creates a freeze response in our brains that shuts down the optimism and innovation needed to solve crises. 

·       People who bemoan social problems or environmental problems often make few or no contributions to solutions.

·       Neuroscientist Rick Hanson describes the human brain’s state of anxiety, stress, and pessimism as the activity of our reactive (and more primitive) ‘red brain.’ Conversely, our ‘green brain’ state is our responsive (and more evolved) mode of confidently meeting challenges and enjoying life’s pleasures without getting stuck in the stress response. 

·       We can see the effects of red brain and green brain play out in human history and the work of current activists such as Wangari Maathai and Boyan Slat.

·       It may be fashionable to moan and complain in ‘red brain’ and talk about our dystopian future, but I challenge you to realize that actually we are designed to respond creatively to our world, not sit frozen in despair.

·       If you want to suffer less and help a lot more, learn to curate your ‘green brain.’ Listen in to learn how.

·       Living as much as possible in green brain allows you to be someone who assists with regeneration for people and planet, rather than someone who holds us back.

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Karen Lorre helps people release unconscious blocks so they can have priceless results. She is the best-selling author of three books, Chronic Pleasure, Effortless Enchantment, and Chronic Pleasure in Relationships. Karen’s work has been endorsed by Deepak Chopra, Bruce Lipton, and Gay Hendricks. She has had a lifelong interest in epigenetics, neuroscience, health, and spirituality. Karen is also an actress who has done over a thousand hours of TV, films and commercials. Earlier in her life, Karen went through intense emotional and physical challenges that doctors could not seem to heal. This led her to discover ways to transform her fatigue and pain into vibrant energy and chronic pleasure. She now lives a life of magnetism and miracles and teaches others how to do the same. You can access her books for free at  https://www.karenlorrecoaching.com/book-downloads 

Hear Karen discuss:

• How she went from feeling that the world was too troubled for her to want to stay in it, to realizing that a focus on problems holds them in our reality.
• Her discovery that when you are solutions-focused, you continually encounter people who are bringing next-level solutions to the world and you see how you can contribute. 
• Her exploration of sustainable and regenerative agriculture’s benefits and how she supports local farmers. 
• How Blissipline took her out of serious chronic illness to her current state of thriving, joy, and mentoring others. “Blissipline creates a momentum” that lets you create from your desire rather than responding to the world from worry or fear.
• The best contributions arise out of love. People think worry and stress lead to creativity, but actually, if you’re feeling good, that’s when your opportunities appear. “I think, I love this planet. I love nature and want to support it any way that I can. I love seeing nature thriving.” And as you focus in this way, opportunities for your contribution become clear.
• How you can choose to be influenced by either the world’s ‘bad news’ or ‘good news,’ and how this affects your brain’s reticular activating system, your neuroplasticity, and your perceptions of life.
• What to do if this kind of conversation doesn’t feel ‘realistic’ to you.

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Do you know what plant essences are, how they differ from essential oils, and how to use them? And are you aware that energy or frequency medicine of this type is increasingly being documented by scientific research? 

Tune in to hear:

• Definitions of what plant essences are and how we can understand their medicine.
• How plant essences are helpful, and how they often come into our lives serendipitously. 
• 3 stories about my recent experiences with plant essences.
• Suggestions about how you can benefit from plant essences and how to buy or make them.
• How working with plant essences is part of our collaboration with nature and part of how we can heal and empower ourselves.

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Dr. Saskia von Diest has been communicating with various forms of nature for the last ten years, much of which she spent researching how intuitive interspecies communication can be used in agriculture. She holds a PhD in plant pathology from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and her research has investigated  subtle agricultural techniques and technologies that use sound, electromagnetics, catalytic substances and human intuitive abilities in decision making on farms. In 2021, she founded Ecofluency to consult, teach, and facilitate nature communication. As a South African of Caucasian and Indian descent, she is committed to healing the internal, ancestral and socio-cultural damage that privilege, sexism and racism cause in the world through her work of helping people connect to their more-than-human relations in the natural world. Find her at www.ecofluency.org  

Hear us discuss:

• Saskia’s definition of Ecofluency as “the science, the art, and the magic of communicating with nature” in ways that benefit all beings. 
• Saskia's discovery: “I’ve not met a single person who can’t do it: it’s just a matter of willingness…all of us are born with this ancient skill of two-way dialogue with more-than-human nature.”  Our intuitive abilities are just as much a part of us as our physical senses.
• How to have a collaborative and respectful conversation with an other-than-human being with Saskia's signature focus on ethics, boundaries, and safety for all participants.
• The support a person can gain from communicating with other-than-human beings, who often are “bigger, older, wiser, stronger, cleverer, and kinder” than we are and very willing to uphold us in our growth and contributions. The first insight she gained when she first experienced nature communication was “I don’t have to feel alone anymore.”
• Nature communication invites stepping away from the over-stimulation of our world, calming your nervous system, and allowing yourself to lean on powers that are greater than your conscious self. Nature communication is grounding and centering as it connects you to the network of life, which can feel especially good if you are experiencing loneliness. 
• How hearing nature’s voices can alleviate your pain about the state of things in our world. 
• How nature communication carried her through a spiritual/mental health crisis, and how it is an act of cultural repair.

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This is a story about a way to respond when you feel helpless to assist the natural world but want to feel more empowered. It’s about an endeavor to save a small turtle trapped in traffic, and how to proceed when your efforts to help don’t go as planned. Listen to hear how to respond to the world with your intention and frequency as well as your actions.

You can feel empowered knowing that you’re placing your energy and time in the service of your love for Earth.

This is about more than practical action: it’s also about ‘voting’ with your energy and your frequency by aligning with the intention of supporting life.

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This interview is for anyone who is a change-maker, anyone who wonders why conflict resolution in our world seems stuck, anyone who has experienced trauma, or anyone who feels held back in your own process of inner shift.

Dr. Cathleen King is an expert on trauma recovery, inner healing, and how consciousness shifts create personal and collective transformation. She has the rare combination of in-depth doctoral-level education and training, over 20 years coaching others in the health field, and having gone through her own heroine’s journey of spending two decades of her life navigating debilitating illness. She speaks to transformation based on deep personal experience. In her youth she lived with poverty, family addiction and illiteracy, homelessness, and violence. In young adulthood serious illnesses kept her bed-bound for years. She is now living out her calling as an Oracle of Primal Trust to liberate others from trauma consciousness. She holds a doctorate degree in Physical Therapy with post-graduate training in orthopedic manual therapy and somatic movement and neuroscience. Her additional training has focused primarily on neuroplasticity-based healing methods and numerous brain limbic system rewiring programs. Find her at www.primaltrust.org and on Instagram at primaltrust_drcat

Hear us discuss:

• Why do humans have a hard time treating one another and Earth with loving kindness? One reason is the emotional dysregulation most of us experience because we were never taught to care for our own nervous systems. Planetary healing depends on individuals regulating their nervous systems because creative solutions emerge from serene, regulated nervous systems, not panicked ones.
• If you are having difficulty stepping into your calling, desired work, or goals, you likely have a dysregulated nervous system. Hear about ways to orient your nervous system toward stability and optimal functioning.
• If we were all self-regulated adults, able to calm our nervous systems and respond instead of react, the way we would interact with one another and society would be completely different. “Peace on Earth begins in our own nervous system.” 
• How to work with neuroplasticity, brain retraining and somatics as tools for personal transformation and world transformation. 
• How do we move beyond us vs. them perspectives that maintain conflict among people, and go beyond the victim consciousness that underlies that oppositional view?
• ‘Yelling at people about how wrong they are does nothing to create change…your nervous system needs to create a field of coherence to be able to have a conversation with someone with an opposing view.” We’re observing people with incoherent nervous systems yelling at one another without listening or reaching resolution. What’s needed is for people to feel safe internally in order to handle others’ different views and then look for solutions to conflict.
• Anyone who seeks to be a transformative presence in the world needs to cultivate nervous system safety.

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John Lockley is a shaman trained in the Xhosa tradition of South African shamanic culture. He is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated sangoma in the Xhosa lineage. He is the author of the book Leopard Warrior. Find him at johnlockley.com 

Hear John discuss:

• How he experienced the invitation to shamanism, why the path opens through invitation, not choice, and why his training was essential for the recovery of his health after years of illness. “Part of taking your power back is realizing, I am in complete control of my own healing.”
•  How apartheid delayed his training, and what it has meant to be a white man trained in the Xhosa tradition.
• His Xhosa shamanic name and its indication of his role as a bridge between the spirit and physical worlds, and between the Xhosa African and western worlds.
• How he distinguishes between shamanic illness and soul sickness, why he believes soul sickness is now so common in the western world, and how he believes it can be healed. 
• Ubuntu: ‘I am who I am because of who we all are.’ And what it means now for humans and Earth, given ubuntu's presence in world religions, not only African understanding. 
•  “We as human beings are the custodians of mother Earth—we have a responsibility to look after the plants, the soil…” 
• “We have to learn the language of the wilderness in order to save the wilderness, and the language of the wilderness is the language of the heart.”

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Do you ever have the experience of suggesting a restorative, healing, or otherwise helpful idea and hearing someone tell you it sounds good but isn’t practical?

We don’t need to let our sense of what’s practical limit our creation of solutions to the problems people and planet are facing.

We are in a position right now on planet Earth where solutions are badly needed.

• If you care about bringing  solutions into being, it’s important to not let yourself feel shut down when others meet your ideas with the statement that they don’t sound practical. 
• People are probably mistaken when they discount a visionary idea as ‘impractical.’
• Inspiration is valid: one of the main points of spirituality is to inspire us to bring into existence that which we value most highly. 

If you feel a spark of inspiration, don’t feel discouraged if others don’t understand your brilliance and claim you’re not being practical. Inventors, visionaries, changemakers, humanitarians, geniuses, and the quiet local-scale contributors and leaders who make things better in the world around them are NOT practical first and foremost. They are visionary and inspired first, and then they seek the ways to bring their inspired vision into practical existence.

We’re living in a time that needs YOUR inspired contributions. Believe in your inspiration and share your vision with those who are open to believing it with you. 

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