Becoming Nature Podcast

In this episode, I speak with Woniya Thibeault who appeared on the show "Alone" and was the first woman to win a season.

Woniya joined two seasons of the show. First lasting 73 days alone in the wild on the brink of starvation. And won the second season 'Frozen', as the first woman in 'Alone' show history. It felt even more special to speak to her, as she won the show on my birth land of Labrador.

We talk about shares her experience in Labrador and the similarities and differences between that location and the Northwest Territories. Woniya reflects on the importance of self-care and the societal pressures around winning and money.

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories.

Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine is forthcoming in 2022 from Inner Traditions. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions.

She is currently researching her next epic, a mythopoetic exploration of ecology and queerness in the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde.

Sarah has been a death doula and ritual healing practitioner since 2012. Her work helps dying people and their families connect with each other, and with the innate wisdom of the dying process.

Sarah's approach draws on nature-­based spirituality, sacred sciences, and the richness of the human soul. She designs and facilitates ceremonies that help her clients to integrate experiences of death, loss, and transformation. These rituals honour the spiritual significance of what's happening, and bring healing to the living, the dying, and the dead.

As one of the leading storytellers, Jan Blake has been performing worldwide for over twenty-five years. Specialising in stories from Africa, the Caribbean, and Arabia, she has a well-earned reputation for dynamic and generous storytelling. Recent highlights include Hay Festival, where she was storyteller in-residence, the Viljandi Harvest Festival in Estonia and TEDx Warsaw.

As well as performing at all the major storytelling festivals both nationally and internationally, she works regularly with the British Council, leads storytelling workshops for emerging storytellers, and gives masterclasses for teachers, brands, and businesses. She also regularly captivates school children with mesmerising stories.

This conversation has invited me to look at those in my mirror. Where I try to polish and where I accept the invitation. In the broader scale where we in West are so busy polishing that our arms are falling off. It takes some breathing deeply and a commitment to not turn away.

About Bayo

Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books,

These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, 'We Will dance with Mountains'.

How easy is it to buy farmland and give it back to nature. This is what we are talking about today.

David Katznelson was born and brought up in Denmark, David specialised in Cinematography at the National Film & Television School in the UK. Since graduating in 2000, he has lived in London, and shot a number of feature films, TV pilots, TV series and won several awards including an EMMY, a BAFTA and an RTS

He has now bought a huge piece of land in Denmark and wants to create a national park. Listen in on his journey.

She spent 7 years writing the book, about her journey around the World, meeting indigenous people and seeking the will of wild.

This is where this conversation begins.

• what is wild, wilderness

• what is it to be an apprentice to something

• what does it mean to give time

• a note on activism and climate despair and fatigue

It was just as rich speaking with her, as it is reading her book.

Jay Griffiths has written on the politics of time, and the importance of wildness in the human spirit and the natural world in childhood. She was born in Manchester, studied at Oxford and has lived in Wales since 2000.

Her fiction includes A Love Letter from a Stray Moon, about the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, and Anarchipelago, about the road protests.

She was the Hay Festival International Fellow for 2016.

Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq is a shaman, traditional healer, storyteller and carrier of the Qilaut (winddrum), whose family belongs to the traditional healers of the Far North from Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland. His name means 'The Man Who Looks Like His Uncle'. Since he was a child he was trained by his family- especially by his Grandmother Aanakasaa – for becoming a shaman. The spiritual task given by his mother is: "Melting the Ice in the Heart of Man".

www.icewisdom.com

My dear friend and mentor Stefana Serafina is our guest today. Her work has transformed my life. The way I live in my body and what I experience because of the intimate relationship with its language.

It became a very rich conversation about body, my body, your body, the body as the extension of Earth. .

A conversation and reflection about the risk of not including our bodies (again!) in the visioning for the new world that might be shaping with this crisis.

About the body having to be the guide and the way in this hopeful emergence of a renewed human race.

I'm so excited to share her work with you! We would love to hear what you take away from this episode.

Stefana Serafina, M.A., is an embodiment educator, writer, and embodied empowerment facilitator based in the San Francisco Bay. She is recognized for her unique and multi-faceted approach to body–based self–discovery and transformation.

She is the founder of Intuitive Body and Dance ©, which has grown into an international platform providing resources, experiences, and education for returning to our bodies' inherent intelligence