BONDED

In this final episode of the Nature Series on The Bonded Podcast, Lizzie and Dr. Patty are joined by Emilia Cianci. Emilia is an Italian-born soul mentor, healing and oracular arts practitioner, and co-founder of Terra Elaya, a regenerative land project in Puglia, Italy. Emilia's work sits at the intersection of Jungian depth psychology, somatic healing, myth and archetype, and the wisdom of the natural world. This conversation weaves together healing codependency within the mother-daughter wound, the mythology of Persephone and Demeter, the cycles of life and death that live in both the land and in us, and what it might mean to restore a culture that actually tends to life. It is one of the most layered and nourishing conversations The Bonded Podcast has ever had!

Conversation Highlights

• The mother-daughter bond as a mythological journey
• The power of separation rituals: how Emilia and her mother intentionally and symbolically "cut the cord" multiple times across her life
• Persephone and Demeter: the myth in two versions: the patriarchal telling where the maiden is taken against her will, and the older, more powerful version where she chooses to descend into the underworld herself.
• The maiden archetype and why so many women get stuck there
• The parallel between how we treat the land and how we treat women
• What it means to steward rather than own land, a body, a relationship, or a life
• The shadow of the negative mother. Marion Woodman's Jungian concept of the mother who cannot let go, who devours rather than releases, and how healing that pattern frees both mother and daughter.

If this episode opened something in you, share it with your mother, your daughter, or any woman in your life who is in the middle of her own descent and needs to know it is leading somewhere.

Emilia Cianci thewayofthesoul.com Instagram: @thewayofthesoul_ Terra Elaya @terra___elaya

Lizzie and Dr. Patty at Sacred Treehouse: www.sacredtreehouse.org IG: @sacredtreehouse FB: www.facebook.com/SacredTreehouse/

Today we are joined by Crystal Smith LCSW, a licensed therapist, professional flow artist, and founder of Stay Calm Wellness Products. Crystal has spent 15 years spinning poi, hula hooping, and doing fire arts, and she has woven all of that into a therapeutic approach built around one of the most underrated concepts in positive psychology: flow state. This conversation will make you look at your everyday life — the dishes, the laundry, the morning walk — and see it completely differently. Crystal's playful and passionate approach to educating made this conversation FLOW easily, we would love to hear what new perspective shifts you take away!

Tag us on social media @SacredTreehouse @Flow.Therapist

Listen to learn:

• What "flow" is, the difference between mindfulness and flow, and how flow releases a cocktail of brain chemicals that function like a natural antidepressant
• Why self-consciousness, perfectionism, and distraction are the biggest blockers of flow and how to reduce resistance before you try to enter a flow state
• The story of factory workers in China who report greater happiness than middle-class Americans
• How to gamify your ordinary day for flowtenial
• The connection between flow, attachment, and trauma: why people who grew up in unsafe environments often lose access to play and how reclaiming flow can be part of reclaiming that lost freedom

If this episode sparked something in you, share it with a friend who says they're "not good at anything" — or anyone who has forgotten what it feels like to lose track of time doing something they love.

Crystal Smith, LCSW is a licensed therapist & flow arts practitioner in Jupiter, Florida.

• Website: flowtherapist.com
• Instagram: @flow.therapist
• Wellness Products: staycalm.app/ @staycalmwellnessproducts

• Explore upcoming mindfulness-based classes for meditation, mental health, nutrition, and relationships: sacredtreehouse.org

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The foundational book on flow state research.

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman The book behind the 20-hour theory Crystal references and how to rapidly learn anything and push through the initial period of suckage.

In this episode of The Bonded Podcast, Dr. Patty and Lizzie sit down with someone who has been woven into the fabric of their lives for years — Christie Caggiani, registered dietitian, intuitive eating coach, and someone Dr. Patty calls one of her greatest professional partners and biggest inspirations. This conversation goes far deeper than food. Because cravings are not a character flaw, a lack of willpower, or something to be conquered. They are messages and once you learn to decode them, everything changes.

Episode Highlights:

• The biological and physiological layers of cravings — how sleep deprivation, dehydration, hormonal cycles, and missing nutrients all speak through the same voice, and how to start telling them apart.
• Why you might crave carbs even when you've eaten and what your body is actually asking for when it does.
• The attachment connection: how our earliest experiences of being fed, soothed, and nourished as infants quietly shape our relationship with food for decades.
• Rebuilding trust with your body is not a quick fix; it is a practice of slowing down, getting curious, and giving yourself permission to simply eat.

If this episode resonated, share it with someone who has been fighting their cravings for years or a new parent who wants to pass on a healthy relationship with food to their kids. The healing can start here.

Decode Your Cravings — Free Masterclass August 24th 5:00–6:15 PM Online

Dive deeper into the biological, emotional, and intuitive signals behind your cravings — with practical tools to help you listen to your body and approach food with more curiosity and less shame. Register Here: https://sacred-treehouse.mykajabi.com/pl/2148817350

Intuitive Nourishment — A educational and experiential deep dive into intuitive eating — weekly 75-minute sessions in a safe, supportive online group setting, with homework, community, and Christie's signature warmth wisdom woven through every session. 👉www.sacred-treehouse.mykajabi.com/intuitivenourishment

This interview marks a symbolic full-circle moment. Maíra Irigaray, was Lizzie's former professor at the University of Florida, and now her co-facilitator on a retreat in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Maíra Irigaray has walked many career paths, notably as an environmental lawyer, teaching and completing her PhD in geography of indigenous resistance, Amazon activist, a mother, shamanic healer, and one of the most extraordinary humans you will ever encounter.

This conversation will ask you to consider what is possible when you finally lay down the titles you collected to prove your worth, your "good enough" — and remember who you were before the world told you who to be.

• From lawyer to activist to healer: how nearly a decade of hardcore environmental law and indigenous rights activism led to burnout, and then to a completely different kind of awakening.
• "Loss can protect forests, but only love creates protectors." How Maíra stopped trying to save the Amazon through outrage and started bringing people to fall in love with it instead.
• The indigenous wisdom that reshaped how Maíra lives
• Why nature is not somewhere you go — it's something you belong to. And why the Amazon doesn't change who you are, it simply removes everything you're not.
• Reciprocity as the foundation: how Maíra's work with indigenous communities on the Tapajós is built on years of relationship, consent, and direct financial support — not tourism, not extraction, but true partnership.
• Intuition as a practice: how Maíra moved from a woman with a plan for every plan, to someone led entirely by inner knowing.
• Growing up in an ayahuasca church, being introduced to plant medicine at seven years old.
• The witch archetype reclaimed: not woo-woo, not a costume — the most intuitive, embodied, wildly wise part of you that the patriarchy tried to domesticate.

If this episode lit something up in you share it with a woman in your life who has everything on paper and still feels like something is missing. She knows who she is, she just needs to remember.

Connect with Maíra Irigaray PhD

• Instagram: @maira.irigaray_ @insamauma
• Website: www.insamauma.org/aboutus

The Retreat — UNTAMED

October 29 – November 2, 2026 · Tapajós River, Brazil · Five days. Eight women.

One of the most breathtaking rivers on earth. This is not a wellness retreat. This is a reclamation. UNTAMED was born from a vision to bring women into the Amazon not to be improved, but to be remembered. To strip away the conditioning, the performance, the version of you that everyone else "needs" — and meet the woman beneath all of it.

What you'll experience:

• Sacred ceremonies with a Tupinambá Shaman around real fires, with prayers in languages older than nations
• Deep rainforest immersion — hands on ancient trees, pink dolphins in transparent water, white sand beaches as far as you can see
• Amazonian plant baths prepared with intention
• Circle, storytelling, and sisterhood — the kind built around a fire, not small talk
• Movement, embodiment, and wild feminine practices
• Living and dining aboard a high-end vessel on the Tapajós with private cabins and local Amazonian chefs
• A portion of every retreat goes directly to the indigenous communities of the Tapajós — supporting their sovereignty, their projects, and their culture on their own terms.

Apply here: www.insamauma.org/untamed

"The Amazon doesn't change who you are. It simply removes everything you're not." — Maíra Irigaray

In this Nature Series on The Bonded Podcast, Dr. Patty sits down with Jen and Jason, the husband-and-wife founders of HapBE Valley — an equine and wellness retreat farm nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains just outside Asheville, North Carolina. What began as Jen's lifelong love of horses and a solo retreat that changed everything became something neither of them could have planned.

This is a conversation about leaving behind the life you were conditioned to live, following a calling into the unknown, and discovering that horses have an extraordinary ability to show us exactly who we are. Horses are attuned to energy of other beings and their environment for their evolutionary survival, which allows them to sense and reflect the relational dynamics in our life because we carry this energy with us. Equine therapy and retreats provide space for self-awareness to grow into self-compassion for your healing. If this sounds intriguing you must listen to learn more!

HapBE Valley Equine & Wellness Farm

Website: hapbevalley.com Instagram: @hapbevalley Facebook: HapBE Valley Email: [email protected]

Equine Experiences — No riding. Just presence, connection, and real-time feedback from horses who don't lie.

Signature Self-Discovery & Self-Compassion Retreat — HapBE's flagship retreat combining equine-facilitated learning with sound healing, yoga, breathwork, and meditation.

Mother Hunger® Healing with Horses Retreat — Coming October 2026. A four-day retreat for women ready to explore the mother-daughter attachment wound, held in a small container of eight with licensed therapists trained in the Mother Hunger® framework and the healing power of horses. Learn more: https://hapbevalley.com/upcoming-retreats/

Wellness Experiences — Sound healing, yoga, breathwork, Reiki with horses, and more — offered individually and woven into retreats.

If this episode awakened or inspired you, please leave a positive review to support the growth of this wisdom and continuation of making these podcasts possible!

Today we sit down with Gabrielle Lanzoni, a regenerative health educator and consultant working at the intersection of agriculture, nutrition, and consumer education. Gabrielle's journey began with a health crisis, a move to Italy, and the realization that the food system, not her body, was broken. Now through her platform Lanzo, she's on a mission to connect the dots between soil health, human health, and planetary health for everyday consumers. This one will change the way you think about how what's on your plate does more than satisfy your hunger.

• How living in Italy resolved years of chronic inflammation, brain fog, and digestive issues
• What regenerative agriculture actually is
• The soil microbiome and the human microbiome striking similarities
• We're experiencing a hidden hunger epidemic: about 2 billion people are nutrient-deficient not because they aren't eating enough calories, but because the food itself has lost 40–60% of its nutritional value compared to 30 years ago
• The mental health connection: ultra-processed food consumption directly correlates with depression and anxiety symptoms
• The mindset around food matters too — research shows that eating in good company actually lowers inflammatory markers, even when the food itself isn't perfect
• Your body has innate wisdom — color, flavor, and aroma in food are nature's signals that nutrients are present
• Energy and intention around eating impacts digestion

• Gabrielle Lanzoni www.lanzohealth.com IG: @lanzohealth
• Sacred Treehouse www.sacredtreehouse.org @sacredtreehouse

Visit your local farmers market — introduce yourself to vendors, ask how they farm, and start building a relationship with your food source. You don't even have to buy anything at first. Just being in that environment is its own kind of medicine.

Look for these certifications on packaging:

• ROC — Regenerative Organic Certified (the gold standard)
• Regenified
• Greener World
• Soil and Climate Alliance

Documentaries:

• Kiss the Ground
• Common Ground
• Groundswell

Read: Growing a Revolution by David Montgomery & Anne Biklé

Today Lizzie is joined by Ryann Morris, an Ayurvedic chef, nutritional health coach, and founder of Food Brilliance. Ryann shares how her health crisis of MRSA, five months of IV antibiotics, and a silenced vagus nerve led her to Ayurveda and completely transformed her relationship with food. She explains what Ayurveda actually is: not a restriction, but a gentle and loving way to live in harmony with your body and the natural world. If you've ever thought of cooking as a chore, this episode will offer some medicinal reframes.

Key topics discussed:

• Why your emotional state matters as much as what's on your plate
• The most overlooked part of receiving nourishment
• Cooking as gift to self and community
• The community garden as second home: how a small food forest in the heart of downtown Delray Beach became Ryann's greatest teacher in patience, presence, and connection
• Three Ayurvedic plants worth knowing: Tulsi (calm and clarity), Ashwagandha (stress resilience and sustained energy), and Amla (vitamin C, skin glow, cooling energy)
• Potlucks as portals into other people's stories, cultures, and memories

If this episode nourished something in you, share it with a friend who loves to cook, a fellow foodie, or someone who needs a reminder that taking care of themselves can start in the kitchen (or garden)!

Ryann Morris: foodbrilliance.com @food_brilliance

Film: Food is Everything, a short documentary about cooking with intention, spices, growing food, and how food gathers people. Releases on YouTube June 21st for one month.

Swinton Community Growing Project: The Delray Beach community garden where Lizzie and Ryann first met and the food forest that inspired so much of this conversation.

Sacred Treehouse: Mindfulness classes, retreats, coaching www.sacredtreehouse.org

In this Nature Series on The Bonded Podcast, Lizzie takes the episode outside — literally. Recording from her Florida backyard, surrounded by cicadas, wind, and bird song, she explores what sound and sight actually do to our bodies, our nervous systems, and our capacity to heal. From the womb to the wild, this episode is part science, part philosophy, and part prescription to get outside!

In this epsiode Lizzie explores:

• Hearing as the first sense we develop in utero, our nervous systems are already learning to read safety and threat through sound.
• Noise pollution is a public health issue: chronic exposure to man-made noise has been linked to elevated blood pressure, impaired memory, and increased hyperactivity in children.
• Bird song is ancient medicine: a 2022 King's College London study found that hearing or seeing birds improved mental well-being for up to eight hours — even in people with depression.
• What we see heals us too: patients with tree-view hospital windows went home sooner, needed less pain medication, and recovered faster than those facing a brick wall.
• Green views build community — apartments with more natural views had up to 56% fewer violent crimes, and residents reported stronger trust and belonging.
• The prescription is 20 minutes: sitting or walking in a nature-adjacent space is enough to produce the greatest measurable drop in cortisol.
• And the big question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it — does it make a sound? Lizzie has an answer.

If this episode resonated, try this week's eco-mindfulness invitation: go outside, close your eyes and just listen — then plug your ears and just look — then let both senses come together. Your ears were built for this before you were even born.

Can a forest, a river, or a favorite tree offer the same qualities we seek in our closest relationships?

Could nature help us heal attachment wounds and remember our belonging to the living world?

Explore these questions and more in this deeply moving conversation, we sit down with author, researcher, eco-chaplain, and founder of the Heartwood Institute, Dr. Lindsay Branham, to explore the profound ways nature can support healing, belonging, and reconnection in a disconnected world.

From secure attachment with trees to the language of the body, erotic ecology, eco-grief, and collective healing, this conversation invites us to remember that we are not separate from nature—we are nature.

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world, longing for deeper connection, or curious about eco-mindfulness practices, this episode offers wisdom, hope, and practical ways to begin cultivating kinship with the living world around you.

• The concept of secure attachment with nature and why it matters
• Why Lindsay uses "they/them" pronouns for nature
• Queer ecology, belonging, and what nature teaches us about diversity
• Allowing safety, boundaries, and consent to support healing sexual trauma
• How the body serves as our primary language with the natural world
• What "erotic ecology" means and how nature invites us back into aliveness
• Eco-anxiety, eco-grief, and how grief can become fertile ground for transformation
• Lessons from trees, forests, and mycelial networks about cooperation and community
• Why healing ourselves and healing our relationship with the Earth are deeply interconnected

"Nature is not going to cross those boundaries of consent or violate them. There is a profound safety available in relationship with the Earth."

• Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees by Lindsay Branham: Review the book on Amazon to help spread the wisdom!
• Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass
• Joanna Macy's work on Active Hope and Deep Ecology
• Suzanne Simard's research on forest communication and mycelial networks

Stay connected with Lindsay on Instagram: @lindsaylaurenne https://www.heartwood.institute/

What if the ocean could become part of the healing process?

In this episode of the Bonded Podcast, Lizzie and Dr. Patty sit down with surf and trauma therapist Jess Ripley, LMFT, to explore the transformative power of nature-based healing and reconnecting with ourselves through the ocean. Jess shares her personal journey from recovery and recreation therapy to creating her own integrative approach to surf therapy blending mindfulness, trauma healing, play, embodiment, and the wisdom of nature. Whether you’re a surfer, nature lover, therapist, or someone longing to feel more alive and connected, this episode offers an inspiring look at healing through relationship — with ourselves, others, and the natural world.

This conversation dives into:

• How nature and the ocean can support trauma healing
• What surf therapy actually looks like in practice
• The role of mindfulness, play, and embodiment in healing
• Why healing outside the therapy office can be so powerful
• Corrective experiences through movement, challenge, and connection
• Ocean metaphors for life, timing, fear, trust, and resilience
• The ethical considerations of doing therapy outside the office
• The healing impact of awe, beauty, and feeling part of nature
• How surf therapy supports addiction recovery, PTSD, anxiety, and depression
• Reconnecting with nature as a path toward wholeness

If this episode sparked something in you, share it with a friend who surfs, works in mental health, or finds refuge out in the ocean!

Connect with Jess

🌊 Website: www.sealovehealing.com

🌊 Instagram @sealovehealing

🌊 Surf Therapy Training: For recreational therapists who want to work within their scope of competence outside the office, co-creating therapeutic spaces with nature. Learn more: www.sealovehealing.com/become-a-surf-therapist.html

Resources

Surf Therapy International: A global hub for surf therapy organizations, research, and resources. https://intlsurftherapy.org/

Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner. The book on awe that Lizzie and Dr. Patty reference in this episode — a beautiful companion read.