In this episode of Compost the Empire, Ethos and Logina are joined by Black queer ethical non-monogamy coach, speaker, and author Evita “LaVita Loca” Sawyers to explore what it actually means to decolonize identity, attachment, and love in real life, not just in theory.

We move from big language about “decolonization” down into the body: nervous systems shaped by empire, internal surveillance, and the schisms we create to survive. Together, we ask what it means to be indigenous to ourselves and how polyamory can act like an “operating system update” for how we do connection, community, and care.

Evita shares from her lived experience as a polyamory educator, parent, and survivor, weaving in how race, class, disability, and housing insecurity shape access to love, village, and long-term support — and why we need to stop treating romantic partnership as the only place where “doing life together” is allowed.

In this episode, we explore:

• Compassion as a core decolonial practice when none of us were taught how to do this well
• Polyamory as an “OS update” from monogamy, and why it’s really just complex human relating on steroids
• Intersectionality and why every layer of identity informs how we give and receive love
• Romantic relationships as sites of literal survival (housing, money, care) under capitalism
• Reimagining village, queer kinship networks, and “people to do life with” beyond couples
• Conflict, rupture, and repair without carceral logics or sitcom timelines
• Trauma, somatics, and the questions Evita uses with clients: “Where are you right now?” and “What did you hear me say?”
• Making friends with the ego as a safety tool, instead of waging war on ourselves
• Love as praxis: the ongoing choice to stay, pause, repair, or lovingly part ways

A question from Evita to carry with you:

How am I being indigenous to myself?
What feels native, honest, and at home in my body and identity — beyond performance or pressure from any side?

Evita is a Black queer ethical non-monogamy coach, speaker, educator, and author known for her frank, emotionally honest approach to polyamory. She appeared in the documentary Poly Love, created the daily reflection project Today’s Polyamory Reminder, and wrote A Polyamory Devotional: 365 Daily Reflections for the Consensually Non-Monogamous. Her work supports people opening up from monogamy, working with jealousy, and learning to communicate complex emotions with clarity and compassion.

(Add Evita’s website / socials / book links here.)

This conversation opens the portal for our upcoming workshop with Evita and Logina:

Decolonizing Identity: From Internalized Surveillance to Relational Truth
📅 February 1
🔗 Register: bit.ly/NeuroColonization101

If this episode gave you language, resonance, or a place to breathe, consider supporting Compost the Empire through our Substack.

Think of it less as a subscription and more as mycelial economics — small, distributed support that lets this body of work grow without being distorted.

We’re also open to sponsorships from brands, collectives, and organizations rooted in care, repair, dignity, and relationship (not extraction or greenwashing). If that’s you, reach out via the contact info in the show notes.

Why Neurocolonization: A Survivor’s Path to Somatic Liberation

In this solo reflection, Ethos speaks candidly about why the Neurocolonization work exists—and why sharing it publicly has been both a resistance and a responsibility.

Rooted in ancestral memory, somatic abolition, and lived experience, this episode traces the journey from activism to liberation, from community betrayal to earth-based belonging, and from disembodiment to metabolic healing.

Ethos reflects on surviving state repression, community exile, complex PTSD, and suicidal ideation—and how those ruptures clarified a deeper devotion to healing that is not performative, extractive, or rooted in spiritual capitalism.

Neurocolonization is named here not as a theory, but as a felt operating system—one that conditions our nervous systems to recapitulate empire, even in movements claiming liberation. Through yoga, meditation, indigenous medicine, sweat, movement, and deep somatic listening, Ethos explores what it means to decolonize not just beliefs, but bodies, relationships, and metabolic rhythms.

This episode also situates Neurocolonization 101 as an invitation into a collective process—what Ethos calls a liberation university—where no one is positioned as guru or guide. Instead, the work is shared from the perspective of a survivor, alongside others willing to feel, metabolize, and imagine together in a time of global rupture.

Drawing connections between intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, and collective harm, the conversation engages insights aligned with thinkers such as Resmaa Menakem, Assata Shakur, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, while grounding everything in lived, embodied practice rather than abstraction.

This is an episode about:

• Why healing is inseparable from liberation
• How trauma is metabolized—or weaponized—through the nervous system
• Why identity politics alone cannot undo empire
• The myth that spiritual healing is only for the wealthy
• What it means to choose hope, imagination, and community in an era of genocide, fascism, and collapse

Ethos closes with an invitation—to those willing to feel again, to confront their complicity without shame, and to co-create spaces where grief, rage, movement, and possibility can be metabolized together.

• Join Neurocolonization 101, a somatic workshop series exploring liberation beyond activism
• Comment “resonate” to receive information about upcoming sessions
• Subscribe to the Substack for 20% off the workshop series
• Stay tuned for the launch of The Feel Tanks—collective spaces for somatic processing and co-regulation
• Come build the world beyond empire, together

If you’re ready to be the generation that ends empire—this is your invitation.

In this opening episode, Ethos shares their personal story as a trans-masculine, non-binary person raised in Mormonism, shaped by colonial cosmologies of separability, and transformed through education, somatic practice, relational inquiry, and lived experience inside the collapse of empire.

Tracing a journey from early gendered misrecognition, chronic depression, and survival through structure, to the liberatory impact of dialogical education and somatic healing, this episode introduces the foundational questions that guide Compost the Empire: How does modernity shape our nervous systems, our relationships, and our sense of self? What happens when rupture is no longer moralized as “good” or “bad,” but understood as a portal for repair, accountability, and post-traumatic growth?

Ethos introduces the conceptual map behind their work—drawing inspiration from decolonial thinkers such as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira—including the four core needs of being alive, the wounds produced by separability, neurocolonization as an operating system of empire, and the distinction between conflict cycles, collapse, repair, and trust-building.

This episode is not a manifesto or a prescription. It is an offering—a story shared as an invitation into deeper relational integrity, somatic accountability, and collective remembering. A doorway into the ongoing exploration known as The Alchemy of Rupture.

Listen if you’re curious about decolonization beyond ideology, healing beyond bypass, and what it might mean to live in right relation with yourself, others, and the living world.

The podcast episode explores the impact of neurocolonization on bodies, bonds, and beliefs, and the creation of an ecosystem for decolonial visions and imaginations. It delves into the acknowledgment of settler colonial projects, the reclaiming of perception of reality and possibilities, and the expansion of access to transformative experiences. The episode also discusses the power of storytelling, the concept of empire with a little e, and the challenges to mainstream notions of energetic power. The conversation delves into neurodivergent experiences and storytelling, exploring the impact of neurocolonization on consciousness and intelligence. It also covers identity exploration and attachment theory in the context of neurodecolonization. The conversation delves into the exploration of relational trauma, secure attachment, and the journey of self-exploration and healing. It also addresses the deconstruction of empire and the practice of somatics. The themes of polyamory and relationship dynamics are prevalent throughout, offering insights into alternative relationship structures and dynamics. The discussion emphasizes the importance of secure attachment, self-discovery, and the rejection of mononormativity in relationships.

Takeaways

• Neurocolonization and its impact on bodies, bonds, and beliefs
• Creating an ecosystem for decolonial visions and imaginations Neurodivergent experiences and storytelling
• Impact of neurocolonization on consciousness and intelligence Secure attachment and relational trauma
• Polyamory and relationship dynamics

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction to Compost the Empire Podcast
• 05:21 Expanding Mycelial Mutual Aid Networks
• 11:04 Releasing Trauma and Direct Embodied Experiences
• 16:24 Big Clit Energy and Energetic Power
• 36:04 Attachment Theory and Neurodecolonization
• 46:19 Journey of Self-Exploration and Healing
• 53:22 Deconstructing Empire and Somatic Practice

An orientation into the intellectual and spiritual ecosystem behind Composting the Empire. Ethos & Logina share their story, names the rupture that made this work necessary, and reframes consciousness and intelligence as embodied, relational capacities rather than personal achievements.