Greetings listener friends!   We are excited to share this conversation with Dr. Jaiya John. This is the second episode in the Men of Depth and Soul series that Carl is hosting with our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun.    Jaiya is an incredible poet, writer, teacher, and human being and the founder of Soul Water Rising press. as he writes on his website: 

"My lifelong calling and work is freedom from the sickness of supremacy and inferiority. Freedom from oppression. Freedom to live a beautiful life. Food, water, and shelter are nothing if the one being fed, watered, and sheltered is immersed in the profound suffering that is poverty of the soul. I am grateful to carry out the humanitarian work of feeding souls the bread and breath of Love, compassion, and hope.

In an often dehumanizing world, Soul Water Rising is a global rehumanizing mission, stirring the soul to remember itself. We support the healing and freedom journeys of historically dehumanized populations and cultures. We honor womanhood and fatherhood. And we treat the sickness of racial and cultural supremacies wherever they exist."   In our conversation, we move through so much terrain looking at how men are being called by the times. We unpack the notion of freedom, and what it means to seek freedom for all beings, we talk about systems top-down dominance, and the pervasive presence of what Jaiya calls the "superiority/inferiority virus." We speak of the sacredness or eros, and how few boys have models of how to be with this energy in a way that feeds life.   So much goodness.    We hope you enjoy the conversation, and please share it with any friends who might enjoy listening.    You can find more about Jaiya and his work at https://jaiyajohn.com   More about Alexandre  https://www.ahealingbridge.com/holistic-psychotherapy-counselling   And more about Carl and Erin at https://embodimentmatters.com

In this conversation, we begin a new sub-series of the Embodiment Matters podcast, Men of Depth and Soul, where Carl and our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun will be hosting interviews around what is being asked of men in these times. 

We begin the series with our friend and mentor, Francis Weller. Francis is a psychotherapist, soul-activist, and author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. 

Our conversation moves through many topics: men and grief, the relationship between power and love, the loneliness and isolation so many men feel, how we can bless each other and call out to each other's gifts, and so much more. 

On February 13th, Carl and Alexandre begin an online men's group, Men of Depth and Soul: Rooting into Sacred Activism. Francis Weller will be one of the guest elder/ teachers along with Pat McCabe, Woman Stands Shining. You can find out more about that course here, https://embodimentmatters.com/menofdepthandsoul/

You can find more information on Francis and his work at https://www.francisweller.net

More on Pat McCabe https://www.patmccabe.net

More on Alexandre at https://www.ahealingbridge.com

   

 

 

We are so excited to share this podcast with the amazing poet and human, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. 

As Erin mentions in the intro, you might want to have some tissues handy, as we dive right into the deep end, and the conversation is filled with tenderness and beauty. 

In our conversation, Rosemerry reads some of her gorgeous poems, and we move through many rich themes including grief and gratitude, ways to be with someone who is grieving,  holding paradox and the stretch of the human heart, and being opened by life. 

The conversation has the same wide range of this experience of being human as does Rosemerry’s writing. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives with her husband and daughter in Placerville, Colorado, on the banks of the wild and undammed San Miguel River. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate (2007-2011) and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate in 2019.

She performs as a storyteller, including shows in Aspen at the Wheeler Opera House, at the Taos Storytelling Festival, Page Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. Her TEDx talk explores changing our outdated metaphors. For five years, she performed in the Telluride Literary Burlesque.

She has been writing a poem a day since 2006, posting them since 2011 on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. In 2023, her poems can be heard daily on the Ritual app, The Poetic Path. Favorite themes include parenting, gardening, ecology, love, science, thriving/failure, grief and daily life.

You can find more about Rosemerry and her work at wordwoman.com

  You can find more about the the course that Erin mentions, Take Heart, Embodying the Great Turning, that she will be teaching with Leilani Navar, with Rosemerry as a guest teacher, along with Francis Weller, Cynthia Jurs, and Lydia Violet Harutoonian at embodimentmatters.com/live-with-erin-and-carl/

Friends, we are delighted to share this conversation with two beautiful Earth-loving humans, John Seed and Skye Cielita Flor. 

John is a long-time Earth activist, writer, teacher, musician, who, along side Joanna Macy, helped to grow the body of work called Experiential Deep Ecology or The Work that Reconnects. 

Skye is a teacher, folk herbalist, plant medicine ritualist, mama, and friend with whom we have connected for several years in online spaces with Francis Weller, Bayo Akomolafe and Josh Schrei.

You can learn more about John and Skye,  and their unique stories and bodies of work at johnseed.net and deepearthdreaming.world 

In our conversation, we talk about the origins of deep ecology ecology work, we speak of ways to de-center the human, and the practices that help to reconnect us with the living intelligence of the Earth. We speak of the challenges of parenting in these times, along with the difficulties of doing this kind of soul work in what John calls “the religion of economics.” 

It is a rich and deep conversation with wisdom holders from different generations who hold such beautiful respect for each other’s wisdom and insight, and such deep love for the Earth and life.

We hope you enjoy the conversation!   You can find more information about the classes that Erin mentions in the introduction here: embodimentmatters.com/live-with-erin-and-carl/

In this conversation, we speak with our friend and teacher, Cynthia Jurs, along with our dear friend and cohost, Leilani Navar, of The Turning Season Podcast.    Cynthia recently published Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing our World, which is a wisdom book for our times. As both of us have shared, this book is an extraordinary weaving of  spiritual biography, riveting travel adventures, essential Dharma instructions, sacred activism, deep ecology, indigenous wisdom, and an overall beautiful story of a human being dedicating her life to liberation, and caring for this living Earth in these mythic times in which we live.       Our conversation moves through many terrains including working with difficult times, the balance of prayer and activism, dismantling systems of domination, keeping our fingernails dirty with the work and practices of liberation, and so much more.   In the beginning of the conversaiton, Erin mentions the gathering of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, and you can find information on that here.     We hope you enjoy, and we highly recommend reading Cynthia's book (or listening, as she reads it in her own voice.)    To find our more about the class, Take Heart: Embodying the Great Turning,  that Erin and Leilani are teaching in January, 2025 with guest teachers, Cynthia Jurs, Francis Weller, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Lydia Violet Harutoonian you can click here.   You can find out more about Cynthia's Gaia Mandala practice here and her Earth Treasure Vase project here.   And you can find out more about Leilani Navar and the Turning Season Podcast  here

 

Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, Body as Sacred Land

 

 

In this conversation between dear friends Erin of Embodiment Matters & Leilani Navar of Turning Season https://turningseason.com/ we dive into rich topics which we’ll be exploring in some upcoming online offerings. 

 

Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, and Body as Sacred Land. We also delve into the 5 Vows of the Great turning as articulated by Joanna Macy (see below.)

 

To find out more about our 3-Sunday series, click here. https://embodimentmatters.com/take-heart-3-sundays-of-encouragement-for-weary-earth-lovers/

 

Soon the January course Take Heart: Embodying the Great Turning, 

with special guest teachers Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer https://ahundredfallingveils.com/,  

Cynthia Jurs, https://earthtreasurevase.org/about-us/founder/ 

Francis Weller https://www.francisweller.net/, 

and Lydia Violet Hartoonian https://schoolforthegreatturning.com/, 

will be listed on our events page. 

Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay tuned to this and future offerings. 

https://embodimentmatters.com/live-with-erin-and-carl/

 

 

 

 Five Vows of the Great Turning

 

• I vow to myself and to each of you to commit myself daily to the healing of our world and the welfare of all beings.

 

• I vow to myself and to each of you to live on Earth more lightly and less violently in the food, products, and energy I consume.

 

• I vow to myself and to each of you to draw strength and guidance from the living Earth, the ancestors, the future beings, and our siblings of all species.

 

• I vow to myself and to each of you to support you in your work for the world, and to ask for help when I need it.

 

• I vow to myself and to each of you to pursue a daily practice that clarifies my mind, strengthens my heart, and supports me in observing these vows.

In this conversation/ transmission we were so honored to hear Dr. Jaiya John pour forth from the depths of his heart and soul in a way that can’t help but touch your own.  We were blessed to hear from Jaiya about his background and how he went from being shy and voiceless to a fully-dilated voice for Love. We were blessed to hear him read passages from several of his extraordinary books including Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution; All These Rivers and You Chose Love; and Dear Artist: A Love Letter. Carl and I also each read a short excerpt from his forthcoming book(s) We Birth Freedom at Dawn.

We are so grateful for his generosity of spirit, his gorgeous writings, and his presence in our lives. His love and courage are contagious. Our wish is that all who listen become infected and go on to spread this love and courage in your own communities.

What an honor to share a conversation with the extraordinary soul, poet, teacher, writer, Dr. Jaiya John.

Please find more about him, his books, his poetry gatherings, his newsletter, his Instagram and more at www.jaiyajohn.com

Toward the end of our conversation, Jaiya mentions our dear heart-friend Alexandre Jodun of ahealingbridge.com

If you loved this podcast, please share it far and wide!

Dear friends,   It is such a pleasure to share this conversation with Zuza Gonçalves.   I met Zuza at the Bobby McFerrin Circlesongs School, and was so moved by his presence, his kindness, the way he moved around the room, and how he led us in movement, song and body-percussion. It felt to me like original human music.   Zuza has been exploring alternative ways to collective music making for more than 20 years, integrating vocal improvisation, body percussion, movement, dialogue, cooperative practices and collaborative methodologies to  promote experiences where music and human connection are interconnected and feed off each other.   Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Zuza has a bachelor’s degree in Music (composing and conducting) and a graduate degree in the Pedagogy of Cooperation.  He is the co-creator of Música do Círculo, part of the faculty at Bobby McFerrin's Circlesongs School, at IBMF (Ghana edition) and travels internationally for festivals and workshops on Música do Circulo.   In our conversation, we speak about vocal improvisation as ancestral practice, and how we are all musical by nature. We speak about the challenges that arise when we outsource our musicality to a small number of perfomers, and don't experience ourselves as being a part of music being made in daily life.   We also explore the value of play and improvisation, an how essential these qualities are for learning, and meeting challenging times, and how rarely modern adults get to experience play and improvisation.    Zuza also guides us all in a wonderful improv practice to sing and play along with.    To find our more about Música do Círculo and the upcoming retreats and trainings you can visit https://www.musicadocirculo.com   To find out more about the Circlesongs School you can visit https://circlesongs.com   Also Zuza mentions The Well, a global vocal improvisation network https://thewellvocal.com   And here are links to other circlesongs/ vocal improv resources:   http://www.judivinar.com https://www.rhiannonmusic.com https://gaelaubrit.com http://www.joeyblake.com https://www.destaniwolf.com https://www.christianekaram.com http://www.rizumik.com/ https://www.jaospina.com https://www.varijashree.com https://www.goussycelestin.com/works https://vocaltoning.net

Greetings, listener friends.

We are so happy to share this episode with our dear friends and colleagues, Holly Truhlar and Alexandre Jodun. In our conversation we speak about what it means to live a soulful life, and why it matters. We weave through many topics connected to soul, including being embedded in relationship with an animate world, ancestors and future beings, imagination and the imaginal, the spell of individualism, ripening adulthood and becoming elders, our relationship with the wild, community building and more. We hope you enjoy the conversation. 

 

Holly Truhlar (she/they) is a grief therapist, group facilitator, and community organizer. She’s most known for her collaborations with politicized grief tending, collapse psychology, and soul activism. Her body of work is a remembering of what it means to be people of potency and culture. Over the last decade, she’s facilitated small and large groups (700+) using ritual, storytelling, creative processes, and Deep Democracy work. She earned a Doctorate in Law and Masters in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, though she learns the most from her relationships with the Wild, including the land she inhabits, Ancestors, Hekate, and donkeys. You can find out more about Holly.and her work at hollytruhlar.com

 

Alexandre Jodun (he/him) is a holistic psychotherapist, facilitator, ritualist, and ceremonialist with a creole-diasporic ancestral heritage. Through a decade of immersion and training within integrative and process-oriented, as well as earth-based and animist paradigms, he passionately walks his path of being a facilitator who can stand with feet in multiple worlds. His eclectic work with individuals, couples, and groups focuses on relational intimacy, grief and loss, altered and extraordinary states, intentional use of psychedelic & master-plant ritual technologies, and the psychospiritual processes of ripening into mature adulthood. You can find out more about Alexandre’s work at ahealingbridge.com

 

 

You can find out more about the Soulful Life online community, which is opening its doors to new members in March of 2024 at Soulfullife.mn.co

Watering the Seeds of Soul

A conversation with Holly Truhlar and Erin Geesaman Rabke

 

Find out more about Watering the Seeds of Soul at hollytruhlar.com embodimentmatters.com

https://watering-the-seeds-of-soul.mn.co

 

 

In this conversation we explore how we came into grief work both personally and professionally.

 

We share a bit about what is unique about our approach to grief, including Soul, somatics, the mythopoetic, anti-oppression, biocultural restoration and more. 

We talk about the Six Gates of Grief as articulated by our dear friend Francis Weller:

1. Everything we love we will lose.
2. The parts of us that have not known love.
3. The sorrows of the world. Grief over destruction of the planet and injustice.
4. What we expected and did not receive. Loss of village and connection.
5. Ancestral Grief from the trials and tribulations of our lineages.
6. The harms we've caused, both personal and collective.

We also explore Francis’s articulation of the 6 elements of an apprenticeship with sorrow. 

1. Practice as a form of ballast.
2. Self-compassion.
3. Staying in our adult presence.
4. Remembering our wild entanglement.
5. Growing a relationship with silence and solitude.
6. Developing right relationship with sorrow.

We also dive into why grief work is important in the world today. 

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

If you’d like to join us for a live online course starting in February, see https://watering-the-seeds-of-soul.mn.co to fill out an application. 

 

About Holly:

Hello there friend, I'm Holly Truhlar. I'm a grief therapist, ritualist, and community organizer. 

I'm most known for my work in collapse psychology and politicized grief tending. In my search for what's just and holy I earned a Doctorate in Law and Masters in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology; yet, I found more Soul, more of what mattered, in witnessing grief and spending time with animal-kin. For over a decade, I've facilitated small and large groups (700+) using ritual, storytelling, creative processes, and Deep Democracy work.

I'm a queer abolitionist and two time sibling loss survivor (Ivy & Brett 🩵). My "positive obsessions" are liberation-based community and culture, donkeys and mules, and the color turquoise. My deepest gratitude goes to my ancestors, mentors, and teachers who've guided me in my work and life, including Desiree Adaway, Kai Cheng Thom, Aftab Erfan, and Francis Weller. I've also been deeply influenced by many poets, authors, and activists, including adrienne maree brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Harriet Tubman, ALOK, Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, Fannie Lou Hamer, bell hooks, Craig Santos Perez, and Jennifer Mullan. 

About Erin

Hi, I’m Erin Geesaman Rabke. I am a Somatic Naturalist and Embodiment Mentor.

I have spent the past 30 years studying & teaching in various lineages of somatics and embodiment. For the past decade, I've been weaving somatic practices with deep ecology, grief tending, praise practice, anti-oppression, & soul work. I am committed to courageous kindness and have a heart vow to live a life of benefit & to steward refugia of many kinds. I have been practicing for 30 years in the Tibetan Buddhist meditation traditions of Dzogchen and Lojong. I’m grateful to be mother to a 13-year-old boy wonder. I’m also a podcaster, a permaculture gardener, a writer, a collector of books and plants, & am a lucky partner to my beloved Carl. I'm a feral Buddhist animist ritualist, home herbalist & beekeeper. I am a lover of poetry, good coffee, big red wine, long walks, and all facets of growing, cooking, sharing and eating food. I'm dedicated to using my skills to ripen mature human beings and to nurture sane and soulful culture. I aim to be grounded, spacious, and gracious. I love being an Earthling with my whole heart.