Liberated Being

Liam Bowler is a teacher, bodyworker, and a somatic philosopher. He’s also the creator of The Body Awake podcast which, if you’re listening to this podcast, I can highly recommend!

He is most recently the author of the book A Creator’s Companion: A Handbook for the Practice of Creation. I found it to be a wonderful read, and a highly experiential book, as opposed to ideas about the process of creation. I believe life itself is a process of creation, and this book is a wonderful guide in how to be more immersed in that.

His book, A Creator's Companion can be found here thebodyawake.com/book/cc

You can find more of Liam’s work at

www.thebodyawake.com

and

www.dynamicalignmentbodywork.com

Liberated Being is at

www.liberatedbeing.community

You can read about the embodied practice studio on the studio page. On Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Caprice Taylor Mendez. Since getting her Masters from Harvard in education, administration, planning and social policy, Caprice has spent the last 30 years supporting social justice in the nonprofit sector.

She works to support strategic grant making and nonprofit collaborations to co-create systemwide impact.

She has done a great of work in policy advocacy, coalition building, and grassroots organizing experience with diverse populations to support low-income communities.

She is also the host of Together, We Can / Juntos, Podemos a bilingual radio show celebrating co-creators and initiatives for a kinder and more just world.

She teaches Journey Dance and practices Cosmohealing Energy.

We’re talking about how she came to be in these parallel worlds of social justice through the non profit sector and advocating for policy change, alongside her own embodied healing practices for herself, and how she came to also provide that work for others.

This week’s episode is with Amoda Maa Jeevan. It is an outtake from a longer guest teacher gathering that happened with Liberated Being members on November 14th of 2020. We talked about her recent book, Falling Open in a World Falling Apart. A fitting title for the times we are living through! In this talk, Amoda connects some important dots between embodiment and spriritual awakening. She gets to important inquiries like- Awakening from what? To what? And what does this have to do with being spiritual or not spiritual (more concepts, as you’ll hear…). What Amoda is pointing to, and what embodiment work is also for, is about shedding conditioning and coming home more deeply to our own internal space and experience.

You can find more of her work at

www.amodamaa.com

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community and on Instagram @liberatedbeing. The embodied practice studio is open with live classes all week.

Today I’m talking with Marika Baxter. Marika has a Masters of Science in Physical Therapy and for 17 years practiced as a physical therapist and Pilates teacher working in particular in the dance medicine world.

She is a Realization Process teacher and is currently studying through Internal Family Systems with Richard Schwartz. Marika is also a dear friend, and a teacher in the liberated being embodied practice studio. You can find out more about her work at www.mb1wellness.com

The Liberated Being embodied practice studio is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Kimberly Ann Johnson. Kimberly is a Structural Integrator, a Sexological Bodyworker, a birth doula and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

She is the author of the book The Fourth Trimester, and her forthcoming book which we are talking about today is Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use it for Good.

You can find out more about Kimberly’s work at www.magamama.com. Maga means sorceress in Brazil, so that THAT maga...

Liberated Being is at liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Our embodied practice studio is at www.liberatedbeing.community/studio

Today I’m talking with Steve Hoskinson. Steve is the founder of Organic Intelligence® (OI) and the nonprofit Organic Intelligence Outreach Institute. OI’s Human Empowerment And Resiliency Training (HEARTraining®) is an international personal and professional development training program using OI’s strengths-based, trauma-safe approach for resiliency.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, The Organic Intelligence® (OI) clinical protocol suggests that, from a systems perspective, what’s wrong with therapy is the focus on what’s wrong — including the focus on trauma.

Organic Intelligence brings a necessary shift in perspective from pathology and trauma to the proven methods drawn from the wisdom of mindfulness and the science of self-organization.

OI teaches how healing happens from the nervous system up and makes it possible to imagine freedom from suffering. Freedom from suffering becomes freedom for living an authentic, vibrant life in the here-and-now.

Steve has trained thousands of trauma therapists, health professionals, mindfulness experts, and teachers. He presents at conferences worldwide, is Adjunct Faculty for JFK University’s Somatic Psychology program, a founding member of the Northern California Society for Integrative Mental Health and the International Transformational Resilience Coalition.

You can find out more about Steve’s work and Organic Intelligence at www.organicintelligence.org

Liberated Being is at www. liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing.

The Liberated Being embodied practice studio is now open!

Today I’m talking with Constance Clare-Newman. Over 30+ years of teaching embodiment, Constance has developed a trauma-sensitive, neuroscience-informed approach to embodiment practices that focus on wholeness of being.

Foremost in her work is a pedagogy of pleasure. The cultural norm of working hard at improvement is relinquished for a slow pace of enjoyment and feelings of pleasure that facilitate healing, creativity and unity of self.

Grounded in her own deep study of somatics, dance, meditation, trauma work, contemplative practices, deep ecology, social justice work and addiction recovery, Constance facilitates a path to wholeness.

She has been studying and teaching movement practices her whole life, as a horse trainer and dressage trainer, as a modern dancer and as an Alexander Technique teacher since 2001.

She is a co-founder of Desert Movement Arts, an intergenerational collective based in Coachella Valley, CA. Constance has taught in performing arts departments of Academy of Art University, University of Redlands, and ACT in San Francisco.

In 2001, Constance completed a three-year Alexander training program in San Francisco with Frank Ottiwell, and has continued her study with master teachers over the world.

I'm also thrilled that Constance is a regular weekly teacher in the Liberated Being online embodied practice studio, which opens to new members this Friday the 15th of January 2021.

You can find out more about Constance’s work at

www.constanceclare.com

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on

Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Steve Haines. Steve has been a bodyworker for 20 years primarily in the field of craniosacral therapy. He is now a senior international teacher of craniosacral, and together with his colleague Ged Sumner he wrote the book Cranial Intelligence and founded a training program at bodyintelligence.com. He is also a lead TRE Certification trainer.

He is deeply interested in pain, trauma, and anxiety and the links between them. As an author, he is the creator of the “...Is really strange” graphic books series which I adore. Titles in that series are: Pain is Really Strange, Trauma is Really Strange, and Anxiety is Really Strange. If you’re looking for simple and straightforward explanations about the current “really strange” science behind these experiences, I highly recommend the books. Today we are talking in particular about trauma and anxiety.

This is my second conversation with Steve, the last one was many years ago. It was great to catch up with him.

You can find out more about his work at

www.bodycollege.net

and

www.bodyintelligence.com

Liberated Being is at liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Enroue Halfkenny. Since 1993, Enroue has been a practitioner within the nature based, West African, Òrìṣà religious tradition of the Yorùbá people. He was initiated as a priest of Ifá in Nigeria in 2000.

In 2008, Enroue graduated as Valedictorian from the Smith College School for Social Work. Since then, he has worked in a community mental health clinic, been an adjunct professor, presented at conferences, sat on various panels, and been a Marta Sotomayor Fellow at his alma mater.

In this role, he consulted on undoing the ways that institutional oppression, as related to Race, Gender and Ability, impacted the students, staff, faculty, advisors and administrators at the School for Social Work.

It is his unique skill set as an activist, priest, and clinical social worker that helps him to develop effective, client specific strategies for those seeking his support.

Today we’re talking about ancestral healing and support- you know these people who are bodies are literally made from! As Enroue says- "We all have a road to go back to."

You can find out more about Enroue’s work at

www.healingandliberation.com

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Laura Banks. Laura is a Certified Compassion Cultivation Training© (CCT) teacher through the Compassion Institute and Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).

Laura has studied literature, languages, folklore, and philosophy to explore expressions of human experience across time. She has traveled around the world to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch life in its countless forms. Joys and sorrows, life and death crossed her path. Again and again, she saw how fear and anger could complicate and magnify pain, but also witnessed people choosing compassion for themselves and others –meeting anguish with loving presence – and spinning the straw of suffering into the gold of connection, healing, and wisdom.

You can learn more about Laura's work here:

https://www.lauralbanks.com/

and she is a teacher in the Liberated Being embodied practice studio which is set to open to new members in January.

You can find out more about Liberated Being at

https://www.liberatedbeing.community/

Resources mentioned in this interview:

A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives by Thupten Jinpa

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams

Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection by Barbara Fredrickson

The Compassionate Species, article by Dachner Keltner, faculty director of Greater Good Science Center

Compassion does not fatigue!, research article by Trisha Dowling

Contesting the term ‘compassion fatigue’: Integrating findings from social neuroscience and self-care research, research article by Anne Hofmeyer, Kate Kennedy, and Ruth Taylor