Alissa (she/her) of Akasha Apothecary is a folk herbalist and facilitator. In this episode, Alissa and Eryn discuss:  Alissa's journey with plants, healing & spirituality What the land is like by her right now Death, complete upheaval and ripping away all that is untrue Resisting death & gripping to untrue stories Life/death/rebirth cycles Opening to ancestral layers of loss Embodiment practices for staying with yourself Cultivating self trust How to know if you’re abandoning yourself The willow tree, compassion, and rage Cultivating safety in yourself to feel rage Integrating spiritual experiences Letting contradiction live within people Staying curious and open Polarized thinking as a fight or flight response  Blog for this episode: www.living-open.com/blog/alissa-akasha-apothecary  Connect with Eryn on Instagram. Learn more about + apply for HOLY, a 7-week reclamation circle and support group for ex-religious folks to create community and heal from the impacts of dogmatic religion together. Connect with Alissa on Instagram and her website.

Ep. #250: Plant Medicine, Death + Not Abandoning Yourself with Alissa of Akasha Apothecary

Living Open is a podcast for mystics and seekers hosted by Philly-based writer and facilitator Eryn Johnson. Explore paths back to the self with this podcast, intended to be support on your unique healing journey.

Alternative Health

Health

Religion & Spirituality

Other

Spirituality

Christianity

Buddhism

Hinduism

Judaism

Islam

Health & Fitness

Jeanna Kadlec (she/her) is a writer, astrologer, former lingerie boutique owner, and recovering academic. Her writing has appeared in ELLE, NYLON, O the Oprah Magazine, Allure, Catapult, Literary Hub, Autostraddle, and she's the creator of the New York Times-featured newsletter Astrology for Writers. A born and bred Midwesterner, she now lives in Brooklyn. HERETIC is her first book. In this episode, Eryn and Jeanna talk about:  Jeanna’s journey with Christianity & deconstruction Grieving the loss of religion Not just replacing christianity with cut/copy/paste spirituality but actually figuring out what we believe Navigating having conservative, evangelical families Believing in people’s capacity to change Having hard conversations with family The particular loneliness of strained and estranged relationships with parents Reparenting ourselves  Check out the blog for this episode at erynjohnson.com/blog/jeanna-kadlec   Check out my recent essay in Insider. Subscribe to Joy Notes and check out the Religious Trauma workbook. Connect with Jeanna on her website, social media. Read her book, Heretic, and check out her substack Astrology for Writers.

Ep. #287: Leaving Christianity & Navigating Religious Families as Queer People with Jeanna Kadlec

Victoria Albina (she/her/ella) a Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioner, an herbalist, and a nervous system expert.  In this episode, Eryn and Victoria discuss:  Her journey with health and healing How the stories we tell about ourselves and the world impact our somatic experience of life Vagus nerve and polyvagal theory! Different nervous system states Perceiving threat Finding safety in the nervous system slowly and steadily Allowing your body to complete the energy of what it wanted to do in a challenging moment  Hypervigilance after trauma Self-love The fawn response, codependence, and people pleasing Attachment theory All of this existing in context of oppressive systems  Blog for this episode: www.living-open.com/blog/maria-victoria-albina  Connect with Eryn on their substack, Joy Notes. Explore the Religious Trauma Support workbook. Download Victoria's free suite of meditations and nervous system orienting exercises.  Tune into Victoria's Feminist Wellness podcast and connect with her on Instagram @victoriaalbinawellness.

Ep. #286: Whole-Body Healing: Nervous System, Gut Microbiome, Self-Love and More with Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioner Victoria Albina

Laura (she/they) is a writer, editor, and book coach who works with intuitive and magical writers who want to unearth their own writing stories and create a sustainable writing practice. In this episode, Eryn and Laura talk about:  Laura’s journey with creativity, writing, magic, and spirituality Using frameworks and support for our writing (and not) Pinning down key emotional moments and using them as a basis for fiction writing Unearthing and softly excavating our deepest stories Collaborating with the parts of you the story is coming from Figuring out the story you’re trying to tell Being open to the nonlinear creative writing process Rituals Laura uses in their writing process Different stages of the creative process where feedback may be more or less helpful Experiential learning through the writing process The inner work that goes along with writing Identifying learned myths in creativity Writing the true book that you’re meant to write Creating a sustainable writing practice  Blog for this episode: www.living-open.com/blog/laura-ellen-joyce  Connect with Eryn on their substack, Joy Notes. Explore the Religious Trauma Support workbook. Connect with Laura on their website and their new Substack!

Ep. #285: Rituals for Creative Writing + Unearthing our Deepest Stories with Laura Ellen Joyce

Chelsey Pippin Mizzi (she/her) is a writer, tarot reader, and the founder of Pip Cards Tarot, a tarot consultancy helping creatives unblock, generate new ideas, and connect to their inner artist through tarot. In this episode, Eryn and Chelsey talk about:  Chelsey’s journey with creativity, writing, and tarot Images in the process of writing Using your tarot deck to have conversations with your creativity Using tarot to write better stories and better-developed characters Doing tarot spreads for your characters Holding the cards loosely! Lessons from Chelsey’s book-writing process  Blog for this episode: www.living-open.com/blog/chelsey-pippin-mizzi Connect with Eryn on their substack, Joy Notes. Some of their writings on creativity and creative process over there:   devotion to creative transformation telling the story that wants to be told play and nourishing the creative self a mini creative reset   the next thing leads to the next thing  scent-sual creative aliveness with Mary Adelle  Connect with Chelsey on Instagram, her website, or her Substack, The French Dispatch. Mentioned in this episode:  The Querant by Alexander Chee Character development tarot spread Chelsey's Tarot for Novelists ebook Chelsey's book, The Tarot Spreads Yearbook 

Ep. #284: Using the Tarot to Have Conversations with Your Creativity with Chelsey Pippin Mizzi of Pip Cards Tarot

Gina Badger (they/she) is a clinical energetic herbalist. They offer care through their private practice, Long Spell, and collaborative projects such as Wet Coast mutual aid kits. Gina is a queer nonbinary femme of mixed Western European ancestry born in Treaty 6 territory and currently living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations (Vancouver, Canada). In this episode, Eryn and Gina talk about:  Gina’s journey with plants! Building an embodied relationship with plants Personal healing-oriented plant communication Looking to the plants as teachers Orienting toward plant relationship Ways to give plants attention What relationship with plants looks like for them in the winter  Blog for this episode: www.living-open.com/blog/gina-badger  Subscribe to the Joy Notes substack here and get a copy of the Religious Trauma support workbook here. Connect with Gina on their website, Instagram, or over email at gina@longspellherbs.com. Footnotes from Gina:  Episodes from KPFA radio show the Herbal Highway: “Herbal Energetics” (15/Feb/2023, originally aired 1/May/1999) and “Honoring our Elders: Karyn Sanders,” (2/Nov/2022) Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects Chani Nicholas’s Week Ahead Podcast for the week of 30/Jan/2023 

Ep. #250: Plant Medicine, Death + Not Abandoning Yourself with Alissa of Akasha Apothecary

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