The third conversation in "The Great AI Unraveling", recorded live with our community on July 10, 2026.

Throughout time, humanity has experimented with playing God, and each time we have been humbled by forces larger than ourselves. Many Indigenous Nations consciously chose not to pursue certain technologies, recognizing that not every innovation serves life, and that wisdom lies in understanding the boundaries of nature and those of our human condition.

As artificial intelligence promises ever greater efficiency, productivity, and control, we are invited to ask a deeper question: Which problem are we really trying to solve? Beneath the relentless pursuit of more—more knowledge, more power, more convenience—lies a profound inquiry into sufficiency, relationship, and meaning.

Guests

Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages.
Her messages focus on Indigenous rights, supporting youth, traditional land stewardship practices and healing inter-generational and inter-cultural trauma.

She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.

Ashley Nicole Leitka comes from the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the Oglala and Sicangu Lakota nations. She lives on Absentee Shawnee land in so-called Oklahoma and is the Director of the Department of Sovereignty and Self-Determination at Honor the Earth.

Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez is a native spirit-rooted social activist, community educator, traditional blackware potter, and fluent Tewa language speaker from the Tewa Pueblo of San Ildefonso in New Mexico. For more than two decades, she has been a guiding force within Tewa Women United, advancing environmental justice, cultural revitalization, healing, and social transformation.

A respected elder, teacher, and mentor, Kathy developed the acclaimed Two World Harmony Butterfly Model and Trauma Rocks, innovative frameworks that support cross-cultural understanding and intergenerational healing. Her lifelong work bridges Indigenous wisdom, environmental stewardship, community empowerment, and the protection of cultural and spiritual traditions. Through local, national, and international advocacy, she continues to inspire pathways of healing, resilience, and right relationship with the Earth and one another.

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Recorded live at our May 2026 online gathering celebrating Little Singer, the Diné film in The Eternal Song series, this conversation with psychologist Eduardo Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota) begins with the prophecy of Crazy Horse and moves through the teachings of the elder who trained him, the soul wound and the origins of the term historical trauma, why Indigenous languages of verbs change how we understand diagnosis, and the Diné teaching of K'é: the universe wired in complete relationship. Trauma, he reminds us, is a movement and not an identity, and the medicine is in the song itself. Eduardo joins the teaching panel of our upcoming live course, Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory & Practice.

Eduardo Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota) is a psychologist and Vietnam veteran who has spent most of his career working in Indigenous communities, informed by Buddhist practice, Native teachings, and heart knowing. His work introduced the concepts of the soul wound and historical trauma into clinical practice. He is the author of Buddha in Redface, Healing the Soul Wound, and Native American Postcolonial Psychology.

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Eduardo Duran

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Clinical psychologist and longtime Buddhist meditator Dr. Nicole Wordlaw joins us to talk about her new memoir, Waking Up Alone: Navigating the Narrow Passage Through Master-Slave Narratives. Nicole came to practice to end suffering, and found instead that enlightenment as an arrival, all bliss, all peace, was one more construction of the conditioned mind. The conversation moves through the single pattern she came to see beneath white supremacy, patriarchy, and the harm spiritual teachers do to their students; writing as prayer; pain as a door; and the intergenerational line of women whose voices run through the book. A tender and unflinching conversation about telling the whole story, uprooting the internal oppressor, and the quiet, still voice that always sounds like Love.

Dr. Nicole Wordlaw is a clinical psychologist and longtime practitioner of Buddhist meditation whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and identity. The daughter of a white mother and a Black father, Dr. Wordlaw brings a deeply personal understanding of belonging and self-discovery to her writing and teaching. A Stanford University graduate with honors and distinction, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley. In her forthcoming book Waking Up Alone, she vulnerably shares her story of trauma and awakening, and offers gentle guidance for her readers to tune into the quiet voice of truth within.

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Dr. Nicole Wordlaw

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Three Kalaallit Inuit women sit with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, who met them while filming on their traditional land in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Ikimaliq Pikilak carries the revival of Inuit tattooing, Nuka Alice carries drum dance, and Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq carries her family's lineage of healing. Together they speak about what colonization severed, what gratitude makes survivable in the Arctic, and Sila, the word that holds weather, breath, and the consciousness connecting all living things. Recorded in June 2025 during the launch week of The Eternal Song, this conversation arrives now to celebrate Sila, the new film from Science and Nonduality featuring all three women, streaming at theeternalsong.org/sila.

Guests

Ikimaliq Pikilak is a Kalaallit tattoo practitioner. Trained in the Western tattoo industry in Denmark, she returned to Greenland and, through the traditionally tattooed mummies of Qilakitsoq, began an eleven-year journey of reclaiming Inuit women's markings: their meanings, their protocols, and their place in healing. 

Nuka Alice Lund is a drum dancer and teacher from the west coast of Kalaallit Nunaat. Taught by Paulina, who gathered songs from the elders of East Greenland, she works to normalize the use of Inuit drum dance and its songs, teaching adults and carrying the stories, intentions, and patience the practice asks for.

Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq is a healer working within her family's ancestral lineage. Her practice spans soul retrieval, putting souls to rest, and the older responsibility of rebalancing relations between people, land, and the spirit world. Of mixed Inuk and Danish parentage, she speaks in the conversation about finding her roots through her ancestors and helping others use her roots to find their own. 

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Restoration ecologist and author Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet joins us to talk about his new book Healing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are: How Indigenous Cultural Resistance Can Restore the Earth, Recover Community, and Create Sustainable Futures. Grounded in over two decades of community-based restoration work across New Mexico, Maceo makes the case that the climate solutions we're searching for already exist and are already being practiced by communities around the world. The book is structured around the four elements — water, earth, fire, and air — treating each not as a category but as a relative with something to say. We move through the memory of ancient Pueblo dry-land farming still visible on La Bajada Mesa, the racism embedded in the history of American fire suppression, and the idea that culture and science were never actually separate to begin with. A conversation about returning to first principles, in a time when the polycrisis makes that return feel urgent.

Guest

Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet is an award-winning restoration ecologist who has spent over 20 years co-creating community-based restoration and education projects across New Mexico and beyond. Since 2008, he has worked with the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, assisting private landowners, tribes, cities, and counties. He holds a PhD in biology from the University of New Mexico with a focus on ecology, freshwater sciences, and environmental education. He teaches a hands-on course at UNM on watershed and community restoration.

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Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet

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Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma: A SAND Community Gathering with Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Gabor Maté & Dr. Jennifer Mullan, facilitated by Dr. Jess Ghannam

Join us for a conversation marking the book launch of Radiance and Pain in Resilience, a powerful collection of essays by Palestinian psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and internationally respected mental health advocate Dr. Samah Jabr.

We are gathering in the midst of genocide. The massive, deliberate traumatization of an entire people, cheered, funded, and shielded from accountability by Western governments, is unfolding in real time. As Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to annihilate bodies, families, and entire lineages, this conversation refuses to look away. It asks what it is to tend to the psyche under conditions of systematic destruction.

Drawing on decades of clinical practice, political analysis, and lived experience under occupation, Dr. Jabr examines the psychological consequences of colonization, displacement, and historical trauma on the Palestinian people. Through personal reflections, case studies, and cultural critique, she challenges dominant Western paradigms of mental health and offers a decolonial, psycho-spiritual framework rooted in dignity, collective care, resistance, and truth.

Proceeds from this conversation go directly to Project Hope Palestine, supporting 500 orphaned children living at Al-Baraka orphan camp in Gaza.

Guests

Dr. Samah Jabr is a psychiatrist practicing in Palestine, serving communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. She was formerly Head of the Mental Health Unit within the Palestinian Ministry of Health and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. She is the author of several books including Behind the Frontlines, Sumud, Sumud in Times of Genocide, and most recently Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma.

Dr. Gabor Maté is a physician, trauma expert, and bestselling author of The Myth of Normal, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and When the Body Says No.

Dr. Jennifer Mullan is a clinical psychologist and the author of the national bestseller Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice. She is the founder of Decolonizing Therapy®.

Dr. Jess Ghannam (facilitator) is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at UCSF.

Timestamps

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Dr. Samah Jabr

Dr. Gabor Maté

Dr. Jennifer Mullan

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Thinkers referenced in the conversation

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Daniel Foor returns to Sounds of SAND for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from his own winding spiritual path to the urgent question of why so many spiritual teachers stay silent in the face of injustice. A doctor of psychology, initiated priest in the Yoruba Ifá tradition, and practicing Muslim, Daniel makes the case that animism is the antidote to human supremacy, that Islam is fundamentally a relational and earth-honoring tradition, and that genuine spirituality cannot retreat from the political realities of our time. Along the way, he speaks candidly about ancestral healing, decolonization, the genocide in Gaza, and what it means to become "regular-sized" in a culture built on separation.

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There is a “false wall” often placed between contemplative life and political action—a story implying that inner peace and outer justice are separate vocations. This imaginary divide exhausts us. In a world facing converging crises, how do those dedicated to healing move beyond the limits of individualized work to support systemic transformation?

Join somatics experts and social change practitioners Nkem Ndefo and Staci K. Haines for a conversation introducing The Outer Work Project; an initiative dedicated to bridging trauma healing spaces with sustained social and climate justice movements. This episode explores how to move from personal healing as solely an inward practice into a rooted force for collective change.

Guests

Nkem Ndefo is an alchemist, disabled Black midwife, facilitator, coach, and strategist. She is the founder of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, a model for embodied healing and liberatory change rooted in neuroscience and social justice. Her work spans the US, UK, and Palestine.

Staci K. Haines has been working at the intersections of personal and social transformation for over 30 years through politicized somatics, trauma healing, embodied leadership, and transformative justice. She is the co-founder of Generative Somatics and co-leads The Outer Work Project. She is the author of The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice.

Rae Abileah (facilitator) is a social change strategist, Jewish faith leader, and member of the SAND team. Her work spans Beautiful Trouble, The Nature Conservancy Agility Lab, and ALAS, weaving cultural connection, the arts, and frontline community leadership as pathways to healing and climate justice.

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Nkem Ndefo

Staci K. Haines

Rae Abileah

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Recorded live at a SAND Community Gathering (April 2026)

Hard times are here, we hunger for voices that can see beyond the fear, beyond the noise, beyond the technologies consuming our attention. We need poets and visionaries. People who remember freedom.

Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man), medicine poet, freedom worker, is one of those voices. He has spent his life gathering words that heal. In this conversation, we enter the beauty, the grief, and the medicine together. We sit with the devastation tearing our world, the sorrows cracking us open, the ancestors still holding us—and the radical insistence that collective freedom is not something we chase. It is something already alive in and between us, waiting to be birthed.

Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man) was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico. He is an ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and the founder of Soul Water Rising—a global mission to eradicate oppression through re-humanization, book donations, and grants to displaced youth. He is the author of numerous books including Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution and Fragrance After Rain, and the creator of the podcast I Will Read for You. A former professor of social psychology at Howard University, he holds a doctorate from UC Santa Cruz and has spoken to over a million people worldwide. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.

Watch the full video version of this conversation.

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Dr. Jaiya John — Guest

Dr. Jennifer Mullan — Referenced

The Gaza Monologues — Referenced

Nikki Giovanni — Referenced

Ancestors Referenced

Hopi Nation / Turtle Island

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Stephan offers webinars, retreats, videos, books, and spiritual counseling that make profound spiritual teachings and practices accessible to a global audience. He studied and practiced for many years with great masters in the nondual wisdom traditions of Zen, Dzogchen-Mahamudra, and Advaita Vedanta, and in 2001 he received Dharma transmission (authorization to teach) from Adyashanti.

In this conversation, recorded to mark the release of his new book Infinite Awakening: A Guide to Nondual Wisdom and the Pathless Path (Shambhala, May 2026), Stephan and Michael explore awakening not as a destination but as an ongoing, infinite process. They move through trauma and trust, the limits of mindfulness, the role of intimate relationship as spiritual path, and how nondual realization speaks — or fails to speak — to the metacrisis we're all living through. The episode closes with a guided "rest and allow" meditation from Stephan.

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Stephan Bodian

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Psychological Modalities

SAND 

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