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   Number 1: Nuance of Wonder: Joan Tollifson

   Joan Tollifson returns to the podcast three years after her first conversation. We talk about her June essay Two Inseparable Truths, on the relative and the absolute and the trouble with getting stuck in either one. Along the way: the silence of many nondual teachers in a dark time, what cancer and an aging body insist on that philosophy cannot, and why "I don't know" may be the answer closest to truth. She closes by reading her essay 'Radiant Light in Dark Times' in full. Topics 00:00 Introduction 00:04 From political movements to the Zen Center 00:06 Politics on Substack, and what bypassing looks like 00:11 Two inseparable truths: stuck in the relative, stuck in the absolute 00:19 Why she refuses final conclusions 00:21 Old age, sickness and death as visceral teaching 00:25 Cancer and what the body insists on 00:28 Zooming out and zooming in: two ways through pain 00:33 Why she has never used AI for writing 00:39 Siri, and what a machine can evoke 00:46 Finding the divine in a construction machine 00:49 Joan reads Radiant Light in Dark Times Joan Tollifson Joan Tollifson has been writing and talking about nonduality for decades, with roots in Zen and Advaita and a background that also includes radical nonduality, contemplative inquiry, addiction recovery, martial arts, somatic work, and visual arts. Before all of that came years of political organizing: the feminist movement, gay and lesbian liberation, disability rights, the anti-imperialist left, and Central America solidarity work. Born without her right hand and forearm, she wrote about it in her first book, Bare-Bones Meditation. She is 78 and lives in southern Oregon. She has been a frequent speaker at SAND gatherings over the years. joantollifson.com Right Now, Just As It Is on Substack Her list of recommended books The two essays discussed Two Inseparable Truths, June 20, 2026. The essay that prompted this conversation. Radiant Light in Dark Times, August 12, 2026. Read in full at the end of the episode. Her books Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogues about Nonduality Nothing to Grasp Death: The End of Self-Improvement Also in the conversation Douglas Harding, whose approach to headlessness Joan cites as an example of what she calls zooming out. Father Arthur Polen, the Catholic monk whose painting Radiant Light, made after 9/11, hangs on her wall and gives the closing essay its title. Huang Po, quoted in the essay: it is that which you see before you, begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. SAND's AI series, referenced in the discussion of artificial intelligence, including the conversation with Tristan Harris. Robert Moor's In Trees, the book about trees, family trees, and hierarchical trees that comes up near the end. His episode is here. Previously on Sounds of SAND Here Now Being: Joan Tollifson, the first conversation, three years ago Support the show Sounds of SAND is listener supported. Become a SAND member to support the podcast and everything else SAND makes.

   September 17, 2026·1h 1min
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   Number 2: The Flow of Coherence: Cynthia Li

   Dr. Cynthia Li joins us to talk about her new book, The Medicine of Flow. Trained as an internist, Cynthia developed an autoimmune condition and then chronic fatigue and dysautonomia, illnesses largely dismissed at the time as being in her head. Her own body pushed her out of the paradigm she was trained in and into functional medicine, qigong, and intuitive healing. A decade later, a second crisis took her back to housebound and taught her what all her effort hadn't: coherence, and what she calls embodied flow. We talk about surrender that isn't passivity, why nervous system regulation is only part of the picture, and how coherence moves between bodies. Guest Cynthia Li, MD, is a physician who moved from public health to integrative medicine and intuitive healing, with earlier work at Kaiser Permanente's HIV/AIDS group, San Francisco General Hospital, St. Anthony Clinic, and Doctors Without Borders in rural China. A certified qigong teacher and healer since 2014, she has served as faculty for Rachel Remen's Healer's Art program at UCSF, and her story appeared in Dr. Kelly Turner's Radical Remission documentary. She is the author of Brave New Medicine and The Medicine of Flow (May 2026). Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 00:01 From internist to patient: the first illness 00:05 Intuitive medicine, and learning to rule things in 00:07 The second health crisis and the turn to surrender 00:09 What coherence is, and why it isn't just relaxation 00:14 Too many apps: the body in incoherence 00:23 Breath, spiritus, and the nondual 00:27 Physics 101: why we are electromagnetic beings 00:31 Coherence in a time of polycrisis 00:34 Overlapping fields, and the living mandala 00:40 Why the collective comes sixth 00:47 Bamboo in the wind, and whether the future of medicine is ancient Books and practices The Medicine of Flow: Harmonizing Your Inner State for Effortless Healing (Reveal Press, May 2026) Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness (New Harbinger, 2019) Embodied Flow Methods, free guided audio and video for the practices in the book, including coherent breathing and a downloadable 30-day worksheet Find Cynthia cynthialimd.com Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Psychology Today Her New York Times piece on the pandemic, poverty, and homelessness Going deeper Awakin Call with Michael Lerner, July 2026, on The Medicine of Flow Her first Awakin Call, 2020, on healing from the first crisis HeartMath Institute, the heart coherence and HRV research referenced in the conversation Contact SAND [email protected] Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

   September 03, 2026·1h 4min
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   Number 3: The Dance of Exile & Settlement: Bayo Akomolafe

   Full interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, recorded by SAND founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. Edited portions appear in The Eternal Song; this is the whole conversation. Bayo moves from his childhood in Lagos to the Orisha who wanted only to travel, from the psychologist's couch he calls too small a space for healing, to the nets slave ship captains strung along their hulls to stop people from jumping. Along the way: why decolonization isn't individual work, why wellness might be a net rather than a cure, what a monster does to a world that's stuck, and the story of a dried African lake whose dust still feeds the Amazon. Topics 00:00:00 — Introduction 00:12:00 — A recovering psychologist 00:18:30 — The plurality of healing 00:28:00 — The one world worldview 00:36:00 — Addiction, sleeplessness, and dreaming 00:40:30 — Decolonization, monsters, and the cracks 00:53:00 — Intergenerational trauma 00:57:00 — Wellness, and the nets on the slave ship 01:04:30 — Captivity is never total 01:08:00 — Arriving on shore 01:11:00 — Artificial intelligence 01:18:00 — The collapse of modernity, and dead bones Bayo Akomolafe Yoruba philosopher, psychologist, poet, and writer. Founder and Executive Director of The Emergence Network, host of the postactivist course series We Will Dance with Mountains, and inaugural Global Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. He is a board member of Science and Nonduality. bayoakomolafe.net The Emergence Network These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books, 2017) We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, with Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye From SAND Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory & Practice A nine-month journey with Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Eduardo Duran, Linda Thai, Dr. Daniel Foor, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, Alnoor Ladha, and Dr. Lynn Murphy. Bayo teaches Module 8, The Cracks Are the Medicine: Fugitive Healing in a Broken System, with Staci Haines. The Eternal Song SAND's documentary series on indigenous cultures, in which Bayo appears. Contact SAND [email protected] Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

   August 27, 2026·1h 28min
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   Number 4: Arborescence: Robert Moor

   Robert Moor is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, Emergence, and The New York Times. His first book, On Trails, won the National Outdoor Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize. He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia. His new book is 'In Trees'. Topics 00:00 Welcome, and the new SAND course 00:04 A tree is a verb, not a noun 00:06 Branching, brains, and why AI has no roots 00:13 Pruning, gnarling, and the beauty of wounds 00:16 The Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya 00:19 From On Trails to In Trees 00:22 Tree thinking and the tree of contents 00:27 Intelligence without anthropomorphizing 00:34 Cedars, Haida Gwaii, and deep time 00:38 Branching futures, many apocalypses, and grief 00:47 Hierarchy, the rhizome, and the Korowai 00:52 Rootedness and relationality Robert Moor In Trees: An Exploration (Simon & Schuster, April 2026) On Trails: An Exploration Robert Moor at Hill Nadell Literary Agency Books mentioned Songs for Relinquishing the Earth by Jan Zwicky. Originally hand-sewn by the author on recycled stock and distributed by request; later won the Governor General's Award for Poetry. Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees by Nalini Nadkarni The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger Thus Spoke the Plant by Monica Gagliano The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge, source of the "big plant with a stick up the middle" definition Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land by Brian Burkhart Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, source of the rhizome A Secular Age by Charles Taylor, source of the buffered and porous self “Ancient Green” by Robin Wall Kimmerer The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson People mentioned Patrick von Aderkas, tree biologist at the University of Victoria, who described a tree as "a growth form" Jeff Lichtman, neuroscientist and Dean of Science at Harvard Robert J. O'Hara, who coined the term "tree thinking" Umeek (Richard Atleo), Nuu-chah-nulth hereditary chief and philosopher, author of Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview Michael Pollan, on the distinction between sentience, intelligence, and consciousness John McPhee, on structural experimentation in nonfiction Stephen Tamatea King, the first known tree sitter, who climbed totara trees in New Zealand in the 1970s Joanna Macy, "there is no away to throw things to" Places and peoples Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, Haida Gwaii The Korowai of Papua, treehouse dwellers with almost no hierarchy Nuu-chah-nulth communities of Vancouver Island The Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, a Ficus religiosa replanted from the offspring of the original Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis fossil in Ethiopia Purgatorius, the ground-dwelling ancestor of mammalian life From SAND Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory, and Practice, the new nine-month course with Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Eduardo Duran, Linda Thai, Daniel Foor, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, and Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Scholarships available for 20 to 30 percent of seats. Sila, a nonlinear documentary following Inuit women through 300 years of Danish colonialism, available to watch now The Eternal Song film series Previous episodes with Monica Gagliano and Tyson Yunkaporta Contact SAND [email protected] Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

   August 13, 2026·58min
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   Number 5: Songs of Sila: Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq, Ikimaliq Pikilak & Nuka Alice

   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. Timestamps 00:00 — Introduction: The Eternal Song, the new film Sila, and the July 28–29 live gathering 00:05 — Ikimaliq: the mummies, the gap in memory, and the return of Inuit tattooing 00:07 — What the markings mean: confession, womanhood, gratitude, kinship 00:13 — Nuka Alice: unlearning the colonial narrative, finding the drum at 19 00:19 — Sila: weather, consciousness, the universe we have in common 00:22 — Aviaja: a family of shamans and the responsibility of the angakkoq 00:29 — Trailer: Sila, streaming now at theeternalsong.org/sila 00:31 — Soul sickness, mind sickness, and the body as self-healing land 00:42 — Drum battles: conflict resolution, truth-telling, and lifelong bonds 00:49 — "Start looking in the mirror": finding your own ancestral roots 00:55 — Eyes as pathway to the soul; growing up between Inuk and Danish worlds 01:02 — Loneliness, homesickness of the soul, and dandelion root medicine Resources & Links Watch Sila — streaming now The Eternal Song film series Sila Live Online Gathering, July 28–29, 2026: two days of conversations with guest speakers and Inuit wisdom keepers Ikimaliq Pikilak on Instagram Nuka Alice Lund at Arctic Sounds Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq on Instagram Contact SAND [email protected] Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

   July 16, 2026·1h 7min
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