The Dandelion Effect

Rodney Yee is an internationally recognized yoga teacher, co-founder of Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT), and the author of two books: Yoga: The Poetry of the Body and Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee. Rodney has also been featured in over 30 Yoga DVD titles and became an overnight sensation when he appeared on Oprah in 1999, selling 1 million videos the very next day. His connection with the Feathered Pipe Ranch runs deep, as he credits India Supera, Cree elder Pat Kennedy and other staff and teachers with his continued growth throughout the 15 years of summer retreats in Montana.

In this conversation, Rodney talks about his experience growing up as a Chinese-American in both Oklahoma and California, his journey through gymnastics, dance, and yoga, and the epiphany of visiting Japan, where his body recognized the relief of walking through streets and dancing on stages where the majority of people shared his similar facial features. We discuss the ways that our ancestors and family history live within our tissues and the reckoning process of finding out who we are, where we came from and where we belong—a therapeutic process that can unfold and bubble up with the practices of asana, pranayama and meditation.

Anyone who practices yoga in this country today can most certainly give a deep bow to Rodney, as he was paramount in helping to spread yoga across the West. He continues to teach worldwide today, expanding self-care techniques to healthcare workers, veterans, teachers and other industries.

YogaShanti.com

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Jessica Bugbee is a U.S. Army combat veteran, wellness director at Hudson Valley National Center for Veteran Reintegration, and co-founder of TRIBE, a non-profit that teaches yoga and meditation to the active duty military community. She’s also a peer specialist in the Vet2Vet program of Ulster County, New York, and leads Women’s Warrior Writing classes, mindful hiking groups, kayaking trips and other mind-body-spirit offerings to support and empower veterans and their families.

Jessica served as a combat medic and paratrooper during her seven years of active duty, and has been on a monumental healing journey since returning to the States, navigating life after the military and finding her way through Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the myriad ways that trauma presents in the mind and body.

In today’s conversation, we talk about her life of service, where it started and who inspired it; her experience in the Army, oftentimes as one of two or three women among 500 or more men; and what her reintegration process has looked like, the ways that her military experiences—while technically “over”—are not at all over, and which modalities and healing techniques have helped her overcome and move through anger, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and heartbreaking loneliness over the last seven years since her discharge.

Now, she practices and teaches five categories of wellness and rehabilitation: nature, community, movement, breath, and storytelling. It’s these resources that inspired her to start TRIBE in 2019, along with a team of veterans, military spouse & family members, DOD personnel, and yoga teachers dedicated to showing people that their superpowers and navigational tools are within them and accessible at any moment.

JessicaBugbee.org
Hudson Valley National Center for Veteran Reintegration
Tribe Yoga

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Claudia is a chef, a writer, an ambassador with Hola Montana and a lover of all things culture, food and community. She was born and raised in Barranquilla, Colombia, a tropical city on the country’s northern Caribbean Coast, where she grew up primarily with her aunt and uncle. But not long after she turned 18, she moved to Miami, pursued a degree in sociology and International Relations, met Steve, her now husband of 42 years, and worked her way through nonprofit organizations, human resource positions and chef roles, trying to find her niche in helping people and having an impact.

When they moved to Montana in 1998, she had one main concern: What the heck is a  Caribbean girl going to eat in the Rocky Mountains? Luckily,  she found plantains, coconuts and lentils–the colorful varieties from Timeless Seeds grown organically right here in Montana.

Discovering lentils in Montana (which was a staple food in Colombia) gave Claudia the confidence to begin recreating recipes from her childhood using local and homegrown ingredients. Through her love of fusion foods, she has built a business as a private chef, leading cooking classes, hosting pop-up dinners, catering large events, and always looking for new and exciting ways to collaborate with local farmers, creators and chefs of different backgrounds.

The tagline of her business, Claudia’s Mesa, is "One World, One Table." Her work and her energy center around celebrating life and strengthening relationships—relationship to the foods we eat, the stories we exchange, the cultures that shaped us and the ones we’re continually learning more about. And the relationship with each other, as we come to the table and break bread together.

**Fact Check: Colombia gained independence July 20, 1810. 

ClaudiasMesa.com
HolaMontana.com

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Tom Ryan was the caretaker of the Feathered Pipe Ranch for 33 years, originally coming to the Ranch in 1975 for a part-time job–and as the story goes, he fell in love and stuck around. Tom has been around the retreat center longer than almost anyone else at this point, and preserving his stories have been a priority to us. If you haven’t yet, check out the interview I did with him two years ago on our Feathered Pipe Roots page under the Community tab of our website. It’s titled “More than a Job.”

These days, Tom lives in a gorgeous house that he designed and built, just above the Ranch property on Old Hippie Lane and he keeps busy as a property manager, dog dad to his new two-year old lab puppy, Bodhi, and resident elder in the summers.

If you’ve been to the Ranch, you’ve probably seen him at meal times, making everyone at his table laugh with stories of his life of adventure and serendipity. At the ripe age of 82, Tom’s sense of humor is vibrant and a bit mischievous, which keeps us all entertained—and there’s a softness and simplicity to his wisdom that I have found incredibly supportive and helpful in my own journey.

Tom tells stories about going from Navy communications specialist to hairdresser to pipe fitter to caretaker of the Ranch. We talk about the Law of Attraction, what it’s meant to him to be given the gift of fatherhood and how he shows up to this role.

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Judith Hanson Lasater is an American yoga teacher and writer who is recognized as one of the leading yoga teachers in the country and throughout the world. Judith’s resume is nothing short of impressive: Not only has she been teaching yoga for more than 50 years, but she helped found The California Yoga Teachers Association, the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco, and the Yoga Journal magazine, which is now in its 46th year of print. She’s written 11 books, has taught all over the globe and raised three children. Talk about a super woman!

Judith taught was also one of the three teachers to hold the first retreat at the Feathered Pipe Ranch in 1975, a three-week yoga program, for 28 people, all inclusive for $250. And she’s returned nearly every year since, and now every summer, one week herself and one week with her daughter Lizzie Lasater, an internationally-known Restorative yoga teacher who learned from her mom.

In this conversation, we talk about the right-hand turn that changed her life, her personal understanding of the word ‘spiritual,’ how the body is a storehouse for wisdom, and her favorite memory from the Feathered Pipe Ranch over the years. Judith has been brave enough to allow her intuition to carry her through life, an act that takes vulnerability, which she defines as being fully porous and present to the moment.

She walks us through several micro exercises to explain topics of perspective, the neurological relationships between the tongue and the brain, and the practice of disidentifying with our thoughts.

There is so much quotable wisdom in this conversation:
“Perspective doesn’t affect your life—it is your life.”
"The present moment is the only truth we know.”
“We think life is strong and love is fragile, but really it’s the other way around. Life hangs by a thread and love holds the universe together.”

Judith Hanson Lasater Website

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This is the "Best Of Season One” episode, a taster to hear pieces of all 22 episodes and invite you to go back and visit the ones that you missed over the last year. 

The Dandelion Effect Podcast is a gentle reminder that inspiring and extraordinary people are out there doing good in the world. These conversations explore a range of topics including post traumatic growth and healing, music therapy, food systems and soil, refugee resettlement, mental health and suicide prevention, nonviolent communication, transgender healthcare, cultural preservation and so much more.

Please enjoy the different voices you hear and the stories that are told. Many of the people interviewed hold workshops and retreats during the summer at the Feathered Pipe Ranch and you can find links to their respective websites in their episode show notes for continued engagement with these teachers, healers, shamans, therapists and otherwise amazing humans.

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Today’s episode is brought to life from the archives, the last interview ever conducted with India Supera, the Feathered Pipe Ranch founder and visionary, who passed away in October 2019 at 73 years old. India was a force of nature and her life holds within in it some of the most exciting stories of adventure, courage, devotion and faith. 

India left home as a teenager for the adventure of foreign travel. After nearly dying in Pakistan, she began a spiritual quest in India and eventually found Satya Sai Baba, who is considered an avatar by millions of people. After living at Sai Baba’s ashram for two and a half years, she was brought back to the U.S. to care for her friend, Jerri Duncan. Within a year, Jerri died of cancer and left India 110 acres of land outside of Helena, MT—and a dying wish that she would help turn it into a healing center.

Owning land and living in America was far from India's plan. For a year, she gave away furniture, thought about selling the land, meditated on the purpose of this inheritance, and held sweat lodge ceremonies to pray and connect with spirits, asking for guidance for the way forward. She even returned to India to call on Sai Baba’s wisdom. “Teach what you know,” he said. “Make it a place for leaders.”

After making the difficult transition from penniless sadhu to administrator, India established the Feathered Pipe Ranch as a nationally known center for seminars in the field of yoga, holistic health and personal transformation.

For 44 years, India Supera floated around the property at the Feathered Pipe Ranch, welcoming new guests like old family, sharing meals on the lawn, and stories in front of the stone fireplace. Stories that included tales of her travels in the 1960s and the extraordinary circumstances that led to her vision for America’s first healing center of its kind.

The 2019 season, however, was different. She had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given two weeks to two months to live. Leaving her in full preparation mode for the ultimate adventure into the unknown—the transition of her body and transcendence of her soul.

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Wilmot Collins is the Mayor of Helena, Montana, and in 2017, he made headlines as the first black elected official in Montana’s state history. Born in Liberia, West Africa, he and his wife fled the country when a dangerous civil war erupted, killing 250,000 people—including two of his brothers—and displacing over a million more. 

After navigating immigration programs for nearly three years and a string of divinely-orchestrated events, Wilmot finally settled in the small town of Helena in 1994, where he raised his two children and has held positions with Intermountain Children’s Home, Alternative Youth Adventures, Montana Department of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs Montana and more. Wilmot has also served in the Army National Guard and Navy Reserves and is active on the boards of United Way, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance.

I sat down with Mayor Collins at the Feathered Pipe Ranch to talk about his early life, growing up in Firestone, Liberia, working on his parents' chicken farm, riding motorcycles with his brothers and the story of how he met his wife at a bus stop of the local college. We shared many, many tears as he walked me through the unbelievable circumstances that he has survived, a barrage of hurdles, one after the next, that nearly defeated him on his path to freedom and reconnection with his family.

I feel so lucky to have Wilmot Collins in a leadership position in Helena, the town that our Feathered Pipe Ranch community has called home for the last 46 years. Someone who sits down for an interview and says, “Ask me anything. I’m an open book.” Someone who isn’t afraid to show his heart, his emotions, his journey. That’s who I want mediating and making decisions. Because he brings his whole self and that inherently gives people permission to do the same.

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Nat Kendall is a San Francisco-based Bhakti yoga teacher and musician who hosts weekly classes in the Bay Area, annual retreats and has produced numerous albums with different collaborators, most recently an acoustic collection called “My Friend."

Raised in Bozeman, Montana, Nat learned guitar, keys and percussion instruments early on and attended the Musicians Institute of Los Angeles followed by the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. He then moved to San Francisco at the age of 30, working as an audio producer and creative director for Pandora Internet Radio before he discovered the path of yoga and began his teaching journey with Rusty Wells and Janet Stone.

This is a deeply personal conversation about truth, vulnerability, commitment to self love, and life as the ultimate practice of yogic philosophy. We talk about seeing our teachers as humans, not people who are perfected beings or enlightened masters.

He openly shares insight into how his yoga practice helps him remain humble in partnership, the incredible gift of parents who always told him to 'Keep Going' no matter what project or hobby he was pursuing, and the long and winding path of how he navigated a 'Dark Night of the Soul' period in his twenties. We get plenty of laughs, though, as he recounts his time playing in punk and hip hop bands, a path that ultimately led him to using music as an expression of devotion rather than ego.

You can hear the buzz of the fans in the heat of the evening, the clink of people setting down mugs of tea between sips. This audio brings you right into the main lodge of the Feathered Pipe Ranch—a place that perhaps you’ve been before or want to venture to in the future.

Nat Kendall Website

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Howard Binkow is an old friend of India Supera and a former Feathered Pipe Foundation Board Member. At 88 years old, his life is dedicated to the subject of listening, and he has been a listener in training for 28 years.

Howard has had several careers in his lifetime: a home builder, radio host, sales person, author, publisher and currently CEO of the We Do Listen Foundation, a 501c3 that empowers children to become better listeners through a series of books, animations and songs based on the adventures of the Howard B. Wigglebottom and Wonder Kitty characters. With the help of Reverend Ana Volinski, Howard has co-created 17 children's books, which have been translated into Chinese, Korean and French and have sold over 2.5 million print copies. 

In today’s conversation, we focus on the two pillars of listening that he learned from author Steven Covey: “Seek first to understand before being understood” and “be present.” He walks us through his journey of chasing money to chasing meaning, a midlife crisis that led him into the woods of Michigan for a two-year isolated retreat, and eventually to the work that he does today: visiting schools, reading his books to 4-7 year olds and introducing them to the concepts of listening that he believes will help them grow into receptive, caring and balanced adults.

Howard speaks from his own experience of awakening as a 60-year-old man, recognizing that his entire life, he equated listening with obedience and doing as he was told in order to escape punishment, whether at home, school or work. Now, as an apprentice to the art of listening, he says the practice has improved his relationships, finances, free time and fulfillment.

We Do Listen Foundation

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