A deep dive into the depths of activism, Shipibo Ayahuasca Curanderismo, and being a professional listener, with the spectacular Joshua Kahn Russell! In this episode, Joshua shares about his experience channeling a sense of knowing about the world into activism and politics, and how that brought him to plant medicine, and to his current work in the world: supporting activists to heal their trauma and gain resilience with the help of Sacred Nature. He begins with a story of understanding change as about shifting the balances and forces of power. This thread is inherent throughout the conversation on both the micro and macro level, as Joshua shares about how he got into and spent decades doing front line, indigenous sovereignty, social and climate justice movement work, until long undiagnosed Lyme disease and burnout brought him to a complete halt. He shares about how his life was saved by practices from an indigenous ayahuasca tradition, and what he understands now about that cosmology and technology. Then, we turn the dialogue to the topic of supporting other activists, and to listening and connecting with consciousness beyond the human realm. This is a conversation about identity, trauma, wisdom, and re-orienting what it means to be an agent of social change.

Bio: Joshua Kahn Russell has spent 25 years as a social movement facilitator and has trained thousands of activists across the globe in over 15 countries. He is the former Executive Director of The Wildfire Project, where he supported progressive grassroots frontline organizations across a range of sectors including Environmental and Climate Justice, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Racial and Economic Justice movements. He has helped campaigns win — defending land, water, and workers rights, defeating multi-billion dollar oil pipelines, winning wage increases and tenant protections — against banks, oil companies, logging corporations, and coal barons; worked with groups in a breadth of arenas, from local resiliency projects, to national coalitions, to the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations internationally. He has been an apprentice of Shipibo Ayahuascero Ricardo Amaringo in the Peruvian Amazon for over 12 years, and brings cohorts of leaders to the rainforest for trauma healing in Indigenous-held ayahuasca ceremonies and plant dietas. He also works with plant medicines as a guide, and is currently a somatic leadership coach. Joshua threads together his experience of decades of frontline activist work as a campaigner, strategist, organizer, and non-violent direct action coordinator, learning from grassroots movements around the world, with his practice of supporting healing and transformation with plant medicine.  He has written and co-edited numerous books, including A Line In The Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice, Beautiful Trouble, and Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the Climate Crisis.

From the episode - quote 1 came from Anthony Machado:
”There is no path. The path is made by walking.” quote 2 came from George Harrison: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”

Jessica Malka is a mother, guide, and steward of embodied remembrance. She is the co-founder of LEIAMOON, where she offers tools and spaces for women to reconnect with their bodies through vaginal steaming and womb-centered coherence. Through her work, she offers original pathways of healing and sovereignty, walking beside women as they return to the living source of their creative power.

Jessica has been a dear friend of mine for a long time. I am so delighted that we finally made it happen to record a conversation. We talk about the web of connection between us and other beings, including our ancestors; the stratospheric layers of our planet; grounding and inhabiting our own containers first, so we can tap into the web of life in a safe and manageable way; vaginal steaming, womb consciousness and creativity; healing the relationship between masculine and feminine consciousness; steaming as a practice for all people and all genitals; historic and cross-cultural uses of steaming for spiritual and holistic health; “symptoms” as signals or communications; and collective prayer spaces.

Please note, the terms “women” and “men” are used throughout this episode, with a lot of fluidity for who and how this may apply to each listener and their unique experience of identity and their body. We hope this episode feels accessible and inclusive to our friends beyond the gender binary as well. <3

Links: LEIAMOON.com

IG: leiamoonwomen

If you’re already familiar with IFS, or you want to skip the intro, fast forward to 18:20!

Mel Galbraith is a psychotherapist with over a decade of experience supporting individuals through a trauma-informed lens. She holds a Master of Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University, a Bachelor of Arts in Social Development Studies from the University of Waterloo, and an Advanced Diploma in Child and Youth Work from Fanshawe College.

Mel has worked in a variety of settings, including community agencies, specialized treatment facilities, and school boards. She is passionate about helping people reconnect with their inner resources and cultivate a sense of calm, clarity, and compassion within themselves.

Her approach is rooted in the belief that healing comes from within — and with the right support, everyone can access the tools they need to move toward their preferred identity and narrative. Mel creates a warm, non-judgmental space for clients to explore and transform the beliefs and experiences that shape their lives.

Show Notes: It was an honor to have Mel, my IFS (Internal Family Systems) teacher, on the podcast finally! Mel is currently leading IFSCA (the IFS Counseling Association) where she teaches, offers consultation and helps people on their IFS journey.

In this episode, we talk about a way to understand IFS and parts; cultural burdens, legacy burdens and intergenerational trauma, and how travel can shake up and shine light on the cultural burdens we may carry; connecting to our own lineage and ancestry; Mel stepping into purpose and service as she brings IFS out of North America and into other parts of the world; Derek Scott, the founder of IFSCA, now an ancestor, whom you can learn from through hundreds of videos on his youtube (or by studying at IFSCA!); consciousness as a form of inner attunement and awareness; seeing ourselves as a work in progress (especially us therapists) and that being OKAY; self energy and self leadership, and sitting with Self.

Links:

IFSCA.ca

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-get-to-know-and-love-all-the-parts-of-your-self

A poetically epic journey, from the porosity we’re born with, to walking a nonlinear path and growing toward honoring our callings while staying grounded and present. We discuss and invite an incorporation of science with spiritual and earth-based wisdom. We reflect on what we’ve been learning and receiving from our feminine friendship, reflecting on the concept of "sistering" as a verb.

Jasmine Virdi (she/her) is a writer, educator, poet, and activist based between Cyprus and Mexico. Her writing centers on psychedelics, spirituality, and deep ecology and has been featured in DoubleBlind Magazine, Open Democracy, Science and Non-Duality, and Psychedelics Today. Jasmine has an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology and offers private coaching and mentorship to clients. She is an advocate for decolonising healing practices, and integrates earth-based wisdom, trauma-informed approaches and somatics into her work.

Follow Jasmine’s Substack - Foraged Wisdom - a monthly newsletter that gathers and collects insights on world-building amidst systems collapse, weaving together animism, earth-based spirituality, grief work, decolonisation, magic, and the richness of the human spirit.

A rich stroll through a wide realm of topics relating to grief with the brilliant Camille Sapara Barton. Topics include the dynamic balance of connection to spirit and to the material aspects of life; parents and their grown children, learning to enjoy one another; cultivating an intentional grief practice (ideally in community) and Cami’s new book - Tending Grief.

Picking up a thread for the conversation with Ayize Jama-Everett earlier this year, we talk about evil, and how this might relate to grief. Cami shares some of the cosmology and cultural elements of the Dagara tribe that inspired them as they wrote the book. They also share about the grief of uncertainty, and the mass loss of the Covid pandemic, and grieving things that have not yet come to an end, such as ongoing systemic oppression.

We discuss joy and cultivating space for play, as part of grief tending. Cami imparts their experience with this work - that feeling one emotion opens them up to a greater depth of engagement with life and its full spectrum of feelings and experiences. We also hear sound guidance around finding spaces that can safely hold us in our grief.

Links: https://camillesaparabarton.com/

https://camillesaparabarton.com/tending-grief-book/

In this episode, Alex Carelli of ThetaSoma comes back on the podcast to talk about her recent experience through the portal of transformation through death, grief and ceremony. How can we support ourselves and one another when dealing with loss and profound change? What does it mean to become the anchor?

Bio: Alexandra is an artist, writer, speaker & teacher. She is a current doctoral student of Transpersonal Psychology at Sofia University with a research concentration in dream studies, shamanism and eco-psychology.

Along her journey, she has studied with masters of the metaphysical healing arts in yoga, Ayurveda, tarot, astrology, divination, and sacred ritual practice woven with an MA in Marriage and Family Therapy. Alexandra's work and words act as a transpersonal bridge between the cosmos, nature and the human world to spark inspiration, introspection, and collective healing.

@‌alexandra.carelli @‌thetasoma

alexandracarelli.substack.com

www.thetasoma.com

A long time friend joins The Psychedologist for a conversation about the gnosis of spirituality, or direct experience of and participation with the divine.

Alex, co-creator of ThetaSoma, comes on the show to discuss fitting big spiritual experiences into the matrix of contemporary culture. She elucidates the subcultural story that the world is not spiritual. We discuss evidence that many of us have lost gnosis and the ability to embody spirituality - Alex explains this as being because of religion, and even the written word. Alex goes on to express how psychedelics give us a gnosis of spirituality.

How can we move from fighting, to connecting; how can we work from a place of curiosity and desire to understand, rather than a need to be right and enforce our view on others? We uplift the value in developing our ability to question whatever we've been taught. Alex says, "we're living in a time where we desperately need new prophecies. We need to be conscious of whose words we are speaking." The conversation closes with a nod to the relationship between spiritual and ecological restoration, and plans to record a part 2.

Bio: Alexandra is an artist, writer, speaker & teacher. She is a current doctoral student of Transpersonal Psychology at Sofia University with a research concentration in dream studies, shamanism and eco-psychology.

Along her journey, she has studied with masters of the metaphysical healing arts in yoga, Ayurveda, tarot, astrology, divination, and sacred ritual practice woven with an MA in Marriage and Family Therapy. Alexandra's work and words act as a transpersonal bridge between the cosmos, nature and the human world to spark inspiration, introspection, and collective healing.

Links:

@‌thetasoma

www.thetasoma.com

A fascinating and dynamic episode with one of my favorite humans in the universe, Britta Love. We discuss.. giving ourselves the space to feel heartbreak and grief; living in sanist culture; surrogate partner therapy; how the Wheel of Consent can support psychedelic communities with some of the common struggles we’re seeing in the movement, and an upcoming retreat for psychedelic practitioners to learn and practice the Wheel of Consent.

Britta Love (they/she) weaves between the worlds of conscious sexuality and psychedelic ritual, with a through line of social justice and embodied consent. They became an advocate for sex worker’s rights as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics and Social Sciences in 2007 and have been a writer and activist pushing for the decriminalization of drugs and sex work ever since. Britta is a certified somatic sex educator through the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, has trained with Betty Martin’s School of Consent and is a certified circle keeper with the Planning Change Restorative Justice Certification Program under the tutelage of Kay Pranis. Britta is currently completing a research-based memoir about healing and awakening through altered states induced by sex and psychedelics, based on her Consciousness Studies thesis at Goddard College. They are also in the process of launching the Sex Strike // Strike for Pleasure in response to the US abortion bans. Their embodied experience as a queer, neurodivergent, sex working femme navigating complex trauma and chronic illness are integral to their work.

Links:

www.brittaloved.com and @‌brittaloved

The event has been postponed, tentatively til 2025!

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/helenadefelice/1249260

Sapha from Sacred Rebels Recovery returns to the show to talk about his learnings from another year working on the land and serving people who are on a pathway to recovery from addiction. We discuss nuances of plant medicine work, specifically various difficulties and complexities that emerge when western/colonized culture, systems and values meet the ways of Shipibo/Indigenous culture. Sapha shares his reflections on the dance of deconstructing ego without unconsciously reinforcing it, working with power, and other shadow sides and limitations of an apprenticeship model.

Bio: Sapha is a practicing curandero, apprentice of Maestro Ricardo Amaringo at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual, and founder of a permaculture project. With over 6 years of experience in ayahuasca-assisted therapy for substance use recovery and 2 years of dietas in the Shipibo Tradition including a year long dieta, Sapha offers guidance and support to individuals seeking to overcome problematic substance use. After overcoming a 16-year battle with problem substance use, Sapha shifted his focus to social work, psychedelic therapy, drug user advocacy, fitness and holistic recovery. He has been abstinent from alcohol, cocaine and opiates for 9 years.

Sapha provides various services including preparation for ayahuasca ceremonies, inpatient rehabilitative treatment programs, recovery mentorship, and personalized long term recovery support. He is currently leading the Sacred Rebels Recovery Program which has been operating for 2 years in the Peruvian Amazon. Sapha is working to expand the project by bringing it to North America in the next 12-24 months.

Links: www.sacredrebelsrecovery.com

A heartfelt and dynamic conversation with the brilliant Carolyn Sanita Taylor-Harris. In this episode, we discuss the journey of changing one's environment to re-ground and reconnect, while practicing nonattachment to thoughts, patterns, words, and stories that aren't ours - allowing for our own Metamorphosis. We offer gratitude for the cycles, embracing and embodying the beauty of the shifts, adjustments, pivots along the way. Carolyn shares about being OK with the mind (and, "thinking!"). We talk about meditation, the bypassing that sometimes happens in spiritual traditions, and the value of being proud of ourselves and celebrating our progress. Carolyn gives a shoutout to Grandmother wisdom, and to offering a space of softness, grace and compassion to Black and Brown women. The conversation winds down with a discussion of spiritually working with the energy of money, rebuilding trust that we are held and supported, and last (but not least) - the healing power of hugs.

Bio: Carolyn Sanita Taylor-Harris is a cultivator of safer containers and advocate for unapologetically speaking your truth and making space to sit within the discomfort to allow for expansion. She believes in the transformative power of story telling and has witnessed paradigm shifts occur with the telling of an inspirational, authentic story. She’s a proud southern, Black woman who offers her educational and personal experiences to those who need and desire within integrative health and wellness.

Links:

sanitasoulwellness.com

@‌sanitasoulwellness

@‌Blackadelics