Today’s fantastic guest is Dr.Cyndi Brannen, one of the world's preeminent scholars on Hekatean Witchcraft. After a successful career in academia and healthcare, Dr.Brannen transitioned to focusing on reclaiming the sacred feminine after she became convinced that mainstream psychology was not sufficient to lead to personal wholeness.  Her work focuses on personal healing through depth psychology, herbalism, rituals, meditations, and exploration of the deeper self. She founded The Covina Institute, a soul school dedicated to the pursuit of wholeness through structured programs of study and transcendent experiences. Dr.Brannen is the author of the bestselling books, Keeping Her Keys and Entering Hekate’s Garden. Mentioned in this episode: • Dr.Sarah Isles Johnstone's Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature • Thomas Moore • James Hillman • Erich Neumann Check out Hide Tanning 101 with Fern + Roe!

TNP150 Hekatean Witchcraft with Dr.Cyndi Brannen

The Numinous Podcast is a show about intuition, spirituality and the mystery of life. The host, Carmen Spagnola, is an intersectional witch and clinical hypnotherapist who has smart, soulful conversations with interesting people. The lineup is diverse, the topics are eclectic, and the people are down-to-earth (mostly).

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We're not afraid of grappling with the tough stuff here on The Numinous Podcast! In this episode we're engaging with high stakes violations of values and betrayals that lead to Moral Injury.
Moral Injury can occur when you do or fail to do something, when you witness something, or when you hear about something after the fact, that violates your deeply held beliefs and values in a high stakes context.
Certainly healthcare practitioners and mental health professionals will be interested in this discussion, but also anyone who has grappled with moral emotions like outrage, shame, guilt, and remorse. 
Moral injury is a social wound that helps the collective stay co-operative. Grappling with Moral Injury is a civic responsibility – a moral obligation as our guest says – and a sign of a healthy pro-social individual.
Our guest on this episode is Dr.Robyn Walser, a licensed psychologist and co-author of 7 books on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (commonly known as ACT). She has most recently written a book entitled,The Heart of ACT: Developing a Flexible, Process-Based, and Client-Centered Practice Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  She’s an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the Director of TL Psychological and Consultation Services, and works at the National Center for PTSD. Dr. Walser has been offering ACT workshops since 1998.
 
Referenced in this episode
Case Conceptualizing in Acceptance and Commitment therapy for Moral Injury: An Active and On-Going Approach to Understanding and Intervening on Moral Injury, by Jacob Farnsworth, Lauren Borges, Sean Barnes and Kent Drescher and Robyn Walser
The Moral Injury Workbook: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Skills for Moving Beyond Shame, Anger and Trauma to Reclaim Your Values by Robyn Walser, Wyatt Evans, Kent Drescher, Jacob Farnsworth
The Heart of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A Talk by Robyn Walser (YouTube)
 
The Moral Injury Course
• Become a member of The Numinous Network and begin a supportive somatic practice ahead of the live sessions. Group somatic practice sessions happen Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
• If appropriate, begin The Safe & Sound Protocol (included in membership) to support nervous system resilience.
• Attend the live sessions, starting in June. Live Sessions form a sequential series of psychoeducation and progressively layered activities:
Friday, June 28, 10-11am PT
Saturday, June 29, 9-9:45am PT
Sunday, June 30, 10-10:45am PT
Monday, July 1, 10-10:30am PT (optional for additional or catch-up work)
Fridays, July 5, 12, 19, 26, 10-11am PT
Live sessions will be recorded and archived for later viewing at your convenience.
• Optional: Stay on with us for aftercare! In August, we're streamlining the calendar and focusing on somatic practice and weightlifting. (Discharging anger by lifting heavy shit!) In September, the full calendar of events is back up and running, with additional SSP co-listening sessions to support nervous system regulation ahead of the American election season.
The Moral Injury course is included in Numinous Network membership which is offered at a sliding scale from $45 - $75 US per month, providing access to over 30 live events and over 50 hours of video on-demand.
 
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TNP233 Understanding Moral Injury with Dr.Robyn Walser

This episode is going to be a very special one for all the listeners who live with chronic illness and all the listeners with Indigenous heritage. These stories and experiences are interwoven in my conversation today with Anishinaabe medicine woman, Asha Frost. 
Asha Frost (she/her) is a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She’s a longtime healer working with homeopathy, plant medicine, and ceremony. She’s also the author of the bestselling book, You Are the Medicine: 13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Ancestral Connection, and Animal Spirit Guidance, as well as the Sacred Medicine Oracle Deck.
This is real talk about living with chronic illness, and about white supremacy and colonialism in the wellness industry and the medical field. 
In this episode, we explore the perennial paradox of any health diagnosis: the tension/balance between accepting the reality of chronic illness while also reaching towards healing. 
Throughout, Asha shares some of the medicines that can be helpful on this journey.
Connect with Asha
Follow her on all the socials: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok
Pre-order her new oracle deck, The Animal Elders Oracle
Visit her website to sign up for her newsletter
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TNP232 Be the Fire, Be the Medicine with Asha Frost

Mental health professional and somatic coach, Aurelie Richards, is back on the show and we’re talking about secure attachment in movement work – community organizing, workplace unionizing.
How can we do this in a way that's sensitive to the realities of interpersonal neurobiology? In a way that recognizes the value of presencing secure attachment in an environment that naturally brings up unresolved trauma, lack of safeness, perhaps even hostility?
The topic of our show today is very aligned with the energy of the Beltane season, particularly the weaving of the labour movement and other liberatory movements with the energies of spring, collective mobilization, and ecstatic, creative union. 
We get into the nitty gritty of working with a disorganized attachment field within movement work.
We dive into astromagic as part of our organizing strategy.
We discuss the intricacies of power mapping in groups and organizations.
It's a juicy case study of Aurelie's labour organizing experience in a German context with lots for us to learn!
Connect with Aurelie
For resilience coaching, somatics, and burnout prevention visit Aurelie's website. 
Aurelie's resilience workshops, team building, and wellness in the workplace offerings 
Her anarcho queer feminist health collective is actively seeking new members in Berlin!
Folks can direct questions or reach out for support to post@aurelierichards.com.
No socials, but sign up for Aurelie's newsletter 
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TNP231 Attachment in Community Organizing with Aurelie Richards

Content note: Specific, sometimes graphic, discussion of death.
Shawn Leonard is a Mi'kmaq psychic medium. Gifted and accurate, his television show on APTN called 'Spirit Talker' depicts him travelling to Indigenous communities across the country, learning about their culture and spiritual teachings, and connecting them with their Beloved Dead.
Along the way, he brings hope, healing, and closure, and deepens his connection to his own Mi'kmaq heritage and the medicine of his Indigenous name, White Eagle Spirit Talker.
 
Connect with Shawn
Follow on all the socials: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
Get Shawn's book Spirit Talker: Indigenous Stories and Teachings from a Mi'kmaq Psychic Medium (I enjoyed his reading of the audiobook version!)
Join his online course starting in September 2024, Spirit Talker Tribe
Find his oracle deck
Watch Spirit Talker on APTN's streaming service, Lumi
(Also check out Indians and Aliens while you're there!)
Visit Shawn's website to sign up for his newsletter
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Check out Sero for psilocybin support at HeySero.co

TNP230 Spirit Talker Shawn Leonard on Working with Your Guides

If you're a 35 - 55 year old woman, you grew up in the very particular cultural landscape of the pre-#MeToo era. You grew up with boy-centered stories like The Outsiders, Stand By Me, Goonies and The Lost Boys, the  everyday male violence and misogyny of entertainers like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison, and hypersexualized movies and music like Porky's and "Me So Horny" – LOTS TO UNPACK THERE. Time to revisit and tell our own stories.
Emelia Symington Fedy's memoir, Skid Dogs, is a brave, bittersweet coming-of-age story about a group of high school girls in the '90s navigating friendship, sex, and parents from the retrospective view of a now 30-something woman supporting her mother's cancer journey.
Content Warning: We're talking about rape culture, sexual assault, and gender-based violence in this episode, the impacts still felt decades on, and the process of sexual healing as middle aged women.
We also get a little explicit with the language so…headphones highly recommended!
This is a raw and riveting coming-of-age story about the wild love of teenage friendships and the casual oppression of 90s rape culture, and to be honest it was so searingly accurate I had to wait a minute and gather myself before I invited @emeliasf to come on the show to discuss it.
Publisher's Weekly describes it this way:
“With plenty of Juicy Fruit, padded bras, and pot smoke, the narrative begins as a nostalgia-tinted reverie before evolving into a devastating portrait of the pre-#MeToo era from someone on the other side of it. The author’s candor and courage will move readers regardless of when or where they came of age.” 
Buy Skid Dogs at your favourite local bookseller or the alternative.
Sign up for Emelia's newsletter on her website.
 
Reach out to a Crisis Line to debrief:
Canadian mental health resources
American mental health resources
International Suicide Hotlines
 
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TNP150 Hekatean Witchcraft with Dr.Cyndi Brannen

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