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I'll be honest with you: the "great unraveling" is as real as the "great turning." They're happening at the same time, and have been for decades. The unraveling was already accelerating, and now (late 2024) to see a democratic election process choose a path of more, worse, faster harm to our planet and our fellow human and more-than-human beings? It's been... deeply discouraging. For many I know, it's been devastating.
And at the same time - always at the same time - I feel so blessed to have had a conversation with Cynthia Jurs about this. We spoke about that devastation, and our bewilderment, and how we keep going. We also talk miracles, activism, practice, awakening, and so much more. Cynthia's life has been devoted to embodied, engaged, sacred activism for the healing and protection of Mother Earth for decades. She is a spiritual teacher who doesn't introduce herself as one, and I love learning from her.
Interviewing Cynthia with me in this conversation are Erin Geesaman Rabke and Carl Rabke, of Embodiment Matters. We talk about
Cynthia's stunning new book, Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our WorldU.S. politics and the question: "Is this the flaming end of the patriarchy?"the interconnectedness of all lifecultural polarizationthe 4 sections of Cynthia's book: "answering the call," "hearing the cries of the world," "becoming a holy vessel," and "collective awakening"reactivity and activismpeacebuilding, and choosing not to fan the flames of blame, separation, and violencecomments from astrologers on this historical momentand Cynthia's profound experience in Greece at the Oracle of DelphiAs much as I enjoyed hearing everything Cynthia had to say on these topics, I valued hearing the way she spoke about it all. I hope you do too. May this conversation serve your healing and the healing of our world.
Note: There are a number of times when Cynthia, Carl, Erin or I reference teachers and teachings, ideas and terms, that might not be familiar to you. (Many of them I've heard of for the first time in the last few years!) So, I've compiled some links with more info in the show notes. If you hear a name or a term and you're wondering who or what that is - or if you simply want to take an internet wander down some of our favorite paths related to indigenous wisdom, ecological belonging, spiritual growth, global healing, etc. - come to the show notes at turningseason.com/episode44 and find my bulleted list of teachers and terms that we mention in this conversation.
You're invited to… Take Heart: Embodying the Great Turning | A 10-week course facilitated by Leilani Navar and Erin Geesaman Rabke, with special guests Cynthia Jurs, Francis Weller, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and Lydia Violet Harutoonian
This series is for you if you're looking for helpful teachings and tools, a place for beauty and for grief, and a kind community. We'll be looking to Joanna Macy's teachings about the "Five Vows of the Great Turning" to help us orient, navigate, and stay heartened in these times, giving our lives to the Great Turning while also living in the Great Unraveling. We're so excited about it and we'd love for you to check it out if you're curious.
More about Cynthia Jurs:
Cynthia Jurs has immersed herself deeply in the study and practice of Buddhism for over three decades, annually spending time in solitary retreat and receiving teachings from many great masters. In 1994 she was given dharma transmission from her root teacher, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and became a Dharmacharya in the Order of Interbeing. In 2018 in recognition for her many years of study and practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and her devotion in carrying out the Earth Treasure Vases, she was recognized as an Honorary Lama at the root temple of Kushok Mangden Rinpoche, Tolu Tharling Gompa, in Nepal. Cynthia says that she holds these titles and dharma affiliations lightly. She shares that her true source of refuge and spiritual inspiration is Mother Earth; Gaia. Inspired by her thirty years of pilgrimage into diverse communities and ecosystems, today Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma, connected to the Earth, in service to Gaia, deeply rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous traditions, and teaching an embodied, engaged, sacred activism through meditation and prayer, ceremony and ritual, pilgrimage and council.
About Turning Season Podcast:
Serving up heartening doses of Active Hope in this Great Turning toward life-honoring, life-sustaining ways of being human. This is a series of deep conversations with people who are rising to their own unique roles in this worldwide shift. This show is for every one of you who's aware of our multiple crises, feels your love for life on earth, and is finding your way to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future.
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A conversation between Leilani and Erin Geesaman Rabke about sustaining our tender hearts and our dedication to showing up for the web of life on Earth, through all the heartbreak, overwhelm, and discouragement that can happen when we care deeply about our world.
We talk about taking beauty as ballast, turning to our grief as a guide, and attending to our bodies as sacred landscapes.
We share the "five vows of the great turning," or the "five commitments of active hope," and how they help us orient, steer, stay steady, and keep wholeheartedly, imperfectly carrying on.
Read more about our upcoming workshops on 3 Sundays in November: Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, and Body as Sacred Land.
You can join us for 1, 2, or all 3!
Find all the other links mentioned in this episode on the show notes page: turningseason.com/episode43
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"How is it that those individuals who are in the front line, in the first response, can bring that awareness, that connection to their own selves through their own nervous system, owning again a quality of spaciousness in their body?"
My wonderful guest for this episode, Paula Ramírez, supports mental health in contexts of war and displacement. In this work, she has learned a lot about that process of reconnection and nervous system regulation, and about the spaciousness that can become accessible even in difficult situations.
It's clear that Paula has cultivated her own spaciousness and presence, practicing what she has been teaching in humanitarian contexts around the world.
Our conversation moved me deeply. Click Play to hear about:
Paula's commitment to supporting the mental health of first responders in humanitarian aid contexts, and especially her dedication to introducing connection with the body as part of that mental health supportA powerful story about working with men digging graves in south Sudan, and what becomes possible when we slow down and become more presentHow all of us - whether in a conflict zone or in a place of currently more peace and privilege - can navigate the two extremes of being overwhelmed by intense emotion, or being disconnected from emotion. (Paula gives some beautiful guidance and tools during the conversation. I really enjoyed feeling the shift in myself as she spoke, and I think you will too.)Paula's own story, from growing up in Colombia in the 1980s when there was an intensification of armed conflict and drug trafficking, through health challenges and healing, and questions she had about violence and war, which led her to study anthropology, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, and Somatic ExperiencingI'm so happy to bring Paula's voice to you. There's a lot she's very clear about, in a powerfully helpful way - and she also invites me into the truth of how much we don't know. We don't know yet how to handle the situations humanity faces right now - and I invite you into that with us, into this conversation with a beautiful fellow human being in these times.
Paula Ramírez Diazgranados is Co-Director of Emerge International, formerly called Breathe International, an organization which combines peacebuilding and mental health driven by the restoration of human resilience. Working with humanitarian teams deployed around the globe, with a focus in mindfulness and somatic (body-based) perspectives, Paula bridges traditional understandings of the human and more-than-human world with contemporary crisis work and trauma integration. This has brought her into work with organizations including the UN and the Tibetan Government in exile, supporting populations in contexts of war and displacement. Paula´s guiding vision is the embodied and universal dignity of all beings.
Turning Season Podcast brings you heartening doses of Active Hope in this Great Turning toward life-honoring, life-sustaining ways of being human. This is a series of deep conversations with people who are rising to their own unique roles in this worldwide shift. It's for every one of you who's aware of our multiple crises, feels your love for life on earth, and is finding your way to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future.
Show notes with links to connect with Paula: turningseason.com/episode42
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My guest Ingrid Edstrom founded the "Accounting Alchemy Network," and in this episode, we talk accounting, and we talk alchemy.
"Alchemy" as in transformation. Practical transformation, which of course is necessary in this great turning toward a life-sustaining society, along with transformation in the ways we think, and the ways we ask questions. These are necessary too.
Listen in to hear us talk about
how the accounting profession can change the world, Ingrid's journey with giving "rights of nature" to the land she calls home,how we change the way we think,finding your zone of genius in your work and playand more! It was great fun and so inspiring to talk with Ingrid. She has such a sharp and creative mind, and a powerful drive in her big heart.
More about Ingrid:
Ingrid Edstrom is a Certified Business Coach through the Woodard Institute, a Certified PQ Mental Fitness Coach through Positive Intelligence, and a certified Working Genius consultant. She is also working with her local chapter of the Pachamama Alliance and Oregon Water League to develop rights of nature for the Rogue River and surrounding local watershed, and working to use some of the education from that experience to develop rights of nature for the 2 acres she stewards where she grows most of her own food, including goats and chix.
When Ingrid is not actively working to heal the world, she is usually playing Irish music, doing a Joe Dispenza meditation, or having a deep conversation about quantum physics & chaos magick. Ingrid Edstrom is a total nerd with a hungry mind and a passion for helping others be their best selves in service to our beautiful world. Her superpowers are manifestation and positive change, even (especially) when change is scary. She loves asking the big questions that confront people with their own personal freedom, and really enjoys developing collaborative relationships with people who are brilliant, grounded in spirituality, and also working to save the world. She is a founder of the Accounting Alchemy Network, volunteers as a course moderator for the Pachamama Alliance, and participates in several other org communities, such as YesWorld Jams, School for the Great Turning, New and Ancient Story, Humane Leadership Institute, and others.
Show notes with links to connect with Ingrid: turningseason.com/episode41
Fundraiser to support Oasis Organization's poultry farm at Nakivale Refugee Settlement - Every dollar will help this refugee-led project feed hungry children. They've survived displacement and we can help thrive in their new lives.
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What a joy to introduce you to We Are the Great Turning, a new podcast series featuring kitchen-table conversations between Joanna Macy, in her 95th year of life, and her friend and student, activist Jess Serrante.
Click Play to hear a brief visit between me and Jess about what's on her mind now that this extraordinary project has come out into the world, and then you'll hear the beautiful first episode of We Are the Great Turning, called Love and Loss.
About We Are the Great Turning:
We welcome you to the kitchen table of the legendary eco-spiritual teacher Joanna Macy, where we’ll dive into what it takes to live with our hearts and integrity intact in this time of global crisis. You’ll be guided into these conversations by Jess Serrante, a longtime activist and student of Joanna’s. Together, we’ll discover abiding wisdom that can help us stay joyful and energized as we work toward a more just and life-sustaining world.
Episode 1 - Love and Loss:
As Joanna Macy approaches the end of a long life dedicated to healing our imperiled planet, she begins the conversation with Jessica Serrante, her student and dear friend, “standing afresh with what it’s like to live on Earth at this moment.” As we look into the face of the climate crisis, injustice, and war, difficult feelings arise; all are welcomed.
You are invited to join them at Joanna’s kitchen table, and invited into a deeper sense of your belonging and love for our world.
In this episode:
How to connect with the great possibilities that still exist for us even in these precarious timesJoanna reflects on her awakening of environmental consciousnessJess reflects on how meeting Joanna changed her lifeLove, laughter, heartbreak, and the Work That ReconnectsBonus Exercise: “Open Sentences”—a practice for partners
We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com
Turning Season Podcast brings you heartening doses of Active Hope in this Great Turning toward life-honoring, life-sustaining ways of being human. Each episode, get to know the how, the why, and the heart of someone who is participating in the Great Turning in their own unique way. This show is for you if you're aware of our multiple crises, feel your love for life on earth, and care about cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life-honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future. Hosted by Leilani Navar, facilitator of the Work that Reconnects, acupuncturist, herbalist and dreamworker.
turningseason.com
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How to become an Earth Caretaker? If you can, "get off your butt and get out in the woods," as Tim Corcoran has been known to say, and his young students love to quote. Hear about many other good starting places and ways to walk the path in this conversation.
It's a fun and rich one, including Tim's own fascinating life story of connecting with nature and with Earth Caretaking people, closeness with animals, and 30 years of running Headwaters Outdoor School, where Tim teaches nature connection, wilderness skills, and earth philosophy.
You'll hear about:
The Earth Caretaker Way, a life-changing, wise, comprehensive new book written by Tim Corcoran and Julie BoettlerTim's story of finding the land that would become Headwaters Outdoor School (it's truly multidimensional)the diverse groups of young people who've come to HeadwatersTim's take on ancestors of place, and our biological ancestors who were Earth Caretakerswhy he believes humans are supposed to be here, and why he has hope right now.Turning Season Podcast brings you heartening doses of Active Hope in this Great Turning toward life-honoring, life-sustaining ways of being human. Each episode invites you into conversation with someone who is participating in the Great Turning in their own unique way. You'll hear about what they do, why they do it, and how they're relating to these times we're in. This show is for you if you're aware of our multiple crises, feel your love for life on earth, and care about cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life-honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future. Hosted by Leilani Navar, facilitator of the Work that Reconnects, acupuncturist, herbalist and dreamworker.
Today's conversation is with Tim Corcoran, who runs Headwaters Outdoor School in Mt. Shasta, California. Tim has been helping transform lives for 30 years, by bringing children and adults to the camp there, teaching nature awareness, wilderness skills, and earth philosophy. He's written a new book called The Earth Caretaker Way, co-written with Julie Boettler.
Tim traces his own connection to Earth peoples philosophy to his Irish heritage, as taught to him by his uncle and grandfather. He knew at 6 years old that the woods were his home, and at seventeen he spent four months alone in the Canadian Wilderness practicing Earth living skills. Tim began a career teaching wildlife conservation in 1974. During this time, he learned how to communicate with the spirits of the animals he worked with, enhancing his abilities to connect on an intimate level with them.
He has worked at the Alberta Game Farm in Alberta, Canada as an animal caretaker, the Crandon Park Zoo in Miami Florida as an animal relocation director, and Marine World Africa U.S.A. as a chimpanzee and elephant trainer. (You may have glimpsed Tim and his elephant in Star Wars, where he was a Tuskan raider on the back of his elephant, costumed as a bantha.) Tim co-founded the Native Animal Rescue in Santa Cruz, California, rescuing and releasing injured wildlife. He created Headwaters Outdoor School in Mount Shasta, California in 1992, to realize his lifelong vision of sharing what he has learned from nature, and to inspire people to discover their own personal relationship with nature. Tim teaches outdoor living skills, and Earth Philosophy to kids and adults.
Tim is also an accomplished professional nature photographer and has published a series of nature photography books highlighting sacred places in nature. Tim has recently founded The Earth Caretaker Way Movement LLC, with the intention of uniting a global community of Earth Caretakers to save wild spaces, and create wildlife refuge within every environment, including urban settings. Tim lives with his wife, Jean, and their pack of dogs on an amazing refuge of wooded land in Mount Shasta, California where he runs Headwaters Outdoor School and The Earth Caretaker Way Movement.
Get the book: The Earth Caretaker Way
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode39
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"I bow to Osprey in deepest respect and gratitude for her years of inspired activism and this brilliant book." - Joanna Macy
Once again, I agree wholeheartedly with Joanna Macy, this time about Osprey Orielle Lake and her new book, The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. The book is packed with so much to learn from - stories, insights, strategies - and so is the conversation Osprey and I had.
Click Play to hear us dive into:
Osprey's experience working with indigenous communities, global leaders, systems thinkers, and climate justice activiststhe importance of nonviolent direct action, and the ways it is becoming increasingly dangerous - specifically for land defenders in Latin Americathe "time riddle" we're in: how do we change things as fast as possible, AND slow down enough to make the changes deep and lasting?the worldviews that need to be dismantled, and the worldviews that we need to revive and strengthen, if we're to have a life-enhancing societythe Kawsak Sacha, or Living Forest Declaration, a vision, a worldview, a strategy, a demand, by the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, in the Ecuadorian Amazonthe loss of identity and belonging we experience when we don't have a healthy connection to long-ago ancestors, who were in right relationship with the land and within the web of lifeplus more - and even then, just beginning to explore what Osprey shares in her book.
Listen in, let me know what you think, and get a copy of The Story is in Our Bones for yourself and for someone else you know whose heart is with us in the Great Turning.
Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), where she works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition to a decentralized, democratized clean-energy future. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Free Non-ProliferationTreaty. Osprey’s writing about climate justice, relationships with nature, women in leadership, and other topics has been featured in The Guardian, Earth Island Journal, The Ecologist, Ms. Magazine and many other publications. Osprey holds an MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University in Oakland and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area on Coast Miwok lands.
Learn more:
Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN International) the Women Speak section of the WECAN website Kawsak Sacha: The Living Forest Declaration Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Global Alliance for the Rights of NatureShow notes: turningseason.com/episode38.
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Alpha Lo caught my attention when I heard him say, "All we have to do is…" and then lay out a sweeping plan for how California can effectively restore rain, prevent both wildfires and floods, and regenerate the water cycle. He explained how we could reverse the negative effects on the water cycle caused by how we've built our cities, treated our forests, and run our agriculture.
This plan clearly would take many years, and plenty of political will and resources, but he said, "All we have to do…"
I loved that, because he helped me see that it's all possible. As he described it, I could see it happening.
With a background in physics, and experience working in different permaculture farms and eco-restoration projects, Alpha is now in the water restoration field. He's been researching the connection of climate, water and ecology, and publishes the Climate Water Project newsletter and podcast. He co-founded a network of water land managers, watershed restorers, and people interested in understanding the connection of water, climate and ecology. He is the co-author and editor of the "Open Collaboration Encyclopedia," and has utilized those collaborative skillsets in emerging a water network.
Alpha has opened my eyes to how crucial the way we handle water is to addressing our ecological and climate emergencies. It's at least as important as carbon - but, as he explains in this conversation, water is getting less attention because the science on water hasn't been made as clear to the public as the science on carbon. So, I hope that after you listen you'll join us in spreading the word, and bringing water into your conversations about climate.
In this conversation, you'll hear about:
how pavement, channelization of rivers, and cutting down trees lead to less rain, and more vulnerability to drought and firehow improving soil and vegetation help prevent floods, with examples from California and Australiahow animals are key players in the "water web" - from wildebeest to dung beetles to wolvesthe role regenerative water practices play (or might play) in local and global coolingpractical changes we can make in small homes and gardens, and on large areas of land - like permeable pavement, curb cuts, swales, terraces, greywater systems, and (of course!) bringing back beaverswhy there are hundreds of climate scientists working on the "small water cycle," but there's very little public awareness and policy discussion around itthe idea of international collaboration in "precipitation recycling watershed networks," because rivers and rain cross all political bordersand one of my topics of greatest fascination: the insights we can get from seeing the Earth as a body, and our bodies as landscapesThis episode is rich with information and I'm excited to hear what sparks your curiosity, your hands-on actions, your conversations.
Visit the shownotes at turningseason.com/episode37 for links to:
Alpha Lo's newsletter, podcast, and networkthe work of the scientists he mentionsand to contact me or subscribe to email updates on new Turning Season episodes.Thanks for being here, and for all the ways you play your part in the Great Turning.
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode37
Music by East Forest
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Our bodies are just like the rest of the living world: coursing with healing, life-affirming intelligence and capacity; and suffering the effects of being out of balance. The body is one setting for what Joanna Macy called "the three stories of our time": Business as Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning. We've explored these stories many times on this podcast. In this episode, I talk with Lydia Violet Harutoonian about how I see all three stories playing out in the landscape of the human body, and in the field of medicine.
Lydia is the founder and director of School for the Great Turning, a music maker, and a longtime, dedicated student and friend of Joanna Macy. She's a friend, comrade, and inspiration to me. You'll get to hear some of her potent way of articulating things during this conversation - but in this episode, I'm the guest, and she's the interviewer. We talk about The Great Turning in relation to illness and healing, through my explorations as a Chinese Medicine practitioner and a lover of Deep Ecology.
Click Play now to hear us get into:
how Deep Ecology and Traditional Chinese Medicine are natural companions that help us understand human beings, and the system of Life on Earthemotions as key to both personal health and collective well-beingthe energy it takes to repress emotions about what's going on the world, the toll that takes on our health, and the energy that's liberated when we acknowledge the truth about our experiencehow Qi flows through the landscape of the body like water in riverswhat happens when we relate to our bodies with a Business as Usual mindset, how illness is like a Great Unraveling, and how the body is always moving toward a Great Turningthe life-honoring changes happening in medicine todaythinking about medical treatment holistically, and seeking gentler, more life-honoring choicesplus a few approaches to well-being that are part of the Great Turning, like acupuncture, self-massage with acupressure, therapeutic movement, and caring for our microbiomes… and have a good time talking about it all!
I love hanging out with Lydia, I love talking about this stuff, and I hope you'll have fun listening to this one. I'd love to hear what you think, too! Please share your reflections with me by commenting on social media, or replying to my emails (you can subscribe to my twice-a-month-or-so emails at turningseason.com).
This conversation was part of The Great Turning Summit, held online on June 17, 2023. It was such a heartening day, full of learning and music from a diverse range of activists, visionaries, artists, and elders. You can purchase access to the recordings of this event through the link in the show notes, at turningseason.com/episode36.
You'll also find links to:
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel's book Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injusticethe online program I host called Healing Season, which is all about you understanding and taking care of yourself, especially the connections between your physical and emotional health, and being able to express your love and care for our world, guided by the wisdom of Chinese Medicine and deep ecologyand a video showing the self-acupressure point Large Intestine 4, which I demonstrated during this conversation (originally broadcast with video at the Great Turning Summit)About the guest:
It's me this time! Your usual host, Leilani Wong Navar. I have a clinical practice where I offer acupuncture and herbal medicine, functional medicine, and dreamwork. With groups, I facilitate the Work that Reconnects and teach practical wisdom from Chinese Medicine. Lydia and I work together at School for the Great Turning, where I serve as Assistant Director. I attended Evergreen State College, where I earned a BA with a focus on Political Economy and Holistic Health. My formal Chinese Medicine training was through the National University of Natural Medicine, where I graduated with a Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine. I was born into Chinese and Jewish families, and see myself as carrying on my Chinese ancestors' holistic, poetic medical science, and my Jewish ancestors' dedication to asking big questions. I'm a mom of two, and as my kids grow up, I'm excited to be getting to support their emergence into their own ideas and passions, and start to see the ways the Great Turning moves through them too.
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode36
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Ready for a dose of Active Hope? Listen to Gloire Mudekuza, a young refugee, a social entrepreneur, a climate activist and a mentor in Uganda, making an impact in the refugee community. He is passionate about regenerative agriculture, climate action, and entrepreneurship. He is the founder and director of Plethora Social Initiative, a refugee-led organization that works to develop the inner potential and capacities of refugees in Nakivale Refugee settlement and their host community, developing a regenerative culture and building a resilient local community.
This conversation with Gloire was part of the Great Turning Summit, a daylong online event that we at School for the Great Turning hosted a couple weeks ago, on June 17. We got to hear from a diverse range of activists, visionaries, artists, and elders speaking about how they're participating in the movement for life on this planet. We talked about how we're collectively making a pivot toward a livable future, in collaboration with millions of people and the more-than-human world, all vying for life.
As part of the Summit, I had the opportunity to speak about The Great Turning in the intimate landscapes - the ecosystems - of our own bodies, and what Chinese Medicine and Deep Ecology teach us about illness and healing. I also hosted a panel on parenting during the Great Turning, and this conversation with Gloire Mudekuza.
Click Play now to hear about:
Gloire's arrival in Nakivale Refugee Settlement 6 years ago, having fled from his original home in the Democratic Republic of Congohis choice to focus on helping his community, and the shift from identifying as a victim to identifying as a survivorlocal farming, impacts of climate change, and the value of learning permacultureparticipating in the Gigaton Challenge to reduce carbon emissions and create green jobs for youth in Nakivale Refugee Settlement and the host communitieshow he sees the Great Turning happening now, particularly in terms of leadership - and what the Great Turning means to himplus more!
This conversation was powerful for me, and for many who attended the Summit. I hope you too enjoy it, learn from it, and feel inspired in your own way.
Turning Season Podcast is dedicated to offering regular doses of Active Hope in this Great Turning toward life-honoring, life-sustaining ways of being human, bringing you deep conversations with people who are rising to their own unique roles in this worldwide movement. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on earth, and is finding your way to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future.
Learn more about and support Plethora Social Initiative and sign up for email updates here: turningseason.com/episode35
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In this planet-wide, diverse movement we can call The Great Turning, one of the threads I'm personally following is medicine. I'm all in for the shift to a life-honoring, life-sustaining approach to understanding illness, treating disease, and promoting health and healing.
Ruby Daniels is part of this shift, too, growing medicinal herbs and making botanical medicines at her home in West Virginia.
I connected with Ruby because she's on the board of United Plant Savers. I heard her talking about protecting wild ginseng, and about her mission to change the narrative of African American relationships to woodland botanicals, and educate about the herbal traditions of African Americans, which have been practiced since the time of slavery.
Ruby is the founder of Creasy Jane's Herbal Remedies. She comes from a creative and inventive family who were enslaved in Virginia and moved to the Southern coalfields of West Virginia to build a new life after emancipation. Ruby refers to her heritage as “Afro-lachian.” She spent many childhood summers in the mountains of Raleigh County, West Virginia, with her great aunt, Ruby, her grandmother, and other wise women of the community, learning about herbal traditions, God, and the plants of the mountains. After earning her Master’s of Science in Herbal Therapeutics, she returned to West Virginia, where she runs Creasy Jane's, named after her great-grandmother, Creasy Jane Pack. Creasy Jane’s offers custom-made herbal teas and tinctures, herbal soaps, and other topical herbal remedies. All her herbal products are formulated with a combination of Appalachian herbal traditional remedies, science and research and spirit.
Listen in to our conversation to hear about:
Ruby's research into how slaves in the region used herbal medicineher experiences as a Black woman in her master's degree program and in the business of herbal medicineRuby's family's history and "permaculture" lifestyle after emancipationher town's history, and herbal medicines for today's coal mining-related illnessesprotecting wild ginsengthe forest and garden botanicals she works withand more.
I'm so grateful for the chance to hear from Ruby, to learn from her and to get these glimpses of how the Great Turning is moving through her in multiple ways, from making sure history is remembered to helping local coal miners with their lung health, from bringing her perspective into academic and workplace conversations to cultivating garden food and herbs.
Enjoy this conversation with Ruby, and be sure to check out Creasy Jane's online shop, the research Ruby talks about, and historical photos of Ruby's family and recent photos from her garden. Links and photos are in the show notes: https://turningseason.com/episode34
Register for the (free!) Great Turning Summit: https://programs.schoolforthegreatturning.com/gtsummit
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How about these goals:
Avoid human extinction Cultivate healthy economies of living systems at local landscape, continental and planetary scales Emerge into these systems on the other side of whatever crises and collapse(s) are aheadWhat would that take?
Joe Brewer has dedicated his life to this question, and to a "living laboratory" of bioregional regeneration and community collaboration. He is the founder of Earth Regenerators and co-founder of the newly established Design School for Regenerating Earth.
I have learned so much from Joe. He's been a source of information, inspiration, techniques and strategies, and also the reason I've found many other people I'm now so grateful to be connected with (including Charles Upton, whom you heard from in Episode 21).
Joe gave me a big grin and two thumbs up when I said that I frame these conversations in the language of Joanna Macy, so we have that in common. His roots of study spread wide in many other directions, though: He's a complexity researcher and transdisciplinary scholar who has studied cultural evolution, physics, atmospheric sciences, and cognitive linguistics, among other things. Joe is also a father, and someone who is trying to embody the pathway to Earth Regeneration. I know through community photos and stories that he's out there digging swales and planting trees, and participating actively in all the realities of community cooperation.
I've been looking forward to having a conversation with Joe Brewer for a long time, and I'm excited to share it with you now.
Click Play now to dive into:
working for regeneration on the scale of larger landscapes, even if we live in cities (how did water move through this bioregion before these cities existed?) in thinking about sustainability, how much depends on the regenerative capacity of the land having children, being with children, and being there for children, in these times (I loved this: "children are such a profound source of human emotional regeneration") the tapestry of local projects being woven together in the High Andes Tropical Dry Forest ecosystem of Barichara, Colombia - a living laboratory for a bioregional-scale regenerative economy the human species being in ecological overshoot, what that probably means about the future, and what Joe is "actively hopeful" for, in light of that how to have effective, cooperative groups - both the knowledge about how to do that, and the actual practice of doing it and Joe's words of advice on following your heart, and being ready for people to be confusedI continue to learn so much from Joe and the Earth Regenerators community. Maybe for some of you listening this will also be a doorway into what's next for you, in your journey toward embodying life-sustaining, life-honoring, regenerative ways to live in the web of Life.
Come to the show notes for links to connect with Joe Brewer, check out the Design School for Regenerating Earth, and learn about other topics we touched on: turningseason.com/episode33
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"Somehow, we were only touching the symptoms, whether it's poaching, whether it's the destruction of forests, or unsustainable development." So said Radhika Bhagat about her 12+ years of conservation work with leading organizations in India, as she explained to me why she founded the Sacred Earth Trust. Radhika now focuses on reviving spiritual connection to the Earth, as well as scientific research and education, in her work to protect India's thousands of Sacred Groves.
This conversation was wide-reaching, and once again I am so heartened and inspired to connect with someone who's reflecting deeply on how to relate to both the Great Unraveling and the Great Turning – and who is enacting her Active Hope every day.
I feel an especially strong resonance with Radhika and what she's doing for Life on Earth, and I'm looking forward to hearing what comes up for you as you listen.
Click Play now to hear us explore:
sitting with our pain as a teacher, and letting it move us to change the things we cannot acceptRadhika's experience working for a leading conservation NGO in India, and why she changed focus to reviving spiritual connection with the Earthwhat Sacred Groves arehow Sacred Earth Trust has approached learning about Sacred Grovesand why it's so important to protect both these groves, AND the belief systems that have kept them alive until nowhow Radhika has seen culture change in India since her teenage years, and what might revive a perspective that all life is sacred, in a modern contextwhy a two-pronged approach, speaking to both science and spirituality, is essentialand stories: change on the "mythic" level of human society's sense of itself; stories from indigenous protectors of sacred groves in India; and Radhika's reflections on the Three Stories of Our Time (Business as Usual, The Great Unraveling, and The Great Turning)plus redefining "development" to include a more comprehensive experience of life, and more.
Enjoy, please share what you think about all this, and if you know anyone else who would appreciate this conversation with Radhika, please send them the link.
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode32
Music by East Forest
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This Full Moon, a new deep conversation with someone rising to her own unique role in The Great Turning - the role only she can play, coming about through what she loves, what breaks her heart, her gifts, her circumstances, her stories. Today, meet Fernanda Lenz, an educator, facilitator, and visual documentarian in São Paolo, Brazil.
Listen in to see what resonates with you about how she's relating to this time of ecological and humanitarian crises, influenced by her longtime immersion in Tibetan Buddhism and Deep Ecology. You might be inspired, or hear something that helps you recognize what's true for you, helps you find your role in these times, or helps you keep going in the role you're already playing. Or maybe you'll find yourself sitting with a really good new question.
Click Play to hear us talk about:
the inner world, and the subtle part of us that carries on beyond our lifetimes in these bodiestaking the small actions that can be felt more deeply than seemingly bigger, more showy actionsfacilitating the Work that Reconnects with humanitarian aid volunteers and with refugeeswhat Fernanda did when she encountered a beach covered for miles with trash carried downriverand the worldview of "interdependence."Fernanda teaches classes in Deep Ecology that weave her Tibetan Buddhist philosophy heritage into Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects. She brings an embodied learning approach that emphasizes empathic connection to our living Earth, transforming apathy and grief into collaborative action.
She started her career as a photographer, after graduating from the International Center of Photography in New York City in 2013. She has produced documentary work with indigenous peoples in Brazil, documented elephants in Tanzania, and made pilgrimages with her brother Lama Michel Rinpoche and Guru Lama Gangchen Rinpoche to Nepal, Tibet and Indonesia. Coming eye to eye with all of these beings and life forms, she aims to communicate our intrinsic connection with our planetary family, portraying both its strength and fragility.
Connect with Fernanda, learn more about the practice of Tonglen, check out Joanna Macy's book World as Lover, World as Self, and subscribe to our newsletter at: turningseason.com/episode31
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News roundup of evidence of The Great Turning, for this month's New Moon:
The Mother Tree project in British ColumbiaTribes and Natures Defenders in the Philippinesand Indigenous leadership on climate change in the Arctic (Native Movement, Indigenous Climate Action, Native Conservancy, as shared recently by Bioneers)Turning Season Podcast is your regular dose of active hope, here with news and deep conversations with people following the thread of their own storyline in this adventure we're all weaving toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human in Earth.
This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for the web of life, and is finding your way to participate in cultivating ways of living that we can believe in, making a life-honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future.
This New Moon episode is a very quick one. Since July of last year, on New Moons, I've been releasing short 10-15 minute episodes sharing news from each dimension of the great turning: Holding Actions; Life-Sustaining Systems; and Shifts in Consciousness.
I'm really enjoying gathering up all this evidence of the Great Turning in action.
And I'm going to keep doing that. But after this one, I'll be sharing that on the New Moons by email newsletter. For the podcast, I'm returning to releasing only the deep conversation episodes, every Full Moon, where we get to really understand the work someone is doing in the world, plus what's happening in their mind and heart around the Great Turning and their personal role in it.
This decision basically comes down to my own personal sustainability. I love this podcast. I love connecting with all of you listening. And I love all the other things I'm doing. Mothering is at the top of that list, and I'm running a fuller acupuncture and dreamwork practice than I did in the past, and now working with the School for the Great Turning to support all the incredible online and in-person programming provided there.
All while I also want to make more, not less, time and space for all the fun and the challenges of my family, community, and bioregion.
So that's the plan: New Moon newsletter, Full Moon episodes. The newsletter will include a roundup of Great Turning news, along with links to other things I've come across that month that I've found heartening or inspiring, or have made me ask new questions, plus maybe a meme or two that made me cry-laugh.
Click Play to listen, and subscribe to the newsletter at turningseason.com,
Come back for the upcoming Full Moon episodes with guests from Brazil, Utah, and India. So excited to share these with you.
Thanks for being here, and for all the ways you play your part.
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode30
Music by East Forest.
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I guess I was believing some "bright green fairytales" myself - because the truths in Bright Green Lies burst a few bubbles in my mind. In a tiny nutshell: Solar, wind, hydro, and recycling do worse than not solve our problems. They continue the harms of industrial society, and divert the attention of people who want to address our ecological crisis away from what matters most.
This book intensified some of my biggest personal questions, especially about relinquishment, and my ongoing participation in destructive ways of life.
So I was prepared to feel the weight of all this when I spoke with Max Wilbert, one of the co-authors of Bright Green Lies.
Instead, I felt lighter. I felt heartened. I felt grateful. Once again, I am reminded, there's nothing like connecting with someone who's bringing their whole mind, heart, and activist body to The Great Turning. Max is a community organizer, writer, photographer, and wilderness guide, living in rural Oregon with his family. He has been part of grassroots political work for 20 years.
He dove right in with me to:
what he loves about being alivewhat's breaking his hearthis take on the "Business as Usual" story, emphasizing the short-term advantages gained by those who are willing to desecrate the living Earth and oppress other peoplehis background in labor activism, and how we've come further now than simply wanting more just distribution of industrial measures of economic wealththe cautionary tale of the insatiable spirit of Wetiko, or Windigo (as described in the books Columbus and Other Cannibals, and Braiding Sweetgrass, among others), and the possibility of co-creating different culture by telling different storieshow it's not that easy or obvious to relinquish the ecocidal aspects of the lifestyles we currently enjoy - and how social change has always been messythe campaign to protect the Nevada area known in English as Thacker Pass, and in Paiute as Peehee Mu’huh, from becoming an open pit lithium minelooking around wherever you are to find something worth fighting forand a future we can't imagine yet, knowing we can be creative about how we transform.I have so much appreciation for the work Max is doing in the world, and deep gratitude for this wide-ranging conversation. Hit Play now, and after you listen, come to the show notes for links to the books we mention, more about protecting Thacker Pass / Peehee Mu'huh, and great resources from Max.
Let's carry the weight together, and keep enacting our active hope.
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode29
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Here at the new beginning marked by the Lunar New Year, come back with me to the beginning of Turning Season Podcast, for what is still one of my favorite conversations yet, with dreamworker, beekeeper, and new mother, Ariella Daly.
A warm hello to all of you who've started listening since this show was born. I know not everyone has gone back to Episode 1 - so please join me in enjoying this rich conversation. If you've heard it before, listen again and let me know what strikes you this time!
We can each be guided by what we love, and by what breaks our hearts. Ariella Daly's heart is with the bees.
If you've listened to The Dreamers' Den series, you heard Ariella in Episode 31, speaking about dream mirroring, bee shamanism, and the dreamweave of the earth.
She joined me again in Autumn 2021 to kick off Turning Season Podcast, opening her heart about how she relates to this time of ecological crisis and possibility, humans as a part of nature, and teaching natural beekeeping.
Click Play to hear us talk about:
the 3 stories of our time -- Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling, and The Great Turning -- and how these three stories are playing out for bees, and for beekeepers.the differences between conventional beekeeping, natural beekeeping, and other ways of being with the beesthe "alarm bell" bees have been ringing, with their deaths and "colony collapse," and what we can dobees on almond trees and bees on city rooftopswhat it feels like to bring a child into the world while feeling great love for life on Earth, and going through times of ecological apathy and dreadand looking through multiple lenses to realize there are no simple answers, so we focus less on policing each other or exiting a destructive system, and more on nourishing new ways of lifeYou'll hear the voice of Ariella's baby, too (6 months old at the time of this conversation), and hear her get distracted by the beauty of leaves outside the window. I love those moments, because no matter what else we're focused on, parenthood and trees in the wind are present too, all the time.
Subscribe to Turning Season Podcast to get every dose of active hope. Returning to this conversation now in February 2023, I'm thrilled by how this expanded podcast has grown and is fulfilling the original vision: bringing you into conversation with healers, changemakers, visionaries, wisdom-keepers, and all kinds of people doing the on-the-ground work of The Great Turning.
Show notes and resources: turningseason.com/episode28
Music by East Forest
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Which is easier to feel in your own mind and body:
The sense of living in The Great Turning (aka, our transition toward a life-sustaining way of being human on earth), or the feeling of "Business as Usual," a way of being human that values being productive, consuming, succeeding, and never feeling like you've done enough or have enough?
My guest in today's Full Moon episode, Nisha Mody, explores with me how these different stories live in our bodies and minds, and play out in our lives. She brings her experience as a feminist healing coach, writer and speaker.
In her work, Nisha explores the intersection of anti-oppression, intergenerational healing and relationship. She helps people sit with their feelings, claim their agency, and relate to the world with care.
Click Play now to hear us talk about:
relational vs. transactional connections (with other people, our own bodies, the Earth) some of the mindsets and the medicines her parents brought with them when they immigrated from Indiafeeling like a failure, and mixing up your "work" with your "worth"your healing story as a massive, epic love story... ...and how that doesn't mean it only includes loving, loveable moments; just like The Great Turning, which is an adventure story, full of positive change but also peril and heartbreakand lots more.
I have very much enjoyed getting to know Nisha over the last year and a half or so. I find her writing and coaching to be such a heartening example of The Great Turning taking place within someone in their own unique way.
I especially appreciate that even though she doesn't present her work as being particularly about ecology, or Nature, or Earth-connection, she brings her own connection with the Earth to her work, and supports clients in tending to theirs.
Of course, I celebrate each and every one of us who does describe our work in terms of ecology and Earth-love - but I am also excited to see this sense of interconnection and reciprocity with the rest of the living Earth woven into all kinds of work and ways of life.
And bonus: In one of Nisha's former careers, she was a librarian, so she has great book recommendations. You can find the books she mentioned in our conversation and others she recommends in the show notes at turningseason.com/episode27.
You'll also find links there to Nisha's website and Instagram.
If you're listening to this episode close to the date it comes out, you still have time to sign up for a free online workshop I'm hosting on Tuesday, January 10th called:
Keep it Moving: Practical Wisdom from Chinese Medicine and Deep Ecology about your Emotions, Your Health, and the State of our World.
Come to turningseason.com/moving to sign up to attend live, or get access to the recording.
I'll share with you a Chinese Medicine-inspired way of looking at stress and stress relief that might be new to you, explain how different emotions affect the body differently, and how our physical health also affects our emotions, plus teach you a couple of practical techniques from self-acupressure massage and qigong for moving the stagnation caused by emotional stress.
We'll also do a little bit of the Work that Reconnects and explore how Joanna Macy and a Deep Ecology perspective teach us how our emotions about what's happening in the world can help us serve and make change - how our human emotions might be a crucial way that life on earth sustains itself.
Sign up at turningseason.com/moving to attend live or have access to the recording.
Turning Season Podcast is here to bring you regular doses of Active Hope, through news and deep conversations about our adventure toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human on Earth. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on Earth, and chooses to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life honoring, present, even in the face of an uncertain future.
Hosted by me, Leilani Navar. I facilitate the Work that Reconnects, I practice acupuncture and dreamwork, and I believe in the power of conversation. This podcast is one way The Great Turning happens through me. Thank you for being here.
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode27
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Click Play for 13 minutes of Active Hope to hearten you today, in the latest news episode of Turning Season Podcast. Hear about:
the work of a young refugee in Uganda named Irenge Mudekuza Gloire, founder of Plethora Social Initiative, teaching permaculture and regenerative agriculture to fellow refugees and host communitiesFossil Free Research campaigns to get universities to break ties with oil and gas companies - and never let them fund research on climate, energy, or environmental studiesand the Declaration of Revolutionary Love, written by civil rights leader and visionary Valarie KaurTurning Season Podcast is here to bring you news and deep conversations about our adventure toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human on Earth. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on Earth, and chooses to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life-honoring present even in the face of an uncertain future.
Hosted by Leilani Navar, acupuncturist, dreamworker, and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects.
Free workshop January 10: Keeping it Moving: Practical Wisdom from Chinese Medicine and Deep Ecology on Your Emotions, Your Health, and the State of Our World
Show notes: turningseason.com/episode26
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It can be hard enough to find your "purpose" in the best of times - and it's a whole other level of challenging when you're reckoning with the prospect of ecological and societal breakdown. My interviewee for this Full Moon episode, Gwyneth Jones, describes herself as a "Deep Adaptation Coach," serving as a life coach for people who are aware of our collective predicament.
She's rising to her role in the Great Turning also as a writer, a gardener, a teacher of her native language, Welsh, and a connector, having one-on-one conversations with people around the world in her interview series, "The Story Anew."
Click Play to enjoy Gwyneth's company with me and hear us talk about:
what "Deep Adaptation" is, and the 4 R's of Resilience, Relinquishment, Restoration, and Reconciliationthe stories we tell about what's happening in our world right now shifts in consciousness Gwyneth has noticed at home in Wales, and in conversations with people from the Philippines to the Democratic Republic of the Congohelping people tap into a feeling of calling, duty or mission (and how it's more than okay to have more than one, and have your work be hard to describe!)and teaching the Welsh language in connection with decolonization, as people reconnect with nature-loving ancestral cultures in the British Isles.I read the "Deep Adaptation" paper myself for the first time early this year, and it's had a profound effect on me. Gwyneth is someone who has integrated these considerations into her personal and professional life, and she remains so full of vitality and love. I'm very happy to be connected with her as we all meet these times together. Enjoy the conversation.
Thanks for listening to Turning Season Podcast, your regular dose of Active Hope in the Great Turning, bringing you news and deep conversations about our adventure toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human on earth. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on Earth, and chooses to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life-honoring present, even in the face of an uncertain future.
Hosted by Leilani Navar, a facilitator of the Work that Reconnects, an acupuncturist and dreamworker, and a believer in the power of conversation.
Show notes with links to connect with Gwyneth, hear the TED Talk she mentions, and learn more about Deep Adaptation and connect with community: turningseason.com/episode25
Healing Season: Practical Wisdom from Chinese Medicine and the Work that Reconnects
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