Future Primitive

Author and filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of ISEC. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is a widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on identity, community and local economies, and is a leading proponent of ‘localization,’ or decentralization, as a means of countering those impacts.

Since 1975, she has worked with the people of Ladakh, or “Little Tibet,” to find ways of enabling their culture to meet the modern world without sacrificing social and ecological values. Trained as a linguist, she was the first Westerner in recent times to master the Ladakhi language, and co-produced the first Ladakhi-English dictionary. Her book, “Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh” has been described as “an inspirational classic,” and sold almost half a million copies. She is on the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and is a co-founder of both the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Eco-village Network.

www.localfutures.org

Helena speaks with Joanna about the pressure of globalization on traditional cultures, … the relationship between beautiful, healthy and sustainable, … local communities and economies as a sustainable alternative to global consumer culture, … the connection path of community and nature, … and her latest film as co-director: “The Economics of Happiness”…

Music: “Part 8” (from Salzau. Music on the Water) by Danielsson/Dell/Landgren

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Geoff Oelsner has built a following as a performer both of his own songs and of poems which he sometimes sets to music or chants and recites to the accompaniment of guitar, harmonica, dulcimer, autoharp, harmonium, and the shruti box (a drone instrument from India). He has released 2 CD’s of original songs, Morning Branches and Ordinary Mystery with musician friends, including Kelly Mulhollan and Leslie. Geoff has published a collection of his poetry, Native Joy: poems songs visions dreams (1963-2003) (2003, Trafford) and his work has been featured in several other books, including Writing Poetry from the Inside Out by Sandford Lyne (Sourcebooks Inc., 2007). His new book, A Country Where All Colors Are Sacred and Alive, A Memoir of Non-Ordinary Experience and Collaboration with Nature (2012) is now available from Lorian Press.

A Buddhist meditator since 1974, Geoff founded the Buddhist Meditation and Spiritual Support Group in 1995. As a licensed certified social worker in private practice of psychotherapy in Arkansas since 1982, Geoff also utilizes poetry therapy with selected clients in psychotherapy. He is committed to sharing the healing and inspirational power of poetry, music, and story with the community.

A long time environmental activist and researcher, Geoff co-authored a book titled Fighting Radiation and Chemical Pollutants with Foods, Herbs,and Vitamins (1992). He is presently involved in several environmental initiatives, including the Psi-Sci Alliance project, which brings together established climate scientists with highly qualified intuitives to innovate new approaches to addressing and ameliorating climate change.

www.geoffoelsner.com

Geoff Oelsner speaks with Joanna about his deep love and connection with the natural world, transpersonal experiences in Nature, the emergence of a spiritual form of environmental activism…

Music: “The Sacred Hoop” (from Morning Branches) by Geoff Oelsner.

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Ruth Zaporah is a New Mexico based performance artist, director and teacher. She is internationally known for her innovative work in performance and performance training, particularly in the field of physical theater improvisation. Zaporah spends much of her time on tour, performing and leading trainings both nationally and internationally. She is a two-time recipient of National Endowment Choreography Fellowships. She is the author of “Action Theater: The Improvisation of Presence”.

http://www.actiontheater.com/index.htm

Ruth speaks with Joanna about Action Theater – an improvisational training process developed by her; the dance of the imaginal and the body, presence and relation to the world, acceptance, “emotional seasoning,” coming back to the body … among other topics.

Music: “Codona” (from The Codona Trilogy) by Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos, Colin Walcott

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I’m celebrating My Birthday …

Will be back next week with an exciting podcast.

Love to all.

Joanna

Zev Friedman grew up in Sylva, NC and received his B.S. in Human Ecology from UNCA. Zev’s specialty is forest agriculture; he now runs the Forest Cuisine Project, which helps land owners to start forest farms and to market their products. He is particularly passionate about assisting landowners in setting up mushroom farming operations and in using fungi as remediators for damaged environments. Zev also specializes in urban permaculture design and installation, including many private residences, as well as consulting on the design of the Mars Hill town hall and grounds; he is an active member and teacher in Transition Asheville, helping to plan for Asheville’s future as an abundant, self-reliant city in the age of petroleum decline.

www.upgardens.com

Zev speaks with Joanna about permaculture and imagination, learning from indigenous societies, transitioning to an Earth-based way of living, working with the “cultural compost”, attuning to the local ecosystem through the Forest Cuisine project,…and more

Music: “Qosh tari” ( from Ouzbekistan L’art du dotar) by Hamidov, Khodaverdiev, Razzaqov

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Reminder: Listeners who subscribed between Dec 5 – 15, 2011, we gratefully request that you please subscribe again. Thank You.

Dr. Robert K.C. Forman is a professor of comparative religions, (CUNY), and founder of the Forge Institute. He routinely gives lectures, trainings and workshops around the world. He was the co-founder and is executive editor of The Journal of Consciousness Studies, which has become the principle journal in the field. He is also the author of ten scholarly books on spirituality, mysticism, consciousness and world religions. His latest book is Enlightenment Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up To Be: A Journey of Discovery, Snow and Jazz in the Soul .

Robert speaks with Joanna about his experiential understanding of what is enlightenment, the similarities and differences between spirituality and psychotherapy, the whisper of the personal call, “jazz in the soul”, feeling the unity with Nature…

http://enlightenmentaint.com/
http://www.theforge.org/site/content.php

Music: “Main theme from When Almonds Blossomed” (from Giya Kancheli: Themes From The Songbook), by Dino Saluzzi, Gidon Kremer, Andrei Pushkarev

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Olivier Clerc is a writer, translator and editorial consultant, specializing in spirituality, shamanism, health, personal development and human relationships. Olivier has crossed paths with many famous authors and teachers whose books he has translated into French, and with whom he often trained. Among them are Stan Grof, Marshall Rosenberg (founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication), Don Miguel Ruiz, and many others. He is the author of 8 books, including Modern Medicine: The New World Religion: How Beliefs Secretly Influence Medical Dogmas and Practices, and Invaluable Lessons from a Frog: Seven Life-Enhancing Metaphors.

www.giftofforgiveness.net

Olivier speaks with Joanna about his experiences with don Miguel Ruiz, the “key” to the gift of forgiveness, the obstacles to forgiveness, implications of forgiveness, from don’ts to dos…

Music: “Paseo 1 Primavera” (from Lo Fi) by Bosques de mi Mente

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Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, Ring of Power, Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, The Millionth Circle, Goddesses in Older Women, Crones Don’t Whine and Urgent Message from Mother, and Like a Tree: How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet.

She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the International Transpersonal Association. She was a recipient of the Institute for Health and Healing’s “Pioneers in Art, Science, and the Soul of Healing Award”, and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She was in two acclaimed documentaries, the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film Women—For America, For the World, and the Canadian Film Board’s Goddess Remembered.

www.jeanbolen.com

Jean speaks with Joanna about the “tree persons”; nurturing a heart-connected activism; morphic fields, circles of support and critical mass; gnostic knowledge…

Music: “At The Zeergen-Grassy Mountain” from World Music Library – Mongolian Songs

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Osprey Orielle Lake, MA is an artist, writer, and lifelong advocate of social and environmental justice issues. She is the Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus and on the governing Board of Praxis Peace Institute. She is the Founder/Artist of the International Cheemah Monument Project, creating 18 foot bronze sculpture monuments for locations around the world, where people can ponder a better future for the earth and humanity. Her themes concern new cultural narratives and the way public imagery and stories either enhance or distance our relationship with the Earth. Osprey studied Ancient History and Biology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon where her focus was on an Ecological Impact Study of the Oregon river system. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz where her reports on the use of phenoxy herbicides and alternative methods for pest management played a central role in Santa Cruz County’s re-evaluation of herbicide use. She received her MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Her recent book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature (2010), delves into a new kinship with nature while acknowledging the treasures of urban life and the unique stake each person has in resolving critical and timely challenges.

www.ospreyoriellelake.com

Orielle speaks with Joanna about reconnecting with Nature in urban life, the balance between high technology and hand-made things, women leadership and climate situation, indigenous wisdom and partnership model, Nature as teacher, open to the beauty and awe of the “big conversation”, Frau Holle and other female archetypes of Nature, art and environmental awareness, honoring the rights of the Earth…

Music:”Sanza” (from Echoes Of The Forest – Music of the Central African Pygmies)

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Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist.  Jensen has published several books questioning and critiquing modern civilization and its values, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He holds a B.S. in Mineral Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. He has also taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University.

www.derrickjensen.org

Derrick speaks with Joanna about words and action for social change, abuse as identity in the dominant culture, the importance of naming the unspeakable, putting nature first, “to speak truth about power”, preparing the transition towards a sustainable culture…

Music: “Ancient Trees” (from On the wing) by Stephan Micus

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Kimerer LaMothe, Ph.D., is a philosopher, dancer, and scholar of religion who lives with her partner and their five children on a farm in upstate New York. After earning a masters degree in Christianity and Culture from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in Theology of the Modern West from Harvard University, LaMothe taught at Brown and then Harvard Universities. She received fellowships for her work in religion and dance from the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study and the Center for the Study of World Religions; and is an award-winning author of several books, including What a Body Knows: Finding Wisdom in Desire, Nietzsche’s Dancers: Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and the Revaluation of Christian Values, and her latest, Family Planting: A farm-fed philosophy of family relations.

www.vitalartsmedia.com

Kimerer speaks with Joanna about our basic human impulse to connect with one other and the natural world,, attuning to the bodily self, the “sting of impossible desire”, thinking and bodily movement, the rhythms of nature, ecstasy and natural birth…

Music: “End” (from Ibero-Caucasian Style) by The Shin

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Elaine Seiler is a writer, facilitator, and coach, specializing in the field of Energetics. In 1992, after 20 years of work as a career consultant and Life Planning Coach, she discovered Energetics, or the study and use of Multi-Dimensional Energies and their interplay with life on earth. She now focuses full time on this expanded reality and assists others to awaken to this reality. She currently spends most of her time in America and Australia, focused on projects that shift consciousness and initiate new paradigms.

She will be releasing her first book, Multidimensional You: Exploring Energetic Evolution,  sharing her personal journey to multi-dimensionality, to energy work and to a transforming world in the fall of 2011.

www.transformationenergetics.com

Elaine speaks with Joanna about our multidimensionality, expanding the range of our lens of perception, the shift in planetary and human evolution, metaphoric language and energetic experiences, attuning to guidance, ecological work as a vehicle of energetic learning…

Music:  ”Bird’s-Eye-View” (from Chiaroscuro) by Arve Henriksen

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Malathy Drew is a healer, teacher and a social media innovator. Malathy was recently honored by Fast Company Magazine as the ’23 Most Influential Person in the Online World’. Her vision of ‘Cultivating Global Healing, One Soul at a Time’ has became “WE (Whispering Energy Collaboration)”: heart-centered networking.

www.whisperingenergy.com

Malathy speaks with Joanna about “WE (Whispering Energy)”, the new paradigm of heart-centered networwing and its applications, uplifting each other in order to uplift the world, raising consciousness and re-distributing wealth, social media and collective change…

Music: “Collection of Folk Songs” (from World Network: Georgia ) by Rustavi Choir & Duduki Trio Omar Kelaptrishvili

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Marian Van Eyk McCain, originally a social worker, and then for many years a transpersonal psychotherapist, workshop leader and health educator, now concentrates on writing, and environmental activism. She writes on a number of subjects, including ‘Wellness,’ stress-management, psychology, personal development, women’s health and spirituality, conscious, ‘zestful’ ageing, environmental issues, organic food production and alternative technology. Her most recent work has been as Editor of what has been hailed as the definitive book on green spirituality, GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness (O Books, 2010), Downshifting Made Easy: How to plan for your planet-friendly future (O Books, 2011) and her first, full-length novel, The Bird Menders. She is also secretary of the Wholesome Food Association. She runs a women’s group and a writer’s circle, is active in her local community, grows organic vegetables, goes for long walks, reads a lot and loves to dance.

www.elderwoman.org

Marian speaks with Joanna about conscious ageing, combining simplicity with modernity,green spirituality, the collective shift of consciousness, developing the “enough switch”…

Music: “We Build Fires” (from Scotland – World Network 32) by The Poozies

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Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over forty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies (Healing Stories) which creatively address life threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration.   With her husband, writer/healer Michael Ortiz Hill, she has introduced the concept of Daré, meaning Council, to North America.

She is the author of many books, the most recent: La Negra y Blanca (“a novel of the Conquest of the Americas and of hope, where wisdom leaks through misty realms between memory and imagination”).

www.deenametzger.com

Deena speaks with Joanna about the characters of her latest book “La Negra y Blanca”, grounded visions, the coming shift, making alliances and restoring a right relationship with the Earth and all beings, “the conquest never ended”, the helping guide of the ancestors, the process of peace-making, “the way of story”…

Music: “No soy de aquí ni soy de allá” (I’m not from here, I’m not from there) by Facundo Cabral

Deena’s Photo: courtesy www.deenametzger.com

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Linda Buzzell-Saltzman is the founder of the International Association for Ecotherapy (IAE) and the editor of The Ecotherapy News. The IAE brings together therapists, educators, students and clients who are interested in the field of applied ecopsychology and healing the human-nature relationship. She has been a psychotherapist in private practice for over 25 years, and specializes in helping people with career issues and lifestyle choices.  She is the originator of For the Future’s Sustainable Small Cities project. She teaches classes at Santa Barbara City College Continuing Education on ecopsychology, ecotherapy and career opportunities in the emerging sustainable society. She and her husband Larry are the founders of the Santa Barbara Organic Garden Club and they have created an edible “Backyard Food Forest” on their city lot, growing vegetables, herbs, tasty flowers and over 60 fruit and nut trees.

http://lindabuzzell.com/

Linda speaks with Joanna about ecotherapy as a “emergency medicine”, the link between mental health, community and environmental health, beyond green jobs, greening the city, ways to re-connect with the wild nature, the disociation of the body, the archetypal femenine and the earth, the “transition movement”…

Music: “Tundra“, (from The Soul of Yakutia) by Spiridon Shishigin

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Keiron Le Grice  is author of The Archetypal Cosmos: Rediscovering the Gods in Myth, Science and Astrology, founder and co-editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology, and co-founder of Archai Press. He holds degrees from the University of Leeds, England (B.A. honors, Philosophy and Psychology, 1994) and the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco (M.A., Philosophy and Religion, 2005; Ph.D., Philosophy and Religion, 2009) where he is adjunct faculty in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program. In 2006, he was awarded the inaugural Joseph Campbell Research Grant by the Joseph Campbell Foundation in association with the Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara. He currently divides his time between San Francisco and the U.K.

www.keironlegrice.com

Keiron speaks with Joanna about his recent book “The Archetypal Cosmos”: that articulates a new mythic worldview, archetypes as creatives principles of the cosmos, the cosmic memory, developing a conscious relationship with the archetypes, healing the split between the individual and Gaia/Cosmos, the archetypal resonance between the sixties and now…

Music: “Syrtos (dance of Western Crete)”  (from Cross Current) by Ross Daly, D. Chemirani & I. Khan

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Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.

Roshi Joan speaks with Joanna about aging and death, engaged Buddhism and systemic activism, personal and social transformation, the historic significance of LSD as a Dharma door, embodied compassion with dying people, speaking truth to power…

Music: “Song without words to Bohdana Pivnenko, I.-Elegy”  (from Fleeting Melodies) by Valentin Silvestrov {Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) }

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Rha Goddess is an internationally renowned performance artist, activist and social entrepreneur. As CEO of Divine Dime Entertainment, Ltd. she was the first woman in Hip Hop to independently market and commercially distribute her music worldwide. Her activist work includes founding and running the young women’s performance movement, We Got Issues!, and producing The Hip Hop Mental Health Project and the play The Meditations Trilogy. Rha is a 2008 recipient of the National Museum for Voting Rights Freedom Flame Award for her outstanding work in the field of arts and civic engagement.

This was a conversation during the 2008 Bioneers By the Bay conference.

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John Seed is founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia.

www.rainforestinfo.org.au

Since 1979 he has been involved in the direct actions which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. He has written and lectured extensively on deep ecology and has been conducting Councils of All Beings and other re-Earth ing workshops  around the world for 25 years. In the US, his workshops have been hosted by Esalen, Omega, Naropa and the California Institute of Integral Studies. With Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Professor Arne Naess, he wrote “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings” (New Society Publishers) which has now been translated into 10 languages. He is an accomplished bard, songwriter and film-maker and has produced 5 albums of environmental songs and numerous films www.rainforestinfo.org.au/video.htm

From 1984 to the present he has traveled around the world each year with roadshows raising awareness about the plight of the rainforests and raising funding for their protection. In 2007 he launched the Rainforest Information Centre’s climate change campaign and has offered “Climate Change, Despair & Empowerment” presentations and workshops in Australia, Canada and the US. www.rainforestinfo.org.au/climate/roadshow.htm

John speaks with Joanna about “climate change, despair and empowerment”, the evolutionary importance of human feeling, working ecologically with Nature, his experience in the reforestation project at Arunachala, experiential tip ecology practices,  Earth Changes, his present work, his love of the earth…

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Martin Prechtel is a thinker, writer and teacher whose work, both written and oral, hopes to promote the subtlety, irony and pre-modern vitality hidden in any living language. As a half blood Native American with a Pueblo Indian upbringing, his life took him from New Mexico to the village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala where he became a full village member of the Tzutujil Mayan population, and eventually served as a principal, responsible for instructing the young people in the meanings of their ancient stories through the rituals of adult rights of passage. Once again residing in his native New Mexico, Martín teaches at his international school Bolad’s Kitchen.

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For 25 years Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. During his tenure with HFS, Mark organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city’s lower income and elderly residents. Mark’s work with the Food System included the development of a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, Connecticut’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, several farmers’ markets, a 20-acre community supported agriculture farm, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.

Winne now writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication work for the Community Food Security Coalition. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in numerous newspapers, organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. He is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press 2008) and Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture (Beacon Press, 2010). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

www.markwinne.com

Mark speaks with Joanna about the food system and emotional connectedness, freedom from the industrial food system, active citizen engagement, re-learning cooking skills as a life-changing shift, the nightmare of the industrial slaughterhouses, food and reinvigorating democracy…

Music: “Adagio” (from String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”) by Leos Janacek.

Note: A special thank you to Pam Roy and FarmToTable for making this interview possible.

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Dr Hugh Wheir graduated from Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine in 1979 and operated a successful and innovative veterinary practice in Santa Fe for many years. A pioneer in animal acupuncture and natural healing, Dr Wheir was trained by Sensei Nakazono in the Kototama School of Japanse acupuncture and practiced on humans with many remarkable healing successes before he turned his full attention to animals. Dr Wheir has been  an advocate for humane population control of domestic animals and wildlife and the protection of endangered species, including Mexican sea turtles and African elephants. He has conducted hundreds of spay-neuter clinics in the US and Latin America through the organization he founded, Animal Alliance, and has lectured widely, collaborating with the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International and many other foundations and institutions. He now serves on the board of Alliance for the Earth, Elephants in Crisis, and The Biosphere Foundation – and is excited to be a hands-on veterinarian once again!

Dr Wheir’s veterinary practice specializes in animal acupuncture and alternative approaches to health and healing, herbal medicine, diet and neutraceutical support for dogs, cats and horses. He offers exams, consultations, diagnosis, second opinions, geriatric care, management of chronic pain, lameness and paralysis and…..having successfully treated over 20,000 horses with acupuncture, Dr Wheir’s rapport with horses is extraordinary.

Hugh’s commitment is to create a field of healing intention in close collaboration with concerned clients to develop understanding & balanced energy for their animals. His expertise and years of tried and true natural solutions has resulted in many herbal remedies that anyone can apply.

Anyone interested in consulting with Dr Hugh Wheir on natural animal health care and healing and management or treatment of many common diseases can contact him at     allanimals AT igc DOT org

elephantsincrisis.org/index/drwheir

earthtreasurevase.org/about-us/board/

Hugh speaks with Joanna about his life-long dedication to our animal companions, his very first treatment in animal acupuncture, inter-species communication, meeting the white lions of Timbavati…

Music: “Hey Da Ba Doom” (from The Codona Trilogy) by Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos & Colin Walcott

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Kimerer LaMothe, Ph.D., is a philosopher, dancer, and scholar of religion, who lives with her partner and their five children on a farm in upstate New York. A former professor at Harvard and Brown Universities, recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Center for the Study of World Religions, and award-winning author of three books, Dr. LaMothe is currently director of Vital Arts, a center dedicated to creating art and ideas that remain faithful to the earth. Trained in modern dance, Haitian dance, ballet, and yoga, LaMothe has choreographed and danced two solo concerts, as well as performing in a range of concert, conference, and liturgical settings. Her third book, What a Body Knows: Finding Wisdom in Desire, uses personal anecdotes and cultural analysis to introduce her original philosophy of bodily becoming. Working with our desires for food, sex, and spirit, she describes a way of thinking and being that privileges bodily movement as the source and telos of human life.

www.vitalartsmedia.com

Kimerer speaks with Joanna about dance & philosophy, overcoming body/mind dualism through movement, desire as a healing impulse, sensory awareness, e/motions, the importance of touch, “remaining faithful to the Earth”…

Music: “Body and Soul” (from Ballads) by Derek Bailey.

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Nina Simons is a social entrepreneur and Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Bioneers. Nina’s life and work are informed by her passion for the natural world, women’s leadership, systems thinking, and the arts’ capacity to shape culture and consciousness.

Nina speaks and teaches nationally about: the environment and the call to engaged action; leading from the ‘feminine’ and redefining leadership; women’s leadership; and businesses and organizations as living systems. She serves on the board of the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California.

www.bioneers.org/about/founders/nina-simons

Nina speaks with Joanna about her book Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, nature as spiritual source, “wholeness-making”,  stories as medicine, power as love, community …

Music: “Woman’s Theme” (from Ulysses’ Gaze) by Eleni Karaindrou

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F. David Peat is a holistic physicist and author who has carried out research in solid state physics and the foundation of quantum theory. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Liverpool. For many years he was associated with physicist and philosopher David Bohm. While living in Canada Peat organized discussion circles between Western scientists and Native American elders, and while living in London organized a conference between artists and scientists. He has authored or co-authored many books including “Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind” “Seven Life lessons of Chaos“, “Turbulent Mirror” and “Gentle Action“. His most recent book is “A Flickering Reality: Cinema and the Nature of Reality“. He has written on the subjects of science, art, and spirituality. He is also director of the Pari Center for New Learning, which is located in the village of Pari near Siena in Tuscany, Italy. He is adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a Distinguished Fellow at the University of South Africa.

www.fdavidpeat.com

David speaks with Joanna about beauty, synchronicity, “Bohmian dialogue” as an experiment in holistic communication, change and complexity, his views about the sacred, the crucial role of the merry trickster…

Music: “Mirage”  (from Vaghissimo Ritratto) by Gianluigi Trovesi

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Dennis McKenna is an American ethnobotanist and ethnopharmacologist. He has authored numerous scientific articles and books, among them - The Invisible Landscape – with his brother Terence McKenna.

Dennis has spent a number of years as a senior lecturer for the Center for Spirituality and Healing, part of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minessota. He is now a senior research scientist for the Natural Health Products Research Group at the British Columbia Istitute of Technology in the Vancouver area.  He is a founding board member of the Heffter Research Institute and serves on the advisory board of non-profit organizations in the fields of ethnobotany and botanical medicines. He recently completed a project, funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, to investigate Amazonian ethnomedicines for the treatment of schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. At the Heffter Research Institute, he continues his focus on the therapeutic uses of psychoactive medicines derived from nature and used in indigenous ethnomedical practices.

http://www.heffter.org/board-mckenna.htm

Dennis’ kickstarter.com Project: The Brotherhood of  The Screaming Abyss

Dennis speaks with Joanna about the KickStarter project of writing a memoir of his experiences with his brother Terence McKenna as a collective effort, the noetic experiment at La Chorrera, teonanacatl and primordial language, following the call of the Mystery…

Music: “Tejido de sueños (Tissue of dreams)” from Nierika, by Jorge Reyes

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This is a replay of a previous interview of Dr. Sahtouris.

Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D. is an evolution biologist, futurist, author, speaker and consultant on Living Systems Design.. Citizen of the USA and Greece, she lives in Spain, where she works with Mallorca Goes Green toward sustainable local economy.  Fellow of the World Business Academy and member of the World Wisdom Council, her post-doctoral fellowship tenure was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; she taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts, was a UN Consultant on indigenous peoples, a science writer for the NOVA-HORIZON TV series, taught in a sustainable business MBA program and organized the Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium in 2008 and another in Kuala Lumpur in 2009.   Her books include: Biology Revisioned, A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us, EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution.

Dr. Sahtouris uses nature’s principles and practice, revealed in biological evolution, as useful models for organizational change. She applies them in the corporate world, in global politics and economics, in our efforts to create sustainable health and well being for humanity within the larger living systems of Earth. She appears in I Am a 2011 documentary film written, narrated, and directed by Tom Shadyac.

www.sahtouris.com

www.iamthedoc.com

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Nora Bateson is a media producer and educator. Her work includes documentaries, multimedia productions, magazine columns, and developing curriculum for elementary and high school students. Central to all her pursuits is the idea of utilizing media and storytelling to encourage cultural understanding, social justice, and environmental awareness. Ms. Bateson has a steadfast dedication to the possibilities of human evolution, starting with encouraging young children to see the interrelatedness of the natural world with that of the “human-made” world using all media.

www.anecologyofmind.com

Nora speaks with Joanna about the process of making the film , the concept of beauty for Gregory Bateson, story as a co-evolving relationship, art and beauty as ways of intimacy with Nature, the perception of life as a “dynamic web of interrelationships”, paradox, play, double bind, the ecological imperative of changing our way of thinking about the world…

Music: soundtrack of  the documentary “An Ecology of Mind” (voice: Nora Bateson,  original music composed and performed by: Dan Brubeck,  Miles Black, Jack Duncan, Rick Kilbourn, and Nora Bateson)

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Tim Ward is the author of the newly released Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess. This is the first book that explores the Goddess from an explicitly male perspective, and how the loss of the feminine divine has affected men and women’s relationships. Tim believes it is in men’s enlightened self interest to work together with women to move beyond patriarchy, and this is the conversation he will engage his audiences in as he shares his experience of exploring Goddess sites and ruins of the ancient Europe throughout 2006-07.

Tim is the author of three previous books: Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess, Arousing the Goddess: Sex and Love in the Buddhist Ruins of India (where he first encountered the Goddess) What the Buddha Never Taught (about life in a Thai Monastery), and the Great Dragon’s Fleas (his search for living Bodhisattvas). He has lectured in colleges and institutions across North America, and all of his books have been used as texts in various schools and universities. Tim has a degree in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia, in his native Canada.

Tim now lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and their two children where he teaches communications courses for international development organizations in Washington D.C. and globally. (See www.intermediact.com for this very different side of his professional life).

http://www.timwardsbooks.com/

Tim speaks with Joanna about his life-changing experiences with the archetypes of the Goddess and the rising awareness of our interconnectedness with the Earth, “what the Buddha never taught”, a new non-patriarchal relationship between fathers and sons, our responsibility in the creation of a new ecological society…

Music: “Prayer to Goddess Saraswati – Raga Kalavati”  by Pt. Shivkumar Sharma

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Camille Adair brings with her more than twenty years of experience in the healing arts, workshop facilitation, hospice and health care. She is an active member of the hospice and palliative health care community, having served as a hospice nurse, educator and professional consultant. She is a pioneer in the field of sustainable health care, integrating medicine with the intimacy of the human experience.

www.camilleadair.com

Camille speaks with Joanna about the film she directed - SOLACE: Wisdom of the Dying -, what she has learned assisting people in the course of their end of life experience, our shared presence, the shadow dynamics of the care giver, death as a natural (transpersonal) process and shared tenderness…

Music: “Her Ute I Moerket” (from  Váli) by Forlatt

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Learn from eight elders whose traditional ways of healing, ceremony, story, sacred song and prophesy will change your relationship with the world. Click here to learn more.

We recommend this event …. Use promo code FUTUREPRIMITIVE to get $80 off the regular price of $375. Please  click here to register.

Desa Van Laarhoven joined the Marion Institute in 2006 after volunteering to organize the first Connecting for Change: A Bioneers by the Bay conference.

She has been the Executive Director since 2007, and works assiduously to oversee and develop the programs and Serendipity projects of the Marion Institute. Desa has her B.A. in Biology with a minor in Environmental Science from Stonehill College. Before her work at the Marion Institute, Desa spent time volunteering for both the Americorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC*) where she was awarded the total commitment award from the southeast campus and the California Conservation Corps (where she lived in the woods for a few months bathing in a stream— seriously;). She firmly believes in the work she does, this passion was recognized in 2009 when she was awarded the Massachusetts SouthCoast Woman of the Year along side the late Senator Edward Kennedy. In addition, Desa spends a few weeks every year in Costa Rica at Rancho Mastatal, a sustainable education center, working to empower the community to live in a more restorative manner.

www.marioninstitute.org

Desa speaks with Joanna about her commitment to the environment through her work as executive director of The Marion Institute, a member based non-profit that acts as an incubator, dedicated to identifying, promoting programs and serendipity projects that seek to find a solution for the root cause of an issue, both on a global and local level, in the realms of sustainability and social justice.

Music: “Second Sense” (from Insides), by Jon Hopkins

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Neal M. Goldsmith, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist specializing in psychospiritual development and resistance to change.

Dr. Goldsmith applies innovative techniques drawn from many schools of thought and traditional practices, such as Psychosynthesis, Imago Relationship Therapy, regressive psychotherapies, Rogerian client-centered counseling, yoga psychology, and other humanistic, transpersonal and eastern traditions.  He facilitates deep life review, awakening to personal history, and life planning, with a special focus on existential and midlife crisis and with young adults suffering from lack of direction or substance abuse.  Dr. Goldsmith is particularly helpful with couples – many feeling “in-love” again after years of vicious cycles.

Author of dozens of popular and scholarly articles, Dr. Goldsmith is a frequent speaker on spiritual emergence, resistance to change, transpersonal psychology, drug policy reform and the post-modern future of society.  He is the author of  Psychedelic Healing – The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development.

www.nealgoldsmith.com

Neal speaks with Joanna about his book Psychedelic Healing, life-changing experiences with the entheogens,  the soul as the “original self”, the psychedelic renaissance, keys of therapeutic change, the reunification between mind-body/ancestral-postmodern/spiritual-scientific…

Music: “Every Person Is One Life” (from How Much Is Yours)  by Arto Tunçboyaciyan & Armenian Navy Band

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Alex Polari de Alverga spent years as a political prisoner during the rule of the military junta in Brazil, enduring torture, brutality, and deprivation. On his release from captivity, he encountered the Santo Daime religion and is currently a padrinho (spiritual father) in the spiritual community of Mapiá. He is author of The Religion of Ayahuasca: The Teachings of the Church of Santo Daime.

www.nossairmandade.com/forest.php

Alex speaks with Joanna about the medicine…

NOTE: This Bioneers 2007 interview is from our unpublished archives. Regular weekly interviews will recommence starting next Friday, April 1, 2011.

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Dr. Jamie K. Reaser is a practitioner and teacher of ecopsychology, nature-based spirituality, and various approaches to expanding human consciousness, as well as a conservation ecologist, poet, writer, artist, and homesteader-in-progress. She has extensive training in leadership development, communications, conflict transformation, dream work, ceremonial design, wilderness rites-of-passage, and group facilitation, and has studied traditional knowledge and healing practices with community and indigenous leaders from around the world.

Jamie has a passion for bringing people into their hearts, inspiring the heartbeat of community, and, ultimately, empowering people to live with a heart-felt dedication to Mother Earth. She serves as a guide for Animas Valley Institute, and makes her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her books, focused on the interface of nature and human nature: She is Editor of the Courting the Wild Series and author of – among others - Huntley Meadows: A Naturalist’s Journal in Verse, and the forthcoming Note to Self: Poems for Changing the World From the Inside Out.

www.jamiekreaser.com

Jamie speaks with Joanna about embracing our woundedness as a rite of passage, ceremony as soul dialogue with Nature, heart consciousness, poetry ans revelation, care taking of humans/Nature, and an invitation to the audience…

Music: “Kadarchynyn Yry/Shepards’ song” (from Five Elements) by Ay-Kherel (Ray of Moonlight)

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Leslie M. Browning is a poet,writer, and longtime student of Religion, Spirituality, Nature, Language and Philosophy as such these themes permeate her work. Raised a Catholic, she studied both the Traditional and Apocrypha doctrine before her spiritual search eventually crossed into the other religions of the world, compelling her to investigate: Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism, Druidry and Shamanism.

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Stanislav Grof, M.D., is a psychiatrist with over fifty years experience researching non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Grof is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a pioneering researcher into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of analysing, healing, and obtaining growth and insight into the human psyche. Being the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (founded in 1977), he went on to become distinguished adjunct faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a position he remains in today.

He has published extensively in professional journals and has written many books including  LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious, Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research (SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology), When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-ordinary Reality, Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy, The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration (SUNY Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology). Click here for the full list of his books.

At the 25th Anniversary Convocation of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (ATP), held in August 1993 at Asilomar, California, Stanislav Grof received an Honorary Award for major contributions to and development of the field of Transpersonal Psychology. Grof received the VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Václav Havel in Prague on October 5, 2007.

www.stanislavgrof.com

www.holotropic.com

Stan speaks with Joanna about his relationship with Nature, the unified worldview emerging from the study of holotropic states of consciousness, working with the archetypes, entheogens and holotropic breathwork as powerful means of transformation, personal experiences versus belief systems, the perils and evolutionary potential of humankind…

Music: Galileo, (from En Concert) by Claire Pelletier

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The renowned anthropologist Jeremy Narby has explored shamanism and plant medicines for over two decades. In his much-admired books, including The Cosmic Serpant and Shamans Through Time, Jeremy has shared his wisdom and insights. For the first time, in this special video teleseminar series produced by Evolver, he will pursue these questions through two exclusive online lectures, and one-on-one discussions with four of the world’s leading experts on the shamanic use of mind-altering plants: Stanislav Grof, Wade Davis, Kat Harrison, and Luis Eduardo Luna.

We highly recommend this event …  please click here to sign up (affiliate link).

Featured Guest on March 27, 2011: Luis Luna.

“My name is ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani, but for the first forty-six years of my life I was called ‘Joseph.’

On January 30, 1997, just about everything in my life changed in a breath. I was no longer the person I’d always thought I was. I agreed on that date to accept my inheritance – and I did it on the strength of faith alone. I have learned how to ask, and how to listen for the answers in the wind and the waves, the rain and the clouds. I learned to wait patiently for my answers. I learned, gradually, to live as our ancestors lived: the Hūnā.

My Grandmothers said: “In every culture on Earth, God gave keys to survival. Hawaiians will return to theirs. It is about reminding every soul what they were given at the beginning of time.” My grandmothers are your grandmothers! People don’t know what they’re capable of. Hawai‘i is the place that’s been called out in prophecy – not Germany, not Alaska – it’s here. But our people don’t have a starting line or a finishing line. It spreads from here: bringing people together to acknowledge something larger than ourselves. I’m not a healer – I promote a return to Source. Huliau: The time is now.”

Inette Miller ‘Īmaikalani has been an international journalist and authored her entire adult life. For many years she has taught a writing workshop. She’d been a single mother for thirteen years, when on vacation from her family’s home, she met ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani. Their destined meeting took place at an ancient heiau – a sacred ancestral gathering spot – on Kaua‘i, at sunrise on Christmas morning, ten months after ‘Iokepa abandoned every scrap of material wealth for his “Walk of faith.”

She has written the story of her overwhelming immersion into the authentic kanaka maoli culture in the book: GRANDMOTHERS WHISPER: Ancient Voices – Timeless Wisdom – A Modern Love Story.

ReturnVoyage.com

Inette and ‘Iokepa speak with Joanna about their powerful spiritual pilgrimage and life of service to the aboriginal Hawaiian people and land, the true freedom, the retrieval of our ancestral roots, the deep listening to the inner guidance, the reconciliation of the feminine and the masculine, …

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