Future Primitive

Speaker at Bioneers By The Bay Connecting For Change (2011)

Destined from birth to teach the ancient wisdom, ritual and practices of her ancestors to those in the West, Sobonfu, whose name means “keeper of the rituals” travels the world on a healing mission sharing the rich spiritual life and culture of her native land Burkina Faso, which ranks as one of the world’s poorest countries yet one of the richest in spiritual life and custom.

It is this reliance on spirit, community and ritual that has allowed Sobonfu’s personal and professional path to become one. Since the beginning of her journey in the West Sobonfu has traveled extensively throughout North America and Europe, conducting workshops on spirituality, ritual, the sacred and intimacy.

Sobonfu has written two books, The Spirit of Intimacy, and Welcoming Spirit Home, her newest offering which draws on rituals and practices involving community, birth miscarriage and children.

www.sobonfu.com

www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change

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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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This is a part two of our interview with Richard Doyle.

Click here to listen to part one of this interview.

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Richard Doyle earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. He was the Mellon Post Doctoral Fellow in History and Social Science of the Life Sciences at MIT in 1993. Professor of Rhetoric, Doyle holds appointments in English, Science Technology & Society and the College of Information Science and Technology at Penn State University and was Visiting Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric in 2003.

Doyle teaches courses in the history and rhetoric of emerging technosciences – sustainability, space colonization, biotechnology, nanotechnology, psychedelic science, information technologies, biometrics – and the cultural and literary contexts from which they sprout. Professor Doyle has published two books: On Beyond Living: Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences (Stanford, 1997) and Wetwares:Experiments in PostVital Living( Minnesota, 2003) – in a putative trilogy about emerging transhuman knowledges. These knowledges and practices, linked to molecular biology, artificial life, nanotechnology, psychedelic and information technologies render the experiential distinctions between living systems and machines frequently dubious and often indiscernible. This excited and confused rhetorical membrane between humans and an informational universe nonetheless broadcasts a clear message: humans, in co-evolution with the technical matrices transforming the planet, find themselves in an evolutionary ecology that is as urgent as it is experimental.

Continuing his collaborative work on the “transhuman imperative”, Doyle ( aka mobius) has now completed the trilogy with a scholarly book about archaic and contemporary psychedelic media technologies and the evolution of mind: The Ecodelic Hypothesis: Plants, Rhetoric and the Evolution of The Noösphere, currently in press with University of Washington. Other current projects include a book, Admixtures: Dialogues After Genomics with Anthropologist Mark Shriver. The Admixtures Project has grown The Penn State Center for Altered Consciousness, currently investigating the genetics and phenomenology of legally altered consciousness with the help of a flotation tank.

Doyle directed the Penn State Composition Program from 2004-2006, and serves as Expert, Wetwares and Human/Machine interaction for international organizations and a volunteer to the Penn State Center for Sustainability. More about mobius’ work and teaching can be found by browsing his web site.

Richard speaks with Joanna about language and the ecstasy of creativity, ego-death as a revelatory practice, eco-humility, Timothy Leary, freedom & Imagination…

Introductory music: “Amazon Beginnings” (At Play In The Fields Of The Lord, soundtrack) by Zbigniew Preisner

You can listen to PART TWO of this interview here.

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Patricia Flasch is an author, a soul and depth coach and a business catalyst who has always been fascinated by the discovery of her own soul and she has spent a lifetime passing on her learning to the countless students she has encountered over the years. Her practice includes writing, counseling, coaching, mentoring, ministry, and workshop facilitation.

Patricia has just published her first book, Becoming a Love Dog: From Emptiness to Tenderness. In this book, Patricia offers support to live your life more fully, tenderly, honestly, skillfully, passionately, and authentically. She shares how you can ease your heartache by learning to cope with life with a growing emotional maturity.

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Miriam Sagan is the author of over twenty books, including a memoir, Searching for a Mustard Seed : A Young Widow’s Unconventional Story (Winner best Memoir from Independent Publishers, 2004). Her poetry includes Rag Trade, The Widow’s Coat), and The Art of Love.

Sagan directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College, and has taught at the College of Santa Fe, University of New Mexico, Taos Institute of the Arts, Aspen Writer’s Conference, around the country, and on line for writers.com and UCLA Extension. She has held residency grants at Yaddo and MacDowell, and is the recipient of a grant from The Barbara Deming Foundation/Money for Women and a Lannan Foundation Marfa Residency.

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