Episodes

  • Dangerous Wonder - Dialogue with Coltrane Lord, Foundress of the Wonderland Project
    Jun 19 2025

    Coltrane Lord is a Psychedelic Integration Specialist, Artist-Healer, and Foundress of Wonderland Project, a nonprofit organization that connects marginalized women who suffer PTSD due to domestic violence, rape, or sexual exploitation to trauma informed psychedelic plant medicines care and integration.

    Coltrane is interested in the intersection of spirituality and science, ancient wisdom for modern times, and how our unique perspectives can merge to elevate the soul of humanity & reverence for the planet.

    More in depth info:

    wonderlandproject.love

    lordcoltrane.com

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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Derrick Jensen on Postmodernism and His First European Tour
    Mar 21 2025

    Writer Derrick Jensen joins us to discuss politics, ecology, and philosophy.

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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • Transcending Trauma with the LoveWisdom of Spacious Mind - with Sara E. Lewis, PhD, LCSW
    Oct 31 2024

    Is trauma real? In what sense? These questions don't in any way deny the real suffering of people diagnosed with trauma. Instead, they ask how we might take a broader and deeper look at trauma, in order to heal and transcend it. How can we do better in reducing the emergence of traumatizing experiences, and how can we do better in supporting ourselves and other in healing from these experiences, and opening up new possibilities for evolutionary learning?

    In her book Spacious Minds, anthropologist and clinical psychologist Sara E. Lewis invites us to see that resilience is not a mere absence of suffering. Sara's research reveals how those who cope most gracefully may indeed experience deep pain and loss. Looking at the Tibetan diaspora, she challenges perspectives that liken resilience to the hardiness of physical materials, suggesting people should "bounce back" from adversity. More broadly, this ethnography calls into question the tendency to use trauma as an organizing principle for all studies of conflict where suffering is understood as an individual problem rooted in psychiatric illness.

    Beyond simply articulating the ways that Tibetan categories of distress are different from biomedical ones, Spacious Minds shows how Tibetan Buddhism frames new possibilities for understanding resilience. Here, the social and religious landscape encourages those exposed to violence to see past events as impermanent and illusory, where debriefing, working-through, or processing past events only solidifies suffering and may even cause illness. Resilience in Dharamsala is understood as sems pa chen po, a vast and spacious mind that does not fixate on individual problems, but rather uses suffering as an opportunity to generate compassion for others in the endless cycle of samsara. A big mind view helps to see suffering in life as ordinary. And yet, an intriguing paradox occurs. As Lewis deftly demonstrates, Tibetans in exile have learned that human rights campaigns are predicated on the creation and circulation of the trauma narrative; in this way, Tibetan activists utilize foreign trauma discourse, not for psychological healing, but as a political device and act of agency.

    Sara Lewis, PhD, LCSW is co-founder and Director of Training and Research at Naropa University's Center for Psychedelic Studies. Sara earned her PhD at Columbia University in medical anthropology and public health; her research sits at the intersection of religion, culture and healing with an emphasis on non-ordinary states. As a Fulbright scholar, she conducted long term ethnographic research in India, culminating in her book, Spacious Minds: Trauma and Resilience in Tibetan Buddhism, which investigates how Buddhist concepts of mind shape traumatic memory and pathways to resilience. As a contemplative psychotherapist, she specializes in intergenerational trauma and healing through Somatic Experiencing and psychedelic-assisted therapy.

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    1 hr and 15 mins
  • The Story Is in Our Bones - How Worldviews and Ecological Justice Can Remake Our World - Dialogue with Osprey Orielle Lake
    Jul 24 2024

    The dominant cultural worldview is based upon extraction and exploitation practices that have brought us to the precipice of social, environmental, and climate collapse. Braiding poetic storytelling, climate justice and deep cultural analyses, and the collective knowledge of Earth-centered cultures, The Story is in Our Bones opens a portal to restoration and justice beyond the end of a world in crisis.

    Author, activist, and changemaker Osprey Orielle Lake weaves together ecological, mythical, political, and cultural understandings and shares her experiences working with global leaders, systems-thinkers, climate justice activists, and Indigenous Peoples. She seeks to summon a new way of being and thinking in the Anthropocene, which includes transforming the interlocking crises of colonialism, racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and ecocide, to build thriving Earth communities for all.

    Lake calls forth historical memory of who we are in the Earth's lineage to bring into being the world we keenly long for, at the delicate threshold of great peril or great promise.

    For anyone grieving our collective loss and wanting to take action, The Story is in Our Bones is a vital guide to remaking our world. This hopeful, engaging, and creatively lyrical work reminds readers that another world is possible, and provides a desperately needed antidote to the pervasive despair of our time.

    Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). She works internationally with grassroots, BIPOC and Indigenous leaders, policymakers, and diverse coalitions to build climate justice, resilient communities, and a just transition. She sits on the executive committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and on the steering committee for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. 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 other publications. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area on Coast Miwok lands.

    To learn more, go to:

    https://ospreyoriellelake.earth

    www.wecaninternational.org

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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Soothing Sounds, Timeless Wisdom - Drukmlo Gyal, the Victorious Dragon Woman of Mantra and Song
    Jul 12 2024

    A super special episode with the magical yogini Drukmo Gyal, a sonic shaman and practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism who bridges Tibetan traditions and global healing. Born into a family of Ngakpas in the culturally rich Amdo region of Tibet, Drukmo Gyal's life has been steeped in the practices of mantra and meditation from a young age. Growing up in a diverse community in Rebgong, she was immersed in an environment where spiritual practices were a daily ritual.

    Her journey in traditional healing began with studies in Tibetan medicine in Amdo, after which she furthered her expertise by working for Sorig Khang Estonia (EATTM) and studying under Dr. Nida Chenatsang, a renowned Tibetan physician and lineage holder of the Yuthok Nyingthig - the spiritual healing tradition of Tibetan Medicine.

    Combining her passion for singing with her knowledge of Tibetan medicine, she has sought to create healing concerts that nurture the body, speech, and mind. She has collaborated with musicians worldwide, producing five albums of Tibetan Healing Mantras and Prayers, and she has shared her work in over 30 countries through concerts, lectures, and courses.

    Drukmo Gyal also serves as an international teacher and guide for Sorig Khang International and as the lead organizer of SKY Estonia. Their team is committed to establishing a Tibetan Medicine Healing & Education Centre in Estonia to bring this ancient wisdom to the Baltic states and Finland, focusing on learning, healing, and cultural exchange.

    https://www.drukmogyal.com/

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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • The Backward Step - Getting Unstuck by Moving Forward and Backward at the Same Time
    Jun 24 2024

    An essential aspect of philosophy or LoveWisdom: How do we move forward in our lives? Maybe you have some problem or challenge in your personal life, or in your professional life. Or maybe you can sense the general stuckness of humanity, and maybe you even take that to be your own stuckness. Given all the confusion of the world, all the fear and uncertainty within our own soul and in the soul of the world, how can we find genuinely creative and beautiful ways to cultivate our lives forward, and cultivate the life of the world forward at the same time?

    It turns out we can only move forward in the most vitalizing and liberating ways if we also move backward at the same time. It’s an aspect of one of the basic paradoxes of LoveWisdom, and we’re going to explore it in today’s episode.

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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • The Artefact: Holographic Habits and Healing, Part 1
    Jun 11 2024

    The Artefact: Holographic Habits and Healing, Part 1

    We inquire into the nature of habit and freedom, the meaning of life, and how we can do our jobs and live together while feeling good in our mind, heart, and body, and feeling good about ourselves, about how we are living and loving.

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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Summoned by the Earth - Dialogue with Earth Bodhisattva Cynthia Jurs on Becoming a Holy Healing Vessel for Our World
    Jun 1 2024

    Dialogue with a spiritual visionary. Cynthia Jurs experienced that almost comical spiritual archetypal pattern of meeting a wise old yogi in a mountain cave. She thought long and hard about what to ask him. His reply sent her on a remarkable spiritual pilgrimage.

    In this very special episode of Dangerous Wisdom, Cynthia shares her incredible journey, which she documents in her book, Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World. This is one of my favorite guests!

    Cynthia Jurs received Dharmacharya transmission from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh to become a teacher in his Order of Interbeing in 1994. In 2018, she was made an honorary lama in the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in recognition of her thirty years of pilgrimage into diverse communities and ecosystems around the world to carry out the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Practice. Today Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia that is deeply rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous cultures, and devoted to collective awakening. Cynthia leads meditations, retreats, courses, and pilgrimages to support the emergence of a global community of engaged and embodied sacred activists.

    You can find her teachings and connect with her global community at: www.GaiaMandala.net

    and learn about her book at: www.summonedbytheearth.org


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    1 hr and 33 mins
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