Embodiment Matters is an ongoing, rich conversation about what it really means to be embodied, and why and how embodiment matters so much in our daily lives and in our world. Our guests include wise and insightful teachers from the realms of somatics, Buddhism, meditation, social justice, psychotherapy, movement arts, bodywork, martial arts, neuroscience, environmentalists, indigenous teachers, and more. In our conversations, we explore a wide range of topics around waking up and being…
In this episode, we follow a river of a conversation that is a meeting of two beautiful souls, Pat McCabe and Jaiya John. We three, (Carl, Erin and Alexandre) have been deeply moved and influenced by Pat and Jaiya's writings, and presence, and work in the world, and we were inspired to host a conversation introducing these elders, who each carries such potent medicine for our times. Together, Pat…
Practices of Reconnection and Remembrance and Why They Matter: A Conversation With Carl Rabke and Erin Geesaman Rabke Greetings listener friends, we are so grateful to have you join us for this deep conversation about practices of Reconnection & Remembrance and Why They Matter. This is the third in a series of podcasts on Practices of Presence, Practices of Depth and Soul, and Practice of…
Practices of Depth and Soul and Why They Matter: A Conversation with Erin Geesaman Rabke and Carl Rabke Greetings, listener friends! We are delighted to share this conversation , the second in a series of three podcasts we're releasing during January 2026. The first is on practices of presence . The second, (this conversation) is on practices of depth and soul . The third will be on practices of…
In this podcast, we dive into one of our favorite topics: practices of presence and why they matter. This is the first in a series of three podcasts on practices of presence, practices of depth and soul, and practices of reconnection and remembrance, and why they each matter. These three interweaving spheres and practices are the foundation of the curriculum for our 13-month Refugia training…
In this conversation, we speak with ritualist, healer, and rites of passage facilitator, Kedar Brown, founder and director of the Rites of Passage Council. Our conversation meanders through a variety of soulful topics. Kedar opens the conversation with a beautiful prayer and invocation. We speak of what it means to live in a good way, to become who we are meant to be, and give our gifts to the…
Greetings listener friends! This is a re-release of a conversation we had with writer, teacher and soul activist, Francis Weller in 2020. We are releasing some of our favorite conversations that are connected with the themes we will be exploring in our 13-month mentoring training, Refugia , which begins in February 2026. Francis will be one of the guest teachers, along with Rosemerry Wahtola…
In this episode, our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun, interviews us! Alexandre had noticed that over these last six years of the Embodiment Matters podcast, and us (Carl and Erin) interviewing so many extraordinary teachers and luminaries, that you, our dear listers, had not heard so much from us about our work, and the soul medicine we carry. So, Alexandre reached out and asked to…
Greetings listener friends! We are excited to share this conversation with Dr. Jaiya John . This is the second episode in the Men of Depth and Soul series that Carl is hosting with our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun. Jaiya is an incredible poet, writer, teacher, and human being and the founder of Soul Water Rising press. as he writes on his website: "My lifelong calling and work is…
In this conversation, we begin a new sub-series of the Embodiment Matters podcast, Men of Depth and Soul , where Carl and our dear friend and colleague, Alexandre Jodun will be hosting interviews around what is being asked of men in these times. We begin the series with our friend and mentor, Francis Weller. Francis is a psychotherapist, soul-activist, and author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow:…
We are so excited to share this podcast with the amazing poet and human, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. As Erin mentions in the intro, you might want to have some tissues handy, as we dive right into the deep end, and the conversation is filled with tenderness and beauty. In our conversation, Rosemerry reads some of her gorgeous poems, and we move through many rich themes including grief and…
Friends, we are delighted to share this conversation with two beautiful Earth-loving humans, John Seed and Skye Cielita Flor. John is a long-time Earth activist, writer, teacher, musician, who, along side Joanna Macy, helped to grow the body of work called Experiential Deep Ecology or The Work that Reconnects. Skye is a teacher, folk herbalist, plant medicine ritualist, mama, and friend with whom…
In this conversation, we speak with our friend and teacher, Cynthia Jurs, along with our dear friend and cohost, Leilani Navar, of The Turning Season Podcast. Cynthia recently published Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing our World , which is a wisdom book for our times. As both of us have shared, this book is an extraordinary weaving of spiritual biography, riveting travel…
Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, Body as Sacred Land In this conversation between dear friends Erin of Embodiment Matters & Leilani Navar of Turning Season https://turningseason.com/ we dive into rich topics which we'll be exploring in some upcoming online offerings. Beauty as Ballast, Grief as Guide, and Body as Sacred Land. We also delve into the 5 Vows of the Great turning as articulated by…
In this conversation/ transmission we were so honored to hear Dr. Jaiya John pour forth from the depths of his heart and soul in a way that can't help but touch your own. We were blessed to hear from Jaiya about his background and how he went from being shy and voiceless to a fully-dilated voice for Love. We were blessed to hear him read passages from several of his extraordinary books including…
Dear friends, It is such a pleasure to share this conversation with Zuza Gonçalves. I met Zuza at the Bobby McFerrin Circlesongs School, and was so moved by his presence, his kindness, the way he moved around the room, and how he led us in movement, song and body-percussion. It felt to me like original human music. Zuza has been exploring alternative ways to collective music making for more than…
Embodying Maitri: The Essential Ingredient with Erin Geesaman Rabke We're delighted to share with you this podcast where Erin speaks about the practice of Maitri. Maitri is a Sanskrit word often translated as "lovingkindness" but several teachers in our lineage have gone further, naming it "courageous unconditional friendliness," or "brave warmheartedness." In this episode, Erin speaks about the…
In this conversation, Carl speaks with John Wolfstone. John is third-generation settler, working on the Traditional and Unceded territory of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok Peoples. His blood and bones hold Hebraic, Norse and Celtic ancestry, and his spirit is from the Stars. As a wilderness rites-of-passage guide, ritualist, community consultant, relationship coach, and transmedia story-teller,…
Embodying Reverent Relationship with Marika Heinrichs What a pleasure to speak with Marika Heinrichs of Wildbody.ca about somatics, lineages, respect and repair - and what a delight to have such a rich and tender conversation in Rumi's field that sits outside of any rigid and fixed ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing. I hope you enjoy this important conversation. Marika Heinrichs is the…
Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients.…
Animal Body, Deep Time and The Thing We All Long For: A Conversation with Josh Schrei Friends, we are delighted to share this recent conversation with Josh Schrei. Joshua Michael Schrei is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast. The Emerald combines evocative narrative, soul-stirring music, and interviews with award-winning authors and luminaries to explore the human experience through a…
Tipping The Scales Toward Love & Goodness In this beautiful conversation with poet, writer, and teacher Mark Nepo, we begin exploring Mark's beautiful take on what it means to be embodied. Throughout the conversation, we were blessed with Mark's soulful readings of several of our favorites of his poems. We discuss how care can erase the walls we keep building between us, and how using our…
Embodying Prayer and Soul Activism In this beautiful conversation, I speak to poet, facilitator and soul activist Nan Seymour, who also happens to be one of my dearest friends. We take as a springboard for our conversation Nan's recently published book of poems called prayers not meant for heaven. Nan weaves several of her poems throughout the conversation and they're beautiful. We talk about…
Liam Bowler is a teacher, writer, father, bodyworker and hosts the Body Awake Podcast. He is the author of A Creator's Companion, a beautiful book that explores the many elements of the process of creativity. In our conversation, we speak about embodiment, and embodiment as relationship, and how each of our understandings of embodiment has evolved over the years. We reflect together about…
Ariella is a beekeeper, writer, teacher, musician and mother living in Northern California. Her work with honey bees came through a lifelong interest in human connection with the non-human world. She is a graduate of the Lyceum, a European shamanic pathway with the bee and the serpent as its central motifs. Within this tradition, she is trained in the healing and seership modality known as the…
We Were Made For These Times : A conversation with Kaira Jewel Lingo In this conversation with Kaira, we explore many rich topics including: embodiment and mindfulness as not separate her new book We Were Made For These Times the practice of coming home to ourselves applying these teachings in the mess of real life rather than just a monastic situation social justice and mindfulness and how each…
In this rich conversation with wise woman Pat McCabe we explore many topics including embodiment as a core practice of decolonization and her trouble with the word "decolonizing" healing after cultural severance through Indian boarding schools in family history and the power of growing a multi-faceted identity the importance of including the body in prayer (in her case through sweat lodge…
Embodying Spontaneity: A Conversation With Jozef Frucek of Fighting Monkey In conversation, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Jozef Frucek. He and Linda Kapetanea are the creators of Fighting Monkey, which is a beautiful system that weaves together movement, learning, communication, creativity, improvisation and a re-imagination of the process and experience of aging. Jozef has studied…
I Wish You Heartbreak - An Exploration of the 19 Ways with Deena Metzger We're so grateful and honored to begin the 3rd season of the Embodiment Matters podcast by sharing with you this rich conversation with wise elder Deena Metzger. A poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over fifty years, in the process of which she has…
Greetings Listener friends, We are delighted to share with you our recent conversation with Langston Kahn. Langston Kahn is a black, queer teacher and shamanic practitioner who specializes in radical human transformation, ancestral healing, and restoring an authentic relationship with our emotions. He stands firmly at the crossroads; his practice informed by somatic modalities, contemporary…
We're so grateful to be able to share this inspired conversation with the amazing Sherri Mitchell, Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset. We absolutely love her book, Sacred Instructions, and highly recommend it! While we only touched on a fraction of the questions we wanted to ask Sherri, we did explore many rich topics together, including Her beautiful perspective on embodiment How we come to recognize our power…
Embodiment & Social Justice We shared such a potent and enlivening conversation with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Dr. Scott Lyons. In this conversation we talk about an upcoming training they are hosting called the Embodied Social Justice Certification Program. So of course, we talked about some of our favorite topics - embodiment, social justice, soft-bellies, the highly contagious nature of…
What a powerful conversation we shared, exploring Plotkin's new book, the Journey of Soul Initiation as well as his vast body of work. Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural regeneration. As founder of western Colorado's Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of seekers through nature-based initiatory passages, including a…
I'm so thrilled to share this episode with you, dear listeners, in which I have the privilege of interviewing one of my hero-writers, Kathleen Dean Moore, whose 2016 book Great Tide Rising: T oward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change was life-changing for me. In this moving conversation, we explore the extinction crisis, what love really means, the importance of facing grief…
Friends, we are thrilled to be able to share our recent interview with the incredible Cynthia Jurs with you. Before sharing her official bio, I want to tell you that I find Cynthia to be one of the most moving human beings I've met in a very long time. Her humility, her wisdom, her bone-deep dedication to healing the Earth and fostering awakening in herself and others is truly awe-inspiring. I…
In this episode, Carl speaks with Ian MacKenzie, host of the Mythic Masculine Podcast. Ian MacKenzie is a filmmaker, speaker, and writer who lives on the Salish Sea with his partner and son. His films include Lost Nation Road , Amplify Her , Sacred Economics , Prayer to the Earth, an Indigenous Response to These Times. For more than decade, Ian has been tracking the global emergence of new…
Uncommon Considerations in the Anthropocene An Interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe Friends, we're thrilled to share with you this most recent interview with our dear friend, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo is a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor, proud diaper changer, and passionate about the preposterous. He's a thinker and speaker unlike any you've met before. Born and raised in Nigeria, Bayo…
A Mythic Response to Our Times In this profoundly deep and freewheeling conversation we cover so much soulful ground. We begin with one of our favorite topics that Michael Meade has been teaching on for years: Your innate genius. He tells of the origins of his teaching about genius with severely at-risk youth, and about how in honoring our unique genius we are all equal, across race, class, and…
Hello, listener friends! We're delighted to share with you our most recent conversation with our dear friend and mentor, Francis Weller, psychotherapist, soul-activist, and author of the life-changing book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, as well as a newly released book of essays which we discuss in this interview. It is titled: In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty and is…
Hello, listener friends! We're delighted to share with you our most recent conversation with our dear friend and mentor, Francis Weller, psychotherapist, soul-activist, and author of the life-changing book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, as well as a newly released book of essays which we discuss in this interview. It is titled: In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty and is…
We had such an enlivening conversation with Steven which we're so excited to share with you! In this conversation we talk about Steven's history - which included leaving civilization as a young man to live in the wild and forage to sustain himself. He eventually felt called to returned to civilization, pursued higher education and eventually growing food and medicines in new/old ways. He offers a…
Friends, I had such an inspiring and useful conversation with Jan Dworkin! I loved her unique and powerful definition of embodiment. We spoke about human relationships in so many ways - what makes a "successful relationship" (hint - not just one that lasts forever.) We spoke about relationships as ground for profound learning, and that "learners can never be losers." Of course we spoke about…
We had such a lovely and enlivening conversation with beautiful Brooke McNamara, who is a gifted poet, dance-theater artist, zen monk, teacher and mama, and whose poetry we ADORE. In this conversation, we talk about embodiment as a line between suffering and wellbeing. We explore many topics including ensoulment, the importance of creative process for its own sake, about parenting during this time…
Oh friends, this is such a rich conversation that I'm thrilled to share with you. I (Erin) had the great pleasure of speaking with award-winning writer, Dr. Sharon Blackie, whose written work and online courses I've adored over the past several years. She's the author of several books including If Women Rose Rooted, The Enchanted Life, and her latest, Foxfire Wolfskin. She's an internationally…
In this episode, Carl speaks with Erwan Le Corre. Erwan is the founder of MovNat, which is a system of movement and embodied learning that helps people to grow the movement skills, physiological preparedness, and mindsets for practical, adaptable participation in the world. In our conversation we explore what Natural Movement is, and why it is so valuable in these times. We look at the challenges…
In this episode, Erin speaks with three trainers of The Work That Reconnects: Mutima Imani, Molly Brown, and Constance Washburn. We explore an overview of this pioneering body of work that includes Deep Ecology, Systems Thinking, and Buddhist practices, developed by root teacher Joanna Macy. We explore the three stories of our times: Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling, and The Great Turning,…
In this episode I speak with my dear friend, Sunny Rose Healey, Ayurvedic practitioner and teacher. In this episode we talk about: • a basic introduction to Ayurveda • 4 wise questions to ask to know if a particular regimen is good for you • tuning into natural rhythms in our days and through the seasons • the importance of digesting not only our food and drink, but every experience that comes our…
In this episode we speak with Stephen Jenkinson. Stephen is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. He has written several books, including Die Wise: A Manifesto For Sanity and Soul, and Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in Times of Trouble. In this conversation we speak about Stephen's Nights Of Grief and Mystery tour that is coming to…
In this, our second conversation with Francis Weller, we once again have a wonderful, deep conversation covering many soulful topics, including: Letting go of searching for an answer, and instead leaning into our own unique response to these times. We talk about the cognitive and soul dissonance of information overload. Francis describes The Five Gates of Grief (if you haven't been introduced to…
Oh, what a shimmering, gorgeous, living, and enlivening conversation with one of the great embodied thinkers of our time! We loved interviewing David Abram and know you'll enjoy this episode in which we explore, through David's unique and gorgeous way with language, ways to be embodied and fully alive in our over-civilized world. We explore ideas about our use of language and the possibilities for…
Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW, is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the non-profit, Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. Lochteaches in a non-sectarian human being lineage using an adult education style based in the earliest non-dual wisdom traditions, modern science and psychotherapy. He is the author of Shift Into Freedom, and most recently The Way of Effortless Mindfulness.…
