Healing Culture Podcast

This is a short epilogue to the Healing Culture Podcast in which host Eric Garza announces that his new podcast, Embracing Apocalypse, is not live. Enjoy it!

In this solo episode Eric talks about planetary boundaries and a few of these boundaries human society seems to be flirting with, about apocalypse and what it means to live in a time of endings when many truths are being revealed, and about the value of being adaptable. This is the final episode of the Healing Culture Podcast, and Eric also talks about why he decided to wrap the show up.

Epiphany Jordan wrote the book Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person’s Guide to Nurturing Human Touch, and has been offering Karuna sessions since 2013. She talks with Eric about the consequences of adults being so touch-deprived, the differences between platonic and romantic touch, consent, and getting our touch needs met, among other things.

Sandor Katzis an author of several books about food and fermentation, among them Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation. He has taught hundreds of workshops demystifying fermentation and empowering people to reclaim this important transformational process. He talks with Eric about what fermentation is with respect to food processing, about the many benefits it offers, and how it begs us to rethink our broader relationships to bacteria and other microorganisms, among other things.

Dare Sohei is an animist counselor-facilitator and expressive artist work spirals around the integration of animist/indigenous lifeways with liberatory anti-oppression politics and trauma-informed somatic counseling. They talk with Eric about why so many people struggle to face death in mainstream society, co-regulating with death, working with fragility, contending with collapse, and how grief is just the beginning of healing, among other things.

Nala Walla weaves a holistic approach to wellness as a practitioner of ancestral healing, grief recovery, nutritional therapy, and permaculture design. She talks with Eric about prayer as a connective versus coercive tool, the importance of doing ancestor work, prayer and grieving as a skill, awakening our indigeneity, and wellness practices she recommends, among other things.

Carolyn Baker is a former psychotherapist and professor of psychology and history. She is also an author, and her most recent book, with Andrew Harvey, is Saving Animals From Ourselves: Healing the Divine Animal Within. She talks with Eric about our connection to animals, how our deep-seated shame estranges us from the animal kingdom, coming to grips with extinction, and finding meaning in troubling times, among other things.

Lisa Masé grew up in Italy, manages her business and website Harmonized Cookery, and advocates for food as medicine, social justice, and food sovereignty. She talks with Eric about what wild and local foods she has been eating lately, harmonizing our diet with our genetic heritage, keeping up with the latest microbiome research, engaging with physicians, and intuitive eating, among other things.

Dr. David Campt is a speaker and media analyst who founded and facilitates workshops on his White Ally Toolkit. He is also an author, and wrote the Compassionate Warrior Bootcamp for White Allies, among other books. He talks with Eric about the limitations of the privilege framework in anti-racism dialog, how focusing on terminology can undermine our ability to effectively communicate, and his RACE method for anti-racist engagement, among other things.

Jason Prall is a speaker, health educator, and practitioner who produced, with others, the 9-part documentary series The Human Longevity Project. He talks with Eric about the impact trauma can have on our personal health and wellness, the importance of differentiating our behavioral patterns from our sense of self, and the value of indigenous wisdom, among other things.

Arthur Haines is a botanist and human ecologist who speaks and educates about the health benefits of wild edible and medicinal plants. He is also an author, and most recently wrote A New Path. He talks with Eric about what wild plant foods he has been gathering recently, the many benefits of gathering and eating wild plants collected in our local areas, and the ethics of harvesting wild plant foods for personal use and commercial sale, among other things.

Tada Hozumi coaches and consults on the practice of cultural somatics and manages the website Selfish Activist. They talk with Eric about the political implications of cultural somatics, universal basic income, cult dynamics, and how ancestral trauma contributes to behavioral patterns, and punitive versus restorative systems of justice, among other things.

Robert Schicker is a therapist in Vermont who specializes in working with people navigating the evolving landscape of what it means to be a man. He talks with Eric about what attracted him to men’s work, the differences between being masculine versus being a man, about internalized homophobia and the importance of platonic touch, and about retraining our instinctive responses to stress, among other things.

In this solo episode Eric reflects on Jem Bendell’s essay Deep Adaptation and how many of our social and environmental predicaments are rooted in the trauma that our cultural body has accumulated. He talks about our stress response and how it gives rise to trauma, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 6 stages of grief, and why modern activism should center the healing of trauma.

Emma Redden is a preschool teacher in Vermont with a background in race, gender, and justice. She wrote the book Power Means Who The Police Believe: Talking With Young Children About Race and Racial Violence. She talks with Eric about the inspirations behind her book, the intricacies of addressing challenging topics with young children, and about fear, among other things.

Rebecca Young Allen is an ordained inter-faith clergy, a spiritual and emotional healer, a certified Focusing practitioner, and a nature lover, gardener, and homesteader. She talks with Eric about the healing practice of Focusing, leads him through a Focusing practice, and they debrief the experience afterwards.

Taína Asili is a Puerto Rican singer, songwriter, activist, and filmmaker who has been creating fiercely political music since her teen years. Her newest album, Resiliencia, was released in mid-April 2019. She talks with Eric about the story behind her most recent album and some of its tracks, colonialism and politics, and the healing power of music, among other things.

Tad Hargrave blogs at Healing From Whiteness, writes for the Facebook page Dear White Men, and wrestles with the complicated and thorny mess that is whiteness, white privilege and white guilt. He talks with Eric about how white shame and guilt make the ideology of white supremacy appealing, how our modern construction of race prevents people from seeing whiteness as the fictions it is, and how learning the nuances of our ancestry grounds us, among other things.

Clelia Rodriguez is an author, mother, knitter, gardener, and educator born and raised in El Salvador. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at colleges and universities around the world, and wrote the book Decolonizing Academia: Poverty, Oppression, and Pain. She talks with Eric about what it means to decolonize academia, the oppressiveness of grading, and how teaching is political work, among other things.

Karl Haloj is a polyglot linguist whose areas of expertise include romance, Celtic, and Iroquoian languages, language acquisition, language pedagogy, and critical discourse analysis. He talks with Eric about the differences between American indigenous languages and Indo-European languages, how learning new languages can help people appreciate other cultures, and the nuances of identity, among other things.

Tada Hozumi coaches and consults on the practice of cultural somatics, wrote the viral essay Why White People Can’t Dance: Because They Are Traumatized, and manages the website Selfish Activist. They talk with Eric about cultural somatics, ancestral trauma and how it is passed down through generations, and the need for white activists to prioritize regulating their nervous systems, among other things.

Larken Bunce is a clinical herbalist, educator, gardener, writer, and photographer who co-founded and directs the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism. She talks with Eric about the physiological and neurological bases of our stress response, how stress becomes trauma, how we can learn to better regulate our stress response, and how plant medicine can offer a path through trauma, among other things.

Aaron Johnson lives in a self-made 13 x 13 ft earth dome in Southern California, and is a singer, photographer and filmmaker who uses these media, and others, to dismantle racism. He talks with Eric about why so many people in the ‘civilized’ world are chronically undertouched and about the consequences of this more generally and in the social justice realm.

Tad Hargrave blogs at Healing From Whiteness and writes for the Facebook page Dear White Men. He wrestles withthe complicated and thorny mess that is whiteness, white privilege and white guilt. He talks with Eric about the traumatic roots of racial whiteness, the role that culture plays in metabolizing trauma, the twin wings of privilege and poverty, and deification of trauma as a defense mechanism, among other things.

Sherri Mitchell is an attorney who speaks and teaches around the world on issues of indigenous rights, environmental justice, and spiritual change and author of the book Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. She talks with Eric about the Wabenaki legend of the Cannibal Giant, the connection between overconsumption and trauma, and waking up to the pervasive grief of patriarchal colonialism, among other things.

Darcy Ottey has guided hundreds of people through initiatory experiences, and co-founded Youth Passageways, a network dedicated to helping young people transition into mature adulthood in these transition times. She talks with Eric about the genesis of Youth Passageways, the consequences of a lack of rites of passage for Western youth, cultural appropriation, and how rites of passages are becoming commodities, among other things.

Lyla June is a poet, musician, human ecologist, public speaker and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages. She talks with Eric about the links between food revitalization and language revitalization, how food production is tied to land protection, the power structure that food creates, the brittleness of industrial food, and learning the lessons of collapse, among other things.

Rebecca Young Allen is an ordained inter-faith clergy, a spiritual and emotional healer, a certified Focusing practitioner, and a nature lover, gardener, and homesteader. She talks with Eric about the challenges many people have with endings in relationships, trauma patterns, the poison of the good and bad duality, shadow work, the value of sometimes running towards the roar, and matrimorphy, among other things.

Jason Hirsch is an anthropologist with a particular interest in Western herbalism and its relationships and tensions operating alongside mainstream medicine in North America. He talks with Eric about the impact that seeing ourselves as separate from nature has on health and healing, healing plants as a radicalizing force, and Western herbalism as an anti-capitalist institution, among other things.

Teresa Mares is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Vermont. Her teaching and research focus on food systems, and she has written widely on the topics of food justice and food sovereignty, among others. She talks with Eric about different ways of framing access to food, the different values intrinsic in food, drawbacks in how the local and organic food movements frame food access, and the realm of deep food, among other things.

Layla Abdel-Rahim is an anthropologist and author. Her books Wild Children, Domesticated Dreamsand Children’s Literature, Domestication, and Social Foundationcritique the foundational social narratives that support a human-centered view of the natural world. She talks Eric talk about what attracted her to unschooling when her daughter was born, what unschooling means and how it worked for her, and how modern schooling diminishes people’s capacity for empathy, among other things.

Charis Boke is an herbalist, educator, community organizer and an anthropologist who completed her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Cornell University. She talks with Eric about being a scholar practitioner, objectivity and bias, different levels of healing, moving away from thinking about the past as a model for a more desirable future, critiques of the Anthropocene, among other things.

Charlotte Biltekoff is faculty at the University of California at Davis, where her research strives to build bridges between scientific and cultural approaches to questions about food and health. She is the author of the book Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health, and her work is the subject of a short film called Imperfection Salad. She talks with Eric talk about the interplay between culture, politics and how we build our identities by moralizing our eating practices, and other things.

Bronislaw Grala has spent much of his adult life learning the art of wildcrafting, and can frequently be found in the local forests and fields gathering food, medicine, and raw materials for his apothecary and kitchen. He talks with Eric about what attracted him to wildcrafting, how wildcrafting can anchor our sense of place, the risks associated with commercializing wild plants, and regulating the take of wild plants as public trusts much like states do wild game animals, among other things.

Heather Retberg operates Quill’s End Farm with her husband in Penobscot, Maine. She advocates for local food sovereignty ordinances in her home state, and played a role in crafting the Maine Food Sovereignty Law that was passed in summer of 2017. She talks with Eric about what food sovereignty is, the links between food and water sovereignty, how large corporations gain control of resources in rural areas of the United States, and lessons she has learned in her years of food sovereignty activism, among other things.

Diana Rodgers is a Registered Dietitian and a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner who’s written a couple cookbooks that cater to Paleo Dieters and is putting together a documentary film tentatively titled Sacred Cow. She talks with Eric about her path to the Paleo Diet, her experiences helping patients with nutrition, and her vision of the future of food and health in the US, among other things.

Walter Poleman lectures at the University of Vermont, directs the PLACE (Place-based Landscape Analysis and Community Engagement) program, and founded the Burlington Geographic initiative. He talks with Eric about what the physical underpinnings of a sense of place, place-based education, human impact, and the relationship between a sense of place and terroir, among other things.

Harlan Morehouse teaches at the University of Vermont and has a keen interest in how people negotiate their futures with regard to 21stcentury social and environmental uncertainties. He talks with Eric about how catastrophism and apocalypticism show up in modern film and literature, how they tend to favor individualism over collectivism, and how he stays balanced while immersed in these narratives, among other things.

Layla AbdelRahim is an anthropologist whose books Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams, and Children’s Literature, Domestication, and Social Foundationactively critique the foundational social narratives that support a human-centered view of the natural world. She talks with Eric about human supremacy, anthropocentrism, decolonizing our minds, and questioning social narratives, among other things.

Jason Hirsch earned a Masters’ degree in Anthropology focusing on medical anthropology at McGill University. He talks with Eric about the roots of mainstream, ‘scientific’ medicine in industrial capitalism, and differentiates our mainstream, reductionist approach to human health from the more holistic, broad-pattern approaches rising to challenging its ideological supremacy.

Charis Boke is an herbalist, educator, community organizer and an anthropologist who earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Cornell University. In this episode she and Eric talk about her research on Transition Towns in the northeast US, the need for cultural healing, seeing racism as a cultural sickness, and the impermanence of social institutions, among other things.

Stephen Jenkinson is an author, teacher, storyteller, spiritual activist, farmer, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. He talks with Eric about the link between the paucity of initiatory experiences and elderhood in the Western world, how grievance is a childish occupation, the risks of becoming lazy with our use of language, the intricacies of sustainability, and the need to reconstitute how we see citizenship, among other things.

Aaron Johnson lives in a self-made 13 x 13 ft earth dome in Southern California, and is a singer, photographer and filmmaker who uses these media, and others, to dismantle racism. He talks with Eric about his counseling programs and his workshops, the challenges that some white people face as they try to get closer to blackness, and the relationship between isolation, toxic masculinity and racism, among other things.

Lynn Trotta is a naturalist, certified life-coach, passionate gardener, facilitator of rites of passage for women, and co-founded the Sagefire Institute with her husband, Michael. Lynn talks with Eric about grief, depression, the importance of mentors and elders in facilitating connection, and how to draw people into connection-based experiences, among other things.

Robert Costanza is the Vice Chancellor’s Chair in Public Policy at the Australian National University, and was among the co-founders of ecological economics. He talks with Eric about the origins of ecological economics, the importance of seeing human beings as part of nature, how to change paradigms and overcome social addictions, and the benefits of payments for ecosystem services, among other things.

Beth Lambert is the Executive Director of Epidemic Answers and the creator and producer of the Documenting Hope Project. She talks with Eric about what motivated her to write her book A Compromised Generation, the many factors that contribute to chronic disease in children, and how her Documenting Hope Project seeks to empower parents to heal their sick kids, among other things.

Shannon Martinez is a former Neo-Nazi who develops and implements programs to inoculate people against hate-based ideologies through her organization Free Radicals. She talks with Eric about how anger and a desire for belonging drew her to Neo-Nazism, what led her away from hate, and the importance of listening to people trapped in cycles of hate, among other things.

JP Sears is an emotional healing coach, video producer, teacher, speaker, and curious student of life. His book How to Be Ultra Spiritual: 12-1/2 Steps to Spiritual Superiority, was released in March of 2017. He and Eric talk about how using humor can help people see their shadows more clearly, how hurt people tend to hurt people, and how our beliefs are wonderful servants but terrible masters, among other things.

Dr. Robin DiAngelo, a lecturer at the University of Washington, coined the term ‘White Fragility’ in an essay of the same name published in 2011. In this episode she and Eric talk about the turn of events that led her to write about white fragility, what set of behaviors it describes, what role those behaviors play in perpetuation white supremacy in the United States, and how owning our racism is an act of liberation, among other things.

Tyler Webb runs Stony Pond Farm in Northern Vermont where he specializes in grass-based dairy and beef production. In this episode he and Eric talk about what compelled him to go into farming, why he gravitated towards cattle, using payments for ecosystem services to overcome market failures in agriculture, and the detrimental feedback loop associated with focusing on producing more milk, among other things.

Dr. A. Breeze Harper consults, writes, and lectures on topics of race and diversity, and founded the Sistah Vegan Project. She talks with Eric about the origins and meaning of the term ‘white fragility’, talking about our privilege, cruelty and racism within food systems, and ways to bring unconscious bias into conscious view without shaming people, among other things.