The Queer Spirit (Nick Venegoni, TanyaMarck Oviedo)

For nearly a decade, Mike Iamele has helped hundreds of GBTQ+ men to integrate shame and figure out what they subconsciously do every time they’re successful –– through a process called Sacred Branding®.
In 2014, Mike accidentally came out to millions when he wrote an article about falling in love with a man after identifying as straight––and 100,000 people shared it overnight.
He's also the author of Enough Already: Create Success on Your Own Terms (Conari Press 2015). Mike's shared his provocative and vulnerable take on sexuality + shame in hundreds of magazines and podcasts, including NPR, CBS, and Huffington Post.

Episode Highlights

• Mikes shares about his unique work with clients with mapping sensitivities and performs a live demonstration with Nick.
• We talk about how this practice can help you discover your superpowers in all aspects of your life from sex and relationships to having a better experience on the job.
• We explore the meaning of “sensitive” and how that connects to being alive.
• Mike illustrates how his work is about reclaiming who we are and releasing the shame around stamping out who we’re supposed to be.
• Mike shares about his own journey to find his purpose.

Web links

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Michael Espinoza (they/them or he/him) is an Artist living and working in Portland, OR. Portland is located on the ancestral lands of the Multnomah, Clakamas, Kathamet, Tualitan and the many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia river. The major themes in their work include queer identity, Mexican heritage, family, ancestry, healing and recovery, sex and the body. Recent work has included a durational live performance on the streets of Portland, site-specific gallery installation, in-studio bricolage, and a series of installations by the sea in Jalisco, Mexico. They regularly collaborate with academics, performance artists, visual artists, drag queens and dancers. Currently they are creating a project tentatively titled The Archive of Absence which aims to create a large conceptual space to fill with the artworks which would have been created by an entire generation of queer ancestors lost to AIDS. Please contact them immediately if you fund a grant or residency that could support this type of work.

Episode Highlights

• Michael shares that they first started making altars after receiving their grandmothers statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe when she died.
  
• They share about the influence of growing up Catholic onto their altar practice.
  
• We talk about the various purposes and functions of altars both in art and in spiritual practice, as a kind of portal.
  
• Michael talks about the elements they use in their works, and the symbolic meanings they provide in a piece.
  
• We discuss ideas about reclaiming queer ancestry and honoring them through altar practices. They share about a public performance piece honoring queer ancestors.
  
• They share about the similarities and differences between having an art practice and a spiritual practice. 
  

Web links

Chiron Armand, founder of Impact Shamanism, is a spirit-initiated shaman holding additional initiations in such New World traditions as Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Quimbanda, and the Unnamed Path. He is a trained hoodoo root doctor in the Southern Conjure tradition and is the author of Deliverance!: Hoodoo Spells of Uncrossing, Healing, and Protection and Clearing Spaces: Inspirational Techniques to Heal Your Home. He holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York University and a BA in Ritual Anthropology and Queer Studies from Hampshire College.

Episode Highlights

• Chiron shares how he first started his mystic path through herbalism & tarot, and then through the Unnamed Path tradition of shamanic witchcraft for men who love men.
  
• We talk about the variety of spiritual and healing traditions he has studied and practices, which lay a framework for the ways he supports his clients in their healing work.
  
• He tells us of his recent experiences with Dionysis as a guide to help him heal family and ancestral lineage.
  
• How he weaves his education and practice of performing arts into his ritual work.
  
• The way that folk magic is a magic of the oppressed and shamanic practice works to undo trauma - both are ideal to support the queer and POC communities.
  
• Chiron explains soul loss and how he practices soul-part retrieval as a significant part of his healing practice.
  
• He explains the differences between unbinding, uncrossing and cleansing work as a result of curses or other negatively intentioned spiritual attacks.
  

Web links

Episode Highlights

• We discuss how TanyaMarck first learned about the power of connecting to the breath from their baseball coach as a child.
• We learn about their current breath work practice helping clients to release stuck energy and activating new insights.
• Nick and TanyaMarck share stories about discovering magic and spirituality through candles at church and connecting to the elements of nature, wind and fog.
• They talk about learning to be of service to family and community, and cultivating that service as a spiritual practice.
• They share about their connection with food as medicine and why they feel called to work with food magic.

Web links

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Eli Ramer, who writes under the name Andrew Ramer, is the author of several books of interest to gay/queer readers, including "Queering the Text" and "Two Flutes Playing," which author and journalist Mark Thompson (who interviewed Ramer in his book "Gay Soul") called "a gay classic." Ramer will be talking about his new book, "Two Hearts Dancing." He lives in Oakland, California.

Episode Highlights

• Eli talks about his new book, Two Hearts Dancing, which is a companion piece to his classic, Two Flutes Playing.
• We explore the value of poems and stories in our increasingly complicated and wobbly world.
• We also discuss the role of queer folx in engaging and dealing with climate change.
• Eli shares three of his pieces from Two Hearts Dancing.
  
• We reflect on the world changes since the first conversation with Eli on this podcast.
• Eli draws comparisons between the unification of the queer community during the AIDS crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Web links

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Episode Highlights

• DeVante shares how from a young age, they first learned martial arts as a way to protect themselves as a child when they first came out. They were drawn to Kung Fu because of the spiritual and energetic aspects of it, as well as the connection to meditation and mind training.
• We discuss the idea of Eros as a kind of energetic connection, and how that shows up in spiritual practice and community.
  
• DeVante shares how they integrate the mind, body and spirit in their practices and teach that integration in their work to others. These teachings initially revolve around body movements and postures.
  
• They share how grounding earth practices have been most needed during the last two years of the pandemic.
  
• DeVante shares how it has been to be a queer POC in the world of martial arts, and modeling difference in those spaces.
  
• We also discuss different experiences and understandings of the spiritual through the practice of Kung Fu.

Web links

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Fresh “Lev” White is a love and compassionate activist. He offers mindfulness, coaching, mediation, and diversity trainings as tools for shifting towards more authentic, conscious and passionate living. He teaches and writes about how love and self-compassion are the ultimate gateways to loving and understanding others; thus, healing our communities, and planet.

Episode Highlights

• Lev and I discuss mindfulness coaching, mediation, and diversity training as tools for shifting towards more authentic, conscious and passionate living. 
• We discuss cultivating self love and compassion as ways to overcome self judgment and hatred.
• Lev shares how his journey through love and compassion led to his Buddhist practice.
• Lev talks about the power of self-compassion and self-care. 
• We examine examples of spiritual leaders throughout history and their practices of self care.
• Lev explains his work mediating microaggressions and transphobia within his community. 
• We explore the pervasiveness of unconscious biases.
• Lev shares about his experiences as a queer person of color, including micro- and macro-aggressions, the influence of the media, and the challenges trans people face.
• We discuss the importance of unpacking internalized hatred towards one’s self.

Web links

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Maisha Najuma Aza is a queer, black healer, teacher and spiritual mentor, co-parent of two teens and ecstatic lover of life. She erotically weaves her social justice roots, spirituality, shamanic practices, and energetic bodywork to co-create comprehensive, intuitive healing sessions. Her work impacts the multidimensional aspects of each person's social, sexual, spiritual, emotional, physical and energetic world. Maisha’s light-hearted, deeply accepting, down-to-earth and empathic nature makes her private consultations and public engagements especially powerful and deeply transformational! Maisha’s calling is sharing the erotic integration of spirituality, sexuality, embodiment and erotic empowerment with others through her healing sessions, consultations, experiential classes, workshops and speaking engagements around the world. Maisha is a certified Reiki Master Teacher. She is also certified in Integrated Healing Arts, Tantra Sacred Intimacy, Shamanic Reiki, and multiple modalities of Massage Therapy. Maisha holds a master’s degree in Social Work, and is the Founder of Black Girl Tantra in the Atlanta, GA area, and offers virtual and in-person sessions.

Episode Highlights

• Maisha shares how she came to the work of sacred sexuality and overcoming sexual trauma through exploring different paths of healing.
  
• She shares her perspectives on the connection of sexuality and spirituality, and how it has been informed by her deep experience of the sensuous.
  
• Her training in Shamanism and astrology helped her understand her own personal erotic energy and sensuous nature.
  
• How she uses Erotic Astrology Consultations in her practice with clients to help them release shame and open up to your own sexual energy and embodiment.
  
• We discuss the interconnection of sexual, sensual, spiritual and erotic energy.
  
• The importance of self-care and being self-centered is healthy.
  
• Her Sexual freedom work with queer POC folk to overcome oppression and heal our self image.
  
• Ancestral healing work as a path to work toward undoing racism.
  
• How BDSM and leather community lead her to feel free in her body and explore her sexuality. 
  

Web links

"Reclaim the Power of YOU!" - a New online course of healing & transformation, with Nick in October.

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Brandi Stanley (she/her) makes a living out of making connections—science and art, fermenting and theology, permaculture and social movements, neuroscience and dance. If creativity is the ability to connect the seemingly un-connectable, that’s the art she practices. In love with the space between things—the intersections and the paradoxes—she's constantly looking for what insights can be gained when we mash the unexpected together and the growth that happens when we learn to hold complexity. These days, she does that by running a podcast and writing a newsletter, both under the name This Plus That, where she's interviewed guests like authors David Epstein & Charles Eisenstein, and well-known artists like Ashley Eliza Williams and Tyler Thrasher. When she's not working on the pod, though, you can find her obsessing over great food and fermenting everything in sight.

Episode Highlights

• Brandi shares how she left the world of marketing and branding, listened to her heart, and started her podcast and newsletter.
• We explore the practice of finding balance, connection, and opposites.
• She talks about her own healing journey of opposing forces in her body and how she cultivates balance in herself today.
• We discuss the gift of queerness in that we bridge the binaries and help others see connections between poles.
• We talk about the concept of holding opposites within ourselves and being capable of holding one side without having to jettison the other.
• Brandi shares her insight that the root of many emotional and physical ailments is inflammation, both in a material and immaterial sense.

Web links

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Jonathan Koe is a queer astrologer, diviner, and alchemist of the subtle realm. Their work aims to empower fellow shapeshifters, visionaries and intuitives in remembering their essence, cultivating skills in being present with the ever-changing nature of reality, and weaving sincere, loving kinships with the world - even when the world has broken our hearts. 

Episode Highlights

Welcome to our second cross-pollination episode, where we share space with other queer podcasters and creators. Jonathan is the host of "Healing the Spirit" podcast.

• We take an energetic stroll and explore the medicines of queerness, healing, astrology, collaboration & connection. 
• Add nuggets of grounding, breathwork & gratitude throughout our shared time. 
• We mix and marinade in queer joy, laughter, connection & community. 

Web links

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*Audio Note: Volume and clarity varies during some parts of this interview.

Rekara Gage (she/her) is an herbalist who focuses on the importance of ritual, safety and community when it comes to personal healing and growth. Her approach to wellness is based in food medicine and spirituality, emphasizing new ways to add plant medicine to the routines that you already have in place. She loves helping people reconnect with their intuition and do things with meaning, making everyday feel special. In her practice, it's important to provide access and information to the public so that they can make the best health choices for themselves. Rekara is a student of Traditional Western Herbalism with Julie James at Green Wisdom Apothecary and School of Herbal Studies in Long Beach.

Episode Highlights

• Thank you to our grounding plant medicines and their energies: dandelion root (clarity), mullein (lung support + moisture), tulsi ( aids with stress + clear headed + relaxation) , and elecampane (breathwork).
• Rekara shares with us about her healing journey and how the medicines and magic of storytelling, food, movement, plants, family, community and curiosity play active roles in finding herself and herbalism.
• We learn about the medicines of ritual and practice that Rekara partakes in throughout her personal herbalism journey, and how they are connected to her culture.
• We learn what herbalism is: understanding plant medicine (the chemistry), how we can benefit from plants being here, how we can learn from them, and how they support us.
• Rekara reminds us that when working spiritually with herbs and plants, important aspects to explore and consider include: connection, intention and being open to answering the call to mindfully interact and work with them.
• Rekara drops an herbal tea recipe that will nourish our queer hearts, bodies, spirits , and souls.  Thank you to these plants  for sharing their medicine and energies:
• Rose (color + reminder of boundaries + protection + safety) 
• Tulsi (aids with stress + clears the mind) 
• Damiana (spicy + sassy + libido + reminds us who we are)
• Cinnamon (unsung hero that moistens us + grounding + supportive)  

Web links

Join the private Queer Spirit Community to continue the conversation and connect with other listeners. 

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Nazanin Afshar Szanto is a mixed race Persian, Central American Indigenous, and white queer. They are nonbinary, disabled/chronically ill, and neurodivergent. Nazanin was born and raised in Northern California, and currently lives in the Bay Area. They are an emotional and spiritual healer and their main modality for healing is reading tarot cards and channeling spirits! Nazanin uses divination to help them get a better understanding of what is standing in the way of someone's emotional, mental, and spiritual well being.

Episode Highlights

• Nazanin shares about their diverse spiritual and cultural heritage and how it influenced their spiritual and healing practices today.
  
• Nazanin first tapped into intuition by discovering and learning to read tarot.
  
• We talk about the correlating time lines of exploring spirituality and queer identities that many folks experience.
  
• Nazanin discusses working with queer folks around healing and creating healthy boundaries.
  
• Radical vulnerability is a path to healing as a liberation tool.
  
• Nazanin shares about being an empath and taking on other peoples energies, and the work they’ve done to set clear boundaries.
  
• We discuss how to identify and strengthen our emotional and energetic boundaries; exercising-self care and self-worth.
  
• We discuss the role of spirituality in queer communities as a way of bringing hope and faith.

Web links

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Episode Highlights

• Nick & Marc discuss the power and importance of fairy tales, myths, and bringing magical thinking into our everyday lives.
• Marc shares how stories influenced his life from childhood and how they affect him today.
• We reflect on the stories of our youth and the frequent lack of representation of queer and POC characters. 
• Marc talks about the experience of writing his own bedtime stories for queer folks.
• He shares about his Academy of Magical Thinking, encouraging adults to embrace their inner kiddo.
• We discuss the crucial fun of play-dates in adulthood.
• Marc ponders the importance of sharing magical thinking.

Web links

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Walt Odets is a clinical psychologist in private practice who has worked with and written about the psychological, developmental and social lives of gay men for more than three decades. His seminal book, In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS, which Duke University Press published in 1995, was selected by The New York Times as one of the “Notable Books of the Year.”

Odets’s recent work has focused on the psychological aftermath of the HIV epidemic, the long-standing childhood and adolescent stigmatization and trauma experienced by young gay men, and the conventional idea of “the homosexual” and its negative influences on gay identities, self-realization and relationships between men. This work has culminated in a new book, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives, which examines the hopes and new possibilities for gay men today.

Episode Highlights

• Walt talks about how he went from being a photo journalist to becoming a psychologist.
  
• He shares stories about how it was to start his therapy career right in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, and how that influenced his first book, Into the Shadows, which depicts the relationships between negative and positive gay men.
  
• His newer book, Out of the Shadows, is a continuation from the first, and is a response to the way gay men are relating now, twenty-five years later.
  
• We discuss the way young gay men today relate to HIV, AIDS and PrEP/Truvada.
  
• Walt shares his ideas about the difference between what it means to be “homosexual” versus “gay.”
  
• He shares his thoughts on how gay men develop shame from the way most men in our culture are raised, and societies relationship to the feminine. This  effects the way they experience isolation in community later in life.
  
• Walt offers some insights about how to begin to overcome shame. 
  

Web links

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Josh Hersh is an entrepreneur, writer, seeker, and curator of community. Over the years, he’s focused on creating mindful, heart-centered spaces for queer people, such as The Thoughtful Gay Man and queeret (pronounced queer-it), a global community for queer introverts. He believes in the power of belonging and connection as a means to bring healing and a sense of togetherness to queer communities.

Episode Highlights

• Josh Shares his inspiration to start social events for queer introverts after watching the Hannah Gadsby special and her asking, “Where do the quiet gays go?”
  
• Nick & Josh discuss the difference between introverts, extroverts and ambiverts, and what kind of environments they feel most comfortable in; and misconceptions about introverts being shy, anxious or loners.
  
• The process of self-discovery and self-acceptance of being an introvert, and the challenges of that identity in the larger queer culture.
  
• Josh talks about being sober curious, and bringing in the additional aspect of sobriety to his Queeret social gatherings.
  
• He describes the different events that Queeret produces, such as Qalm and Book Qlub.

Web links

Anna Renée Winget (they/them - currently living on Tongva land) is an artist, activist, scholar and educator. They currently serve as Affiliated Scholar at the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) where they are collaborating on Crossing Pride: a transnational digital healing storytelling project and archive by/ for/ with queer and trans refugees. They hold a doctorate in drama and theatre from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) and at San Diego (UCSD) where they completed their dissertation, "Performing Possibilities: Trans-Healing in Activist Performance" and received their MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. Anna teaches theatre and writing in communities and universities and develops new collaborative performances with communities toward decolonizing and healing. They have developed the Newcomers Performance Project which focuses this work on empowerment for queer and trans refugees. With Tina Rosenberg and Sandra D'Urso, they are co-editor and contributor in the newly published textbook, "Palgrave Handbook of Queer and Trans Feminisms in Contemporary Performance."

Episode Highlights

• We learn about how Anna found a place in theater to express and find their true identity. 
• Anna shares how they explored the therapeutic and social justice aspects of theater and how they traveled internationally helping queer refugees tell their own stories.
• Anna talks about how theater and film can be tools for conscious raising and healing.
• They talk about their journey towards becoming a drama therapist. 
• We discuss the healing power of sharing stories with each other.

Web links

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rexylafemme (rex renée leonowicz) is a visual + performing artist, writer, and musician born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY. As a working class trans femme, rex’s work is grounded in a politics of radical resistance, healing and witness. rex blends genders and genres, utilizing drag, comedy, visual art, and burlesque, to critically respond to the relationships people “on the margins” have with our surroundings and each other. rex's book of poems and illustrations, when there is no one and there is everyone is available from Magic Helicopter Press. rex is also a practicing witch and offers spiritual readings and mentorship with a focus on radical occultism. they co-create with bloom wave collective, a network of artists and organizers building revolutionary culture in New York City.

Episode Highlights

• rex talks about being the family entertainer growing up, which influenced their performance art.
  
• As a child, rex explored divination and had spiritual experiences with deceased relatives.
  
• We discuss the ways that witchcraft is inherently queer and trans.
  
• rex uses drag and performance art as ritual for healing and banishing, and talks about embodiment as a spiritual practice.
  
• They also use poetry and creative arts as a divination tool, and writing poetry as an oracle.
  
• rexy does an impromptu divination from their poetry about supporting the queer future.
  
• Their first experience of performing burlesque had an empowering and spiritual effect on them.
  

Web links

Reclaim the Power of YOU - NEW e-course to Transform Your Relationship To Yourself & Others

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Vanessa Rochelle Lewis is the Founding Director of Reclaim UGLY.
She is a healer with a satchel full of medicine words,
A conjuror with desire to nurture other artists as they create magic and save lives,
A faery princess mermaid gangsta for the revolution,
A lush-bodied, Black femme Goddess motivated by sensuality and freedom,
An educator and performer with a passionate exuberance for silliness, laughter, and the stage,
A starlet who doesn’t want to be in the spotlight alone,
A lover of all things collective, emergent, and interdependent,
A wild-seed born and blossomed in South-Central Los Angeles,
A fighter with fists born of circumstance and a heart that refused to harden,
A warrior committed to freedom, brow dripping with resilience, wings crusted with diamonds that grew from trauma healed,
And so much more.

Episode Highlights

• Vanessa and Nick discuss the way culture has used the label of “ugliness” to oppress, dehumanize and disconnect us. 
• Vanessa talks about her journey with her organization, Reclaim Ugly.
• She shares how we can turn ugly on its head to uplift, glorify and love ourselves.
• We explore where we find “uglification” in our country’s history as well as in today’s world.
• Vanessa talks about the importance of taking care of ourselves without perpetuating the harm done to us.
• We discuss the insidious uglification we experienced in recent events such as the January 6th Insurrection of the US Capitol.

Web links

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Amanda Yates Garcia (she/her) is a writer, witch, and the Oracle of Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The LA Times, The SF Chronicle, The London Times, CNN, BRAVO, as well as a viral appearance on FOX. She has led rituals, classes and workshops on magic and witchcraft at UCLA, UC Irvine, MOCA, The Hammer Museum, LACMA, The Getty and many other venues. Amanda hosts monthly moon rituals online, and the popular Between the Worlds podcast, which looks at the Western Mystery traditions through a mythopoetic lens. Her book, Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, received a starred review from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly and has been translated into six languages. To find out more about her work become a member of her Mystery Cult on Substack.

Episode Highlights

Welcome to our third cross-pollination episode, where we share space with other queer podcasters and creators. Amanda is the host of "Between the Worlds" podcast.

• We are so grateful to have Amanda Yates Garcia share some time with us. Join us for a queerly witchy saunter and exploration of the medicine of enough. 
• Amanda gets us started and casts a delicious, magic circle, and then we dive in and explore.
• We get curious about our “enough’s” and spend some time both in the light and shadowy aspects, while being between the worlds. 
• We get cozy naming our “enough’s” which takes us into our queer + witchy stories, potently connecting some dots. 
• We close by sending a care spell out to our collective past and future selves. 

Web links

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Kerin “KB” Berger (she/her) is a physician assistant (PA) practicing in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from Quinnipiac University PA program in 2015 with a master’s in health sciences. She works full-time at the LA LGBT Center in the sexual health and education department. Additionally, she performs high resolution anoscopy for anal cancer prevention. Kerin is an adjunct professor at Charles Drew University (CDU) PA program where she implemented the LGBTQI and nonbinary curriculum. Kerin travels around the U.S. speaking to medical professionals, students, mental health clinicians, community members and advocates. She lives in West Hollywood with her wife, Jordan and her dog, Rilo. She loves to cycle, travel, and drink old fashions.

Episode Highlights

• KB explains what a Physician Assistant (PA) is and how it’s different from a doctor or a nurse.
  
• She shares how she got interested in medicine by being interested in science.
  
• KB talks about her podcast “Queer Meducation” and her inspiration to start it to bridge the medical and queer communities.
  
• She felt like her medical education didn’t prepare her to work her best with the sexual health of queer folks.
  
• Later on she was invited to come give a presentation on queer health to medical professionals, and this gave her insight to the level of ignorance and inspired her to do more.
  
• She shares ideas about how queer folks can find queer and friendly medical practitioners. (GLMA)
  
• KB shares tells us what kinds of health issues queer folks might be overlooking and encourages us to pay a bit more attention to. 
  

Web links

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Justin Sayre, praised for their “deeply passionate soul and acerbic wit” by The New York Times, is a writer and performer who Michael Musto called, “Oscar Wilde meets Whoopi Goldberg.” They were hailed as one the “Funniest People in Brooklyn” by Brooklyn Magazine and among “LA’s 16 Most Talented LGBT Comics” by Frontiers Magazine. Sayre's most recent book, Mean, the third in their trilogy of young adult novels from Penguin Books, was released in 2019. Sayre’s works for the theatre has been seen at LaMaMa, The Wild Project, Ars Nova, and more. Sayre’s Ravenswood Manor was recently produced at LA’s Celebration Theater and hailed as “a sharply written and well-acted exemplar of the horror-comedy genre” by The Los Angeles Times. Sayre also writes for television, working with Michael Patrick King on his hit CBS comedy “2 Broke Girls” and for Fox’s “The Cool Kids.” Sayre also appeared on HBO’s “The Comeback” with Lisa Kudrow.

Episode Highlights

• Justin shares how they started “The Meeting” after redirecting her acting career and coming up with a variety show she created on retreat with the Radical Faeries.
  
• The Meeting took a hiatus when Justin moved to LA but is now coming back [online, for the time being.]
  
• We discuss how The Meeting was created as a way of cultivating community, sharing successes and challenges in the queer communities.
  
• Justin shares their flair for mixing humor with darkness, while holding the audience with radical compassion.
  
• They tell the story of lending her platform to support a Black Lives Matter performance when a show was cancelled, and how communities of difference need to support each other.
  
• Justin talks about their forthcoming book, “The Gay-B-C’s,” a dictionary of queer culture, and what inspired its creation. 
  

Web links

Grab your FREE Guide - Needs, Boundaries & Self-Care for Queer Folks.  Download it here.

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Sheridan Gold is a retired Special Ed teacher of at-risk youth, and is currently very involved with creating art, and playing and performing music. She enjoys her days with her wife Dianna, their dog Sweet Pea, and their 13 chickens, and teaching hand drumming to seniors.
Dianna Grayer has been a Marriage Family Therapist for the last 25 years. She is the author of 8 children's books and has written 11 plays; she's a guest speaker at schools and colleges, and co-hosts her radio show with her wife Sheridan.

Episode Highlights

• Sheridan and Dianna share about their long-running radio show, Living Proof.
• They share about their creative outlets, such as poetry, writing, music and other inspirations outside of their show.
• We talk about the healing power of music for people of all ages.
• They discuss the strength, beauty and support of their relationship, and how it provides ample ground for creativity.
• Dianna talks about her new play, Release: Unearthing the Silent Rumblings, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Web links

Karen Erlichman provides psychotherapy, spiritual direction, supervision and So(U)L coaching in San Francisco. Most recently she has been exploring embodied leadership and transformation, and has been inspired by learning at the Strozzi Institute, the Jewish Studio Project and the Center for Courage and Renewal. Karen’s writing has been published in numerous journals, blogs and anthologies, including Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, Feminist Studies in Religion and in the interfaith anthology Spiritual Guidance Across Religions. She is passionate about creating diverse and welcoming spaces for liberation, embodied spirituality and community.

Episode Highlights

• Karen starts by helping us understand what spiritual direction counseling is, and why someone might seek it out.
  
• We explore what it means to be spiritual versus religious.
  
• Karen talks about the importance of discussing the spiritual dimension with clients, and the difference between psychotherapy and spiritual direction work.
  
• She shares how she got interested in spiritual work with clients when she felt called to do more than therapy and social work.
  
• Karen also does Soul Coaching and explains how it’s different from therapy and spiritual direction work.
  
• We explore the idea of wholeness and how spiritual practice can support it in ourselves.
  
• We also discuss how a queer persons journey of coming out is a path toward wholeness.
  
• Karen shares how she works with trauma by bringing somatic (body) work to her practice.
  
• She also talks about the importance of engaging the body in spiritual practice, when it has been seen as dangerous by many traditions.
  

Web links

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Roger Kuhn (Poarch Creek) is a doctoral candidate whose research focuses on Two-Spirit love, sexual sovereignty, and erotic survivance. He works as a psychotherapist and Professor of American Indian Studies, and is a board member of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS). In 2020, Roger served as the Chair for the BAAITS Two-Spirit powwow. 

Episode Highlights

• We unpack what it means, as queer people, to unsettle our bodies from cis-, straight culture, liberate our eros, and respectfully reconnect with indigenous land.
• Roger shares how his introduction to yoga became a major lift shift for him. 
• He explains the meaning of somatic psychology and some of its practices.
• He talks about his experiences and process of working on his Ph.D. dissertation on decolonizing sexuality.
• We explore the relationship between sexuality and the land before the arrival of European colonizers. 
• Roger discusses the notion of queer assimilation to Western heterosexual culture and questions why it is needed for survival.
• He shares about the healing power of pleasure and the redefining of eroticism.
• He talks about his definition of two spirit and two-spirit love.
• We learn more about the annual BAAITS Two-Spirit Powwow in San Francisco.

Web links

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Natalie Zeituny is a modern mystic, reality researcher, conscious business entrepreneur and energy medicine healer. She is currently working with individuals and organizations’ fields of consciousness and soul psychology to bring about higher states of consciousness and well being. Natalie is a facilitator, speaker, presenter and the author of Ensoulment, dedicated developing conscious evolution models. 

Matthew Clark Davison is the author of Doubting Thomas (Amble Press in 2021) and creator of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD. His textbook The Lab, Experiments in Writing Across Genre, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2022. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on Guernica, The Advocate, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Exquisite Pandemic, and others. Matthew also teaches full time in SF State's Creative Writing MFA and BA programs.

Episode Highlights

• Matthew shares about how he first started writing in church services after he ran away from home.
• We discuss his new book, Doubting Thomas, and how the political landscape of the last two US presidencies influenced the story.
• We explore the themes of control and surrender.
• Matthew shares his experience with organized religion and how his perception has changed since being introduced to GLIDE Memorial Church in San Francisco.

Web links

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George Taxidis (he/him) is a therapist working in private practice in east London, UK. He holds an MSc in Therapeutic Counseling from the University of Greenwich, which was integrative in orientation, and is in the final stages of a second training, this time in Jungian analysis with the British Jungian Analytic Association. In 2016, George co-founded the Queer Social Dreaming Matrix which now meets monthly to play with dreams in the queer community. He was also involved in creating the Queer Analytic Circle, a collective of psychoanalytic and Jungian practitioners who are interested in queer challenges to analytic theory and practice. George is an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he teaches on introductory therapy courses and psychosocial studies, and regularly uses the social dreaming method with his students. The method brings together a number of his interests: spirituality, Jung, radical politics, queerness, creativity and imagination.

Episode Highlights

• We discuss spirituality, Jung, radical politics, queerness, creativity and imagination.
• We learn about George’s group the Queer Analytic Circle.
• George shares about his discovery of the power of dreams through the work of Carl Jung.
• George discusses the usefulness of keeping a dream journal.
• He talks about the formation of the Queer Social Dreaming Matrix.
• We explore the importance of creating safe space for queer people to share about their dreams and their associations with their dreams. 
• George describes his spirituality as a sense of awe towards the unknown.
• George highlights the profound experience of dream sharing.
• We learn about George’s work to provide a supportive community for queer people in training for professional therapy, as well as receiving therapy.

Web links

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Claudiu Oprea is a queer permaculture educator, artist and healer. Since the pandemic he has set up the Sanqtuary Goa, India, an experimental arts and permaculture sanctuary that explores the intersection between permaculture and queerness as well as the question of where our healing may come from.
Maria Fernandes is a body based facilitator and therapist, merging yoga and expressive arts therapy as well as social permaculture.

Episode Highlights

• We learn about the creation of Sanqtuary Goa and the importance of safe, physical space for LGBTQ+ people.
• We discuss how the principles of permaculture, to live in harmony with the natural world, help us to create and foster queer community,
• Claudiu and Maria share their ideas about how nature is inherently queer.
• We talk about their vision for the Sanqtuary Goa, as a center of art and healing for queer folks in that region of India.

Web links

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Rita Alma is a queer entrepreneur and coach on a mission to guide people to create the life (and world) they want to live in. Her work as a career coach for LGBTQ+ people catalyzes transformations in their personal lives, the workplace, and the wider world as she challenges and supports clients to be who they are, reclaim their dreams and put them into action. She uses her experiences in the LGBTQ+ community, her background in conflict resolution and peer counseling, and her insights from working with clients, to deliver programming on the importance of building meaningful relationships and fostering deeper understandings of LGBTQ+ issues as a precursor to enacting diversity in the workplace. 

Episode Highlights

• Rita shares how she came to doing career coaching for Queer people, to help them get fulfilling and meaningful work.
  
• She shares common “career fears” that keep LGBTQ people stuck in unfulfilling jobs.
  
• We talk about how the experience of fear can be an indicator that you’re on the right path, especially when you’re pursuing something you want.
  
• How to find your super powers and authentic self to convey into your work life.
  
• Showing up as your authentic queer self with your gifts in your work place is an act of helping to ending oppression.
  
• Rita is working to end LGBTQ oppression in the workplace through coaching and educating employers.
  
• She tells success stories about people she’s helped to shift their career path towards fulfillment.
  

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Episode Highlights

• Dean shares how he first came to studying law through witnessing law enforcement from the perspective of queer activism in NYC.
  
• He then started teaching law as a way to create change from the foundation of the legal world.
  
• We discuss his forthcoming book, “It’s Not You, It’s Everybody,” which is a self help book for people who want to change the world. It looks at the way that capitalism and hetero-patriarchy contribute to stress, and how we can bring communal healing to activist individuals and groups.
  
• We explore the difference between self-help, self-care and expanding those practices to groups and communities.
  
• Dean talks about being conscious of your autopilot behaviors, and how they are supportive and detrimental to your wellbeing.
  
• He shares new and radical ideas about self-care, challenging the capitalist and escapist ideas of self-care.
  
• Dean asks, How do we cultivate an economy of care? How can you be well while being of service?
  
• We talk about the different kinds of self-care which might not be what most think of.

Web links

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Episode Highlights

• We talk about O’s journey from a classically trained composer and music teacher to delving into the study and practice of vibrational alchemy.
• O shares how the practice of deep listening, developed by Pauline Oliveros, lead to the paths of dream yoga and asana, which they incorporate into their vibrational alchemy work.
• We discuss the joys of teaching children, especially in music education.
• We delve into the worlds of dreams: dream recall, dream yoga and dream work.
• O talks about their experiences with sound healing and forest bathing.

Web links

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Jacoby Ballard is a yoga and Buddhism teacher with over 20 years of experience, working at the intersection of social justice, trauma and embodied practice. He has taught in prisons, schools, hospitals, recovery centers, offices, co-led a yoga teacher training, and co-founded a worker-owned cooperative healing justice center in Brooklyn. His first book is released November 23, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation.

Episode Highlights

• Jacoby shares how he stumbled into yoga and meditation by chance while in school.
• We learn how those practices have supported him as a queer person and an activist.
• He talks about his new book, A Queer Dharma: Buddhist-Informed Meditations, Yoga Sequences, and Tools for Liberation, and the importance of understanding the history of cultural appropriation and capitalism in the yoga industry.
• We discuss the importance of creating a safe, queer-centered space to practice and form community.

Web links

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Rudy Loewe is a visual artist utilizing drawing, painting and printmaking as a means of building narrative and contributing to dialogues on social themes. They work with large scale, sometimes directly onto surfaces that then ensure their temporality; as well as small scale in forms such as publications.

The work itself is bright and colorful, referencing aesthetics from the Afro Caribbean diaspora. 

It also represents different kinds of bodies, highlighting differing races; non-conforming genders; sexualities; classes and (dis)ability. Rudy makes the work that reflects the narratives they would like to see in the world, the histories that are not getting the visibility or care that they deserve.

Episode Highlights

• Rudy shares how they grew up in a family of artists, but was the first to make a living from art, starting with making comics.
  
• They talk about using comics as a way to get art and the narratives of art, to those who wouldn’t normally access other kinds of art.
  
• Using art to tell the kinds of stories they want to see in the world, especially for queer POC and others who aren't normally depicted.
  
• Workshops Rudy has facilitated to teach others to create zines exploring gender, sexuality and mental health.
  
• The way art helps one have access to, and explore the language of identity when words are not quite right.
  
• Rudy’s zine sharing about their polarized experiences in therapy, to help people understand more about how to be mindful as a consumer of therapy.
  
• How mental health symptoms vary for different kinds populations and identities.
  
• The exploration of Afrofuturism and black feminist utopias in Rudy’s art; the importance of telling POC stories in history, and removing white supremacy from images of the future. (Here is an image of the piece we refer to when discussing Afrofuturism.)
  

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Join us for our season finale: Nick (he>they) + TanyaMarck (they/them) share about their queer story and connection.

Episode Highlights

• We flow into and explore the potency of cultivating queer connections.
• We take a dip into queer spirituality. 
• And finally we are honored to share and announce upcoming queer spirit offerings in 2024.

Web links

Gwion Raven is a tattooed Pagan, writer, traveler, musician, cook, kitchen witch, occult shop owner, and teacher. Although initiated in three magickal traditions, Gwion describes his practice as virtually anything that celebrates the wild, sensuous, living, breathing, dancing, ecstatic, divine experiences of this lifetime.
Born and raised in London, England, he now resides in Northern California and shares space with redwood trees, the Pacific Ocean, and his beloved partner.

Episode Highlights

• Nick and Gwion discuss his book, The Magick of Food: Rituals, Offerings & Why We Eat Together.
• We talk about creating special meals with gods and ancestors as a way to establish and strengthen connections.
• Gwion shares about his passion for food and how that translates into his spiritual practice.
• He expounds on the communal, healthy nature of food sharing and cooking together, and how it’s still possible during the pandemic.

Web links

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Julie Bacher is an author and teacher from New England. She has traveled the world working on community service projects, and spent 23 years as a public school teacher. She is the author of four books, with her latest book, Oh S#*t! I think I’m Gay: a coming out book. Julie is passionate about LGBTQ issues, social justice, and crafting the right words to speak your truth.

Episode Highlights

• Julie and Nick talk about LGBTQ issues, social justice, and crafting the right words to speak your truth.
• She shares her inspiration for writing her latest book, “Oh S#*t! I Think I’m Gay.”
• We explore some of the origin stories of famous queer people and their impact on our culture today.
• Julie talks about the journey of her own coming out as well as the benefits of her spiritual practice.

Web links

Langston Kahn is a New York City based shamanic practitioner specializing in emotional clearing and radical transformation. He stands firmly at the crossroads, his practice informed by the western modality of Inner Relationship Focusing, initiations into traditions of the African Diaspora, the contemporary shamanic tradition of The Last Mask Center, and the guidance of his helping spirits and ancestors weaving it all together. He joyfully endeavors to bring spirituality out of the dark dusty recesses of esotericism and into our daily existence, where it can aid us in re-aligning with the ecstatic energy of our soul’s purpose and allow us to become the people who can create the change we wish to see in the world.

Episode Highlights

• Langston us how he was always a helper from an early age, wanting to support others in need.
  
• He looks for solutions in witchcraft to change the way larger culture affected our mental health, and tells how a dream lead him to explore shamanic practice.
  
• His journey of deep shamanic education and practice to heal himself and move into spiritual adulthood, and taking those experiences to help others.
  
• What it means to be a spiritual adult and how to achieve that, especially with the support of elders.
  
• The particular importance that queer youth get the support of queer elders to guide them into adulthood.
  
• How ancestral healing fixed his love life by reconnecting with his dead grandmother and doing the work to support their own healing.
  
• His practice of Deep Liberation Process to help others to respond authentically to life more clearly and easily.
  
• The importance of having strong healthy boundaries from the inside out.
  

Web links

Sandi Kaplan has been practicing homeopathy for the last 17 years and runs a private practice called Divine Monkey Homeopathy. She has worked in low income and youth clinics, women’s shelters and makeshift clinics in Tanzania. Sandi taught at the Center for Homeopathic Education in NY, supervises homeopathy students and has trained to be a Trauma Informed practitioner.  She recently traded her surfboard in for raised beds and a beehive in Sacramento, where she now practices. Sandi remains dedicated to treating people of various cultures, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, gender expressions and lifestyles, believing everyone deserves quality healthcare.

Welcome to Season 6 of the show! 

Episode Highlights

• We learn about Nicholas’ journey and connections with science, stones, energy, folklore, animals.
• Nicholas shares about what stones he is currently drawn to and working with & how he is embodying them into his daily navigation, practices and work.
• We receive some medicine about how to choose, care for, sit with and let go of crystals.
• Nicholas shares with us  how to explore, be curious and embody all the aspects of stones.
• We receive Nicholas’s recommendations of what stones could be included in our magic tool-kits that support our queer liberation.
• Thank you Tongva, Ohlone, Seminole lands; essences and energies of magnolia tree, limestone, moonstone, emerald, opal, aegirine & animals.

Web links

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- Nick Venegoni, he>they
- TanyaMarck Oviedo, they/them

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Kalyela J (she/her) is a Queer Spirituality Coach whose desire is to help the LGBTQ community experience love and peace with their spirituality and sexuality. She is considered a “Soulspeaker'' helping people heal their limiting beliefs so they can live into their purpose.

Through first-hand experience she knows the journey and challenges that a Queer person faces. For over 20 years as a gay woman she struggled with religious trauma, lack of acceptance from family, and internalized homophobia. As she encountered a spiritual awakening she found peace and inner knowing that being LGBTQ is a divine gift. Her soul purpose is to help you receive the same so that you can live a life of purpose love and freedom.

Kalyela resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, where in her free time she loves to read, spend time with her family and her fur baby. Her life’s mantra "Live Life with Intentionality.”

Episode Highlights

• Coach K shares her story of struggling with her queer identity while growing up in a conservative Christian community and how she eventually reconciled her faith and identity.
• We learn how she shares her work with her clients and how she became a soul speaker.
• We discuss religious trauma and its impact.
• Coach K describes her spiritual coaching work and its empowering effect on her clients’ lives.
• Coach K describes her definition of Soul Speaker.

Web links

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KB Boyce is the Co-Founder and Director of Queer Rebels, a Queer People of Color arts company that connects generations – and honors our queer legacies with visionary art for the future. Musician and media artist KB Boyce is a Gender Non Conforming / trans masculine performer whose adventures have brought them from teenage punk band appearances at CBGBs in NY, to B-grade horror movies in LA, and on to solo blues performance as The Drag King of the Blues in San Francisco. Boyce composes and performs music that pays homage to African-American and Indigenous legacies of resistance through art. Boyce conjures the spirit of cross-dressing Blues performers – reflecting the history, creativity, and aesthetics of the ancestors.

Crystal Mason co-founded and co-directed Luna Sea Women’s Performance Space. They are the former Executive Director of the Jon Sims Center for the Arts. They lived in Berlin, Germany for 9 years, where they co-owned and operated Schoko Café, a women’s art and culture center. Their last project in Berlin was a two-year long European Union funded film project dealing with multi- dimensional discrimination faced by lesbians of color and immigrant lesbians in Berlin. In San Francisco, Crystal was an AIDS activist and organizer working with ACT UP and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in the Women’s and Children’s Program. Crystal was also a regular behind the scenes and in front of the camera on Electric City Queer TV for several years. They co-produced the multimedia theater piece Hey, Sailor and created 3 short films: In My Blood, I Know My Soul, and In My Own Hands. In 2016 Crystal created a multimedia performance/installation at Fort Mason as part of the THIS IS WHAT I Want Festival 2016 called There is No Other, Fractured And Complete, Tell Me Something True. They have been a Queer Rebels Board Member since 2012 and is now the Managing Director at Queer Rebels Productions.

Episode Highlights

• KB tells about how the Queer Rebel Festival first began in San Francisco in 2008 as a way to create a space for centering queer/trans people of color (QT POC) artists.
  
• KB & Crystal share about their own backgrounds in art and activism. KB group up in a New York family of artists, performers and activists. Crystal grew up always being creative and a storyteller, and explored using story as a tool for liberation activism.
  
• They each discuss their visions for the future of QT POC and how Queer Rebels helps to support that vision.
  
• We discuss the importance of intergenerational collaboration in art, and the introduction of the Queer Rebels intergenerational residency program.
  
• They share some samples of what the audience can expect at the festival this year.
  
• Crystal shares how collaboration has been a source of hope and inspiration in their activism and art.
  

Web links

Episode Highlights

• Ni’Ja shares about their artistic and spiritual origins, as well as their emergence from a lineage of dreamers.
• They discuss their current project, The Illumination Catalogue, a ceremony project honoring Black, trans, and gender nonconforming lives and communities across Turtle Island (U.S.).
• We learn about their transformative experience in Tanzania and the meaning of their name.
• Ni’Ja talks about what they call a Black Trans Cosmic Map, an aspect of the Illumination Catalogue that is a compilation of life stories, cosmology, and ancestral connection of Black trans people across the country.
• We explore the astrological connections between the movement of laws in the United States and how they affect the lives of the queer community.
• Nick & Ni'Ja discuss the importance of creating sacred, intimate space in which to share stories and the journeys of people in the Black trans and gender nonconforming community.

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https://ever-changing.net/daily-magic

Listen here on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Episode Highlights

• Colleen shares about her podcast Shame Pinata, and how it focuses on creating rites of passage for real life transitions.
• We discuss the importance of ritual as a container and support for big and small changes in our lives.
• Colleen shares how she discovered the power of ritual to help her feel supported through life’s challenges.
• She talks about some ways people have honored their relationships from the stories on her podcast.
• We learn about Colleen’s first exposure to the pagan community and how it challenged her to re-examine her conditioned assumptions.

Web links

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Episode Highlights

• TT shares what it means to be a sacred intimate and a pleasure activist, and how he helps others to explore their erotic and sexual selves.
  
• He discusses how he came to doing this work after being inspired by his husband when they first met and going to his first Body Electric workshop.
  
• TT defines the tradition of tantra he studies, and explains his way of working with it.
  
• Pleasure is a foundational principle for healing, and TT strives to bring mindfulness to pleasure in the day to day.
  
• We explore the relationships of pleasure and joy, versus seeking the highs of happiness.
  
• We also talk about practicing self-care through healthy levels of selfishness in order to get our needs met.
  
• TT shares about his workshops and group work he does through his Intimacy Academy, to help others explore their desires, while giving and receiving pleasure.

Web links

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Jessie Susannah Karnatz, aka the Money Witch, brings capitalism-critical, shame-free education to healers, hustlers, and creatives in order to catalyze change in their financial lives. She believes healing our finances will bring blessing to our lives, our lineages, and our communities. She offers education, Money Magic products, Intuitive Financial Coaching, and tax preparation online and in the Bay Area (unceded Ohlone land) and does it all with #businessladyswag.

Episode Highlights

• Nick & Jessie Susannnah explore the impacts of financial health on our lives, our lineages, and our communities. 
• Jessie Susannah describes her journey through union organizing into intuitive financial advising.
• We learn about her spiritual path from Unitarian Universalist to Judaism.
• We delve into the entangling of psychology, spirituality, and everyday choices about one’s life and finances.
• She emphasizes the importance of focusing on our material experience while still maintaining connection to spirit to lead meaningful human lives. 
• Jessie Susannah shares about her money magic products that help align one’s energetic body with different financial situations.
• She explains the connection of working with the Tarot with her work with budgeting.

Web links

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Anthony Michael Lopez is a queer, disabled actor known for his appearances on Broad City, Homeland, and the feature film “Mapplethorpe” starring Matt Smith. He recently shared the stage with Daniel Craig, David Oyelowo, and Rachel Brosnahan in New York Theatre Workshop’s production of “Othello.” Anthony’s new streaming miniseries “desert in” - premiering June 3 on Operabox.tv - is a supernatural story exploring queer love, loss, and the price of memories.

Episode Highlights

• Anthony shares his journey as an actor and how his identities of being queer and disabled have shaped that path.
• We discuss the intersection of disability and queerness in media and how Anthony is working to bring more representation into the field.
• Anthony shares how his work with attachment theory has been very healing for him.
• He talks about his most recent project, “Desert In,” an operatic online mini-series.
  
• We explore why it’s so important to have queer and disabled people on both sides of the camera in the entertainment business. 

Web links

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Episode Highlights

• Keone shares some poetry from their new collection, “Love Songs For Boys,” including their focus on the intersection of painting and poetry.
• We discuss nature vs. capitalism, messiness as a path to healing, and laughter as medicine.
• They talk about how the ancient forest near their home has inspired their poetry, and how patriarchy and white supremacy serves as a metaphor for the destruction of nature.
• Keone shares about how they found poetry to be a source of healing throughout their life.
• We explore the Fool archetype and its inherent beautiful, queerness.

Web links

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Welcome back to the Queer Spirit Podcast + Community!

We're excited to launch Season 8 with some new shifts and evolutions inside. Take a listen and hear about what's in store on the podcast, in our online community, and with our monthly offerings. 

As always, you can find all things Queer Spirit HERE. 

Links + Resources + Invitations:

• An invitation to the private Queer Spirit Community to continue the conversation and connect with other listeners. 
• Join us for FREE meditation + chanting + breath work circles online. 
• Follow us on BLUESKY + IG!
• Join our mailing list to get news and Care Cirlce + podcast updates sent directly to you.
• QS Resources: News, Education + Care.

Christian de la Huerta has been a writer, speaker, retreat and group facilitator for over 25 years. Author of the award-winning and critically-acclaimed “Coming out Spiritually,” he is currently working on a new book, “Calling All Heroes.” Christian is creator and teacher of several self-development programs focusing on personal growth and awareness, advanced transformational practices, understanding sex and relationships, mechanisms of ego and projection, life purpose, and reclaiming personal power. He is an acclaimed speaker at universities, conferences and spiritual communities nationwide, where audiences find Christian's message particularly relevant in these times. Christian also practices as spiritual coach and a leadership development consultant whose work ranges from individuals and couples in private practice to major corporate engagements and non-profit groups. Retreats, workshops and other events led by Christian are known for their life-changing experience and for their inspiring and transformative exploration of our inner human potential. More about his work may be found at SoulfulPower.com

Episode Highlights

• Christian tells us how he was on a path of becoming a psychologist, but then he discovered breath work and found the practice of it to be powerful and transformative.
  
• He explains the different kinds of breath work practices and how they work, as well as the ways they offer healing and insight on all levels.
  
• Christian shares what Soulful power is and how he helps others tap into their own aspect of it.
  
• He discusses his is passion for empowering women through spiritual healing and changing their relationship to power.
  
• We discuss the way he brings this wisdom to the LGBTQ communities to heal their relationship to spirituality.
  
• Spirituality vs. organized religion, and the important of questioning both.
  
• We talk Queer people a catalysts for the planets evolution as outsiders, gatekeepers and other archetypes.
  
• What it means to be a hero and to live heroically in the modern day.
  
• Cultivating soulful relationships and looking at the ways relationships can shine a light on unhealed parts of ourselves.
  

Web links

The Queer Spirit Festival is a five day celebration of the love, passion and creative spirit of the LGBTQ+ community. Now in it’s third year, the festival will be held August 14-18, in Northamptonshire, England.

Al Head is a pagan energy worker who has been an lgbt activist and organiser since the early 1980s, as well as a peace, environmental and inclusion activist. They are also the author of “Queer Deity, Sacred Slut.”

Shokti is a spiritual activist and Faerie Witch. He is one of the crew who worked to birth Folleterre Radical Faerie Sanctuary in France and who brought Faerie gatherings to the UK in 2006. Shokti is the workshop programmer for the Queer Spirit Festival, bringing together dozens of facilitators and activists working on the cutting edge of queer community and consciousness.

Episode Highlights

• Shokti shares how his HIV diagnosis lead him to explore spirituality and through this path connected with his current community.
  
• Al tells the story of their spiritual journey from radical Christianity to exploring the intersection of sexuality, spirituality and politics, leading them to paganism.
  
• They share how the Queer Spirit festival first began as an idea out of Queer Pagan Camp, as a way of bringing different tribes of queer spiritual folks together.
  
• They describe what it’s like to attend the QS festival, what kind of workshops are scheduled and the different rituals and ceremonies which are offered.
  
• Shokti shares more of his ideas about the reclaiming of queer mystical power, and the weaving together of sexuality and spirituality.
  
• Al talks about how they use sex magic to help heal the land and brings these practices to the festival for restoring the energy of the earth.
  
• We discuss how learning about consent with people can improve our relationship to the earth.

Web links

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

 And follow us on Instagram! 

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Lis Goldschmidt is an acupuncturist and herbalist who has been practicing in San Francisco for ten years. She works with people with a wide variety of conditions and has advanced training in the treatment of Lyme Disease, hormone balancing, pre + post natal care and mental/spiritual issues. Lis approaches Chinese Medicine with the sensibility of an artist and activist.

Episode Highlights

• Lis tells us how she first got interested in acupuncture by being gifted a few treatments from a friend, and she noticed all the ways it benefited her.
  
• She gives us a brief overview of what acupuncture is and how it works - it comes from an ancient practice of Chinese medicine working with energies in the body.
  
• Lis shares how she approaches Chinese medicine from the perspective as an artist and activist, as well as the connection with the subtle energy bodies.
  
• How she used to work with more members of the queer community, and still sees her practice as queer despite the demographic change in San Francisco.
  
• The ways that she uses acupuncture to treat queer people, particularly folks in gender transition.
  
• Lis shares what she notices about the differences in energy patterns of queers and outsiders.
  
• How Chinese medicine works on an emotional and psychological level.
  
• We discuss the importance of self care in a world that asks us to work more and more.
  
• Lis comes out about honing her abilities for energy work in combination with acupuncture by touching clients feet.
  

Web links

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 
And follow us on Instagram!
Join our mailing list to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Julie Dreyer (she/her) is a board certified hospital chaplain who helps patients, families and staff meet their emotional and spiritual needs. She completed a Masters of Divinity at Maitripa (a Tibetan Buddhist college), where she teaches classes, facilitates meditation and music practices. Her sense of the world has been shaped by practicing within various spiritual and embodiment traditions. In search of wholeness, Julie spent four years traveling the world sharing sacred music with people on the streets, in nature and with intentional communities. She is grateful to all her teachers who continue to inspire her to be with what is.

Episode Highlights

• Julie explains what a chaplain is and how she fulfills that role now in a hospital.
  
• She tells about her spiritual journey to become a chaplain, moving from a career in computer engineering to exploring music and yoga for her own healing.
  
• Julie talks about how her sisters cancer diagnosis and death lead to her to confront her own relationship to death, and eventually supporting others as they face their own mortality.
  
• She shares how music and songs help to express emotions and support others through challenging times.
  
• We talk about the important challenge of confronting and engaging your fear when facing illness and death.

Web links

Grab your FREE Guide - Needs, Boundaries & Self-Care for Queer Folks.  Download it here.

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

And follow us on Instagram!

Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Rae McDaniel (they/them) is a non-binary speaker, author, therapist, Certified Sex Therapist, coach and Transgender Diversity & Inclusion Educator. Rae helps audiences gain the sheer audacity to be themselves in the world through play, pleasure, and possibility.
Their book Gender Magic is a first-of-its-kind practical guide to achieving gender freedom with joy, curiosity, and pleasure for transgender and non-binary individuals, gender explorers, and those who love them.
Rae is also the founder and CEO of Practical Audacity, a Gender & Sex Therapy practice in Chicago, serving over 300 clients yearly.

Episode Highlights

• During our shared time we explore what it means to be in flow with the unfolding journey of gender.
• Rae shares that coming out to their family took a couple of years - they were blessed and lucky to have built a supportive strong queer community prior to coming out.
• They share with us  how pandemic quarantine removed a lot of the external barriers trans people navigate on the daily. During this time, Rae honored their trans identity by getting top surgery and working more deeply with testosterone injections. 
• Rae drops some queer wisdom nuggets: How do we connect to ourselves, to each other? How do we bring more pleasure + joy + play into our lives right now even while holding all the heavy stuff?
• In their new book, Gender Magic, Rae poses that we position gender exploration and transition as just another part of self growth. 
• Rae shares an excerpt from their book with us and it’s filled with such yummy nuggets of queer wisdom. 
• Pleasure + Joy + Play remain integral ingredients of their growth.

Web links

Join the private Queer Spirit Community to continue the conversation and connect with other listeners. 

Join us for First Saturday's FREE meditation & breath work circles online. 

Grab your FREE Mini-Course: The Self-Confident Queer - start here.

And follow us on Instagram:
- Nick Venegoni, he>they
- TanyaMarck Oviedo, they/them

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Kendrick Daye is a multi-media collage artist and the creator of the Black Queer Tarot. Originally from Coconut Grove, Florida, he is now setting up art camp in Harlem, NY. His diverse approaches to making art include art direction, bespoke design, music, and most notably collage - both digital and analog. Kendrick aims to create work that imagines a future where black, queer life is prosperous and thriving.

Episode Highlights

• Kendrick shares about how he started making art and how he dove in deeply, creating a zine while in college.
• Kendrick talks about how creating art has been a foundation of his life and led him to the projects he’s working on now.
• We discuss his new Black Queer Tarot deck, co-created with Justin Henry.
• He shares about his creative process working on the Tarot deck and what that was like during the pandemic.
• We talk about Afrofuturism and its place in art and society today.

Web links

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

 And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Crystal Mason (they/them) is an artist, activist, dreamer, consultant and coach. They believe in the power of community and necessity of hope.
Jason Wyman (they/them) is Queerly Complex. Using appreciative inquiry, deep listening, and creative conjuring, Wyman taps the Cosmic Mysteries in all to reveal moments of Chaos Poetry. They live, love, and create on Yelamu / San Francisco, and share a home and family with their husband and pride of house and feral cats.

Episode Highlights

• Crystal + Jason share their personal queer-stories and drop some queer wisdom nuggets
• Sweetness alert: We get cozy + comfy while Jason + Crystal take us for a saunter and share about how they met and their connection.
• We learn about the medicine + magic of dreaming in public and how sharing those dreams with others can lead to co creation and action.
• Crystal leads Nick + TanyaMarck through a dream practice that includes a share/reflection of what we experienced.
• Behind the scenes and during our shared time, Jason has been alchemizing some chaos poetry which they share with us; it’s very queer + yummy.
• We learn about the offerings and practices that both Jason + Crystal share with our collective.

Jason's chaos poetry from our collective dreaming practice lead by Crystal:

Web links

Join the private Queer Spirit Community to continue the conversation and connect with other listeners. 

Join us for First Saturday's FREE meditation & breath work circles online. 

Grab your FREE Mini-Course: The Self-Confident Queer - start here.

And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Episode Highlights

Season 7 premieres with our first cross-pollination episode, where we share space with other queer podcasters and creators.

• We start by floating into a round of: I will share mine (show you mine), if you share yours (if you show me yours) - a lovely space where we each share books/authors that have impacted our queerness.
• We reflect and share about the books and the aspects of our queerness that are awakened.
• TanyaMarck & Nick get into some queer spirit medicine and drop into some breathwork + movement + toning with the intentions of bringing and sharing all of theses beautifully awakened frequencies with our bodies and systems sprinkling it all with gratitude.
• Thank you to books and their authors: Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunnigham; The Velvet Rage, by Alan Downs; The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, by Ann Rice writing as A.N. Roquelaure; & Tales of The City, by Armistead Maupin.

Web links

Author, grief doula, sound healer, vocalist, and composer, gina Breedlove (she/they/Grace) is from the People's Republic of Brooklyn N.Y. gina is an oracle for the medicine of Grace and grief, and travels the world sharing the good news of grief-letting as a path to liberation.

Episode Highlights

• We learn about gina and the medicine + magic she shares with our collective about her work with grief-letting.
• In honor of gina’s Kitchen Table Grief circles, the three of us come to table to share and explore the ingredients/medicines each of us practice when navigating grief: grounding, clearing, calling in (guidance/support).

Web links

Bonnie Violet is a trans femme genderqueer spiritual drag artist, identity doula and digital chaplain; YouTuber, Twitcher & Host of A Queer Chaplain podcast with such series as Drag & Spirituality, TranSpirit & Faith Leaders. Co-host of Splintered Grace with her conservative christian aunt, and At the Castro Country Club recovery podcast. Director of 1st Annual Drag & Spirituality Summit to take place in Chicago in October 2022.
Bonnie Violet shares her experience of strength and hope with HIV, recovering from drugs, alcohol, and sexual assault in classrooms, community centers, churches, online and anywhere else she is invited.
As a queer chaplain she is present with people in death and dying to self by helping to lace one’s narrative with a spiritual thread to remind them of their resilience, strengthen faith in self and create serenity in the now.

Episode Highlights

• Bonnie shares about her personal journey with drag and her trans identity being a result of a spiritual awakening.
• She talks about her work as a queer chaplain and identity doula to helps others through all transitions of life.
• We learn about Bonnie’s connection to her spirituality through sobriety.
• Bonnie talks about their work with death and dying.

Web links

Grab your FREE Mini-Course: The Self-Confident Queer - start here.

And follow us on Instagram!

Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Seth Eisen is a San Francisco-based artist, writer, director, dramaturg, archivist, and educator who engages LGBTQIA+ history as a living, breathing dialogue by researching lost legacies. His transdisciplinary aesthetic combines physical theater, dance, ritual, puppetry, drag, circus, installation, and video art. Blurring the edge between art, research, and activism, the work is a hybrid of visual art and immersive live theater. For 25 years Seth has staged performance pieces, original plays, street spectacles and installations and has curated and appeared in numerous collaborative projects created with other Bay Area artists.

In 2007, he founded the ensemble-based theater company Eye Zen Presents that unearths and elevates the lost and hidden histories of queer ancestors so that we can better understand our lineages and ourselves. The company’s mission is to share queer cultural legacies with the general public and provides space for our local QTBIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities to gather and be in creative relationship with each other. Eye Zen creates multidisciplinary community-building events in traditional and alternative theater spaces, private homes, gardens, schools and community centers. Eye Zen’s most recent multi-year project OUT of Site, is a series of performance-driven queer history tours make the connection between the people and the sites where histories took place, bringing them to life in immersive, educational, and entertaining events around San Francisco. FabLab queer history program provides community members opportunities to learn queer history while developing creative interdisciplinary projects specifically focused on queer ancestors of color.

Episode Highlights

• Seth shares his path of creativity through his youth to becoming a performer and producer.
• We talk about why he began focusing his work on queer ancestors and how he brings these histories alive in the present day.
• We explore Seth’s simultaneous connection with spirit and his creative work, beginning in childhood.
• Seth talks about the art of puppetry and his work through that medium.
• He shares about the experience of caring for his brother, who passed from cancer, and how it transformed and inspired his life & work.
• We discuss the power of place when bringing queer history alive, in particular queer BIPOC ancestors

Web links

Mark Horn is the author of “Tarot and the Gates of Light: A Kabbalistic Path to Liberation.” This innovative, spiritual workbook has won praise from two groups that don’t usually come together—rabbis and tarot experts.
Mark has been a life-long activist in the post-Stonewall LGBTQ movement, starting in 1970 as a member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance; as well as serving as chair of Gay & Lesbian Youth of New York. Over the years his activism and community service has included working as a peer counselor at the LGBTQ counseling center, Identity House; and serving on the board of directors of NewFest, New York City’s premier LGBTQ film festival.
He is the editor/writer of the Stonewall Seder liturgy, a ritual dinner celebrating Jewish LGBTQ Pride, which has been used and adapted by congregations around the United States, Europe and Australia.
Mark is probably the only person who has taught at the Readers Studio International Tarot Conference, the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Identity House Gay Men’s Conference.
He lives on the Upper West Side in New York City where he is available for private instruction and consultation.

Episode Highlights

• We discuss Mark’s book, Tarot and the Gates of Light: A Kabbalistic Path to Liberation. 
• Mark shares about his spiritual journey from his days studying Buddhism in Japan to his work today teaching and doing tarot readings.
• He talks about his ways of working with his mysticism traditions as a path of queer liberation and wholeness.
• We learn about his creation of the Stonewall Seder and how it has grown and evolved over three decades.
• We explore the heroic journey archetype and how that applies to the queer community.

Web links

Help us support the queer community & keep the podcast going - Support us on Patreon.

Grab your FREE Guide: The Self-Confident Queer - Download it  here.

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

 And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

David Auten & John Schneider are the Debt Free Guys and hosts of the Queer Money podcast. With their writing, speaking and coaching, they help queer people live fabulously, not fabulously broke. Their goal is to connect LGBTQ people with the information and services we need so our community can do more and be more. They’ll connect your brand and employees to the queer community and help your queer employees thrive financially. They’re regular contributors to Forbes and their work has appeared in Motley Fool, Yahoo Finance, Market Watch, CNBC, Huffington Post, Business Insider and Time to name a few.

Episode Highlights

• David and John share how they started Debt Free Guys by confessing to each other about their personal debt despite their background in finance. They worked hard to pay off their debt quickly and decided to start teaching others to do the same through their personal finance blog and then coaching.
  
• We talk about how people get to acquiring large amounts of debt, using money to cover up feelings of inadequacy as a result of growing up queer.
  
• The Queer Money podcast started as a way to educate the LGBTQ communities on personal finance, and now also they tell stories of how others have overcome financial struggles.
  
• We discuss a recent episode where they shared big challenges they had in their business and how they really leaned into their spiritual practices for support and self care.
  
• They share some insights about what is preventing LGBTQ folks from achieving financial wellness.
  

Web links

Grab your FREE Guide - Needs, Boundaries & Self-Care for Queer Folks.  Download it here.

 Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

 And follow us on Instagram!

  Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

April Harter is a black, queer, radical feminist who specializes in reforming the perpetrators of racism through the Racist Signature™ Anti-Racism Method. 

"I teach anti-racism without shame and with loving compassion for my fellow human beings. We all have things we are ashamed of, and it is in those dark nights of the soul, that we convince ourselves that we do not deserve love or compassion.

"I reform the perpetrators of racism to learn to love themselves so that they can learn to love people of color (POC) authentically, and in so doing, love all of humanity on the deepest of levels."

Episode Highlights

• April tells us how she unexpectedly got into anti-racism coaching by working in her private practice to help white psychotherapists, and also after the events of Charlottesville.
  
• She discusses the importance of healing her own racial trauma before she could help perpetrators of racism.
  
• We talk about the difference between performative allyship versus actual healing from racial trauma through intervention; and how it’s a kind of deep shadow work and tuning into unconditional love.
  
• She unpacks the relationship of shame to racial trauma, and the effects of racial battle fatigue on POC.
  
• We talk about the deep commitment it takes to do the healing work necessary to heal racial trauma and overcome unconscious racism.
  
• We compare and contrast unconscious racism and unconscious homophobia, and she exposes the thread of narcissism  running through unconscious perpetration.
  
• April lays out her model of identifying Racist Signature™ patterns as a form of defense mechanisms in unconscious racist behavior.
  
• She shares about her different offerings to help people work on their unconscious racism, on social media, free e-book and e-course, community network and coaching programs.

Web links

Season 6 of the podcast will launch next week on Monday, March 27th, 2023.

We're excited and grateful to share this season with TanyaMarck Oviedo (they/them) as a co-host on the show. You may remember them from the last episode of season 5 last year. 

We want to share about some of our online offerings…

First Saturdays Online Meditation + Breath Work
This is an opportunity and an invitation for us to be in and with queer community while we meditate + breathe together.


And If you’re seeking queer community, we invite you to join us and others in our virtual and private Queer Spirit Community group. It’s a space where you can connect with like-minded queer beings, share and receive support, and build community  
Join us at queerspirit.mn.co


We hope you enjoy this upcoming season!

Kenji Oshima is an Intrerfaith Spiritual Director, Community Dharma Teacher and Life Coach specializing in high functioning adults with ADHD. When not geeking out over Sci-Fi you’ll find him volunteering for QTAPI groups, reading at the beach, or finding ease in alternative health care.

Episode Highlights

• Kenji shares how his diagnosis of adult ADHD started him on the path to becoming a life coach.
• He talks about his philosophies of bringing shift and ease to his own clients.
• We discuss how mindfulness and spiritual practice has supported his own journey which led to him becoming a spiritual guide and companion. 
• Kenji describes what “co-active” coaching is and how he works with it.
• We explore the concept of epigenetics and what we inherit from our ancestors.

Web links

Grab your FREE Mini-Course: The Self-Confident Queer - start here.

And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Episode Highlights

• We talk about how music holds the power of healing and memory.
• Kerem shares her experiences of music as medicine and the power of improvisation, regardless of age.
• We learn how drumming was significantly healing and inspirational for Kerem and what she learned from it.
• We discuss the power of sharing music collectively and what that means for personal and social healing.

Web links

Help us support the queer community & keep the podcast going - Support us on Patreon.

Grab your FREE Guide: The Self-Confident Queer - Download it  here.

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

 And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

David Weissman is a documentary filmmaker, public speaker and longtime activist. He is best known as producer of the films THE COCKETTES, WE WERE HERE, and CONVERSATIONS WITH GAY ELDERS. David was also co-founder of QDoc—The Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival.

Episode Highlights

• David shares about how he became an accidental filmmaker while he followed his path of activism.
• We discuss how his style of interviewing to elicit personal story colors the depth of his documentaries on queer history.
• David talks about his Gay Elders Project and value of including queer elders in his documentary work.
• He also talks about using younger folks to edit Gay Elders Project, and the importance of intergenerational collaboration.
• David provides insights into his connection between activism and filmmaking.

Web links

Ed Wolf has been working continuously in the HIV/AIDS epidemic since 1983, as chronicled in the award-winning documentary We Were Here. He has developed HIV-related curriculum and trainings for a large number of national and international organizations and institutions, including the California State Office of AIDS, the Shanti Project of San Francisco, UCSF AIDS Health Project and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. He's facilitated trainings for counselors working in clinical trials in Lima, Peru as well as South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe. His stories and articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Christopher Street, the James White Review and Prentice Hall’s Discovering Literature. Ed has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was awarded the HIV National Educator of Year Award from thebody.com.

Episode Highlights

• Ed shares how he became a story teller by learning from his mothers skill to do so, and how he began to weave that skill into his work as an AIDS activist in the early years of the epidemic.
  
• Ed was a volunteer supporting people with AIDS very early in the 80’s, and took leadership and training roles. He shares some stories about what it was like in the early days of AIDS.
  
• He has traveled to South America, Africa and Russia, offering training in AIDS prevention and healthcare; as well as gay rights activism.
  
• He shares a story about visiting Lima, Peru to help people who were part of the first clinical trial of PrEP/Truvada.
  
• His blending of spirituality with activism, and using the support of a higher power to help others through challenging times.
  
• His one-man stage shows touring the US, telling stories of his life as a gay activist.
  

Web links

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

And follow us on Instagram!

Join our mailing list to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Episode Highlights

• Nick & Darshana discuss the difference between erotic and sexual states of being and how we can cultivate our own eros through connection with the natural world. 
• Darshana shares how she helps folks heal from trauma and shame, and to learn and prioritize our own pleasure.
• We learn about Darshana’s Erotic Wholeness coaching practice.
• We explore the disconnect between human society and the natural world, and how that has cost us in mental, emotional and sexual health.
• Darshana talks about “eco-sexuality” and its role in our well-being as humans.

Web links

Help us support the queer community & keep the podcast going - Support us on Patreon.

Grab your FREE Guide: The Self-Confident Queer - Download it  here.

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

 And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Welcome to our first CareCast episode of 2025! 

This year we're are posting recordings of our monthly CareCircles to the podcast - this is our "CareCast."

We invite you get comfy, grab some hydration and join us in chanting together.

The Queer Spirit Community gathers on the 3rd Sunday of each month for practices in devotional chanting, toning and song, as well as breath work + movement. These practices are faciltated by TanyaMarck Oviedo (they/them) and Nick Venegoni (he/they). They are curated + inspired by the planetary + astrological + pagan wheel of the year energies in mind.

For January's gathering we were honored to have Mx. Puja Singh share a sargam + kirtan practice with us. 

Find more about them at mxpujasingh.com 
and on IG @mxpujasingh

We honor with Gratitude + Thanks the sacred Practices + Traditions + Peoples + Lands: Yoga, Ayurveda – Sanskrit, Mantra, Raga, Hindustani Music, Buddhism + Tibet + Meditation; Tongva + Kizh + Chumash + Ohlone; Tarot + Astrology + Magic + Witchcraft; the teachers who have carried this wisdom and shared it with us ~ Gracias.

As always, you can find all things Queer Spirit HERE. 

Links + Resources + Invitations:

• An invitation to the private Queer Spirit Community to continue the conversation and connect with other listeners. 
• Join us for FREE virtual Care Circles meditation + chanting + breath work circles online. We meet monthly on the 1st Saturday, 3rd Sunday + 4th Sunday. 
• Follow us on BLUESKY + IG!
• Join our mailing list to get news, Care Cirlce + podcast updates sent directly to you.
• QS Resources: News, Education + Care.

Madre Jaguar (she/they) is a Queer, Non-Binary Birth Doula, Oracle and Curandera of Mayan, Pipil, Nahual and Garifuna descent. Born in Los Angeles, CA to Salvadoran immigrants and raised in Mexico. Their practice is rooted in their ancestral heritage and indigenous traditions of Mexico and Central America.

Episode Highlights

• We learn about Madre Jaguar via some sweet nuggets of their story and how they answered their call to magic. 
• Madre shares about some of the tools and medicines she works with regularly (mushrooms + tarot) and the impact they have on their life and practice. 
• The three of us drop in together and share a platica (heart to heart) where we navigate what’s showing up on our hearts + how we are navigating + responding to current energies
• Madre Jaguar is called to draw a tarot card and share a reading for the collective.

Web links

Join us for FREE meditation + chanting + breath work circles online. 

 And follow us on Instagram!

 Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Kaya Colin is a queer femme, social worker, witch, and accidental parent to an almost 3 year old. Her upcoming projects, both launching this summer, are inspired by vulnerability and isolation from community during pregnancy and parenting. The Mad Queer Parents podcast, explores the intersection of mental health, queerness and parenting. Kaya and her partner are opening, a counseling practice, Femme & Them, to serve LGBTQ families and pregnant people. In between foraging, parenting, and making tea and magic, Kaya is a crisis worker in rural Washington state.

Episode Highlights

• Kaya tells how she was inspired to study social work after having a chaotic childhood, and her desire to understand the system she grew up in by studying psychology.
• She shares the story of becoming a parent, which was unplanned but is learning so much from this new experience. She talks about being a single, queer mother-to-be and the challenges of navigating her identities in birthing spaces.
• During her pregnancy she tuned into the energies of grief and death by connecting with her ancestors as she became a parent.
• Now she and her partner run a therapy practice in Washington state, working with LGBTQ families.
• Her identity as a witch is a way of connecting to nature and finding support through that connection. She shares how the earth has taught her to be a parent.
• Her new podcast, Mad Queer Parents explores the intersection of queerness, mental health and parenting.

Web links

Join the Queer Spirit Community Facebook group to continue the conversation and stay up to date on new episodes. 

And follow us on Instagram!

Join our mailing list  to get news and podcast updates sent directly to you.

Cameron Esposito is a Los Angeles-based standup comic, actor and writer. She has appeared both on TV and film, as well as at comedy and music festivals world wide. Cameron’s podcast, Queery, features interviews with LGBTQ+ luminaries including the likes of Roxane Gay, Trixie Mattel, Evan Rachel Wood, Lena Waithe & Tegan and Sara Quin.

Cameron is co-creator and co-star of Take My Wife, which garnered rave reviews from the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture and Indiewire and is available on Starz. Her most recent special, Rape Jokes, raised almost $100,000 for RAINN. Her first book, Save Yourself, is available March 2020.

Episode Highlights

• Cameron shares about her newly released book, Save Yourself.
  
• We compare and contrast our experiences of growing up Catholic and queer.
  
• She shares her story about how she wanted to be a priest, from being an altar server to going on missions as a teen.
  
• Cameron’s social justice education opened her eyes to realize the path of priesthood was not for her, while simultaneously coming out queer.
  
• She shares that her primary spiritual fulfillment is found in her own community.
  
• We discuss how her interests in community, social justice and comedy combine into her standup work.
  
• We talk about the importance of language in public spaces as a way to respect communities of diverse identities.

Web links

Mahrs Schoppman, born and raised in California, is a queer & trans somatic psychotherapist with a private practice based out of his home office in Occidental, California. He specializes in working with the queer community and with those who live with the embodied traumatic impacts of growing up in an oppressive religious environment. He is passionate about walking with people on their journeys of reclaiming embodied knowing, sensation, emotional range, and vitality. Currently, he is launching a series of religious trauma therapy groups with an understanding that group-based trauma needs group based healing.

Born queer and raised orthodox Mormon, Scott Sessions knows about navigating worlds that seem like polar opposites. Scott, who now identifies as an agnostic post-Mormon mystic, is developing a career as a spiritual life coach. He helps those who have left restrictive religions to cultivate new spiritual practices that bring healing and inner peace. In addition to coaching, Scott runs monthly reading events (both online and in-person) called Queer Bedtime Stories, where folks come together to share and be moved by the words of LGBTQ authors. With a commitment to help meet the spiritual needs of this particular moment, standing firm in both Mormon and queer identities, Scott proudly carries the pioneer tradition into the 21st century.

Episode Highlights

• Mahrs shares about his upbringing in the Evangelical Christian church, and how that effected him as a queer and trans person.
  
• Scott shares about his childhood growing up queer in a Mormon community, and struggled with his queer identity and coming out in that space.
  
• They both share how they found their path out of the dysfunction of those religious sects, and discovered their new spiritual practices.
  
• Mahrs shares how his relationship with the sensations of his body deeply impacted his ability to reconstruct his spiritual self.
  
• Scott talks about how he felt numb when he left his church and reconnected to spiritual sensation through writing and poetry. He also shares that learning about the spiritual practice of other queer folks informs his practices as well.
  
• Mahrs shares how his work as a psychotherapist is expanding to offer groups for folks recovering from religious trauma. He explains more about what somatic psychology therapy practices look like in practice.
  
• Scott shares about his new life coaching groups for queer folks who have left restrictive religions. He also talks about his Queer Bedtime Stories for folks to gather in a soft space to connect online and in-person.
  
• They both share their struggle to stay present in groups generally as a result of religious trauma, and how they stay grounded in their bodies in those moments.

Web links

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Dr. Rehan Lakhani is a naturopathic doctor in Ontario, Canada. He focuses on treating mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression by reducing systemic inflammation and optimizing the gut-brain axis. His treatments address the root cause of illness and include diet and lifestyle changes, orthomolecular medicine, botanical medicine, and more.

Episode Highlights

• Dr. Rehan helps us understand the connection between our mental health, gut health, and nutrition.
• We talk about the ways that modern diets and lifestyle are detrimental to our overhealth, and steps we can take to improve it and reduce anxiety.
• Rehan shares about his own personal journey which led him to his own medicine practice.
• We explore how chronic stress and anxiety is directly tied to physical health.
• Rehan offers some simple steps to help increase awareness around what we eat and how we eat.
• We discuss how our work lives and environmental surroundings can also contribute to a variety of different conditions in our physical and mental health.
• He talks about the importance of spending time in nature and the connection with mental and physiological health.

Web links

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Ruth Camillia (they/she/ella) is a bilingual, bicultural, healing arts practitioner, reiki master, akashic records practitioner, and tarot reader. With maternal Indigenous roots from Los Altos de Jalisco, México, they integrate curanderismo and other ancestral practices into their daily life and work. As an intuitive and trauma-informed practitioner, Ruth believes healing is sacred.

Episode Highlights

• Ruth shares their queer journey and story in the most delightful ways. And we explore aspects of Queerness alongside them.
• We get curious about and drop into the Akashic Records. Ruth collaborates on a reading for Nick.
• Ruth offers a Tarot reading for the queer collective  -  it’s cute + juicy. 
• Thank you magic and animal medicines of: hawk + black phoebe  + Akashic Records, Cosmic Tarot by Norbert Losche, Sanskrit tools and practices 
• Queer spirit fingers to Leah Garza @crystalsofaltamira + Linda Howe @drlindahowe + Salva @salvatattoo.

Web links

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In 2017 Jack Davis retired from being an office worker, which means that he can now devote as much time as he wants to being a visual artist, a witch and a radical faerie. His most recent visual art show, called FAGGOTS, was at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco in January 2019. In December of 2018 he created the dancers’ costumes for Winter Circle X, a ritual/performance piece instigated by Keith Hennessy in collaboration with Snowflake Towers.

Episode Highlights

• Jack tells how he first started studying art and education in college, and then got a masters degree in textiles. He started making crocheted penis shapes as his own way of glorifying sexuality during the sexual revolution of the 70’s.
  
• He shares the history of the word faggot, and about his exploration and usage of “faggots” in his artwork as part of queer liberation.
  
• We discuss the public's response to his art, and how censorship and exclusion of his art has been part of that response.
  
• Jack uses performance art and ritual activism, such as in "Faggots around the Labyrinth," in San Francisco prior to the 2016 presidential election to protect queer youth.
  
• He gives us a brief history of the Radical Faeries, starting in 1979 with a gathering of gay men who were anti-assimilationist, who believe that gay men are different and have a special purpose.
  
• Now Radical Faerie community is co-created in cities and sanctuaries around the world, with gatherings that are open to all gender identities.
  
• Jack got involved in ’82 and eventually became the treasurer of a local division. He was also part of the support team to care for two of the founding members (Harry Hay and John Burnside) at the end of their lives.
  
• He offers his ideas about how and why the Radical Faerie communities have been, and continue to be, so influential in queer culture.
  
• Jack shares how he uses pagan prayer beads, which have been a significant part of his spiritual daily practice.

Contact Jack Davis

Jason Hanasik is a filmmaker, artist, curator, and journalist. He originated the position of Storyteller in Gap’s Global Marketing Department. During his tenure he made videos for Gap and Gap Inc including their contribution to the It Gets Better project.

Hanasik has a Master of Journalism from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, a Master of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Summa Cum Laude from the State University of New York at Purchase. He is currently a resident at SFFILM’s FilmHouse where he is developing a screenplay and editing new films for The Guardian’s Documentaries Division and the BBC.

Episode Highlights

• Jason shares how he first got interested in photography after working at a 1-hour photo shop as a teenager.
  
• We discuss themes in his work of invisibility & exploring what is hidden in plain sight, and layers of invisibility within subgroups.
  
• We talk about his exploration of the intersections of sexuality and masculinity within the context of military culture.
  
• Jason shares his perspective on the importance of queer voices and diverse perspectives in the media and the newsroom, and the responsibility of journalists.
  

Web links

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Nikki Borodi is a Bay Area-based acro-phenom, musician, songwriter, filmmaker, educator and activist storyteller. Borodi dazzles audiences by combining her unique vocal stylings and acrobatic talents during her signature "Acrolele" performances where she sings and plays ukulele while doing acrobatics. “Acrolele” is an astounding demonstration of human potentiality that transcends perceived impossibility. Her message can be felt through every show she gives-we have the power to transform fears into flight and to live as our most authentic selves. Her work and creativity coaching inspires others to embrace diverse identities and dive into spaces of vulnerable exploration. 

Episode Highlights

• Nikki shares about her path as a musician, performer, and artist.
• She talks about how she finds healing through creative expression and the way she works with others to transform fears into flight.
• We learn about how Nikki teaches and encourages people to express their creativity and vulnerability through music.
• We explore how fear of failure or rejection can impede our creative drive and we discuss how to remedy those fears.
• Nikki talks about her conception of her Acrolele project and her upcoming album, Lesbionic.

Web links

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Cassandra Snow (they/them/she/her) is best-known for penning the Queering the Tarot book and a series of the same name, which was seen on Little Red Tarot. They’ve also written about tarot, witchcraft and theatre at Take Your Pills, QueerTarot.cards, and Howlround among others. Cassandra’s second book, Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins, is coming out via Red Wheel/Weiser Publishing on November 1, 2020.

Cassandra has been reading tarot for over a decade, and operates out of Minneapolis, MN. Cassandra is normally stationed weekly at The Eye of Horus and twice a month at The Future. They also read regularly at The Haunted Basement’s Maker’s Fairs and special events. They’ve taught classes and workshops everywhere from colleges to sex stores, as well as at the more expected metaphysical stores and events. 

Cassandra firmly believes that tarot and witchcraft should be accessible tools for anyone who wants to use them and works to make them approachable without making them seem fluffy. Humor, generosity and collaboration weave their way through all of Cassandra’s work. The work also comes from a radical, queer, sex-positive, fat-positive, anti-racist, feminist and Pagan point of view.

In Cassandra’s other life, she runs a queer theatre company called Gadfly Theatre Productions in Minneapolis.

Episode Highlights

• Cassandra shares about the importance of making tarot more approachable to all people.
• They share about their book “Queering the Tarot” and how it brings the queer perspective into divination.
• We explore what it was like to grow up queer in a Christian conservative community and how Cassandra found their liberation through witchcraft and tarot. 
• Cassandra discusses the concept of a fluid god energy and how it manifests in the form it needs for the specific person.
• They talk about the importance of honesty, compassion, and empathy when it comes to tarot readings.
• Cassandra shares about the significance of empowerment through tarot.
• They talk about their new book, “Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins.” 
• Cassandra shares their favorite queer tarot decks:
  - Next World Tarot
  - The Numinous Tarot
  - This Might Hurt Tarot
  - Modern Witch Tarot
  - The Fountain Tarot

Web links

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Elsa Asher (they/them) is a practitioner and teacher of somatics and ritual with a specialty in healing developmental and intergenerational trauma. They are a registered biodynamic craniosacral therapist, life coach, doula, Koheneh (Hebrew ritual leader), and wilderness first responder. 

Elsa holds a master’s of science degree in narrative medicine from Columbia University, a bachelor of arts in healing and humanities from Antioch University, and a certificate of Jewish studies from Machon Chana Institute. They’ve been an associate professor of narrative medicine at Columbia University and Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and presented workshops at various universities, conferences and organizations.

Elsa was born and grew up on Duwamish land, currently called Seattle, and lives on Lenape land, currently called Philadelphia. They are queer, non-binary, disabled, and mixed-class.

Episode Highlights

• Elsa & Nick discuss what it means to reconnect with our bodies in order to heal generational and developmental trauma. 
• Elsa shares about the practices of ancestral connection and how we can begin to re-inhabit our own bodies for more healing.
• They talk about their own past trauma and how it led to their work with health and healing.
• Elsa shares how, as a doula, they came to understand that peoples experiences  in their bodies are very relevant to the birth process.
• We explore balancing one’s spiritual calling with societal demands on one’s gender and body expectations.
• They explain the nature of intergenerational trauma and the importance of its healing journey.
• We talk about the differences between event trauma and persistent or developmental trauma.
• Elsa talks about the powerful sense of spiritual presence and its involvement with healing, in particular cranio-sacral healing. 

Web links

Minoritea Report is a weekly BIPOC Gay Podcast. Join Yo' AunTeas Kerel, Dawon, and Jerrell as they catch up & spill tea about the Black & POC LGBTQIA+ experience, relationships, politics, sports, and pop culture! 

Episode Highlights

• We learn how the hosts met and why they decided to start their podcast, Minoritea Report.
• They talk about the importance of representing variety within the queer BIPOC communities and showing that to the world.
• They discuss the ways last year’s events have impacted them and how that is reflected on their show.
• They share about how their podcast has helped them learn how to listen to people who not only agree but also disagree with them, and cultivate necessary conversations from those interactions.
• Most importantly, we talk about wigs!

Web links

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Seraphina Capranos is a homeopath, herbalist, and educator who is passionate about bringing more healing, communion, and earth magic to the world. She grew up learning natural medicine from her elders, and this rooted her in the confidence and power of the body’s innate healing wisdom, which inspires her daily. Seraphina's greatest passion is educating and empowering people in the wisdom of natural medicine through one-on-one consultations and classes at her clinic, The Green Raven Centre on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada, where she's been in practice since 2004. She also offers online consultations.

Episode Highlights

• Seraphina gives basic descriptions of western herbalism and classical homeopathy, their differences, and how they fall under the umbrella of naturopathy.
  
• She shares her story of being a 3rd generation herbalist, using plant medicine for common family ailments; and how she used natural medicine to help her through a spinal injury.
  
• How to make the decision to use natural medicine instead of prescription drugs, particularly for prevention and comfort.
  
• She describes how most herbs are often safe and tested over centuries to offer ease and support.
  
• Using magic for healing by connecting to the energy force of nature, spirit and the unseen world.
  
• As queer people are often more sensitive in their environments, which is a gift and challenge, Seraphina talks about how she supports people to manage their energy levels.
  
• Queer people are natural wounded healers as a result of our path in the world today.

Web links

First and foremost, David Nazario is a human, spirit, brother, lover and friend. Secondly, he is a writer, speaker, and educator. David released his first book, "Make Love Your Religion: How To Put Love First & Succeed at Doing What You Love" in 2018, and his second book, "Poems Written In The Bathtub While Cumming Out"  released Winter 2021.

Episode Highlights

• David shares his passion for writing and exploring ideas through story and poetry.
• We explore how writing can serve as a healing practice.
• We talk about his book, "Make Love Your Religion: How To Put Love First & Succeed at Doing What You Love," and how it is a guide for healing the Self and connecting with the Divine to fulfill one’s purpose and passion.
• We get to hear one of David’s poems from his upcoming book, "Poems Written in the Bathtub While Coming Out."
  

Web links

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Larry Armstead II is an expectation coach and inspirational speaker who is taking the world by storm. Seeing a need for a step over the law of attraction, Larry heard these words during his nightly meditation that forever transformed his life:  “In life, we don’t get what we want. We get what we expect.” That caused him to chase this wisdom like a madman. He holds a Bachelors of Arts in Sociology and Spanish, and a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology.

Episode Highlights

• Larry tells us what the law of attraction is and his new spin on it.
  
• He shares his merging of expectation and anticipation: Exp-anticipation
  
• Getting clear on your internal mindset to match your expectations in the world.
  
• His new book “Where’s my pizza?” as a road map to help you get clear on your life intentions.
  
• His story of awakening his psychic abilities when he was a teen and foreseeing the death of his older brother.
  
• How he helps people get clear on what they want by getting clear on who they are.
  
• The challenges queer people have being vulnerable and open to loving relationships.
  

Web links

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Ryan Loiselle is a non-binary queer person (using he/him or they/them pronouns) and has been exploring radical identity and spirituality since their early 20s. While that journey has involved enculturation as a gay male and initiation into some more organized systems their experience has always been foregrounded by deep interest in expressing and celebrating their own queerness and discovering the inherent magic that can come out of liminal being. Under the name Sister Sharin’ Dipity, they became fully-professed member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in 2003 and continues that work today as the current Prioress of the Portland Sisters. In 2018, he was initiated as a Brother of the Unnamed, an ecstatic spiritual path for men who love men that focuses on service and personal work with ancestors and the deities connected to that path. In his secular life, Ryan is a licensed professional counselor and gender therapist in private practice in Portland Oregon where they also serve as the Clinical Supervisor for Brave Space, a counseling center devoted to supporting a transgender, non-binary and other gender expansive individuals and their families.

Episode Highlights

• Ryan tells us who the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI) are, how they began and what they do today. He also tells us how he first discovered them and his path to joining them.
  
• They share their ideas about the connection of the Sisters to the Radical Faeries.
  
• Ryan talks about how being a Sister shaped his spiritual life and his own queer identity.
  
• We discuss how the Sisters help us push and expand our ideas of gender through their own authentic explorations.
  
• Ryan talks about becoming a therapist and how he came to focus on gender and identity.
  
• They share how they use and practice existential therapy in their practice.
  
• We talk about breaking gender role norms, no matter what your sexual or gender identity is.
  

Web links

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Today we have another cross-pollination episode for you with our friends over at the Radicle Curiosity podcast, Lou Florez and Lynn Flanagan-Till.

Lou Florez (Awo Ifadunsin - he/they) is a diviner and metaphysical reader who facilitates spiritual connectivity and transformational empowerment throughout his myriad roles as a Priest, lecturer, author, medicine maker, and activist. His work is inherently interdisciplinary and intersectional—bridging the fields of herbalism, ecology, divination, poetry, psychology, religious studies, gender and sexual studies, mixed-media art, and perfumery. Lou investigates the emanating Spirit present within all these fields and incorporates them into experiences that activate the Spirit within.

Lynn Flanagan-Till (she/they) is a Mother, Folk-Futurist Herbalist, generational Veštica (‘a skilled woman’) in Serb-Romani lineage, Olorisha, DIY ethnobotanist, botanical formulator and nature punk. Her work is deeply influenced by ancestral traditions and rematriation. Lynn has been a practicing herbalist in the Denver area for over 20 years and is devoted to serving spirit and community via plants.

In this collaboration we have a round table conversation about herbs that we each feel a connection to the winter solstice. We share magic and history about rue, creosote, rosemary and osha. We offer practices for each one you can do at home to deepen your relationship and understanding.

Find all four herbal practices on this nifty handout HERE!

Web links

Gede Parma (Fio Aengus) is a Balinese-Australian witch, international teacher, magical mentor, author, and initiate. Gede (they/them pronouns) cherishes the initiatory mysteries of four powerful witchcraft traditions, and is a co-founder of the Coven of the Wildwood and midwife and initiate of the Wildwood Tradition. They are also an active initiate of Reclaiming and Anderson Feri. Gede has authored or coauthored five books.

Gede/Fio's work links animism to heresy to sorcery to poetry to spirit-work to sex to faerie faith to folklore. Most of their time is spent reading Tarot, working magic, teaching and celebrating the Craft, mentoring witches and spirit-workers, singing and drumming, and laughing with friends. 

They currently reside in the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal Peoples, in so-called Brisbane, Australia.

Episode Highlights

• Gede talks about their first spirituality came from being born into Balinese Hinduism which includes mysticism and Tantra. They started exploring witchcraft on their own in childhood.
  
• They share their ideas about what it means to be born a witch and to practice magic.
  
• We muse over the intersection of queer people coming out and discovering their own personal spirituality.
  
• Gede shares about their first experiences of racism and cultural appropriation within their multicultural experience growing up as a child in both Australia and Bali; and within pagan community.
  
• We discuss the practice of white on white calling out of cultural appropriation
  
• Gede talks about Intention vs. impact, and the relationship of money and spiritual appropriation.
  
• They talk about their engagement and influence from the Reclaiming tradition, and its embracing of multi-gendered identities in its community.

Web links

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Kanyon Sayers-Roods "Coyote Woman"  (Mutsun-Ohlone, Chumash, EuroMutt) is a two-spirit steward of Indian Canyon, an artist, activist and educator. Kanyon teaches truth in history and envisioning indigenous futures to diverse audiences. Kanyon's work has been featured at the De Young Museum, SOMArts Gallery, Gathering Tribes and many indigenous powwows and gatherings.

Episode Highlights

• Kanyon shares how she first started her business, Kanyon Konsulting, to provide education on decolonization and reindigenization for non-native people, particularly in the Ohlone territory (San Francisco Bay Area, California).
  
• Kanyon helps us understand what it means to do the work of decolonization and reindiginization.
  
• She shares about the practice and importance of land acknowledgement and recognition.
  
• We also talk about the practice of offering “land tax” donations to help native peoples get land back.
  
• Kanyon shares why it is important and helpful to get familiar with the native peoples in your own territory.
  
• We break down the label of “two-spirit” and other labels native folks use to talk about their queer experience.

Web links

Syd Yang (they/them) is a mixed race queer/non binary healer, writer, intuitive artist and healing justice organizer who weaves together magic, prayer and intention as an energy healer in the world through their practice, Blue Jaguar Healing Arts. As someone who lives with depression and anxiety, and has recovered from eating disorders, their work finds its resonance in the stories we each hold at the intersection of memory, body, sexuality and mental health.  Syd's work is rooted in Buddhist practice, is liberation minded and trauma informed. Syd is based in Los Angeles, CA.

Episode Highlights

• Syd shares about the discovery of energy and spiritual healing work on their journey of recovering from bulimia. 

• We explore the significance of understanding the human body as a whole energetic entity and how that concept ties into recovery. 

• Syd describes their transformation from being healed to becoming a healer.

• They discuss their initiation into the role as a healing practitioner in New Orleans through a powerful vision.

• Syd talks about overcoming their personal judgements regarding energetic and spiritual healers.

• We discuss the power of sharing the stories held in our bodies. Tied into that is the exploration of the power of vulnerability through storytelling.

• They share how eating disorders and self harm can show up as imprints of trauma, and as reactions to what is happening in the world.

• We explore the importance of being present with how one feels about their body, positively and negatively, and the strength of not running away from those feelings. 

• Syd shares about their meditation practice and how it helped them witness the state of their body and their healing process.

• They talk about their connection with animals and plants, and how it creates new possibilities about how they can view their body in relationship to the natural world. 

• They reflect on their clients sharing that the healing work they do together has led to deep transformation in themselves and their relationships.

Web links

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Richael Faithful is a multidisclipinary folk healing artist, healing justice strategist, complex conversation facilitator, community lawyer and creative. Working from the shamanic tradition of conjure, they focus on the interactions of generational healing, practical ritual, and magic and death doulaship.

Episode Highlights:

• Richael shares their path to finding and practicing folk healing work.
• We talk about the different ways Richael uses this work, particularly in groups with healing justice practices.
• We learn how Richael answered their shamanic calling.
• Richael talks about their passion for drumming and leading drum circles as ways to create communal space.
• They share about the importance of not only healing the individual body but also tending to the collective body.
• We discuss Richael’s book, “Together at the Edge of the World: On Healing Justice."

Web links

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Hank Hivnor is a healer, artist, psychic & life coach, who uses psychic ability and other healing modalities he's learned along the way. For twenty-seven years he's been sharing insights, working with energy and transforming lives and himself, present in everything he does from working with Angels, inspiring beings and seeing the profound shifts in people’s lives.

Episode Highlights

• Hanks defines what it means to him to be a clairvoyant and medium.
  
• His healing work is an intention to help people change, grow or transform.
  
• Nick shares a story about his own healing experience with Hank when they first met.
  
• Hank tells how he first discovered his intuitive abilities to be a psychic healer.
  
• We discuss how the trauma of homophobia many queer folks experience can be a gateway to tapping into intuitive and healing gifts.
  
• Hank makes paintings and multimedia art as a way of activating healing in others. We discuss one of his art pieces of “Heart Healing."
  
• We talk about the importance of play and art in the role of personal healing and empowerment.
  
• We discuss tuning into the moment and making healing spontaneous and common place without the bells and whistles; and bringing positive intentions to everyday life.
  
• Hank talks about being in the “Truth Time,” the way that the truth is coming to the surface in our culture quickly and easily right now.
  
• He shares the importance of practicing self love and compassion to combat the harsh inner critic. 

Web links

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Phoenix Song is a licensed trauma therapist, expressive arts practitioner, certified hypnotherapist, and applied shamanic counselor serving healers, artists, and spiritual seekers in their own deep healing work. She is passionate about supporting others in reconnecting with the wisdom of our bodies and the Earth, taking back our own power, and connecting to our own creative and spiritual paths. She is in the process of opening a second business, Earth Based Wisdoms, with a focus on offering energy work and earth based healing services to individuals and groups. Phoenix is also a writer, poet, singer, dancer, and yoga student. She is deeply in love with the healing power of the arts and the greatest artist of all, this magical being of Earth.

Episode Highlights

• Phoenix shares how she became a healer by connecting to the mysterious energy of nature and asking for her “magic powers” to come to her.
  
• We talk about praying in an earth-based way by connecting to the different elements of nature.
  
• Our wild, queer nature has been taken from us and connecting to the earth and calling that essence back is empowering.
  
• Phoenix shares her ideas of healing the “sacred space of me” as a way of bringing back wholeness and compassion to ourselves.
  
• She talks about the intersection of psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and earth based wisdom practices (aka. eco-therapy or “shamanic” practices), and how she weaves those all together in her practice.
  
• We discuss biological cycles and spiritual initiations, and how they hold power and teachings for us when we are present to them. 

Web links

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