CIIS Public Programs

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * How do ordinary people with busy lives leverage our actions in support of liberation, justice, and authentic connection? How can activists and social change-makers avoid burning out? How does the body factor into what our social movements might mis...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Today we are excited to announce that we are returning to a weekly episode release schedule, so please make sure to subscribe and look for a new release from us each week starting with the next one featuring a conversation with Rae Johnson on embod...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * How do we grieve our losses? How can we care for our spirits? Immigrant daughter, novice chaplain, bereaved friend, and author Chenxing Han explores these searing questions in her latest book One Long Listening. One of American Buddhism’s most vita...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Non-binary therapist, certified sex therapist, and transgender diversity and inclusion educator Rae McDaniel has spent decades exploring gender. Their recent book, Gender Magic, is a first-of-its-kind practical guide to achieving gender freedom wit...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * At the heart of every healthy, fulfilling relationship lies the unshakable knowledge that we can trust another person with the care of our whole well-being. Yet most of us arrive at our relationships with triggers, traumas, and old patterning that...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Author, creative, host, and self-proclaimed "pleasure doula" Sara Elise is on a quest to examine the ingredients of our lives—those essential components that make up our days—in support of systemic transformation and radical change. Sara’s work, an...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone La...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Archetypal astrology is an approach influenced by Jungian and transpersonal psychology that studies the connection between the changing positions of the planets in the solar system and archetypal patterns in human experience and history. The eviden...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * A massively diverse group of organisms, fungi support and sustain nearly all living systems. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality, and even intelligence, into question. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate env...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Integrative physician, author, and activist Tanmeet Sethi’s work focuses on shifting our nervous system and biochemistry into a form of joy at the cellular level. Dr. Sethi has worked globally and locally on the frontlines with the most marginalize...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * How can we cultivate the traits of a vibrant community in our own lives and what would it look like to prioritize caring and acceptance in our interactions with others? How can we, collectively, create a climate of true inclusivity, one where our d...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Popular belief assumes that mixedness gives you the ability to feel at home in more than one culture, but the flipside reveals you can feel just as alienated in those spaces. * Born to a white American and a South Asian immigrant, scholar and essay...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * For over two decades, Deborah Egerton has been teaching the Enneagram—a popular personality typing tool—as a valuable device for social justice and anti-racism. In this episode Dr. Egerton is joined by Micky ScottBey Jones, Enneagram teacher and mu...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * For a great many people, the human impact on the Earth was not apparent until recently, but this is not the case for all people or cultures. For the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story th...

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. The contemporary definition of a “good” or “healthy” body has been centuries in the making, but as eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessic...

In her latest book, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, activist, counselor, and Buddhist teacher Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde shares ways of creating kinship and community through the metaphor of Indra’s Net—a universal net in which all beings reflect each other like jewels. In this episode, Ayo is joined by somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez for a hear...

Caste is one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world. It negatively impacts 1.9 billion people worldwide, crippling their quality of life. Brahmins, who created this system in Hindu scripture, are at the top of the caste system and have benefited from centuries of privilege, access, and power because of it. Dalits, who sit at the bottom of this hierarchy, are branded “untouchable” and sent...

Resmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker renowned for his bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Resmaa is the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building. In this episode, CIIS Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion...

Between 2016 and 2018, essayist and humor writer Elissa Bassist saw over 20 medical professionals for a variety of mysterious ailments. Elissa had what millions of American women had: pain that didn’t make sense to doctors, a body that didn’t make sense to science, and a psyche that didn’t make sense to mankind. Then an acupuncturist suggested some of her physical pain could be caged fury finding...

Koans are the record of provocative, and often paradoxical, exchanges between Zen masters and their students developed in medieval China. In her practice and writing, renowned Zen teacher Joan Sutherland reimagines the koan tradition with allegiance to its root spirit and to its profound potential for vivifying, subverting, and sanctifying our lives. In this episode, Joan is joined by clinical psy...

Black Queer Feminists Cara Page and Erica Woodland’s work focuses on political and spiritual liberation grounded in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and Queer and Trans healing justice lineages. Their work guides individuals through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes in the generational trauma cau...

One of the 10 most radical discoveries in human history is that of cosmogenesis, the narrative of how the expanding universe is evolving into stars, galaxies, life, and human consciousness. The challenge to this discovery is the thorny question of how human subjectivity relates to the evolution of the universe. Is there cosmic meaning in our ongoing efforts—like using memory and art—to record our...

We live in a turbulent time with storms everywhere, of every size and shape. And like every generation before us, we must learn the art of surviving them, so we can help each other endure. In his work, bestselling author and spiritual teacher Mark Nepo explores the art and practice of finding the strength to meet adversity by using the timeless teachings of the heart. In his life’s work as well as...

The term Two-Spirit is translated from a Northern Algonquin word and is used by some Native peoples of North America to signify variations of gender and sexual orientation. The term gained popularity in the 1990s as a counterpoint to colonial terminology used by anthropologists and academics alike to signify practices of nonbinary gender and sexual orientation among the Native peoples of North Ame...

When we understand and engage with our dreams we can tap into a special, deeper kind of healing. The process of healing is not about putting the same pieces back together, rather it is about reclaiming what is already within us that could not be broken—the essence of who we are as individuals and as interconnected parts of a greater whole. In this episode, author and health and wellness practition...