Tending the Roots: Composting Conversations

In this conversation, Karine Bell is joined by Mist Saoirse Alderkin to explore the New World Nursery, a space within the Rooted Village dedicated to collective dreaming, creativity, and responsibility to the worlds we are shaping together.  They talk about heartache and the longing for alternative futures in a time of deep division and polarization, and why so many people feel disconnected from t...

Karine shares a story from childhood about visiting her grandmother's house where she encountered the heavy, unspoken tensions that would shape a lifelong commitment to shadow work. This reflection weaves personal memory with a deeper exploration of the cost of avoiding the shadow —those edges-places we've been taught to fear in ourselves, our families, and our social worlds. It explores what we s...

In Care We Distrust is an introduction and reflection from inside the Rooted Village, where we're not just talking about care and care ecologies—we're getting into the messy, layered work of studying, designing and practicing it/them. Underneath so much of the crisis we're living through—political, ecological, economic—is a crisis of relationship (or a crisis of care, as our friend Cassie calls it...

In this episode, we dive into a powerful and thought-provoking conversation with the brilliant Weena Pauly-Tarr, creator of SE+AM—a body-centered practice that blends Somatic Experiencing + Authentic Movement. In a time of heightened polarization and disconnection, SE+AM offers a profound way to explore how we show up in relationship—with ourselves and others—and how we can begin to recognize and...

Welcome to a fresh session of Tending The Roots. In this episode Karine Bell speaks with Dr Leticia Neito about an upcoming program hosted by The Rooted Global Village called Where Do I Belong: An Exploration of Identity and Belonging for Bi/multicultural bodies - this time, for Europe. It's a fascinating one. The two of them talk about how this program for bicultural bodies came to be, some of th...

About Heidi J Cardoza:   From a young age Heidi has been empathic and expressive, with a love of nature and a desire to understand reality by honoring multiple perspectives. She studied physics, dance and performance art in college and produced several multimedia shows asking questions and inspiring integration and celebration.    She joined La Caravana Arcoiris por la Paz (the Rainbow Caravan for...

On our own, the desire born from the challenges we've faced can be a powerfully transformative force in our lives.    Our personal embrace of the Soulful Chainbreaker becomes a cultural force when we gather together, commune, share stories, and support each other to commit to and sustain the journey.  We do not disrupt and re/orient within a vacuum, other beings dedicated to this process become ou...

Many experiences of trauma/oppression reveal where we've failed to belong authentically. The ways in which, as we navigate our social worlds, we come up against blocks and barriers to birthright dignity, authenticity, acceptance and belonging. That is, where we disappoint and fail to conform to the expectations of dominant cultural narratives. This rejection dampens our inner spark, disorients our...

The Chainbreaker as archetype invites critical questioning and reclaiming. We are invited to consider disappointing our families of origin, and the cultural influences at large by rejecting narratives and dictates that reproduce harms. It's risky, even, for those most marginalized in these narratives. Yet in this risk we open to a vital rebirth: the opportunity to access desire long hidden or damp...

Transmuting Intergenerational Trauma Through The Creative Principles of Fire This is a story about what it means to be the one who steps out of line.  The one willing to be the weak link in the chain.  The one willing to disrupt and disobey; to embrace disruption as a portal and disappoint some of the expectations held for us (and the people associated with them) in the service of another future....

Cliff Berrien has 40-years of experience as a student and teacher of Afro-Diasporic drumming and music traditions. He has combined his music studies, degree in psychology and years of experience as a professional DJ to develop practices that promote collective joy, cultural dexterity and global healing. Cliff has had the honor of using these practices for the past 5 years co-facilitating workshops...

I've learned over a lifetime of experience with people who either steered me away from, or closer to, the intelligence and wisdom my body held, that the teachers I trusted most were those that taught me to trust myself. There is a profound relationship between trust, bodily intelligence, and building authentic connection. From the vast complexity of bodily intelligence to the oft neglected guidanc...

In this episode we discuss grief as a metabolizer of experience and its role in our lives and the world to come. An End of Life (EOL) Doula, Oceana specializes in the liminal spaces of active dying and grief. She is currently researching the intersection of embodied grief and somatic abolitionism as well as developing and holding space for healing through a sensual (all the senses) lens. Here work...

This podcast was recorded in early September, 2023, in the midst of a wave of grief that felt too big for my body; too big to hold alone. In Rooted, we are dedicated to shifting away from cultural forms that perpetuate separation and isolation. Sometimes my heart breaks so deeply at the news of the world that I can hardly keep my head up. At times the grief becomes so big that it feels like my bod...

I'm excited to have Weena on the podcast today. She happens to be a dear friend of mine and also one of our rooted team members. In rooted, Weena is probably the person who more than anyone else, brings us back to the body, to the impulse of bodily knowing, and how we can engage with the themes we're working with in a space like rooted. Her work is focused on truly experiencing this world through...

Welcome to the Rooted global village. This podcast episode is an introduction of sorts, to what The Rooted Global Village exists because of, and for. Rooted is an organism made up of the many souls who are a part of it. And like any organism, it has a birth story. And like other birth stories, the birth is not the beginning… As you listen, we invite you to hold this question near: What sparks a fi...

Akilah is a mother, partner, and liberation worker who helps people unlearn the barriers to being our real selves together, in our homes and all the other ways we connect, work, and serve. In July of 2016, Richards published the first episode of Fare of the Free Child podcast, now known among the short list of must-listen-to podcasts for anyone considering parenting and leadership from a liberatio...

Kai Cheng Thom is an author, community worker, somatic healer, lasagna lover, and wicked witch based in Toronto. She has spoken and published widely on the topics of trauma, transformative justice, and mental health. A former clinical social worker, Kai Cheng has also spent over a decade working in public sector mental health with LGBT youth and their families, an experience that continues to info...

Yvette Murrell is a coach, healer, consultant, co-founder, and Connector of the former Playback Milwaukee Theatre Company, has multifaceted, cross-sector national career accomplishments in expressive arts, business, and education. A powerfully-gifted facilitator and shaman with over 30 years of practice, Yvette weaves a deeply embodied approach to social, racial, and restorative justice into the l...

I grew up looking into the night sky and the heavens above me.  Without concepts that defined the movement of planets and stars, or the mathematics to describe them, I would orient my head and neck upwards, captivated by the beauty of this cosmic mystery stretched out above my head. So expansive that it would take my breath away.   For those of us who have been sold a narrative that there is only...