CIIS Public Programs

Why do we love who we love? Why do we stay in unfulfilling relationships, and stray from rewarding ones? Is it ever a good idea to open a relationship? And why do some long-time couples crash and burn while others stay madly in love? Evolutionary biologist, author, and Executive Director of the world-renowned Kinsey Institute, Dr. Justin Garcia examines these questions and more in this conversatio...

With rejection and intense commitment being such integral parts of any artist’s life, many struggle to stay with the creative process. Author and CIIS Faculty in the Interdisciplinary Arts program, Cindy Shearer has spent decades helping artists stay with their craft. In her book, Stay with Writing, Cindy encourages writers to understand themselves as artists, and for artists across all mediums to...

Many of us feel disconnected from our family stories and traditions, which can create a sense of loss of home and belonging. Pacha philosopher and ecopsychologist Lorena Saavedra Smith believes reconciling with our ancestors’ traditions and weaving ourselves back into our history is a therapeutic endeavor that deserves to be embarked upon with respect and authenticity. * In this episode, Lorena is...

In her book Who We Are Becoming Matters, Zen teacher and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Norma Kawelokū Wong asks “Who do we need to become to move forward in togetherness and mutual responsibility?” Norma invites us to reckon with 4 essential inner capacities—courage, compassion, aloha, and strategic wisdom. We must cultivate and embody these capacities, not just to survive, but to shepherd ourselves...

The 20th century’s discovery of LSD and subsequent use of various psychedelics in both therapeutic practice and popular culture has been a deeply transformational event in modern civilization. It has carried the power of a collective initiatory rite of passage, yet often without an adequately containing ritual structure, indigenous wisdom tradition, or clinical knowledge to mediate that transforma...

In his latest book, How I Know White People Are Crazy and Other Stories, psychologist Jonathan Lassiter pulls back the curtain on the mental health system and reveals the hurdles that Black psychologists and students are forced to endure in the field. * In this episode, Dr. Lassiter is joined by CIIS Expressive Arts Therapy core faculty Chevon Stewart, for a thought-provoking conversation explorin...

Seedkeeper, author, mentor, and founder of Sierra Seeds, Rowen White is a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty. With the increasing industrialization of our food and the erosion of biodiversity within cultural contexts, Rowen works to guide and mentor mindful eaters and food/seed sovereignty leaders in their capacity to lead, vision, and nourish a deep-rooted transformation...

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening? * In her critically acclaimed novels and immensely popular works of nonfiction including Eat Pray Love and Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert expands our understanding of creativity, spirituality, and love. This episode features a powerful c...

Tantra and Yoga are practices rooted in Indic spiritual traditions that share long, intertwined and complex histories. Often, we encounter tantra and yoga as forms of exercise, self-care, sex, or as pathways to personal wellness. However, these powerful, multifaceted practices are much more than that. * In this episode, Dr. Anna Corwin, Chair of the CIIS Women’s Spirituality Program facilitates an...

In her work, sex therapist and author Dr. Lucie Fielding seeks to move trans sexualities from the margins of gender-affirmative clinical practice to centering pleasure and sparking creativity and empathic attunement within the client-provider relationship. In the latest expanded second edition of her groundbreaking book, Trans Sex, she offers new concepts such as gender-pleasure and solidarity to...

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. * It is possible to heal ourselves and our planet if we are open to the power of integrating multiple and often conflicting views. In their lives and work, authors and CIIS faculty m...

Life is perpetually, endlessly filled with change: new jobs and new loves, unfamiliar places and faces. And entwined in that change is loss: loss of what was or is, or what could have been. Amid this shifting landscape, author Ann Tashi Slater has found power in embracing impermanence through the Tibetan Buddhist belief in the intermediate state of bardo. * In this episode, Ann is joined in an ill...

In this episode, CIIS Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness professor Sean Kelly has a deep and fortifying conversation with psychotherapist and author Francis Weller. * Together they explore ways of moving together through the anxieties, difficulties, and sacred transitions of 21st-century life. Featuring insights from Francis’s latest book, In the Absence of the Ordinary, this conversation fr...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Parts Work, also known as Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is a transformative tool that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self. Parts Work allows you an all-access pass to...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Why do we assume romantic relationships are more important than friendships? In this episode, clinical psychologist Margaret Boucher has an illuminating conversation with NPR journalist Rhaina Cohen on the power of platonic partnerships and how the thrill, int...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes 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 California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. * Harvard-trained anthropologist and autho...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * In Dr. John J. Prendergast’s decades of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher, the area of the body that’s most difficult for people to connect with—given our survival fear and trauma—is our physical and energetic ground. In his work, he finds...

We are living in a world where the depths of division, violence, and destruction can no longer be ignored. Escalated forms of harm require an equally escalated response. Yet social movements often use tactics that tend to escalate an “us vs. them,” “right vs. wrong” worldview not conducive to healing. Activist, trainer, and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice Kazu Haga argues this...

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. * Shaped by her own experience with the death of her father and her time co-founding The Dinner Party, a leading peer-support organization for people who’ve experienced a major loss,...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * More than 10 million millennials are caring for aging parents before they've been able to fully launch their careers and consider starting their own families, and that's not including the incalculable numbers of people affected by long COVID. Writer and caregi...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * A Black Feminist, activist, professor, and author, Loretta J. Ross has spent five remarkable decades in activism. She’s deprogrammed white supremacists and taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism and it’s worked because the power of her message com...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * In challenging times, it can be important to access a multitude of healing pathways, and we can use astrology as a supportive tool to understand both the current moment and access our personal and collective agency. * In this episode, Humanistic Astrologer, ps...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Many activist projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * In her work, author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral c...

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Generational silence is a term applied to families who have experienced suppressed thoughts or repressed emotions for at least two generations. Generational silence addresses both the cycle and impact of issues like substance abuse, religion, racism, education...