Feathermane Soul Wisdom

I recently heard a discussion about the Arrow Sutra, the story that the Buddha told about the two arrows. The first is the unavoidable suffering that happens as a part of life; the second is how we perceive the suffering. Now I’m going to stop and tell you that this blog is not about just thinking about our suffering different, but rather, this is how wild spirit storytelling, ecosystem restoratio...

For our final episode of pride month, I’m talking abut how we can take up space and claim membership in communities even when we don’t feel welcome, and how self-abandonment relates to that. Without getting technical or into psychology jargon, the first step is to stop abandoning ourselves. I begin by defining and talking about self-abandonment, then discuss more broadly how to take up space or ma...

In this week’s horse wisdom blog, I think about how the horses really enjoyed treats when the farrier came and how too often we don’t make time in our own lives to enjoy the good things. You can read the blog here . Sometimes when we’re grieving or because we’ve internalized stories that we’ve been told, we don’t think we deserve good things and this is very far from the truth. We all deserve good...

In this week’s body theology blog I talk about when your body doesn’t feel sacred. If you’re dealing with a chronic illness, disability, food allergy, burnout, or just don’t feel “good”, then there’s a chance you don’t see just how sacred your body is. I offer you powerful tips to start seeing every aspect of your body, even the unpleasant ones, as sacred and discuss just how powerful accepting yo...

In last week’s show I talked about the grief of feeling like you’re excluded from the communities that you are a part of and how that especially feels for neurodivergent and disabled individuals. This week I’m speaking to the communities themselves and talking about what they can do to help people feel more included. Disabilities aren’t always visible, and the vast spectrum of neurodifferent brain...

If you’re queer and neurodivergent you can feel separated from your community this pride month. If you do not outwardly look like your gender, then you can feel separated from your community this pride month. These two things are not separate. They are part of the larger ways in which we might feel separated from our community during pride and why we might be grieving. In this episode, I discuss t...

In this blogcast, I share this week’s horse wisdom blog talking about forgiveness. Radical acceptance can help us to forgive ourselves, which can help our rejection sensitive dysphoria and can help us learn from the horses and from the world around us. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

Bhakti is the practice of loving devotion designed to bring you closer to the divine. Spirituality is the connection to something larger than yourself, something outside of yourself, and doesn’t necessarily have to do with religion or divinity. What do these two things have in common? Because when you put them together with tools for nervous system regulation like yoga and mindfulness, you can cul...

This Horse Wisdom blogcast talks about how horses don’t mind when it rains and how we can apply that to when “rain” happens in our own lives. Learn the one question to ask when you’re not sure what you need in the moment and learn from the sacred herd. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

This is a blogcast episode, an audio recording of the latest Body Theology blog posted on Feathermane Soul. Now you can listen on the go, and this also makes the blog more accessible. Meditation is a great way for me to tune into my body. When I start to feel anxious, I focus on my breath, usually for no more than five minutes, and this helps me understand where the anxiety is coming from. Once I...

I recently came across the term “hyperverbal autism” and it described me perfectly. When I shared the post on social media, many people I knew (who were also neurodivergent) said that explained them too, and the curious thing was, until now, no one had heard the term before. What did we have in common? That we were all very much into books, reading, and language. We were all former gifted kids, an...

This is a blogcast episode, an audio recording of the latest blog posted on Feathermane Soul. Now you can listen on the go, and this also makes the blog more accessible. This week’s horse wisdom has me turning to the sacred herd to learn how to trust myself. Horses don’t question whether they do the right thing. They do what they feel they need to do for survival. They obey herd dynamics, but most...

This is a blogcast episode, an audio recording of the latest blog posted on Feathermane Soul. Now you can listen on the go, and this also makes the blog more accessible. My work involves Wild Spirit Storytelling^TM^. What is it? How does the process look? And when you come up against the realization that you, or something about you, has fundamentally changed, how does the process help you to revea...

Welcome to the first blogcast episode for Feathermane Soul. I am hoping to bring the blog posts to you in audio format so you can listen to them on the go, as well as for accessibility reasons. In today’s blog, I talk about why I think it’s important people like myself are seen doing yoga online and what it means to me to be able to do this work. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Featherma...

On a recent podcast I heard the hosts talk about how once they stopped focusing on struggle, they stopped attracting it. And I admit, my eyebrows went up. I might have screamed a little too, because there’s no such thing as attracting struggle, and we need to stop blaming people for the bad things that happen, especially when so many of them are caused by socio-cultural-economic factors. As we beg...

I am pleased to announce that starting May 17 I will be hosting monthly pagan pet loss grief circles on the third Sunday of each month from noon to 1:30 pm central time. These circles will be a free-will donation offering, and more information can be found on my website. In this episode, I talk about things that I feel are important to pagan pet loss grief and a bit about why I am focusing on this...

As promised the show is back from hiatus and I wanted to announce a bit of a realignment. I’ve given the website a bit of a polish and wanted to take a few moments to talk to you about the change in focus that is coming to Feathermane Soul Wisdom. I’ll have more announcements in the future including a monthly event I hope to start running next month, but in the meantime, I wanted to post an episod...

There’s been a bit of a break in the show recording schedule in part because I’ve been dealing with things, and part of that is that I’ve been thinking about systems that aren’t meant for neurodivergent people. Spirituality as it is conceived by the bulk of society is one of those things. Our need to ask questions, our need for clarification, and the fact that we often walk our own roads means tha...

I’ll be honest that I’m rather skeptical of a lot of psychology-related studies that are published. First off, there are those who believe psychology is pathology, when I believe that it connects to all aspects of our being, and a holistic approach is the best approach. But also, I’ve seen how studies can be drafted that come up with exactly the same outcome as what the researchers wished. As some...

We tend to think of our mental health and physical health as separate. The same thing is true of our spiritual story and our mental health. Quite often modern therapy doesn’t deal with our spiritual story, or does so in a purely religious sense. So in this episode I talk about how our spiritual story can impact our mental health and what that means for creating our systems of spiritual care. Want...

What is a spiritual story? What the heck am I talking about? Spiritual story is something I’ve been thinking about a lot to try and define into something I can share with others who will understand that I’m not talking about religion, and I’m talking about something that intersects with all areas of our lives. Join me in this week’s episode while I discuss my definitions of spiritual story and jus...

I shamelessly have borrowed the phrase “spiritual buffet table” for this podcast because I don’t know about you, but I love buffets. You can choose what you want depending on your mood, there are a lot of choices, and lets be honest, in the spiritual and religious realms, especially when it comes to our mental health and spiritual stories, not everything works for everyone all the time. We need to...

Allow me to geek out just a bit with my religious scholar hat on, but I’ve been thinking about something for a while now and finally, thanks to reading a lot of Sallie McFague for my thesis, am able to do a show on it. And that is the concept of a distant god compared to an embodied god and how that changes your spiritual and/or religious worldview and affects the way you worship and your spiritua...

What is spiritual bypassing? How is it embedded in most modern religions and how can understanding it help you bring more accessibility and disability liberation into your religious practice? This episode looks at spiritual bypassing, what it is, how it affects disabled people, and why it needs to be unmasked if we’re going to root it out to ensure wider accessibility, accountability, and disabili...

Well that was a longer than expected pause to the show. Between technical issues and illness, I swear it was just April a few moments ago. Right? Right? Nothing has happened, right? You can laugh. It’s okay. But we are back. A brief explanation as to why we were gone for so long. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and b...