Sounds of SAND

This final episode of 2025 reflects on a year of transitions and healing, focusing on themes of intergenerational trauma, collective grief, and social justice, especially in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Through diverse voices including Dr. Gabor Maté, Naomi Klein, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Ashira Darwish, Omid Safi, Kazu Haga, and others, the episode delves into personal and collective...

In this episode of The Sounds of SAND podcast, host Michael Reiley speaks with Father Adam Bucko about his journey and the integration of Christian contemplative spirituality with social justice activism. Father Adam shares his formative experiences growing up in Poland during the resistance against totalitarian government, his work with marginalized youth in the United States and India, and his p...

A Decolonial Invitation to Remember, Relearn, and Resist   From a live SAND Community Gathering (November 2025) a live conversation with Dr. Jennifer Mullan & Iya Affo . Their discussion emphasizes the importance of ancestral wisdom, collective healing, and the decolonization of therapeutic practices. Dr. Mullan shares her personal journey of reconciling traditional healing methods with m...

This episode, recorded live at The Eternal Song live gathering (June 2025), brings together a distinguished panel featuring Patricia June Vickers, Judy Atkinson, Dr. Diana Kopua, and Donald “Del” Lavedure, moderated by Dr. Gabor Maté. The discussion explores the integration of ancestral wisdom and modern therapeutic methods to address and heal trauma within Indigenous communities. The group share...

Dr. Cara Judea Alhadeff discusses her work and the profound ideas in her book   Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era . She explores themes of dream consciousness, cultural and ecological extinction, radical symbiosis, and the concept of apocalyptic parenting as a strategy for social justice and ecological ethics, an antidote to petro...

What does it mean to stay tender in times of unraveling? In this live SAND Community Gathering (November 2025), SAND co-founders, Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo spend the hour with activist and author Kazu Haga . This conversation invites us into a collective inquiry about healing, justice, and the radical courage of vulnerability. Drawing from his work on restorative justice and Kingian nonviolence, H...

Recorded live at The Eternal Song Seven Day Film Premiere Gathering.  In this episode, hosts Maurizio and Zaya engage in deep conversation with Yoruba philosopher and post-humanist thinker Bayo Akomolafe . In this episode, Bayo shares a Yoruba creation myth involving the Orishas, highlighting the importance of flow and memory. He reflects on his journey as a psychologist in Nigeria and critiq...

Hosted by SAND’s Lisa Breschi Almond, this poignant discussion entitled 'War's Long Shadow Part Two: The Medicine of Story' was recorded live as a recent SAND Gathering. The show features two heartfelt stories of their first-hand accounts of post-war trauma shared by Linda Thai and Jungwon Kim. The conversation explores personal narratives of war trauma and generational grief, focusing on the Viet...

In this episode, SAND co-founders and hosts Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo welcome Dr. Thema Bryant , a tenured professor of psychology and former President of the American Psychological Association, to discuss holistic healing, ancestral wisdom, and collective liberation. Dr. Bryant emphasizes the importance of recognizing both individual and collective trauma, the power of storytelling, and the need...

Recorded live at The Eternal Song Seven Day Film Premiere summit with Indigenous voices.  Donna Kerridge, a Rongoā Māori practitioner from Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand, shares insights into her journey bridging Māori traditional medicine and the Western healthcare system. Kerridge discusses the challenges and beauty of indigenous healing practices, emphasizing the significance of connection...

In this panel from the The Eternal Song 7-Day Global Gathering Schedule , Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo speak with Dr. Diana Kopua, a   Māori psychiatrist, Mark Kopua, a cultural leader and master carver, and Tina Ngata, an advocate for indigenous and environmental rights. The conversation explores the significance of revitalizing indigenous knowledge, ancestral connections, and reindigenization....

Ancestral Bone Mapping & Healing: Reweaving the Soul Through Bone, Beauty, and Ancestral Nourishment with Iya Affo Through rhythms of beauty, grief, and intergenerational wisdom, this presentation and conversation explored healing through the languages of somatic ritual, trauma-informed neurobiology, and ancestral remembering. Iya Affo is a Culturalist and Historical Trauma consultant. She ear...

Please join us along with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Ashira Darwish, Rae Abileah, Shahd Abusalama, Omid Safi, Reverend Michael Yoshii, and Iyas Sartawari for a reckoning . A collective refusal. A gathering of those who cannot stay silent while genocide is livestreamed. We do not come together to be informed. We come because we already know. We come because we refuse to normalize atrocity. We come to gri...

In this live recording from The Eternal Song Seven Day Premier broadcast, hosts Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo engage in a deep discussion with guests Francis Weller, a psychotherapist and soul activist, and Orland Bishop, a spiritual teacher and founder of ShadeTree Foundation. Exploring themes such as indigenous wisdom, the impact of colonialism, communal grieving, and the necessity of reconnecting w...

Lama Rod Owens is a Black Buddhist Southern Queen. An international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School with a focus on the intersection of social change, identity, and spiritual practice. Author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger and co-author of Radical Dharma...

In this episode we present excerpts from the recent conversation (June 2024) as part of SAND’s “Conversations on Palestine” around the premiere of the film Where Olive Trees Weep hosted by the directors of the film and co-founders of SAND, Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. You can watch this full conversation and 22 others. SAND has created a program with leading historians, spiritual teachers, trauma th...

Alixa García is a Colombian born, globally-raised, multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and cultural activator whose work is imbued in ritual, spirit, and deep reverence for our Great Mother, Great Lover, our Earth. She is an award-winning activist, poet, and filmmaker. She is also a professional writer, visual artist, musician, and facilitator. Her work has been published by Whit Press, AK Press,...

Today on the show, we welcome Scott Kiloby and Toshi Matsunaga, authors of Awake But Sick, to explore the hidden emotional pain that can persist even after profound spiritual awakening.  Their work challenges the common myths of nonduality and mindfulness, offering a deeper path through emotional repression, physical illness, and the illusion of immediate freedom. In this conversation, we exp...

Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen is a Historian of Religion, Ph.d from Uppsala University in Sweden. His research into Afro-diasporic strategies for maintaining animist reality in the modern world has lead him towards reading North European cultural history from the perspective of rejected animist knowledge and practice. The objective is to recover Euro-traditioanl forms of landconnectedness ecological knowl...

Wendy Elisheva Somerson (wes) is a non-binary Jewish somatic healer, writer, visual artist, and activist who helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. They facilitate Ruach, body-based Jewish healing groups held in an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, and feminist framework. As part of a movement of anti-Zionist Jews, they support Jewish healing from historical trauma and promote a libe...

Join SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo in conversation with Aboriginal elders and authors Uncle Paul Callaghan and Uncle Paul Gordon for a powerful SAND Community Gathering (2023), “The Dreaming Path,” where they explored some of the profound Aboriginal teachings. Connect with Uncle Paul Gordon and dozens of other Indigenous speakers at the 7-Day The Eternal Song Gathering hosted live by...

Abigail Rose Clarke is a somatic educator, writer, and creator of The Embodied Life Method. Her new book, Returning Home to Our Bodies: Reimagining the Relationship Between Our Bodies and the World , challenges the dominant narratives that treat our bodies as machines. Instead, she invites readers into a deeper relationship with the body as part of the living world. In this conversation, we explor...

This episode is a live recording from a recent SAND Community Gathering (April 2025) facilitated by Jungwon Kim. Join Buddhist scholars and activists Rev. Duncan Ryūken Williams, Ph. D. and Funie Hsu/Chhî, Ph. D. for an illuminating dialogue exploring the intersection of Buddhist practice and social transformation. This conversation weaves together Buddhism, remembrance, healing, and liberation, e...

Elizabeth Philipose, PhD  has a lifelong passion for transformational arts and the expansion of consciousness. She has pursued this as an academic studying the causes and consequences of violence. Her focus is on healing relations between masculine and feminine, humans and nature, races, and nations. As a spiritual guide, she offers programs in decolonial wellness, spiritual principle, embodi...

Today, we present a wild and flowering conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers, and theobiologians Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand . This conversation is from a 2022 SAND Community Gathering. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it  here (with SAND Membership). In Greek Mythology, the Titan Kronos eats an indigestible stone and vomi...