Sounds of SAND

Judith Blackstone, Ph. D. , is a psychotherapist and innovative teacher in contemporary spirituality. She developed the Realization Process®, an embodied approach to personal and relational healing and nondual realization. She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body, Belonging Here, The Intimate Life, The Enlightenment Process, and The Empathic Ground. For more, see realizationprocess.org . T...

Today on the podcast, we welcome two special guests, Science and Nonduality co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo . Zaya and Maurizio are both filmmakers and activists. They merged their lifelong passions for science and mysticism when they met in 2007, and their first project together was filming the documentary Rays of the Absolute on the life and teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. This proj...

We wanted to create this episode highlighting some shimmering jewels from the first 50 episodes of the podcast. We know that getting into a podcast can be daunting when there are dozens of episodes to choose from. So we wanted to distill some of the varied guests from our previous episodes with some clips from the show. Consider becoming a member of SAND to support the production costs of this pod...

Mauro Bergonzi taught ‘Indian Religion and Philosophy’ from 1985 to 2017 at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. About twenty years ago  - after 25 years of meditative practices -  a spontaneous fading out of his spiritual seeking just happened unexpectedly and only a radical non-dualism prevailed. From then on, he has been invited to hold regular meetings of ‘sharing of being’ (satsa...

Dr. Daniel Foor is a ritualist and educator focused on helping others to reclaim their innate capacity to relate with their ancestors and with the greater web of other-than-human kin. He is the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing and an internationally respected teacher of ancestor reverence and ritual. Since 2004 Daniel has guided over one hundred multi-day ances...

Parvathy Baul  is a practitioner, performer and teacher of the Baul tradition from Bengal, India. She studied closely with two of the most respected Baul Gurus of the previous generation, Sri Sanatan Das Thakur Baul and Sri Shashanko Goshai. ​According to her Guru's vision, Parvathy Maa has created Sanatan Siddhashram - as a place of learning, practicing and preserving the oral history of the...

Marlon Barrios Solano is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary artist and researcher specializing in software engineering, generative AI, dance improvisation, and mindfulness. His diverse work, ranging from AI-driven apps to digital therapeutics, manifests in web applications, interactive installations, multimedia performances, education, and consulting. His notable work with Sati-AI dem...

Two recent appearances of Sophie Strand at SAND. One was her Community Conversation with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo the second a story she read called “Healing: A Ghost Story” with Bayo Akomolafe. Sophie’s course The Body is a Doorway at SAND Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more...

Martin Gray  is a seasoned explorer, photographer and travel writer renowned for his profound insights into pilgrimage to sacred sites around the world. He created the World Pilgrimage Guide website in 1996, which has received more than 100 million visitors and shares lists of places, writings and photos of sacred sites in over 160 countries around the planet. In 2004 National Geographic publ...

The full title of today’s episode is: “They thought they buried me; They did not know I am a seed” In this community conversation from June 2023, SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo host Bayo Akomolafe and Chief Oluwo Fayemi peeling back the layers of history and tap into the wellspring of resilience that resides within us all. Weaving Bayo's wisdom and Chief Oluwo Obafemi's ancestral knowl...

“The past is history. The future is mystery. The present moment is a gift” — Lama Lhanang Rinpoche Today’s guest are the authors of a new book out on Sounds True, The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Beginners: A Guide to Living and Dying . In this episode we go into Tibetan Book of the Dead’s cultural significance in the West, the West’s death phobic culture, the connections to Dream Yoga, what is me...

Hosted by SAND Co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo Deran Young  is a licensed therapist specializing in racial trauma and legacy burdens. She is also a Co-Author of the New York Times Best Seller, You Are Your Best Thing, a retired military officer, & founder of Black Therapists Rock. Black Therapists Rock is a non profit organization with a network of over 30,000 mental health professi...

Spiritual guide and author, Shakti is known internationally as one of the most authentic and profound voices in contemporary spirituality. Presenting the message of Advaita and non-dual Tantra within a contemporary framework, Shakti offers, with compassion and great clarity, an inner technology for dissolving the contraction of suffering that traditionally accompanies each of our lives. Her invita...

Lyla June in this illuminating community conversation with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo shares ways in which indigenous food systems of the past and present teach us how to relate to our inner and outer world. These highly successful systems have been proven to operate based on respect, reverence, responsibility, and reciprocity. She explores, among others topics: How can we manifest these qualities...

“For now, what is important is not finding the answer, but looking for it.” ― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid   Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and author of more than 100 scientific papers and three books, including  Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See  (W.W. Norton, 2000). He received his BA from UCLA in Quantitative Psycholog...

Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers, and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland’s...

Mukti’s name originates in Sanskrit and is most often translated as “liberation,” a term used in Vedanta and Buddhism much the way the term “salvation” is used in Christianity. Mukti has been the Associate Teacher of Open Gate Sangha since 2004 and has been a student of her husband, Adyashanti, since he began teaching in 1996, when they founded Open Gate Sangha together. Previously, Mukti was rais...

Dr. Rupa Marya illuminates the hidden connections between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems. What is deep medicine?  How can re-establishing our relationships with the Earth and one another help us to heal? The first part of the episode is taken from a live SAND Community Conversation hosted by SAND Co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo....

“We are not walking through the world; we are interwoven with it. In everything we do, we participate in complexity." –Neil Theise Neil Theise is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Through his scientific research, he has been a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity and the anatomy of the human interstitium. Dr. Theise’s studies in complexity theory have led to interdi...

Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power o...

Cornelius Boots is a woodwinding pioneer, composer and root philosopher. He is a nanotheist and elemental-nature lover. After a 30-year career of high-caliber jazz, classical, rock and experimental music activities (on multiple woodwinds with a focus on the bass clarinet), Boots has now positioned himself at the crossroads of personal expression and divine revelation, exclusively playing bamboo sh...

From the SAND Archives we present a conversation between SAND co-founder Maurizio Benazzo and biologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake from SAND’s Wisdom in Times of Crisis Series (2020). In this talk they discuss Merlin’s book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures . Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist, writer, and speaker with a background in plant sciences,...

Joan Tollifson is a writer and lifelong explorer of what is. Her background includes Buddhism, Advaita, nontraditional meditative inquiry, radical nonduality, martial arts, somatic work, addiction recovery, political activism, visual arts, and a devotion to both boundless presence and the beauty of the ordinary. Joan has held public and private meetings as well as occasional workshops and retreats...

Kabir Helminski is co-director, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism. He is the author of Living Presence and the translator of four volumes of Rumi’s poetry, including Love Is a Stranger and Rumi: Daylight. His new book which we discuss on the podcast is  The Mysterion: Rumi and the Secr...

From the SAND Archives we present two talks from Christian Mystic, Richard Rohr from two SAND Conferences recorded before live audiences. The two talks are entitled “Christianity and Unknowing” from SAND16 and “The Christian Meaning Of Enlightenment” from SAND11.    Richard Rohr, as a Catholic priest and Franciscan Friar, offers a concise history of how Western Christianity once had, soo...