Turning Season: Conversations with Changemakers in Our Adventure Toward a Life-Sustaining Society

Click Play for your dose of Active Hope in today's news episode of Turning Season Podcast, here to bring you news and deep conversations about our adventure toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human on Earth. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on Earth, and chooses to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe...

I know Sinéad Cullen is not alone in once feeling inadequate for not being a fists-in-the-air, protest-in-the-streets kind of activist. For not taking a bold stand in that dimension of The Great Turning we call "Holding Actions."   I also know she's not alone - and many of you listening will relate - in being deeply inspired by spontaneous creative expression, by powerful shifts in perspective, an...

Welcome to a news episode of Turning Season Podcast, your regular dose of Active Hope in the Great Turning, bringing you news and deep conversations about our adventure toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human on Earth. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on Earth, and chooses to participate in cultivating ways of life we...

How do we live at a time like this? You are in for a treat in today's episode, hearing John Seed's answer to this question, and especially in hearing about how he's come to his answer.  If you don't recognize his name, John Seed is a wise elder, activist and well-loved leader based in Australia, and a beautiful human being who's a lot of fun to talk with. He's made core contributions to Deep Ecolo...

This is the first "news" episode of Turning Season Podcast. I had the idea to do short episodes like this while listening to a 5-minute NPR podcast a few months ago. It was a very quick, back-to-back series of stories with the sense: "Here's what you should know." It included something like, updates on war in Ukraine, the stock market, NBA basketball, and a mass shooting in the U.S. And yes, it is...

Have you ever noticed that little butterfly on some packaged foods, labeled "Non-GMO Project VERIFIED?" Maybe you even look for the butterfly before you buy, and feel better about eating what's inside because of it. That's you exercising your power in one of the most intimate ways possible: how you take food into your own body. In this conversation, I'm joined by my dear friend and admired collabo...

How do we get from, "We know we have to change," to "We're actually changing"? As a society, or even as individuals?  As you'll hear my guest Petra Bongartz say at the beginning of this episode, we've known for a long time that we need to change – and yet, we haven't changed. Why not? For Petra, the doorway to change is the body. If we don't address the patterns and stories in our bodies, which ar...

How are you dealing with the stress of these times? If you're turning to (or curious about) talk therapy, yoga, other spiritual and energetic practices, or learning to regulate your own nervous system, you'll be interested in my guest for this episode, Morgan Starr-Riestis, therapist at Mind Psy Guidance and creator of the Seven Centers Practice, which combines Western psychology and Eastern philo...

Adrián is one of the many people I am just so glad to know is out there, enacting The Great Turning in the ways that he is uniquely moved to do. He's a longtime facilitator of the Work that Reconnects, in Spanish and English, in North, Central and South America. I feel like I can hear in the way Adrián speaks that he is, as he calls it, a "practitioner of contemplative disciplines," who has a year...

"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." - The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien That's a favorite quote of my guest Judyth Shamosh, which she relates to seeing each person's health as a whole system, and as part of even larger whole systems. How can we really understand a cell by looking at it only once it's been removed from the body it was part of? Removed...

This one's a treat for you lovers of wild lands, you who are curious about wilderness survival, my dreamers and dreamworkers, and anyone seeking out their path in a world of so many possibilities, and so many needs. I knew that in conversation with Claire Dunn - who lived alone in the bush for a year, spent almost a decade in grassroots environmental activism, has authored two books, and facilitat...

What do desire and pleasure have to do with The Great Turning? Oh so deliciously much. I asked Ann Nguyen to join the Turning Season conversation not only because she facilitates trauma resolution – which is a huge piece of personal and global healing – but also because she facilitates a deepened connection to Love itself, and to a thrumming, radiant kind of aliveness that many of us are longing f...

Have you ever donated to "save the rainforest?" I remember placing a globe-shaped piggy bank on the secretary's desk at my elementary school in about 1991. The Kids for Saving Earth club asked people to drop in their spare change so we could buy a $25 acre of rainforest, and protect it "forever."  It's been eye-opening to connect with Liz Downes, who works with John Seed, who has himself been devo...

When you click Play, you'll hear the voice of Jamie Harvie, reflecting on the mindset that's at stake as he works on one practical project: ending the use of single-use bags.  When I first connected with Jamie, he told me about this campaign in Duluth, MN, to move on from single-use bags and promote a culture of reuse. Pretty quickly, though, I learned how much wider his scope of action and reflec...

Have you ever glimpsed your interconnection with the rest of the living world? Felt it in your own body? Maybe breathed in that knowing for a moment, or a few, but then slipped back into our dominant culture's habitual perspective of separateness? I adored this conversation with Skye and Miraz, who are devoted to re-membering our interconnection, as many times as it takes. They have walked through...

Do you carry stories or sayings from your grandparents, or other elders in your life? How about wisdom that comes through you -- are you a mentor or an elder to someone? Do you ever view yourself as a "future ancestor"? Click Play now to listen to my conversation with AnneLisa Vallery about supporting intergenerational connection in BIPOC (Black, Indigenous & People of Color) communities. When...

The one where a grandfather & permaculture designer points out my "old paradigm" thinking. And where this seasoned teacher, André Soares, founder of Ecocentro Ipec in Central Brazil, talks with me about: his more than 25 years in international permaculture design and teaching unlearning "business as usual" thinking healthy home design the abundance of our planet, coexisting with the inequality...

Matt Cochran joins me again, this time to share how dreamwork, especially in connection with men's work, is a part of his role in The Great Turning. Click Play to hear us talk about: how Matt relates to the "three stories of our time" (and how these compare to a rite of passage, or initiation) what dreams are for him and the people he works with (a navigational tool; a fierce, viable presence; a g...

Click Play now to hear my conversation with Jay Wong, who's developing "regenerative smart villages" in Portugal. What would it look like to have residential, commercial, and agricultural life happening in a multi-generational community, one that handles waste, water, food and electricity sustainably? That's a big question, and Jay's learning about all aspects of the answer, in the project he co-f...

We can each be guided by what we love, and by what breaks our hearts. Ariella Daly's heart is with the bees. If you've listened to The Dreamers' Den series, you heard Ariella in Episode 31, speaking about dream mirroring, bee shamanism, and the dreamweave of the earth. She's back now to to kick off Turning Season Podcast with me, opening her heart about how she relates to this time of ecological c...

Something new and much more personal for this Full Moon: You’re about to hear me share a series of 3 of the most potent dreams of my life, and how they’ve been woven into my healing. There’s the personal physical level, the ancestral, and the societal levels. There’s a yurt at the sandy confluence of two rivers; a computer to reprogram; a devil prince; an invader and a martial arts master; a golde...

Do you recall any dreams of being back together with an ex? How about needing to pee and not being able to find a bathroom? These are more common dream-themes than you might realize, and there can be much more going on here than the obvious. Click Play to hear a deep-dive on these themes, in excerpts from two bonus podcast episodes originally released for Dreamers' Den members only. In the first,...

I could try to describe group dreamwork to you. Why we do it, what it's like, how wow'd and moved I am every time. But I couldn't do it justice. There’s nothing else like this. I couldn't have imagined it before I'd taken part, no matter how it was explained. A current dream group member who's been loving our time together was thinking along these lines, and suggested that I record a dream group s...

Raise your hand (or, better yet, leave a comment on the show notes , so I can see it too) if you’ve ever dreamt of a political figure you strongly dislike. When they showed up in dream-form, how did you engage with them? When dreamers have shared dreams of political figures who were the object of anger or disgust, I've seen transformative shifts in perspective unfold. In this episode, my guest Cyt...

“Bee shamanism” is ancient, but its existence was recent news to me. Ancient Greek priestesses who dreamt with the bees? A European folk tradition tied to women's spirituality and beekeeping? Tell me more! In this episode, Ariella Daly tells me so much more. I was enchanted. Click Play to hear us talk about dreamwork in connection with bee shamanism, plus: dreaming with the Earth (or the bees) vs....