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CHITHEADS with Jacob Kyle (Embodied Philosophy) — Religion & Spirituality
CHITHEADS with Jacob Kyle (Embodied Philosophy)

Chitheads is a smorgasbord of contemplative education. Each episode is like a mini masterclass, exploring the diverse landscapes of spiritual practice, philosophy, and the transformative power of embodied knowledge. Each episode is crafted with the curious and open heart in mind, aiming to illuminate the path of self-inquiry and empowerment for yoga teachers, scholar-practitioners, meditators and other spiritual seekers and contemplative folks from around the world. From the profound teachings of Yoga and Buddhism to the sometimes complex theories of contemplative psychology and the vibrant tapestry of indigenous wisdom, our guests share insights that awaken, challenge, and inspire. With every episode, we dive into discussions that matter, exploring questions that guide us closer to our true selves and to a deeper understanding of the world around us. Our mission is to create a space where wisdom (and not fame, power, or money) is the center of gravity and what we are most concerned about cultivating in this lifetime. Join us on Chitheads as we explore the liminal spaces of consciousness, embrace the complexities of the human experience without dogma or self-righteousness, and discover the beauty again and again of the interconnectedness of all things. Subscribe to Chitheads on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform, and please consider leaving us a positive review on one iTunes, or your favorite podcast player. Come dive into these in-depth conversations that illuminate our path of contemplative discovery. If you’ve felt like you’re the only one full of chit – full of consciousness or awareness ˀ– welcome home. This community of listeners, seekers, and scholar-practitioners is for you.

Latest Episodes:

Cornel West on Spiritual Citizenship (#137) Sep 14, 2021

Show notes

In this interview with Dr. Cornel West, originally a keynote event from our July 2021 Spiritual Citizenship Online Conference, co-host for the conference, Oneika Mays, explores the relationship between Cornel West’s spiritual and religious commitments and his political activism. By highlighting the example of his many decades of work, through this conversation we arrive at a notion of what it means to be a spiritually-informed citizen. They explore what, from Dr. West’s perspective, are the most important things we can do today to start living our spiritual practices in a politically engaged way. About Cornel West... Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. Dr. West is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span and Democracy Now. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice. Dr. West is the co-host of the new podcast Cornel West & Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope along with his esteemed friend and colleague Professor Tricia Rose, the Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. In this episode, we discuss:

Bearing witness and responding to spiritual decay.
The necessity of community, of mutuality as part of citizenship.
How to intervene with ourselves.
Responding to hate with love, cultivating loving-kindness.
Learning how to die to allow for growth.
Wrestling with suffering.
Transfiguring grief, hurt, and pain into joy.
The difference between hope and optimism.
Coming to terms with what it means to be human.
Finding ways to cultivate hope.
Joy in service to others.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Raj Balkaran on the Wisdom of Stories (#136) Jul 27, 2021

Show notes

Dr. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts and the author of The Goddess and the King in Indian Myth (Routledge 2018), The Goddess and the Sun in Indian Myth (Routledge 2020), and several academic articles and book chapters since completing his doctorate in 2015. He is also an avid spiritual practitioner, having been initiated into ancient Indian wisdom traditions by multiple masters, and having been engaged in daily practice for two decades. Also a seasoned online educator, he teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies where he also serves on their Course Development Board. He is the Founder of the School of Indian Wisdom where he teaches original online courses combining scholarship, storytelling and spirituality to apply ancient wisdom teachings to modern life. Beyond teaching, research and administration, Dr. Balkaran runs a thriving life coaching practice and hosts the New Books in Indian Religions podcast. As a boon to Chitheads listeners, visit https://courses.rajbalkaran.com/ and use the code 50OFF to get half off anything at the School for Indian Wisdom. In this episode we discuss:

The intersection of scholarship and practice.
The self-employed scholar and the un-university.
Yogic philosophy in Puranic and other Hindu narratives.
Making sense of the human experience through narratives and storytelling.
Story as the fabric of our culture.
Breaking behaviors or patterns by becoming conscious of limiting stories.
Dismantling unconscious bias in the mythological strata of Western consciousness.

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Michelle C. Johnson on Finding Refuge (#135) Jul 06, 2021

Show notes

Michelle C. Johnson is an author, yoga teacher, social justice activist, intuitive healer, and Dismantling Racism trainer. She approaches her life and work from a place of empowerment, embodiment, and integration. As a dismantling racism trainer, she has worked with large corporations, non-profits, and community groups, including the ACLU-WA, Duke University, Google, This American Life, Eno River Unitarian Universalist Church, Lululemon, and many others. Michelle published Skill in Action: Radicalizing Your Yoga Practice to Create a Just World in 2017; she teaches workshops in yoga studios and community spaces nationwide. Michelle’s new book, Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief, published by Shambhala Publications, comes out on July 13th, 2021. She was a Tedx speaker at Wake Forest University in 2019 and has been interviewed on several podcasts in which she explores the premise and foundation of Skill in Action, along with creating ritual in justice spaces, our divine connection with nature and Spirit, and how we as a culture can heal. Recently, she created her own podcast, Finding Refuge, which explores collective grief and liberation and serves as a reminder about all the ways we can find refuge during unsettling and uncertain times and of the resilience and joy that comes from allowing ourselves to find refuge. Whether in an anti-oppression training, yoga space, individual or group intuitive healing session, the heart, healing, and wholeness are at the center of how Michelle approaches all of her work in the world. In this episode we discuss:

Stewarding grief.
Acknowledging brokenheartedness to begin healing.
Presence of the heart and finding refuge.
Spiritual practices to bring you back home to the body and into the collective body.
How oppression takes the breath away.
Being in relationship with your ancestors.
Collective care and justice.

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Shreena Gandhi on White Supremacy (#134) Jun 08, 2021

Show notes

Shreena Gandhi is a part of the Religious Studies Department at Michigan State University, where is primarily teaches classes on religion and race in the Americas. She is currently finishing up edits on a manuscript, A Cultural History of Yoga in the United States, which looks at the impacts of race, gender and class on how yoga is practiced and commodified in religious and secular spaces. She is also collaborating with 4 other scholars of South Asian descent on an article titled Feminist Critical Hindu Studies in formation. Dr. Gandhi has presented her work nationally and internationally and is committed to intersectional scholarship and meticulous research grounded in facts. In this episode we discuss:

Whiteness, white supremacy, and cultural appropriation.
Honoring the roots of yoga.
Colonialism, capitalism, and war and their relationship to white supremacy.
Understanding orientalism and yoga.
Unrooting westernization and white supremacy in the studies of philosophy and religion.
Reflecting on privilege.
An affirmative vision of the project of the United States.

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Isa Gucciardi on Birth & Initiations (#133) May 25, 2021

Show notes

In the mid-nineties, Isa Gucciardi began developing Depth Hypnosis as she entered into clinical practice. Her studies, both in academia and in the field of cultural and linguistic anthropology, comparative religion, and transpersonal psychology formed the basis of her approach with clients and students. As the body of work that grew out of her clinical practice became larger, she began teaching others so that more people could benefit from the techniques she had developed. In order to accommodate the number of classes that grew out of this process, she co-founded the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, which is now a school for consciousness studies in Berkeley, California, serving hundreds of students each year. Isa teaches and speaks nationally and internationally, and she has published numerous articles, podcast episodes, videos, and the books Return to the Great Mother and Coming to Peace. She maintains a private practice with institutions and individuals in Depth Hypnosis and Coming to Peace processes. Isa speaks five languages and has lived in eleven countries. She is the mother of two children and lives with her partner in San Francisco. To receive future special offers, exclusive discounts, course announcements, and featured content, subscribe to Sacred Stream’s email list today. New subscribers will receive a free guided meditation download, delivered straight to their inboxes.

RECENTLY RELEASED ON AUDIBLE: The New Return to the Great Mother

In this episode we discuss:

The birthing process and how it has changed historically and become a site of socio-political significance.
Relating to the Great Mother as a compass and guide.
The significance of ceremonies and rituals as initiations that help to support significant moments of change in life.
The seven initiations (as Isa outlines them in her book): birth, puberty, menses, sexuality, birth, childbirth, menopause, and death.
Preparing for death.
Applied shamanic journeying.
Taking refuge in the creative power of the earth.

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Richard Katz on Indigenous Psychology and Allyship (#132) May 11, 2021

Show notes

After receiving his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Harvard, Richard Katz began a journey beyond the confines of psychology, into a world of experiences nourished by Indigenous knowledge and its emphasis on spirituality. He traveled in 1968 to the Kalahari Desert to work with the Ju/’hoansi, Indigenous peoples who, as primarily hunter-gathers, offer a view into the fundamental evolutionary roots of our human behavior. He experienced how their spiritually-infused healing energy expanded and became renewable, so, in a synergistic manner, the healing of one became the healing of all. Over the past 55 years, Katz has lived and worked with other Indigenous healers, experiencing that same spiritually nourished healing energy pervading daily life. They asked him to bring their teachings to Western health care so as to make it more appreciative of diversity, more committed to social justice, and more respectful of the importance of community and spirituality in health and healing. Katz stresses that while Indigenous knowledge is always offered freely – it cannot be sold on a fee-for-service basis – there is a cost. That knowledge has been nurtured by Indigenous peoples through centuries of colonization and oppression. To share in that knowledge we must commit ourselves to a path of service, not ego-enhancement or power; and give back to those who have been its guardians. Katz’s latest book, Indigenous Healing Psychology: Honoring the Wisdom of the First Peoples is a culmination of his work. Author royalties from that book will be given back to the Indigenous elders and healers whose teachings animate the book. Katz is presently a Professor Emeritus at the First Nations University of Canada, he can be reached at: rkatz@firstnationsuniversity.ca In this episode we discuss:

Contemplative practices, popular approaches to alternative wisdom, psychedelics and indigenous healing.
The irreplaceable role of community in spiritual transformation.
Comparing western concepts of psychology to healing from indigenous points of view.
Notions of cultural appropriation and procedures for the transmission of teachings.
Orienting our purpose in passing on teachings and performing ceremonies in a context of service.
Principles of allyship.
The roles and responsibilities of elders.

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Françoise Bourzat on Consciousness Medicine (#131) Apr 20, 2021

Show notes

Françoise Bourzat has been bridging the divide between western psychology and indigenous wisdom for the past 30 years in collaboration with healers in Huautla de Jimenez, Mexico, on the optimal applications of the psilocybin-containing mushrooms for healing and growth . She is the Founder of the Center for Consciousness Medicine and is the co-author of Consciousness Medicine. Françoise was part of the advisory board for Oregon Prop 109 initiative. She is currently collaborating with the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in an FDA approved research study on psilocybin assisted therapy for Covid related grief in Los Angeles. She has a Master of Arts in Somatic Psychology and is Hakomi trained. Françoise has taught at CIIS in San Francisco, is a counselor, and runs online courses and lectures in various institutions. She is a sought-after keynote speaker that has traveled the world sharing her message, along with the Mazatec tradition, to international audiences around the globe. In this episode we discuss:

Plant medicine journeying as therapy - incorporating expanded states into our growth process.
Psychedelic Psychotherapy Renaissance and the Neo-shamanistic movement.
The importance of rooting in lineage, indigenous context, the thread of permission, and respectful sharing.
The spiritual dimension of healing and avoiding spiritual bypassing.
The relationship between pain and suffering; and the role of meaning in the transmutation of suffering.
The role of fear and what it is that we’re afraid of.
Françoise's five-part holistic model: body, mind, spirit, community, and environment.

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Prentis Hemphill on Healing Justice & Queer Spiritual Purpose (#130) Apr 06, 2021

Show notes

Prentis Hemphill is a movement facilitator, Somatics teacher, and practitioner, and working at the convergence of healing, collective transformation, and political organizing. Prentis has spent the last 15 years bridging wellbeing and power building as a part of movement building organizations, most recently as the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network. In 2016, Prentis was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought. At present, Prentis is the co-founder of Resilient Strategies, a project intended to deepen movement practice and understanding of politicized healing. Prentis is also a teacher of Somatics with Generative Somatics and with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity. In this episode we discuss:

What is healing? How do we heal?
How does somatics shift the paradigm of traditional therapy?
What is healing justice and how does it differ from other approaches to social justice?
Recovering pre-colonial practices in a post-colonial context through the lens of somatics.
Healing individual and collective trauma.
Critiques of the wellness industry and the structures that deny access to healing for everyone.
Queer spiritual purpose, supporting repair and stretching the parameters of belonging.

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Vineet Chander on Hindu Chaplaincy (#129) Mar 09, 2021

Show notes

In this episode we discuss:

The roots of pastoral care and chaplaincy
Incorporating the frameworks of Vendantic, yoga philosophy in Hindu chaplaincy
Contemplative dimensions of pastoral care, bringing radical compassionate presence in spiritual accompaniment
Obstacles to cultivating spiritual health and the epidemic of loneliness in the globalized westernize world
The three elements of Sādhanā: Tapas, Svādhyāya, Īśvarapraṇidhāna
Building inner resilience
Intimate and personal experience of the Supreme

Vineet Chander is the Coordinator for Hindu Life and Hindu Chaplain at Princeton University and a Religious Life Leader at the Lawrenceville School. He has also served as an adjunct professor, attorney, and communications consultant. His areas of specialty include Bhakti theology, models of pastoral counseling, and the Hindu-American diaspora community. His writing has appeared in a number of publications, and he is co-author of Hindu Chaplaincy (Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, 2017) and co-editor of Hindu Approaches to Spiritual Care: Chaplaincy in Theory and Practice (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019). A student of His Holiness Radhanath Swami for more than two decades, he is a sought-after speaker and teacher in his own right— particularly known for his ability to infuse ancient wisdom with humor, relevant examples, and avenues for application. He has spoken at a number of conferences and educational institutions, including the American Academy of Religion, the Global Dharma Conference, the Global Chaplains Conference, Yale University, Cornell University, and the Harvard Divinity School at Harvard University. In addition, he has offered wisdom teachings in a number of temples, ashrams, and yoga studios, including the philosophy portions of YTT courses at Gratitude Yoga (Princeton, NJ), Prana Yoga Shala (Princeton, NJ), and Onyx Yoga (Warren, NJ). He is a regular speaker at, and past board member of, the Bhakti Center (New York City).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracee Stanley on Yoga Nidra (#127) Feb 09, 2021

Show notes

In this episode we discuss:
1. The philosophy of yoga nidra, the goddess of yoga nidra and the four states of consciousness.
2. Yoga nidra as a state and as a systematic guided relaxation.
3. Obstacles to rest in our culture.
4. Working with trauma and the importance of safety in moving toward rest.
5. The science of yoga nidra, accessing the place of healing and rejuvenation.
6. The relationship between liminal space and creativity.
7. How to set up a supportive yoga nidra nest. Tracee Stanley was introduced to the practice of yoga nidra in 2001. She immediately recognized it as a healing salve for the world and began to incorporate it into her life and her yoga teaching. She left her high-stress career as a Hollywood film producer to delve deeper into the study of the practices that were empowering and rejuvenating her, so she could share them with others. With over 20 years of experience practice and teaching in the Himalayan Tradition, Tantra and Sri Vidya, she also understands the demands of life as an entrepreneur, wife, and stepmom. Her effortless way of sharing ancient teachings in accessible ways is her superpower. She travels extensively to offer yoga nidra, meditation, self-inquiry, teacher trainings and workshops. As a gift to all of our listeners, Tracee is offering a 30% discount on her book “Radiant Rest” which is now on pre-order from the publisher’s site with the code RR30 until 3/31/21 at https://www.shambhala.com/radiant-rest.html.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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