Ciis Public Programs & Performances

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * A massively diverse group of organisms, fungi support and sustain nearly all living systems. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality, and even intelligence, into question. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disasters. By examining fungi on their own terms, we are changing our understanding of how life works. * In this episode, Merlin Sheldrake, biologist and author of the bestselling book Entangled Life, is joined by CIIS professor of Ecology and Religion Elizabeth Allison for an illuminating conversation about the ways these extraordinary organisms, and our relationships with them, change our understanding of the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel, and behave. * This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 5th, 2023. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs Y

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Integrative physician, author, and activist Tanmeet Sethi’s work focuses on shifting our nervous system and biochemistry into a form of joy at the cellular level. Dr. Sethi has worked globally and locally on the frontlines with the most marginalized communities, as well as with victims of school shootings, survivors of hurricanes, and citizens impacted by police violence. She shares her methods and lessons learned in her recent book Joy Is My Justice. * In this episode, Dr. Sethi is joined by licensed marriage and family therapist Anjuli Sherin for a conversation about rediscovering joy and how to reframe joy as an act of resistance to reclaim resilience and sense of purpose as a unique human right. * This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 2nd, 2023. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is availab

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * How can we cultivate the traits of a vibrant community in our own lives and what would it look like to prioritize caring and acceptance in our interactions with others? How can we, collectively, create a climate of true inclusivity, one where our differences both challenge and strengthen us? * After having meetings with different communities in the United States over the course of two years, psychologist Lisa Kentgen identified some key traits of vibrant, healthy communities that we can all apply to our own lives and networks. She compiled and expanded upon what she learned in her book, The Practice of Belonging: Six Lessons from Vibrant Communities to Combat Loneliness, Foster Diversity, and Cultivate Caring Relationships. In this episode Dr. Kentgen is joined by CIIS professor in Counseling Psychology, Shoshana Simons, for a conversation about how we can tr

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Popular belief assumes that mixedness gives you the ability to feel at home in more than one culture, but the flipside reveals you can feel just as alienated in those spaces. * Born to a white American and a South Asian immigrant, scholar and essayist Samira Mehta grew up feeling more comfortable with her mother’s family than with her father’s—her white family never carried on conversations in languages that she couldn’t understand or blamed her for finding the food too spicy. But in adulthood, she realized that some of her Indian family’s assumptions about the world had become an indelible part of her—and that her well-intentioned parents had not known how to prepare her for a world that would see her as a person of color. * In this episode Samira is joined by the Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University A-lan Holt for a conv

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * For over two decades, Deborah Egerton has been teaching the Enneagram—a popular personality typing tool—as a valuable device for social justice and anti-racism. In this episode Dr. Egerton is joined by Micky ScottBey Jones, Enneagram teacher and multi-faith movement chaplain, for an empowering conversation exploring social justice through the lens of the Enneagram. * Drawing on Dr. Egerton’s work and latest book, Know Justice Know Peace, their conversation illuminates how the inner work of each of the nine Enneagram archetypes creates healing, elevates consciousness, and aligns us as individuals with the heart of humanity in order to eliminate systemic racism. They invite us to explore our own personality archetype in order to activate ourselves as allies within a beloved community; a community that acknowledges that, while we may come in many shades and colo

Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * For a great many people, the human impact on the Earth was not apparent until recently, but this is not the case for all people or cultures. For the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story that is many generations long. They have had to adapt, to persevere, and to be courageous and resourceful in the face of genocide and destruction, and their experiences have given them a unique understanding of civilization-based devastation. * In this episode author and journalist Dahr Jamail is joined by ecologist and activist-scholar Melissa K. Nelson for a unique conversation exploring ideas from Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about the current climate crisis. These stories and perspectives of those who have long been attuned to climate change, provide indispensable wisdom to those looking for new

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. The contemporary definition of a “good” or “healthy” body has been centuries in the making, but as eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson writes in her recent book It’s Always Been Ours, “the pure, moral, rule-abiding body has never, ever, been a Black woman’s.” Every day, Jessica sees how the pressure to conform to white supremacist ideals of health and beauty constrict and harm women of color. As a registered dietitian specializing in eating disorders, as a social justice activist, and as a woman with multiple marginalized identities, Jessica’s goal is to end this harm. In this episode, CIIS Dean of Faculty Development, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at CIIS Danielle Drake has a conversation with Jessica that challenges us to rethink the

In her latest book, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, activist, counselor, and Buddhist teacher Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde shares ways of creating kinship and community through the metaphor of Indra’s Net—a universal net in which all beings reflect each other like jewels. In this episode, Ayo is joined by somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez for a heartfelt conversation that is both a call and a primer for community-oriented models of well-being in our age of polarization and turmoil. This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 3rd, 2023. We had some technical issues during this event that have resulted in audio quality that is lower than our usual standard, but we felt it was important to share this conversation regardless. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us

Caste is one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world. It negatively impacts 1.9 billion people worldwide, crippling their quality of life. Brahmins, who created this system in Hindu scripture, are at the top of the caste system and have benefited from centuries of privilege, access, and power because of it. Dalits, who sit at the bottom of this hierarchy, are branded “untouchable” and sentenced to a violent system of caste apartheid with separate neighborhoods, places of worship, and schools. Dalit American activist and author Thenmozhi Tenmori Soundararajan has been working to end caste oppression around the world for decades. In her work, she endeavors to help Dalit individuals and families heal through international solidarity with other oppressed people, working together to dismantle caste apartheid. In this episode, author, meditation teacher, and law professor Rhonda Magee has a powerful conversation with Thenmozhi about the ongoing trauma of the caste system and Dalit people’s fight agai

Resmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker renowned for his bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Resmaa is the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building. In this episode, CIIS Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Rachel Bryant has a transformative conversation with Resmaa about his recent book, The Quaking of America, and how we can heal the historical and racialized trauma we carry in our bodies and our souls. This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 10th, 2023. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for growth, and that

Between 2016 and 2018, essayist and humor writer Elissa Bassist saw over 20 medical professionals for a variety of mysterious ailments. Elissa had what millions of American women had: pain that didn’t make sense to doctors, a body that didn’t make sense to science, and a psyche that didn’t make sense to mankind. Then an acupuncturist suggested some of her physical pain could be caged fury finding expression, and that treating her voice would treat the problem. It did. In her memoir Hysterical, Elissa shares how growing up, her family, boyfriends, school, work, and television all had the same expectation for a woman’s voice: less is more. Elissa shares her journey of a voice lost and found and discusses new ways to think about a woman’s voice—where it’s being squashed and where it needs amplification. In this episode, Elissa is joined by novelist and CIIS professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing Carolyn Cooke for an empowering conversation about how girls and women internalize and perpetuate direct

Koans are the record of provocative, and often paradoxical, exchanges between Zen masters and their students developed in medieval China. In her practice and writing, renowned Zen teacher Joan Sutherland reimagines the koan tradition with allegiance to its root spirit and to its profound potential for vivifying, subverting, and sanctifying our lives. In this episode, Joan is joined by clinical psychologist Megan Rundel in a conversation exploring how practice with Zen koans makes us permeable to the joys and the anguish of this life—and to the primordial mystery we glimpse behind the veil of the everyday. This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 27th, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for growth, and t

Black Queer Feminists Cara Page and Erica Woodland’s work focuses on political and spiritual liberation grounded in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and Queer and Trans healing justice lineages. Their work guides individuals through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes in the generational trauma caused by systemic violence and oppression. In this episode, Cara and Erica discuss their recent collaboration as editors of the anthology Healing Justice Lineages, a profound and urgent call to embrace community and survivor-led care strategies as models that push beyond commodified self-care, the policing of the medical industrial complex, and the surveillance of the public health system. This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 2, 2023. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. To find out more about CIIS and public programs

One of the 10 most radical discoveries in human history is that of cosmogenesis, the narrative of how the expanding universe is evolving into stars, galaxies, life, and human consciousness. The challenge to this discovery is the thorny question of how human subjectivity relates to the evolution of the universe. Is there cosmic meaning in our ongoing efforts—like using memory and art—to record our experiences? Cosmologist and CIIS professor emeritus Brian Thomas Swimme’s latest book, Cosmogenesis, tells the story of how the new cosmology demolished his modern industrial mind, then slowly assembled a new mind, one rooted in the creative energies of our developing universe. In this episode, Brian is joined in a unique conversation with novelist and CIIS professor in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing Carolyn Cooke as they explore the impact of time-developmental cosmology and its potential to impact—and possibly transform—human consciousness. This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed ev

We live in a turbulent time with storms everywhere, of every size and shape. And like every generation before us, we must learn the art of surviving them, so we can help each other endure. In his work, bestselling author and spiritual teacher Mark Nepo explores the art and practice of finding the strength to meet adversity by using the timeless teachings of the heart. In his life’s work as well as in his latest book, Surviving Storms, Mark articulates the heart’s process of renewal and connection with insight and accuracy. In this episode, Mark is joined by CIIS Professor and Program Chair for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing Cindy Shearer for an empowering conversation on learning to overcome the storms of life. This episode was recorded during a live online event on November 30th, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and co

The term Two-Spirit is translated from a Northern Algonquin word and is used by some Native peoples of North America to signify variations of gender and sexual orientation. The term gained popularity in the 1990s as a counterpoint to colonial terminology used by anthropologists and academics alike to signify practices of nonbinary gender and sexual orientation among the Native peoples of North America. Despite over five centuries of ongoing colonial terminology and ideology, Two-Spirit people have survived. Now, they are coming together and returning to values and traditions that existed prior to the invasion of the land we now call North America. But what does Two-Spirit and the transition from surviving to thriving mean to Two-Spirit peoples? In this episode, Chickasaw Two-Spirit activist, drag queen, and community organizer Landa Lakes is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit artist, activist, and educator Roger Kuhn for an inspiring conversation on Native American ideas on gender, cultural expression, and

When we understand and engage with our dreams we can tap into a special, deeper kind of healing. The process of healing is not about putting the same pieces back together, rather it is about reclaiming what is already within us that could not be broken—the essence of who we are as individuals and as interconnected parts of a greater whole. In this episode, author and health and wellness practitioner Kathleen Webster O'Malley shares her practices of using our dreams to heal unwanted patterns and live more authentically. She is joined in conversation by mindfulness, trauma and racial healing leader Jenée Johnson. This episode was recorded during a live online event on November 3rd, 2022. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for gr

For Afro-Indigenous intuitive healer and scholar Jennifer Vest, being an ethical psychic means being of service and learning how to navigate the thorny issues and unique risks inherent to intuitive work. In her latest book, The Ethical Psychic, Dr. Vest explores how and why energy workers must be of service, authentic, and self-aware. They must learn from their mistakes, embody sensitivity to client needs, be humble, and listen to a higher source. In this episode, Dr. Vest is joined by CIIS Associate Professor and Chair of the Women’s Spirituality program Annette Williams for an illuminating conversation exploring how psychics and energy workers can build an authentic, equitable, and culturally sensitive healing practice. This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 27th, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. We hope that each episode o

What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? For far too many of us, we have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic and damaging pace. In this world, rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop is an artist, theologian, and the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating sacred spaces for the community to rest through Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops, and performance art installations. Tricia’s work is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. In this episode, Tricia is joined in a conversation with CIIS Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Damali Robertson on the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as the foundation of healing and jus

For over 50 years CIIS has been a leader in transformative integral education. Integral studies, in the founding of CIIS, encapsulated a contemporary academic approach to a spiritual mission. In this episode, CIIS Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures, Debashish Banerji, and CIIS President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, Robert McDermott have an illuminating discussion on the multitude of meanings of integral, as seen and applied to the spiritual mission in the history and future of CIIS. This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on September 28th, 2022. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for growth, and that our listeners will use them as a starting p