Voices of Esalen Podcast

Laura Mae Northrup is a somatic psychotherapist, educator, podcaster, and author. Laura has been a guest on this show before, in 2020, when we discussed her podcast "Inside Eyes", a one-season tour de force that focuses on people using entheogens and psychedelics to heal from sexual trauma. She is now the author of a new book, Radical Healership: How to Build a Values-driven Healing Practice in a Profit-Driven World. Northrup views healing work and healing practitioners through a spiritual and political lens, as they do battle with the forces of capitalism while attempting to heal their clients and take care of themselves, all at the same time.

Find Laura on the web at www.lauramaenorthrup.com.

Check out Radical Healership.

Dr. Adele Lafrance is a clinical psychologist, research scientist, and a leader in the research and practice of psychedelic medicine. Currently, she is the clinical investigator and strategy lead for the MAPS-sponsored MDMA-assisted psychotherapy study for eating disorders and a collaborator on the Imperial College study for psilocybin and anorexia nervosa.

We talked about her history as a clinician, and why she believes psychedelics may offer a different and perhaps more successful way of treating eating disorders than traditional methods. We also spoke about a system she developed known as emotion-focused family therapy. Dr. Lafrance believes emotion-focused family therapy can used effectively in conjunction with psychedelic therapy to treat eating disorders.

Sandor Katz has taught hundreds of workshops demystifying fermentation and empowering people to reclaim this transformational process. His book, The Art of Fermentation, received a James Beard award and was a finalist at the International Association of Culinary Professionals. In 2009, he was named one of Chow magazine’s top “provacateurs, trendsetters, and rabble-rousers.” This self-described "fermentation fetishist" treats us to a discussion of his new book, Fermentation Journeys. We talk about food writing and favorite food writers, the benefits of fermentation, being an adventurer in the kitchen, and what's fermenting in his refrigerator.

Vivien Sansour is the founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. Trained in the field of Anthropology, Vivien has worked with farmers worldwide on issues relating to agriculture and independence. She is a 2020-2021 Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative Fellow at Harvard University where she is working on an autobiographical book documenting her work saving seeds in Palestine and around the world. Together we discussed how food sovereignty aligns with the struggle of Palestinian resistance, how biodiversity reflects and intersects with cultural diversity, how the military occupation of Palestine affects the farming practices that go on there, and how love is the greatest form of resistance to colonial oppression. She's brilliant.

This episode captures Jack Kornfield's lecture/ Dharma talk at Esalen on September 15th, 1983. Kornfield, one of the most articulate and compassionate voices in modern Western Buddhism, is co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah, about whom he speaks at length in this lecture. Kornfield has taught meditation worldwide since 1974 and is considered one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practices to the West. He’s the author of a host of books, including 1977’s Living Dharma, 1993’s A Path with Heart, and 2001’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. This talk is at turns funny, wise, and insightful. It awakens a certain kind of spirit in the listener. We're grateful to Kornfield for his continuing association with the Esalen Institute, and continuing devotion to the path of the heart.

Justin Michael Williams is an author, speaker and musician who works at the intersection of social justice, mindfulness, and personal growth. Justin has become a pioneering voice of color for the new healing movement. His mission is to make sure that all people, of all backgrounds, have access to the information they need to change their lives. Together, we discussed the science of transformation, what it means to combat forces of oppression (in a healthy way), identity labels (and how they function for good and for bad within the activist framework), what it means to go beyond anti-racism, Justin's current take on the human potential movement, and more.

Ayana Young is a protector of wild nature and host of the podcast For the Wild - an interview-based show that examines and champions intersectional environmental and social justice, deep ecology, and land-based restoration. Topics include the Future History of Water, Queering Permaculture, Unruly Beauty, the Divine Time of Fungal Evolution, the Violence of Globalization, and much more. Together we talked about capitalisim, her involvement with the early stages of Occupy Wall Street, why she lives off the grid and how exactly that works with being an activist and media producer, the manner in which she curates her guests and creates episodic structure, and her thoughts on the future of humanity. Visit her work at forthewild.world/podcast.

Dr. Han Ren is a practitioner of decolonial mental health: she offers liberation-oriented, anti-oppressive, culturally informed therapy, and practices from a justice-oriented, systems-informed framework. Some of her specialties include Asian-American mental health, anxiety, perfectionism, high achievers, children of immigrants/third culture kids, anti-racism, and parenting. Dr. Ren is also a force to be reckoned with on TikTok, amassing a large following on a platform she uses in an attempt to make therapy accessible and applicable to our everyday lives. Together we talked about how white supremacy can be internalized, what it looks like when you center BIPOC mental health in treatment, how one decolonizes language, the conceptual shift from a dyadic trauma perspective to a more collective, societal notion of trauma, and her struggles as a recovering perfectionist.

Richie Reseda and Indigo Mateo are the co-owners and founders of Question Culture, an activist-artistic art label whose projects support grassroots organizing. Richie Reseda is an abolistionist-feminist, formerly incarcerated in the state of California and the subject of the CNN documentary" Feminist in Cell Block Y," a film that chronicles his journey educating and combatting toxic masculinity within the walls of the prison system. Indigo Mateo is a singer, healer, abolitionist, survivor, and artist. She’s releasing her sophomore album on the label this summer. Indigo met Richie while visiting him in prison; her partner, 88, also an artist on the Question Culture label, is currently incarcerated. Together we discussed how patriarchy functions in culture and in jail, what the school to prison pipeline is, and why it exists, how economies sprout up around the prison system and in neighboring towns, how meritocracy has led to a culture of vengeance, and why“the prison system is,” in Richie Reseda's words, “the deadbeat boyfriend of America.”

Reverend Bodhi Be is the Executive Director of "Doorway into Light," a non-profit that seeks to re-invent and revolutionize the funeral home and the funeral industry, transforming the “business of dying” and returning it to “sacred service." Bodhi is an ordained minister in the universal Sufi lineage, an independent funeral director, hospice volunteer, end-of-life bereavement counselor, as well as a grandparent, coffin maker, death doula, educator, artist, and entrepreneur. He lives on Maui, where he is also the founder and president of the Death Store, Hawaii's only community educational resource center and store for those who are living with a life-threatening illness, those grieving the death of a loved one, and those wishing to explore their own approaching death.