For The Wild

Gabes Torres offers her thoughtful wisdom in this conversation that weaves through healing, interconnection, and embodiment. Focusing on holistic healing and mental health support, Gabes lucidly describes the ways our individual health and well-being are dependent upon our connections and the structures of the societies in which we reside. Together Ayana and Gabes dream of what we may be free towards (not just free from) as we divest from extractive mindsets. Reverberating on a call to expand love in deeply rooted directions, this conversation offers nourishment for body and soul.

Gabes Torres was born and raised in the countryside of the Philippines. She is a psychotherapist, organizer, and artist with her work focusing on the interplay of mental health, the arts, spirituality, and justice-oriented practice. She has an MA in Theology & Culture, and Counseling Psychology; both graduate degrees were accomplished in Seattle, the city where she organized with abolitionist and anti-imperialist groups at a local, grassroots level. In her clinical practice, Gabes pays attention to healing from racial and migration trauma, while decolonizing the therapeutic space from White Western modalities. Gabes writes for Yes! Magazine, an independent publisher of solutions journalism with stories that uncover environmental, economic, and social justice intersections. She is also a poet and singer-songwriter.

This episode of For The Wild is brought to you by Anima Mundi Herbals.

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Music by Amaara, Blue Doll, and Annie Sumi. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

This week, guest Veda Austin invites us to consider and grow closer to water – as both a preciously vital and often overlooked life source. Veda’s work researching and making art with water has allowed her an intimate look into water’s role on Earth and within our lives. Water is our companion, and more than just companion, it is what makes us. We are continually obliged to water, and it to us, as we are in an interdependent relationship with it. Veda calls us to investigate our liquid selves – the tears and sweat that make us human, the rituals of baptism and bathing that connect us to that which lies beyond. As Veda states, water is always in search of itself. How might understanding water begin to help us in our search for ourselves?

Touching on her healing journey, art, practice, and methods of working with water as collaborator, Veda highlights curiosity, closeness, and tenderness as guiding principles. Continually on a learning journey, Veda’s work shows what is possible when water is seen as source rather than as commodity. This episode reminds us of the wisdom we inherently hold alongside the grand scale of that which we have left to learn.

Veda is a water researcher, public speaker, mother, artist and author. She has dedicated the last 8 years observing and photographing the life of water. She believes that water is fluid intelligence, observing itself through every living organism on the planet and in the Universe. Her primary area of focus is photographing water in its ‘state of creation’, the space between liquid and ice. It is through her remarkable crystallographic photos that water reveals its awareness of not only Creation, but thought and intention through imagery.

Music by Strong Sun Moon/Camelia Jade and Doe Paoro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.