Sounds of SAND

Today, we present wild and flowering conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers, and theobiologians Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand.

This conversation is from a 2022 SAND Community Gathering. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it here.

In Greek Mythology, the Titan Kronos eats an indigestible stone and vomits up the new Olympic pantheon of gods. In our current time, people planted in stratigraphic layers of shared trauma find themselves uniquely ill – physically and mentally. We are unable to digest food and unable to digest violence. What if indigestion – practical and mythical – was a sign that a new world was threatening to be born? The very basis of our nucleated cells is an ancient botched bacterial cannibalism. What if our inability to digest certain injustices was an invitation to vomit up a new pantheon? And in an age when we are all threaded through with microplastics and blood pressure stabilizers, what does it mean to start to physically grow into new shapes around incursions we cannot properly assimilate or expel?

Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022.

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Yet it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she’ll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients.

She is the author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine and The Madonna Secret. She is also finishing a collection of essays about navigating an incurable genetic disease and early trauma through ecological storytelling.

You can subscribe to her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com, and follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com.

Topics

• 00:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 01:35 Introducing Dr. Bayo Akomolafe
• 04:11 Introducing Sophie Strand
• 06:35 Starting the Conversation: New Gods in Challenging Times
• 13:54 Exploring Mispronunciation and Evolution
• 27:27 Animist Perspectives on Trauma
• 28:17 Healing in Yoruba Culture
• 30:29 Bioelectric Signals and Embryogenesis
• 35:40 The Role of Trickster Gods
• 38:26 Invasive Species and Ecosystem Dynamics
• 47:25 Disability as an Invitation to Community
• 55:32 Concluding Thoughts on New Gods

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Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers, and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland’s work in healing and human development is framed by an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology, and Indigenous cosmologies, primarily those of South and West Africa.

Find more about the Three Black Men: A Journey Into the Magical Otherwise series with Orland Bishop, Resmaa Menakem, and Bayo Akomolafe.

Purchase tickets to watch the North American live web stream and download the recording of this event

Topics:

00:00 – Introduction

03:17 – Part 1, Are We a Part of the Same Reality?

05:12 – ”I Give You My Word”

10:00 – Know Thyself

13:00 – Shared Inner Freedom & Trust

16:13 – Shared States of Consciousness

23:40 – Part 2, What Gives Form to Consciousness

30:44 – Light of Consciousness

37:35 – Collective and Racialized Trauma Questions from the Group

46:10 – Where Does History Go?

In a rare meeting of minds, Gabor Mate asks Adyashanti explore whether there is a predilection for spirituality and expand on passages from Adyashanti’s recent book My Secret Is Silence.

Discussion topics in this episode:

• The influence of trauma on the spiritual path
• The need for specialists help
• Spiritual bypassing
• The power of silence
• The relationship between spiritual insight and emotional growth

In a rare meeting of minds, Dr. Gabor Maté asks Adyashanti explore whether there is a predilection for spirituality and expand on passages from Adyashanti’s recent book My Secret Is Silence

Discussion topics in this episode:

• The influence of trauma on the spiritual path
• The need for specialists help
• Spiritual bypassing
• The relationship between spiritual insight and emotional growth.

Dr. Gabor Maté

Rather than offering quick-fix solutions to these complex issues, Dr. Maté weaves together scientific research, case histories, and his own insights and experience to present a broad perspective that enlightens and empowers people to promote their own healing and that of those around them.

After 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, Dr. Maté worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in over thirty languages, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress; Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder; and (with Dr. Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. His next book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture is due out on September 13, 2022. His second next book, Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children is expected in 2023. Gabor is also co-developer of a therapeutic approach, Compassionate Inquiry, now studied by hundreds of therapists, physicians, counselors, and others internationally. More on his books and programs can be found here. https://drgabormate.com

Dr. Gabor Maté

Adyashanti (whose name means “primordial peace”) is an American-born spiritual teacher who has been teaching for 26 years. His teachings include evening meetings, weekend intensives, silent retreats, live internet broadcasts, and online courses. He has taught throughout the US and also in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia. More than 30,000 people in 120 countries are connected to his website through free email subscription. He is the author of eleven books. https://www.adyashanti.org.

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Reach out to us at [email protected]

This is a recording from the 2022 Community Conversation between with guest Iya Affo and SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo.

Very few people are aware of the impact of historical trauma. Historical trauma is trauma so deeply rooted in the subconscious we may not even know it is there. It can leave us feeling anxious, irritable, sad, and hopeless... and we have no idea why. But once we begin to see the larger context of our trauma, then a more holistic healing can begin.

Iya Affo is a Culturalist and Historical Trauma consultant. She earned Western certification as a Trauma Specialist and is a descendant of a long line of traditional healers from Bénin, West Africa. Iya serves as an Executive Board Member for the Arizona ACEs Consortium, is an Adjunct Faculty member at the Arizona Trauma Institute, and is the founder of Heal Historical Trauma Culture & Indigenous Wellness Academy. She has visited more than 30 countries; living in Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Native American, and Yoruba communities, embracing aspects from each culture for personal evolution. She strives to transcend tolerance through cultivating love and respect in hopes of facilitating the decolonization and subsequent healing of indigenous people from all over the world. Iya advocates for the harmonization of Traditional Medicine and Western Medicine for true holistic healing.

Iya's passion is to cultivate intergenerational healing by connecting intuitive ancestral practices with modern neurobiology. As we delve into leveraging our neurobiology to facilitate the healing process, we will also explore re-culturing and the creation of self-harmonizing communities.

Iya Affo’s Website

Topics

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:51 Introducing Iya Affo

02:31 Iya's Personal Journey

05:57 Understanding Historical Trauma

10:14 Resilience and Cultural Connections

11:57 The Role of Names and Identity

16:25 Tools for Healing and Resilience

19:12 The Importance of Cultural Practices

24:35 Epigenetics and Generational Trauma

26:34 Storytelling and Historical Context

26:54 Ancestral Vigilance and Survival Instincts

29:05 Epigenetics and Generational Trauma

30:50 Impact of Historical Trauma on Modern Behavior

34:52 Challenges of Western Medicine in Indigenous Communities

43:51 Traditional Healing Practices and Neurological Regulation

Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

In this magnificent talk from the SAND 2018 Radiant Intimacy gathering,Esther Perel offers fresh insights into

• Expectations
• Negotiations
• Intimacy
• Motherhood
• Turn-ons and turn-offs
• The coming and going of love and eroticism.

She concludes with answers to a series of questions from the audience, which confirm her reputation as one of the most brilliant and original authorities in the natural history of relationships.

So we hope you enjoy this foray into an important and ever-evolving topic we explore at Science and Nonduality – the nature of love and relationships.

Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel is recognized as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. Learn more at EstherPerel.com or by following @EstherPerelOfficial on Instagram.
scienceandnonduality.com/podcast

Reach out to us at [email protected]