The Queer Spirit

Bevin Branlandingham is an ultra rad warrior for self-acceptance. She is a writer, aerobics instructor, healer and performer in Los Angeles, CA who believes that all bodies are good bodies and makes the world safe for people to love themselves. An award-winning Femmecee and event producer, Bevin’s monthly body positive dance party Rebel Cupcake was named one of the reasons New York City is the Best City in the World by Time Out New York. She moved to Los Angeles in 2016 and is excited to be part of an upstart community that turns the stereotype of thin obsessed Hollywood on its head. She goes live on Facebook every day, blogs at queerfatfemme.com and offers Reiki, energy healing and life purpose readings distance and locally. She teaches her one-of-a-kind healing aerobics class Fat Kid Dance Party (For All Sizes to Heal from Body Oppression) in Los Angeles, on tour and in an aerobics video available at FatKidDanceParty.com!

Episode Highlights:

• Bevin talks about going from an NYC lawyer and queer party promoter to SoCal aerobics instructor and Fat activist.
• How she started doing reiki healing after a tarot reading, and the benefits of energy healing on yourself and others.
• The importance of creating safe and accessible spaces for fitness.
• The journey from dance parties to Fat Kid Dance Party class. Holding trauma and oppression in the body, and healing it through exercise.
• Creating community through self care.
• Body liberation activism, body currency and being a gender warrior.

Bevin’s Social Media links

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram

 

Offering Information, Insight, Empowerment, Enlightenment, HiC is a Tarot Conversationalist, Coach, and Ritual & Magic Consultant who has been working with the Tarot for over 18 years. His readings have been described as “a tarot reading, therapy session and life coaching session all in one.” He offers his services using the Tarot combined with healthy doses of numerology and astrology, a splash of i-Ching, a taste of Feng Shui, and practical application. Along with a heaping spoonful of magic and ritual, HiC assists you in crafting what can enhance and manifest your life in the fullest, most beneficial and blessed way possible by discovering practical, useful information that can be used to change your life for the better. HiC’s approach to a reading is creating a space that honours the person and allows them to open the door to, ultimately, have a conversation with themselves. Find out more about HiC’s offerings and how to contact him for a private session (in person, FaceTime, Skype and phone sessions available) at Tarotbyhic.net

Episode Highlights

• We discuss the difference between a tarot reader vs. a tarot conversationalist, as an interactive dialog among the people and spirit for guidance.
• Our futures are not set in stone - “We Create our own outcome and future.”
• Looking at life situations from a different perspective to move closer to your desires.
• Using divination to gather additional guidance about your life, instead of seeing it as a narrowing of life options.
• The way HiC synthesizes the tools of tarot, astrology, I Ching, runes, Feng shui, magic and ritual to support his clients and to effect transformation in their lives.
• Using rituals and magic as a point of focus to infuse energy and intention into their goals.
• Using natural elements — like herbs, oils or crystals — to bring energies to help support your magical intentions.
• The magical energies of food.
• The benefit of working with a reader who has different life experience than yourself.
• The influences of Buddhism and Egyptian Kemeticism on HiC's spiritual and personal growth paths.

HiC's web links

• Tarotbyhic.net
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Crystal Mason (they/them) is an artist, activist, dreamer, consultant and coach. They believe in the power of community and necessity of hope. Jason Wyman (they/them) is Queerly Complex. Using appreciative inquiry, deep listening, and creative conjuring, Wyman taps the Cosmic Mysteries in all to reveal moments of Chaos Poetry. They live, love, and create on Yelamu / San Francisco, and share a home and family with their husband and pride of house and feral cats.

Episode Highlights

• Crystal + Jason share their personal queer-stories and drop some queer wisdom nuggets
• Sweetness alert: We get cozy + comfy while Jason + Crystal take us for a saunter and share about how they met and their connection.
• We learn about the medicine + magic of dreaming in public and how sharing those dreams with others can lead to co creation and action.
• Crystal leads Nick + TanyaMarck through a dream practice that includes a share/reflection of what we experienced.
• Behind the scenes and during our shared time, Jason has been alchemizing some chaos poetry which they share with us; it’s very queer + yummy.
• We learn about the offerings and practices that both Jason + Crystal share with our collective.

Jason's chaos poetry from our collective dreaming practice lead by Crystal:

Take a deep breath... Take a deep breath & soften your gaze... Take a deep breath & flow... Flow like a river as it snakes its way through the jungles... through the forests... through the deserts... through the valleys... through the mountains... through the prairies... through the lands of your ancestors & ancestors of these lands, including those unnamed & unknown... Listen for the birds, the animals, the critters, the wind blowing from the Southwest, from the energies of dreams & wishes... Smell the flowers & the lush green flora thriving all over this world... Flow on this river & arrive in queer paradise... Where the water glistens & glitters... And queer beings of all bodies-- clothed & naked... serene & making love... joyous & free... alone & in community-- Celebrate completely... "I do not want to leave..." "Me neither..." Remember... This dream is within you always & in all ways... You can come back here... Take a deep breath... Lay in your hammock... Dream queer dreams... Here we will always be free.

Web links

• Find Crystal online at CrystalMason.net & on Instagram @ham_job1
• Find Jason at QueerlyComplex.com & on Instagram @queerlycomplex
• And their collective work at TreeOfChange.net

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Elizabeth Cooper grew up in Japan and Brazil, and moved to the Bay Area for its queer, experimental performance art. She studied Anthropology, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Dance at Princeton University and has completed immersive, residential programs at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts and Antioch Buddhist Studies Program in India. She blends her academic background in cultural politics of the body, feminism and queer theory with her passion for the power of movement and meditation in her Queer Body Love coaching business. She explores the question “How do we love ourselves, our bodies and each other in the face of oppression?” through her work.

Episode Highlights

• Elizabeth discusses working with people who ask, “How do I love myself when I struggle to accept my body?”
• Being a third culture kid, growing up in multiple foreign cultures in a white American household.
• Using movement, dance and art to heal from oppression and become more embodied.
• Healing her connection to her body through yoga and movement deep practice.
• “If I really listen to my body, there is both an impulse towards rest and an impulse towards movement.”
• “If you can create enough space to really begin to rebuild trust and listening and intuition with your body, it will tell you what it needs.”
• How consciousness and connection with our bodies can set us free to relate to ourselves and others more fully.
• Using the Buddhist principle of fierce compassion to set clear boundaries as we can heal ourselves.

Elizabeth’s web links

• Queer Body Love Coaching
• The Queer Body Love Speaker Series

Laura Perlin is a Tarot card reader, intuitive counselor, and ritualist. She works especially with personal and collective transformations, resolution of chronic & mysterious health challenges, and ancestral lineage repair. Her approach to healing work is rooted in anti-oppression practice and animist sensibilities. Laura grew up on Ohlone lands in the SF Bay Area and is of Jewish, Sakha (Siberian indigenous), Roma, and Finnish ancestry. She is a founding member of Embodiment Arts Collective, a healing arts and events space in San Francisco rooted in queer and outsider communities.

Episode Highlights

• We discuss how Laura's work in national forests lead to mystical experiences by connecting to the presence of land in the wilds of nature, and the cultivating of relationship with other-than-human entities.
• Ritual work as healing, and working with spirits, ancestors, plants and land.
• Acknowledging the time and space that we’re in is sacred.
• In ritual, the spiritual component is in the foreground.
• Laura's work with people who are transforming and shifting to help with move through a new experience; as well as chronic and mysterious health issues.
• Ancestral repair work.
• How being in relationship with her ancestors helped her clarify and align with her life path as a healer.
• Laura's pilgrimages to Siberia and the important process of re-indiginization she is dedicated to.

Laura's web links

• LauraPerlin.com
• Wild Heart Tarot
• Embodiement Arts Collective