The Numinous Podcast

TNP64: Learning To See In The Dark

This special episode is a recording of an hour-long keynote address I gave in the fall of 2016. The title of the talk is, "Learning To See In The Dark: Reclaiming Our Power, Transforming Our World". It's a deep dive into the Dark Woman archetype, how she shows up in our lives, why she is so feared and what her purpose is in transforming our lives and our world. For further reading: Charlene Spretnak Jean Shinoda Bolen Demetra George Caroline Casey Carol Leonard & Elizabeth Davis Peggy Reeves Sanday Marije Gimbutas

TNP63: Healing The Abandonment Wound {Special Mini-Series Part 3 of 3}

In this final episode, I talk more about the spiritual void underpinning the abandonment wound. I also provide a framework and suggested exercises that clinical hypnotherapists and other healing practitioners might use to support clients in their journey from abandonment to healing. This framework is based on Susan Anderson's model of the Five Stages of Abandonment.  

TNP62: Healing the Abandonment Wound {Special Mini Series Part 2 of 3}

In Part 2, I dive deeper into Attachment and Addiction. Additional readings I suggest in the introduction to this episode are linked below: The Attachment Parenting Book, by Dr. SearsHold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers, by Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor MatéHold Me Tight, by Dr. Sue JohnsonAttached, by Amir Levine and Rachel HellerThe Opposite Of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture, by Nora SamaranThe Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, by bell hooks  

TNP61: Healing the Abandonment Wound {Special Mini-Series Part 1 of 3}

A therapist I once worked with said it best: Abandonment is the gap between what you need and what you get. Abandonment arouses the primal fear of infancy and childhood, that of being left alone to fend for ourselves. This kind of wound is cumulative: every loss, betrayal, disappointment, rejection (perceived or real), break-up or death can trigger the primal Abandonment Wound. Rather than dissipate, feelings incubate. Everybody has an Abandonment Wound. The issue is not whether or not it exists within us, it’s how well we’re coping with it. In 2014, I delivered a lecture at the Canadian Association of Clinical Hypnotherapists Conference called, "Healing The Abandonment Wound: A Five Step Process". This is a special Numinous Podcast three-part mini-series that expands on that lecture with additional readings, resources and thoughts about how this work has evolved in the three years I've spent focussing the client work in my hypnotherapy practice in this area. Resources cited in this episode include: The Roots of Addiction in Free Market Society, by Bruce K. Alexander Rat Park, by Bruce K. Alexander and the comic it inspired by Stuart McMillen (not mentioned in this episode but equally entertaining work describing Rat Park is the video, "Everything We Know About Addiction Is Wrong") In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, by Dr. Gabor Maté The Journey From Abandonment To Healing, by Susan Anderson You can explore this work with me further at: www.carmenspagnola.com/abandonment-therapy/

TNP60 Lindsay Rose Turner - How The Healer Heals Herself

Lindsay Rose is a Reiki Master and intuition development teacher who has experienced more than her fair share of loss and tragedy in her life. In this episode, Lindsay shares the intimate story of her healing journey along with a host of techniques and tools that helped her cope when the sadness, pain and anxiety was overwhelming. This is an excellent episode for anyone who's struggling with the pain of death, a break-up or any form of abandonment.
Learn more about Lindsay Rose at her website or on her blog.
Find out about Love School at Locate Your Soulmate.

TNP59: Ritual + Magic with John Michael Greer

I chat with living occult encyclopedia, John Michael Greer, author of popular blogs, The Archdruid Report and The Well of Galabes.
John is Past Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America and current head of the Druidical Order of the Golden Dawn, and the author of more than thirty books. (Makes you wonder what the heck you do with your time, doesn't it?)
In this second conversation with John, we talk about why ritual sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I ask him about the placebo effect in relation to ceremony and healing. He tells me about a Druid communion ceremony (???) in more detail, including a description of the use of solar and telluric currents of the cosmos. We talk about the impact of reclaiming the gods of nature. And then he schools us on "decensus" and genetic drift.
It's a broad, sweeping and thought-provoking conversation about how and why the universe works the way it does and how humans behave in relationship to the greater realms. Whew!

TNP58: Carrie Klassen on Kindness + Goodness in Business + Life

My marketing crush, Carrie Klassen, shares the story of a heart-wrenching experience that occurred while she was volunteering at a shelter for abused girls and women in India.
How We Met
I first came across Carrie's work some time around 2009. When she released her workbook, How To Write a Loveable Homepage, she became the go-to adviser that I recommend to any entrepreneur who feels icky when it comes to sales and marketing.
 

TNP57: Homeless + Hopeless to Unbounded Joy with Shayla Logan

When she was 19, Shayla Logan was homeless and suffering from severe depression with suicidal tendencies. For six months, she lived on the street while working her way through the court system to take control of her life. A near-death experience changed everything.

TNP56: Motherless Daughter, Mother, Sheila Webster

What is the size and shape of the wound of absence? When she was 11 years old, Sheila Webster's mother died of cancer. With tender open-heartedness, Sheila shares her story of navigating her mother's death and the impact it had on her life as she became a woman and a mother. This show was created in response to a previous episode on the Mother Wound. Sheila commented that she couldn't really relate and I was intrigued.
How We Met
I'm not sure I remember exactly how I met Sheila - I think she saw me speak at a conference and then booked an appointment with me. I know it was about four years ago and we've since woven in and out of each other's paths. When I think of Sheila, the word "alignment" comes to mind. She's one of those people you meet and instantly know she's a good, solid, dependable person with a strong moral compass. Considering her story, that seems quite a feat, no?
 

TNP55: Nicole Foss on How To Build A Lifeboat

International energy and finance analyst, Nicole Foss, breaks it down for us: what is really coming down the road in terms of systemic financial collapse and how do we personal prepare and cope with it. Can we talk for a minute about the escalating consequences of debt? How about the unsecured loans we're making to the banks (ie: keeping our savings there)? We run some scenarios.
 
We also talk about the importance of social capital in the midst of a long drawn-out crisis. This conversation is definitely thought-provoking. For more in-depth review, read the cited post, How To Build A Lifeboat.

TNP54: Nicole Foss on Navigating the Perfect Financial Storm

How do we cope with personal and public debt in an age of global markets and possible Econopocalypse? We're talking with international energy and finance analyst, Nicole Foss, about how we manage global financial insecurity at a personal level. How do we manage our personal finance, investments and real estate to secure our future when globalization makes us so vulnerable to systemic collapse? I'm asking Nicole to expand on financial concepts because she's such an intellectual force of nature. Here's just a sample of her background: Nicole ran the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she has focused on farm-based biogas projects and grid connections for renewable energy. While living in the UK, she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level. She earned a BSc in biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, and an LLM in international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK. She was granted the University Medal for the top science graduate in 1988 and the law school prize for the top law school graduate in 1997. So, yeah, she's pretty well informed.

TNP53: Astronomy’s Mysteries with John Reid

In a universe that's at least 13 billion years old and at least 13 billion light years across, how is it possible we've never had contact with intelligent life from other planets? In this episode, Astronomy Educator and Librarian, John Reid, discusses the Fermi Paradox, space debris and what the heck is happening with those crazy lights shining on the asteroid Ceres right now. How We Met John and I went to high school together. One of the most memorable and terrifying experiences of my high school life was a late study session in the creepy old wing of the main school building. John told a group of us, in chilling, expressionless detail, all about this book he was reading called The Shining by Stephen King. Episode We start by tackling The Fermi Paradox, the contradiction between the extremely high likelihood of intelligent life in the universe and the extremely low probability of our never having come across it yet. We also muse about what might be happening with those brights lights on Ceres right now. I get irate about space debris and John gets moony about the moon. He slips in little side notes here and there about things can could instantly end all life on earth like gamma ray explosions, supernova explosions and asteroids hitting us. (We saw what happened to the dinosaurs, he says casually.) This is one of my favourite episodes and I'd like to thank my patron, Charlene Lo, currently hailing from Hong Kong, for her support in making it happen.  Yay, Charlene!

TNP52: Humanism, Atheism + Optimism with Emrys Miller

Graphic designer, Emrys Miller, has worked as an artistic director for both a yoga magazine and a skeptic magazine - what the??? How does he, and how do we, make sense of the world using both reason and intuition?
How We Met
I mentioned our origin story last time Emrys was on the show. You might also find it interesting to know that Emrys is the father of twin girls just entering their teen years. (Each, in my opinion, is a genius in her own way.) Emrys and his family usually spend an extended vacation every summer at an ashram in the interior of British Columbia. Cool, right? Also perhaps a little unexpected.
Episode
Required reading for this podcast: Anomalous Events That Can Shake One's Skepticism to the Core by Michael Shermer.
And I simply can't recommend the book by Barbara Ehrenreich that I mention in the show highly enough. It's called Living With A Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search For The Truth About Everything and it was so deliciously exciting for me that when I read the last line, I slammed the book shut and literally squealed.
Also, take a look at Emrys' site www.rocketdayarts.com. If you're interested in humanism, check out the book he published, Voices of Humanism. It's an anthology of 35 articles by 15 humanists. My copy has a lot of underlines and dog ears.
 

TNP51: Love + Apocalypse with Carolyn Baker, PhD

Love in the Age of Ecological Apocalypse: Cultivating the Relationships We Need To Thrive is Carolyn Baker's most recent book and I'm so thrilled to talk to her about it in this episode of The Numinous Podcast.
In this episode, Carolyn talks about our fear of death, shares practical skills for communicating with a reluctant partner and children. She also helps us move through the feeling of schizophrenia that comes from trying to speak truth while living in an insane culture.

TNP50: Carmen & Ruben on Badass Backyard Spirituality

For this special milestone episode, my husband, Ruben Anderson, interviews me. A self-proclaimed atheist, Ruben starts out with basic questions about intuition and spirituality. But things get interesting when evidence mounts that Ruben is, in fact, the most spiritual person I know.

TNP49: Carolyn Baker on Grief + Love During Collapse

This week on the podcast we're getting to the heart of it all: facing environmental, economic and social decline and the sheer amount of grief that entails. Thankfully, we have the lucid, sensible and sensitive guidance of one of North America's foremost experts and elders in this area, Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. Carolyn is a Jungian psychotherapist, an adjunct professor of history and psychology, and a prolific author of many thought-provoking books including one I consider essential reading for our age, Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths for Turbulent Times. Some of the content in this show may be news to some of you, but for those for whom it is an urgent and incessant background beat, this show will be a release valve. Hearing someone approach such a daunting subject with such clarity and calmness is truly heartening.

TNP48: Christopher Lloyd Clarke on Meditation + Music

This week my guest is musical artist, Christopher Lloyd Clarke. Christopher is the creative spirit behind all of the music in The Numinous School. I listen to his mucis nearly every day in meditation and use it in sessions with clients. I was curious to know how he found himself creating music in this niche.
 

TNP47: Indigo Ocean Dutton on Saying Yes to Happiness

Indigo Ocean is the founder and champion of multiple service organizations, an entrepreneur, a self-made millionaire, and a consultant for spiritually oriented entrepreneurs. Her first suicide attempt was at age 9 and she struggled with depression for years before deciding to stay and make the most of life.
In this episode, I mention Indigo's two books, Being Bliss and Micro Habits for Major Happiness. Indigo also recommends some great books for those exploring spirituality and enlightenment:
Personal and perennial favourite, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas
The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
To find out more about Indigo Ocean and her offerings, including Phone Buddies Peer Counselling Community, find her online at www.IndigoOcean.org

TNP46: Mirabella Ponders the Mystery

A conversation with my 11 year old daughter, Mirabella, about intelligent life in the universe, lucid dreaming, parking angels and what happens after you die. It's a "who knows?" kind of conversation. I hope it prompts you to ask your loved ones, or even yourself, the Big Questions. Here are some Big questions to start with:
Do you believe there are other intelligent life forms in the universe?What do you think happens after you die?If you could come back as any person or thing, what would you choose?Do you believe in angels?Do you believe in ghosts?Have you ever had a lucid dream?What do you fantasize about most?

TNP45: Emrys Damon Miller on Graphic Design + Shamanism

In this episode, we re-imagine the design process as a form of shamanic journey. Emrys Damon Miller is the founder and creator of Rocketday Arts, a communications studio which helps clients who aim to build a healthier future. His clients have included those in the arts, the environment, education, and humanism/theology. Our conversation moves from how imagery affects society and self-image, intuition and the creative process, balancing a client's needs with personal and professional creative expression, and the way that intuition can bring charm, warmth and beauty to design.