Ep 40. How Ancestral Practices and Laughter Help Us Navigate Being Human (w/ Kate Graham)

If we held up a laugh-meter (like the one from Monsters, Inc) what would our laugh levels be? and Why do we just feel drawn to certain places? and Do our ancestors matter? and Is it possible to befriend crows while being a nomad?

These are the types of questions (serious and silly) you’ll hear around today’s fire where I’m joined by the ever-optimistic, comedy-loving Kate Graham -  a shamanic oracle and creator of the Empath Energetics intuition development and archetypal healing program. With training in hypnotherapy, yin and restorative yoga, thai yoga massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and shamanism, Kate uses her experiences to teach people how to trust their own bodies and hearts. She has also worked on an alpaca farm, lived nomadically in a van, and moved to manage a retreat in the Scottish Highlands, all in the name of intuition.

So for those of you familiar with my story (goatherd turned organic farmer turned yoga teacher turned shamanic practitioner turned nomad… etc) you can imagine that we have a lot of shared conversation topics… and they will wander through territory deep, wise, irreverent, visionary, and most likely sort of meaningless, too.

Topics like:

• tuning into the energy of lands and locations;
• how we might be selling our long-ago ancestors short;
• the beauty of it taking all kinds;
• why did we put structures which hold us in place into place?;
• moving from hopelessness to optimism;
• what remembering ancestral ways of meaning-making, healing, celebrating, and integrating have meant for us personally;
• the balance of light and dark;
• the role of tricksters, crows, and comedians in society;
• the difference between healers who put things back together and healers who walk the edges with you;
• why healing work can feel so hard and exhausting sometimes and some shifts in approach which might make it easier;
• how love and abolition are teaching us right now…

and more.

This is a longer conversation because we just kept riffing off each other. But watching it back as I was preparing these notes, I kept finding myself laughing and wondering about things all over again. 

Join us around the fire? You’re most welcome here.

May we each find the gift of our part in things and the places, people, and rituals to nurture those sparks. May we laugh more than we think we should and be free to flow where our medicine is most useful and our hearts feel most alive. May we have the courage and trust to come undone and rediscover something of even greater beauty. May we love our boundaries and therefore be able to love everyone. May we befriend the crows.

You can find Kate G:

Heartsfrontier.com

YouTube @heartsfrontier

Instagram @shamanicoraclekate

And if you've come for Kate G, I hope you'll stick around for more conversations to access, repair, inspire, and evolve our humanity and serve the wild, tender aliveness of our personal and collective hearts.

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