Survival of the Kindest Compassionate Communities UK

76: Dave and Sara Brave Heart - Humility and Compassion




Your responsibilities to others are more important than your own personal wants.




This week’s podcast features Dave and Sara Brave Heart. Daves childhood was not easy. His father suffered from alcoholism and Dave also found some solace in alcohol. Both he and his father were successful in coming to grips with their addiction, finding compassion and wisdom in their Native American roots. Despite quite different backgrounds, both David and Sara, his wife, found connections and similarities.
 
Dave leads the healing Annual Mahkato Pow Wow , the Dakota Wokiksuye Makoce, or Land of Memories Park in Mankato, Minnesota. This was where the Dakota People held many gatherings before the execution of 38 warriors during the U.S. Dakota War of 1862. After that mass execution, the Dakota People moved out of the area and scattered to different parts of the country. This pow wow is an effort to bring them back to their homeland.
 
Dave was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neurone disease, in September 2021. Both Sara and Dave’s openness and care for each other shines through in this podcast.
 
Dave’s speech is slurred from his ALS. He is still able to communicate well and his wisdom and humour are evident throughout. A GoFundMe for Dave can be found here to help make Dave and Sara's house more accessible.



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75. Dr Ros Watts - Psilocybin As A Treatment For Depression



I have become more and more interested in community and nature as important ways of integrating not only psychedelic experiences, but just life experiences.



On this week’s Survival of the Kindest podcast I am delighted to welcome Dr Ros Watts. Ros managed to combine both a conventional and unconventional side to her childhood, doing well academically at the same time as enjoying a thriving dance scene. She became a clinical psychologist and got a job supervising people using psilocybin in a clinical trial for depression at Imperial College. What was clear from the outcome of the trial was that people developed a sense of belonging after having taken psilocybin in a therapeutic clinical environment. This naturally led Ros to consider the role of community in mental health. She has designed a therapeutic intervention that connects people both to nature and each other.



Follow Survival of the Kindest on Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen to get our episodes as they are released. Email us on sotk@compassionate-communitiesuk.co.uk

74. Holly Prince - You Will Be An Ancestor To Somebody. And What Is Your Legacy?



Start thinking about being accountable to the next 6, 7, 8 generations down the line, it really encourages you to live your life in a good way.



We welcome back Holly Prince to this week’s Survival of the Kindest podcast. Holly was a guest on episode 15. She is a First Nations palliative care researcher who worked alongside Mary Lou Kelly, who was a guest on episode 7. Mary Lou and Holly together ran an exemplary participatory research project in First Nations communities in Canada, which endures to the present day.
 
Holly is now midway through her PhD. She is researching First Nations ways of knowing and being. She’s using innovative research techniques to make sure that the elders of her community determine what they think is important to say, and furthermore her interpretation of this will be checked directly with them.



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73. Professor George Slavich - What Does The Immune System Care About?



'Suggesting that those things be practiced misses at least 50% of the point which is not just about getting us to live longer but it's about moving us incrementally toward being better people, being more, kind and compassionate to ourselves and to other people, purely for the sake of doing it.'





On the Survival of the Kindest podcast we try and piece together a variety of different views which help to explain why compassion is so important.
 
We have heard from Professor Julianne Holt Lunstad about the dramatic effect of social relationships on reducing the risk of dying. We heard from Professor Steve Cole about how this works at a molecular level, including the field of human social genomics. On this week’s podcast we hear about the fantastic work of Professor George Slavich. George and Steve are colleagues. Starting with a psychology degree, George became increasingly interested in the biological impacts of social relationships. This led him to the field of psychoneuroimmunology. The depth of his interest is amazing. He has managed to describe as complete a picture of the impact of social relationships in all the body systems as we have. He has developed the field of social safety theory which comprehensively examines the evolutionary roots and the impacts of a variety of different environments, both physical and social, on how our bodies function.



Follow Survival of the Kindest on Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen to get our episodes as they are released. Email us on sotk@compassionate-communitiesuk.co.uk

72: Diana Reynolds - The Bigger Picture



"If you're looking at the bits you're not seeing the bigger picture"



On this week’s Survival of the Kindest podcast I am delighted to welcome Diana Reynolds. Diana is the Sustainable Development Change Manager for Welsh Government, where she is a leadership coach and manages a long term behaviour change programme.



Diana has, in various existences, been a school teacher, head of computing, private sector training manager, semiskilled machine operative and university staff development officer. She spent several years working freelance in mid-Wales as a management consultant; providing advice and training on educational management, adult education, information technology and environmental education, through the medium of Welsh and English.



Follow Survival of the Kindest on Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen to get our episodes as they are released. Email us on sotk@compassionate-communitiesuk.co.uk

71: Judah Amani - Making Sense



"Music provides the vehicle to express things that are quite difficult to express"



On this week’s Survival of the Kindest podcast I am delighted to welcome Judah Amani. Judah has an extraordinary background being brought up in Iran, London, and Israel. This unique combination of different cultural upbringings was somewhat disorientating for him. Judah found that he was able to make more sense of his complex world through understanding design. He took a diversion in the world of music, and perhaps found this equally disorientating.



Going back to design via the route of human rights, he used the processes he understood working with prisoners and help them develop In-House records.



The social context of design has been really important to him and there is a real commonality of language with that of community development. Design is in everything and is part of power structures, equity and human rights.



Follow Survival of the Kindest on Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you like to listen to get our episodes as they are released. Email us on sotk@compassionate-communitiesuk.co.uk