Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Podcast International School of Temple Arts

It has become common to talk about creating safer spaces for healing work. And this is a good thing. Everyone in the field of conscious sensuality, embodiment, and healing work should be looking to improve their practice and rise to higher standards of care, support, awareness, and sensitivity.


At the same time, it has also become common to resist this advancement in favour of the idea that self-development spaces should reflect the level of safety in the outside world. And sometimes, for some people, the world can feel really dangerous. People who take this view might say that this is how we learn resilience, or how we can turn difficulty into growth. 


But for our guest in this episode, somatic psychotherapist Shelby Leigh, if we are interested in the resolution of the trauma that affects so many of our lives, the spaces we enter for healing simply must be environments grounded in values of connection, responsibility, and trust. 


For Leigh, trauma is anything that overwhelms us, and it can stay with us if we never have a chance to naturally complete our body’s survival response to that overwhelming thing. The feeling of overwhelm can stay with us, separating us from our sense of belonging in the world, and inhibiting our capacity for healthy relationships. 


In her conversation with ISTA facilitator, Usha Rose, Leigh speaks about just how important it is to learn skills of self-regulation, stillness, and boundaries in a safe environment. It is then that we are in a great position to step into the revolutionary practice of taking those skills into the dynamic, playful, and perhaps riskier outside world. 


Some of the topics covered in this episode are: 
Relating with others as the medicine we need.

Understanding your ‘attachment style.’

Growing up with narcissistic parents. 

When complex trauma gets misdiagnosed as ADHD or anxiety. 

Protocols for people working in healing spaces.

Not pushing past your ‘no.’ 

Stepping slowly into healing spaces. 

Nervous system regulation as meditation. 
You can learn more about Shelby at her website: https://www.shelby-leigh.com/
And to learn more about ISTA, visit our website: https://ista.life/
Or follow us on social media: @ista.community

Over the last couple of years, Dave Boda has been really critical of ISTA. He’s composed blog-posts and spoken openly about how some of the people involved need to improve, and how some of the ways ISTA approaches its work need to fall away. 

In this episode, he talks with ISTA facilitator, the podcast founder, and his old friend, Ria Yoshida, about how important it is to not only have these frank conversations about improving the sacred sexuality space, but to do it in an engaged and loving way. 

Although Dave has not attended an ISTA experience himself, he has  facilitated hundreds of events in the spiritual self-development space and draws, here, on his experience there. He has also been through an extended mediation process with ISTA in his role with the group, Safer Sex Positive and Spiritual Communities. 

For him, it is crucial for communities to acknowledge when it is time to shift with the times, and grow along with those who form them. 

Dave and Ria cover many points of wisdom that have arrived for both of them in their journeys of self-exploration, like: 


How important it is to take breaks from going to workshops or festivals and integrate what you’ve learned into ordinary life. 

How we need to take accountability for what happens in our lives, and for when we’ve made mistakes. 

How important it is to really listen to feedback. 

How we often stay working on projects that no longer serve us because it’s what we get rewarded for. 

How it is really difficult to genuinely do the work of taking responsibility. 
We hope you enjoy this frank, and very real, conversation.


To learn more about Dave, visit his website: https://boodaism.com/

To learn more about Safer Sex Positive and Spiritual Communities, visit their website: https://3sc.community/
To learn more about ISTA, visit our website: https://ista.life/
Or follow us on social media: @ista.community

There’s a lot of hot debate about the ethics of transformational spaces right now, driven by questions of how power should be held in these spaces. Who should be responsible if something goes wrong? Just what are the limits of what gets taught?


Maybe it would be easier not to create spaces for transformational work, for looking at shadows and how power moves. Maybe making such spaces, if they are still to exist, should be made so anodyne as to neutralize whatever challenges people might feel around these issues (including sexuality).


Our guest, Elica Lorde-Syzygy, a transpersonal counsellor and Internal Family Systems therapist, is on today’s show to discuss these questions. In this conversation Elica explains how we can be so accustomed to pointing the finger at others that we miss many opportunities to pass over the threshold of responsibility to a more sovereign and resilient selfhood. 


The reasons we do this are understandable. We don’t want to be exiled from the groups that support our thriving. We’re part of a larger culture that perhaps wants us to remain attached to archetypal figures of the mother and the father. But if we stay like that, we remain dependent! 


We might find ourselves getting to a place, in ourselves and in the groups we are part of, where these kinds of subconsciously dependent relations are just simply not working any more, and are causing more harm than good. It’s at this point, Elica explains, that we can get to work…
To learn more about Elica, visit her website: 

https://www.b-inghuman.com/our-story-1


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To learn more about the International School of Temple Arts, visit our website or follow us on social media: 


ista.life
@ista.community

In this episode, Ria talks with Dr. Jen Howk about the collision of science and mysticism in the field of evolutionary psychology. With her feet planted firmly in both worlds, Dr. Jen delves into the how and why of our psychological quirks, revealing some of the mysteries of our development as a species.


In particular, she tackles the intriguing phenomenon of cancel culture. In doing so, she explores the historical roots of our collective drive to create ‘in’-groups and ‘out’-groups, explaining that it was a crucial strategy in ancient communities for protecting against threats.


Conformity, she argues, often stems from a deep-seated fear of being relegated to one of these 'out'-groups—a survival instinct that persists, even when it may no longer be necessary.


It turns out that there are many unhelpful characteristics of contemporary culture which derive from our instinct to survive and reproduce. According to Dr. Jen, we can feel a sense of freedom, and find compassion for ourselves and others, when we understand that it might be these instincts pushing us towards behaving in one way or another. 


We can feel similar feelings when we acknowledge our ability to choose alternatives. 


In this conversation, Ria and Jen also cover: 


Coercion as a defining mark of cultsThe ‘Big Five’ personality characteristicsHow our behaviour can often be explained by what evolutionary goals we are trying to achieveThe problems with ‘blank slate’ thinkingThe importance of connecting with nature

If you love this episode, share it with your friends! 


And if you want to learn more about ISTA’s retreats and workshops, check out our website, ista.life


Go follow us on social media @ista.community

Do you ever feel like you’re being held back in life by events and circumstances that are out of your control? Maybe you find yourself in uncomfortable, even terrible, circumstances thinking to yourself: how did I even get here? And, how do I get out?

These are questions that arrived powerfully in the life of Carolyn Elliot, transformational guide and author of the book, Existential Kink. We won’t give too much away, but as she explains in this episode, she was really in a bind. And then, almost by accident, she had the realisation that ‘having is evidence of wanting.’

Elliot had to come to terms with the idea that some part of her had wanted to be in the difficult, unpleasant situation she was in. Maybe not on the surface, but deeper down. 
Her journey was then about being able to unravel what she has come to call her ‘existential kink,’ which she defines as a desire for something that others might think too edgy, or outright bad. It’s ‘existential’ because the kink is about life, not just sexy stuff. 
For her, the key is to bring consciousness to what we enjoy in even the ‘bad’ parts of our lives. This can help release their hold over us. 
Stay tuned all the way to the end of this lively and fascinating conversation to be guided through the existential kink practice that Elliot details in her runaway classic book of the same name! 
To learn more about Carolyn, please visit her website and join her email list: 

https://carolynlovewell.com/ 

If you love this episode, share it with your friends! And if it want to follow ISTA on social media, you can find us @ista.community on all good platforms. 

In this, his third episode with the Spiritual, Sexual, Shamanic Podcast, ISTA Lead Facilitator and member of ISTA’s governing council, Raffaello Manacorda, speaks about shamanic leadership. 

What is shamanic leadership? Raffa explains that it’s an essential component of taking responsibility within groups of people. Instead of competing for powerful positions within organizations and then ruling through domination and manipulation, he says, what we can do is understand the role of the leader as similar to that of the shaman. 

A shamanic leader has the capacity to sense and respond to the subtle energy moving within a group, and to make decisions based on a felt sense of what needs to occur. This, Raffa says, is only possible when those called into leadership are able to bring the power in their own bodies along for the ride. 

Shamanic leadership is also based on a fundamentally different leadership culture than many of us are used to. Raffa paints the picture of a ‘cloud’ roving over a group of people, a cloud which will stop above the head of the person who is being called into leadership and strike them with shamanic lightning. An investment of great power indeed, and often only for a temporary period of time...

If you're a practitioner, facilitator, or entrepreneur who's leading a group of people (or sees a future in it), this is especially for you. 

Join us for this deep and enlightening conversation, where Simon and Raffa explore the benefits and inevitable dangers of this kind of leadership.


If you love this episode, please rate it and share it with others who need to hear it! 
And if you want to learn more about ISTA, visit our website: ista.life 
Or follow us on social media: @ista.community