The Dojo: Life Beyond the Edge Zahara Zimring

Garrain Jones is an artist, public figure and transformational speaker. His upbringing was anything but easy: He lost his father when he was twelve, was in and out of juvie as a teenager, and spent two and a half years in prison for smuggling drugs. After finding, and sabotaging, success as a model and music writer, Garrain found himself at rock bottom. An epiphanic encounter with a homeless man, who mumbled the words, “Change your mindset, change your life”, marked the moment that he began uprooting everything in his life. Now a successful spiritual leader and entrepreneur, in today’s episode, we hear the stories and tools that helped Garrain tap into his power to become the man he is today.

Today’s guest, Dr. Gayla Loewenstein, is a licensed acupuncturist with a Masters and Doctorate in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine, BA in Psychology, AA in Performing Arts, and Reiki Master-Teacher certification. She is incredibly intrigued by the mental-emotional patterns which influence one’s overall health, and the effects of multi-generational trauma on epigenetics. In an effort to achieve a greater range of understanding, Dr. Galya has traveled through her own ancestral lands and various concentration camps in Eastern Europe, performing acupuncture on herself and singing prayer songs to clear Holocaust trauma from her body. In this episode, she tells us the story of her travels and the myriad of synchronicities that occurred along the way.

Today on the show, Zahara is joined by the musician, one half of the Denver-based folk duo, Lvdy, Kathleen Hooper. Lvdy is set on creating a safe and joyful space through music that inspires other people to do what they love, embrace vulnerability and connect with others. In this transmission, Kathleen lets us in on some of the peaks and valleys of her journey thus far and sings us a few of the beautiful songs that were written in the wake of the life experiences in which she’s sharing.

In today’s transmission, Zahara connects with her friend and former roommate, the creatrix, actor, director and magic maker, Jade Tailor. Beginning at the ages of nine and ten respectively, Jade and her brother were left home—completely unattended—for extended periods of time. When her mother did return, Jade still found herself playing the role of caretaker, a role that has inspired her path forward. In this episode, Jade dives deep into the details of her childhood trauma and how it shaped her into the full-spectrum, deeply empathetic superwoman she is today.

In today’s solo, Zahara shares the deep learnings that she’s been facing over the past few months, which have coaxed some of her oldest emotional tendencies to the surface. Two scenarios, the prospect of new love and a medical visit, did not pan out the way she had become so deeply attached to. When we start to become aware of what’s happening in our lives, it’s our tendency to spin our own interpretation on the happenings in our life and to predict the ensuing events to play out in a way that tells us the story we’ve decided must happen…But the universe often has twists and turns in store that we never could have expected. Our joy depends on our ability to handle these unexpected reroutes with grace.

In today’s transmission, Zahara connects with her friend, the author, ceremonialist, and child of magic, Christine Olivia. After losing her father at a young age, Christine felt that she had lost a part of herself that she would never be able to connect with again—her indigeneity. After discovering Mayan cacao from Guatemala, paralleled with the ceremonial use of other traditional plant medicines, Christine began reuniting with her own heart and ancestry. In this episode, Christine shares how she’s continuing to use magic, cacao and sensuality to heal herself and the world at large.