Today I’m talking with Master Mingtong Gu Named Qigong Master of the Year by the 13th World Congress for Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Master Mingtong is on faculty for Esalen Institute, OmegaInstitute, 1440 Multiversity, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Shift Network. He is the founder of The Chi Center / The Center for Wisdom Healing Qigong, a beautiful 79 acre retreat center south of Santa Fe, NM

You can find more of his work and more about the chi center for Wisdom Healing Qigong at www.chicenter.com and if you head to their website, they also have a free ebook Ancient Healing Secrets which is available to download.

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Betsy Polatin. Betsy Polatin, is an Alexander Technique teacher, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and has her MFA. She is An internationally recognized breathing and movement specialist,, has been teaching for more than forty five years and is currently a master lecturer at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. She has worked with numerous individuals and institutions and some of her teaching experience includes Berklee College of Music, the Boston Ballet, and the Opera Institute of Boston. Her background includes movement education and performance, as well as training in music, dance, yoga, meditation, trauma resolution, and the broader healing arts.. She is the author of two books, The Actor’s Secret and her most recent book which we are discussing today: Humanual: A Manual for Being Human.

I hope you enjoy the conversation. You can find more of Betsy’s work at www.humanual.com and her book again is also titled Humanual.

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

This is a practice-based episode. We are so inundated with information all the time! Even information about being less conceptual and more embodied, as on this podcast lol.

Within Liberated Being we also run an embodied practice studio, where we can engage with practices that help us to make the shift into embodying what we know, becoming more real, and changing how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world.

So this week I'm sharing two 15 minute practices that I taught in the studio last week. Take a break from the firehose of learning about things and instead have a chance to digest things by connecting with the home inside yourself.

These practices are for inhabiting the head and the heart- and seeing how locating within those areas shifts the way the world shows up to us.

More information about the embodied practice studio can be found at www.liberatedbeing.community/studio

Liam Bowler is a teacher, bodyworker, and a somatic philosopher. He’s also the creator of The Body Awake podcast which, if you’re listening to this podcast, I can highly recommend!

He is most recently the author of the book A Creator’s Companion: A Handbook for the Practice of Creation. I found it to be a wonderful read, and a highly experiential book, as opposed to ideas about the process of creation. I believe life itself is a process of creation, and this book is a wonderful guide in how to be more immersed in that.

His book, A Creator's Companion can be found here thebodyawake.com/book/cc

You can find more of Liam’s work at

www.thebodyawake.com

and

www.dynamicalignmentbodywork.com

Liberated Being is at

www.liberatedbeing.community

You can read about the embodied practice studio on the studio page. On Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Caprice Taylor Mendez. Since getting her Masters from Harvard in education, administration, planning and social policy, Caprice has spent the last 30 years supporting social justice in the nonprofit sector.

She works to support strategic grant making and nonprofit collaborations to co-create systemwide impact.

She has done a great of work in policy advocacy, coalition building, and grassroots organizing experience with diverse populations to support low-income communities.

She is also the host of Together, We Can / Juntos, Podemos a bilingual radio show celebrating co-creators and initiatives for a kinder and more just world.

She teaches Journey Dance and practices Cosmohealing Energy.

We’re talking about how she came to be in these parallel worlds of social justice through the non profit sector and advocating for policy change, alongside her own embodied healing practices for herself, and how she came to also provide that work for others.

This week’s episode is with Amoda Maa Jeevan. It is an outtake from a longer guest teacher gathering that happened with Liberated Being members on November 14th of 2020. We talked about her recent book, Falling Open in a World Falling Apart. A fitting title for the times we are living through! In this talk, Amoda connects some important dots between embodiment and spriritual awakening. She gets to important inquiries like- Awakening from what? To what? And what does this have to do with being spiritual or not spiritual (more concepts, as you’ll hear…). What Amoda is pointing to, and what embodiment work is also for, is about shedding conditioning and coming home more deeply to our own internal space and experience.

You can find more of her work at

www.amodamaa.com

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community and on Instagram @liberatedbeing. The embodied practice studio is open with live classes all week.

Today I’m talking with Marika Baxter. Marika has a Masters of Science in Physical Therapy and for 17 years practiced as a physical therapist and Pilates teacher working in particular in the dance medicine world.

She is a Realization Process teacher and is currently studying through Internal Family Systems with Richard Schwartz. Marika is also a dear friend, and a teacher in the liberated being embodied practice studio. You can find out more about her work at www.mb1wellness.com

The Liberated Being embodied practice studio is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Today I’m talking with Kimberly Ann Johnson. Kimberly is a Structural Integrator, a Sexological Bodyworker, a birth doula and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

She is the author of the book The Fourth Trimester, and her forthcoming book which we are talking about today is Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use it for Good.

You can find out more about Kimberly’s work at www.magamama.com. Maga means sorceress in Brazil, so that THAT maga...

Liberated Being is at liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing

Our embodied practice studio is at www.liberatedbeing.community/studio

Today I’m talking with Steve Hoskinson. Steve is the founder of Organic Intelligence® (OI) and the nonprofit Organic Intelligence Outreach Institute. OI’s Human Empowerment And Resiliency Training (HEARTraining®) is an international personal and professional development training program using OI’s strengths-based, trauma-safe approach for resiliency.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, The Organic Intelligence® (OI) clinical protocol suggests that, from a systems perspective, what’s wrong with therapy is the focus on what’s wrong — including the focus on trauma.

Organic Intelligence brings a necessary shift in perspective from pathology and trauma to the proven methods drawn from the wisdom of mindfulness and the science of self-organization.

OI teaches how healing happens from the nervous system up and makes it possible to imagine freedom from suffering. Freedom from suffering becomes freedom for living an authentic, vibrant life in the here-and-now.

Steve has trained thousands of trauma therapists, health professionals, mindfulness experts, and teachers. He presents at conferences worldwide, is Adjunct Faculty for JFK University’s Somatic Psychology program, a founding member of the Northern California Society for Integrative Mental Health and the International Transformational Resilience Coalition.

You can find out more about Steve’s work and Organic Intelligence at www.organicintelligence.org

Liberated Being is at www. liberatedbeing.community, and on Instagram we are @liberatedbeing.

The Liberated Being embodied practice studio is now open!

Today I’m talking with Constance Clare-Newman. Over 30+ years of teaching embodiment, Constance has developed a trauma-sensitive, neuroscience-informed approach to embodiment practices that focus on wholeness of being.

Foremost in her work is a pedagogy of pleasure. The cultural norm of working hard at improvement is relinquished for a slow pace of enjoyment and feelings of pleasure that facilitate healing, creativity and unity of self.

Grounded in her own deep study of somatics, dance, meditation, trauma work, contemplative practices, deep ecology, social justice work and addiction recovery, Constance facilitates a path to wholeness.

She has been studying and teaching movement practices her whole life, as a horse trainer and dressage trainer, as a modern dancer and as an Alexander Technique teacher since 2001.

She is a co-founder of Desert Movement Arts, an intergenerational collective based in Coachella Valley, CA. Constance has taught in performing arts departments of Academy of Art University, University of Redlands, and ACT in San Francisco.

In 2001, Constance completed a three-year Alexander training program in San Francisco with Frank Ottiwell, and has continued her study with master teachers over the world.

I'm also thrilled that Constance is a regular weekly teacher in the Liberated Being online embodied practice studio, which opens to new members this Friday the 15th of January 2021.

You can find out more about Constance’s work at

www.constanceclare.com

Liberated Being is at www.liberatedbeing.community, and on

Instagram we are @liberatedbeing