For the past few months I’ve found myself in a deep internal dialogue exploring the nature of my desires, my relationship to will, and my capacity for action. In the face of difficult choices, divergent interests, or upon reaching a fork in the road, how do we decide which path to take? How do we tell the difference between “trusting the timing” and rest/reflection vs. laziness and avoidance? How do we confront the grief of not being able to “do it all?” In this episode, I explore all of these questions, and share an epiphany I had that’s been helping me to move through the complexity of honing in on my desires in order to take authentic action. I also share some big news relative to Chris Ryan and my community project in Crestone, CO, and also speak about how I see A Millennial’s Guide to Saving the World evolving in the coming months and years.

Song featured: “In Praise of Home” by Rura

Join our book club by clicking here.

Follow Chris and my community project, The Crestone Conglomerate on Youtube and on Instagram

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Michael Ridge has spent the last decade living and traveling nomadically on horseback, mostly in the Pacific Northwest. He is an expert in primitive skills and wild foods, and possesses a level of bravery and commitment to core values that I find extraordinarily impressive. In our conversation, Michael shares about the events that led him to his current life on horseback, and outlines what his day-to-day has looked like, season by season, for the past ten years. We discuss civilization, technology, authenticity, grief, ecology, and community, and Michael outlines the the logistical, psychological, spiritual and emotional tools necessary to live the kind of life he’s chosen. This conversation is by far one of my favorite episodes of the podcast, and deserves more than one listen.

Find Michael on Instagram, TikTok and Youtube.

Here is a short video about Finisia Medrano, Michael’s teacher –

Songs featured: “And You Don’t Even Know You Hurt Me” by Nick Murphy, “Fertile Ground” by Evan Fraser, Vir McCoy, Rising Appalachia, and Chloe Smith, and “Wandering Nomad” by Cody Francis

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Johanna Hoffman is a designer, urbanist and strategist exploring the ties between design, planning, fiction and futures. She’s the founder of Design for Adaptation, a studio using strategic planning, interactive storytelling and speculative design to survey the impacts of potential futures and spur proactive adaptation. Her new book is called Speculative Futures: Design Approaches to Navigate Change, Foster Resilience, and Co-Create the Cities we Need. Johanna and I talk about strategies to make the intangibility and overwhelm of the future more personal and inspiring, and how we can integrate grief into shifting narratives. We discuss how national mythologies translate into the creation of different landscapes, the pros and cons of modern cities, and how important it is to give ourselves permission to lean into our creativity, imagination, and confidence in order to manifest big ideas.

Johanna’s book recommendations: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and the work of Eric Klineberg, Ursula Le Guin, Stuart Candy, and Octavia Butler.

Find Johanna at johannahoffman.com and on Instagram

Songs featured: “The Fear” by Ben Howard and “Let Me Down Easy” by Gang of Youths

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Téo Montoya is a Human Design Analyst, Metamodern Myth Mender, Indigenous Futurist writer and multimedia artist. His work focuses on synthesizing cosmological and spiritual systems, myths, archetypes, and modalities to find ways of supporting an emerging world in crisis through human development, ecological literacy, and reciprocity with our communities and more-than-human kin. In other words, Téo and I have a lot in common. We speak about our complex relationships to both Human Design and Astrology, and the importance of questioning the nature of “belief” when it comes to working with archetypal systems of meaning. We also discuss mythology, individualism, our collective crisis of meaning, grief, identity, ecology, masculinity, Metamodernism and so much more.

Find Téo at archaicremnant.com and on Instagram @teomontoya_

Songs featured: “A Prayer of My Own” by Nick Mulvey and “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

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Van is an educator and practitioner in dance, healing and spirituality with over 20 years of experience. He integrates Eastern and Western modalities to create a holistic dance education, centering on how dance can enlighten our perspectives on life and how we interact with society. Van reaches beyond dance and choreography by focusing his work on human development through fusing dance, spirituality and healing practices. Van and I recorded this conversation in Athens, Greece where I spent two weeks participating in his Contact Beyond Contact facilitators training course. We speak about Van’s unconventional journey in discovering dance, his desire to unify his multidisciplinary interests, and his work using movement and dance not just as performance, but also as a healing modality for our body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Find Van at UnitySpace.org, and on Instagram

Interested in signing up for the CBC Facilitators Training Course? Find the info here and email cbc@unityspace.org using code “CBC_Anya”

Songs featured: “Passage” by Garth Stevenson, “Rest (Acoustic)” by Leif Vollebekk, and “De Ushuaia a La Quiaca” by Gustavo Santaolalla

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Deborah Eden Tull (who goes by Eden) is a Zen meditation and engaged dharma teacher, public speaker, author and sustainability educator, as well as the founder of Mindful Living Revolution. She trained for seven and a half years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery and has taught engaged dharma for over 20 years. Her new book, Luminous Darkness, explores what it means to embrace, navigate and learn from the unknown. Eden and I discuss how “endarkenment” is different than enlightenment, and how balancing both light and dark in our lives can provide a radical path to wholeness. We discuss everything from embodiment to dark nights of the soul, light pollution, the suppression of femininity, our collective disconnection from the earth, and the complexities of power, dominance, hierarchy.

Find Eden at deborahedentull.com and on Instagram

Eden’s Book Recommendations – Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki & Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmermer

Sign up for Retrograde with Intention here – We start September 17th, but registration will remain open through September.

Songs featured: “Heat & Dark” by Luca Fogale and “The Fruitful Darkness” by Trevor Hall

How to support the show:

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Whitney returns to the podcast to discuss how paradox, polarity and nuance show up in astrology, and how to best utilize concepts of “good” and “bad” to provoke self-awareness. How can nuance be used to both invite and prevent growth? How can we assess when duality is helpful vs. when it isn’t? Whitney and I provide an overview of concepts such as malefics & benefics, sect, dignities and debilities, aspects, and retrogrades, to discuss what’s both helpful and unhelpful about seeing something as “positive” or “negative”. We also discuss the archetype of Mars, and the upcoming Mars retrograde in Gemini. Our course, Retrograde with Intention, returns  September 17th, and is a group container to support your growth, awareness and transformation over the course of the upcoming Mars Rx transit.

Sign up for Retrograde with Intention here.

Songs featured: “Tumbleweed” by Puscifer and “Born Under A Bad Sign” by Albert King

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Kimberly Ann Johnson is a somatic experience practitioner, sexological bodyworker, author, podcast host, and doula. She returns to the podcast to speak about the turmoil of the past couple years, and recounts the journey that led her to co-author Reckoning with Stephen Jenkinson. We speak about our mutual experience feeling alienated from the “wellness” community during Covid, and the great loss and betrayal we felt from those who pitted individualism and “personal sovereignty” against community and social responsibility. We also touch on the importance of becoming conscious of our biases, cultivating humility and nuance especially in times of heightened emotion, the risks of overvaluing the hero’s journey, and what we can do to make ourselves worthy of elderhood.

Purchase a copy of Reckoning by Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson here.

Find Kimberly on Instagram and on her website KimberlyAnnJohnson.com

Songs featured: “Ballad Of A Thin Place” by RF Shannon and “Baby Hallelujah” by Konradsen

How to support the show:

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Stephen is a culture activist, teacher, author, and co-founder if the Orphan Wisdom School. His work centers around grief, elderhood, community, and is rooted in knowing history, being claimed by ancestry, and working for a time we won’t see. Stephen and I speak about how a lack of generational connection and transmission has provoked deep rupture and brokenness. We discuss the difference between communities and collectives, the danger of individualism and personal “sovereignty,” and how grief is an inevitable outcome of true “awakening”. We also touch on guru/student relationships, societal misconceptions about power and privilege, how to cultivate belonging as a state of being, and the devastating effects of living in a culture that has traded grief for grievance.

Purchase a copy of Reckoning by Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson here.

Songs featured: “Invocation” by Nights of Grief and Mystery, “The Future” by Leonard Cohen

How to support the show:

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Mónica Guzmán is an author, journalist, and bridge builder. She is the Director of Digital Storytelling at Braver Angels, a nonprofit working to depolarize America, and author of the book “I Never Thought Of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times”. Móni and her parents immigrated to the US from Mexico when she was a teenager. Móni is a liberal, but her parents voted for Trump… twice. Our conversation focuses on the importance of curating connection to those we disagree with, and the practice of maintaining curiosity about ideas and opinions we don’t understand. We speak about how to prioritize trust above “truth,” the polarizing role of the media, and the danger of getting sucked into ideological silos. Móni explains how it is possible to remember that we are all smarter and more capable than what they want us to believe, but only when we make space for and reclaim vulnerable conversations, and a connection to one another.

Mónica’s book recommendation: The Collected Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Find Mónica on Twitter, Instagram, and ReclaimCuriosity.com

Click here to learn more about Contact Beyond Contact.

Click here to sign up for the Sex at Dawn Retreat this September in Montana, hosted by Chris Ryan, Cameron & Melayne Shayne, and me! (Only two spots left).

Songs featured: “Moving” by Eskimotion, “Back to You” by Benjamin Gordon, and “Going Home” by Ásgeir

How to support the show:

• Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!
• Join me on Substack and get access to newsletters, exclusive writing, community book clubs & access and a private Discord server just for listeners of the show: anyakaats.substack.com

Listen to this episode on Substack or wherever you listen to podcasts.