Anya Kaats, Author at Anya Kaats

#127 Healing, Transformation and Evolution through Movement and Dance with Vangelis Legakis

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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#126 Navigating Darkness & Becoming an Apprentice of the Unknown with Deborah Eden Tull

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

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#125 Paradox, Polarity and Nuance in Astrology with Whitney Will

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.

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

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#124 Reckoning With Our Disconnection From Grief, Elderhood and Community, Part Two with Kimberly Ann Johnson

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

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#123 Reckoning With Our Disconnection From Grief, Elderhood and Community, Part One with Stephen Jenkinson

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

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#122 Reclaiming Curiosity and Connection in Dangerously Divided Times with Mónica Guzmán

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

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#121 Celebrating Unpopular Opinions and the Fluidity of Identity with Lenore Black

Lenore Black, a fan favorite of the show, returns for a second episode. It’s an understatement to say that a lot has changed in the year and a half since Lenore and I first connected, both personally and collectively. We speak about Lenore’s move from New York City to Joshua Tree, which was as much an inner journey as an outer journey. Lenore shares why she decided to reevaluate her career, her connection to herself and to nature, and the identity she held onto for years as a bisexual, queer, kinky, non-monogamous woman. We speak about the importance of avoiding political and ideological silos, and why it’s vital that we approach ourselves and the world with curiosity, empathy and a willingness to have our minds changed in ways we might not expect.

Click here to listen to the first podcast episode Lenore and I recorded together.

Find Lenore on Instagram and on Substack

Songs featured: “Desert Solitaire” by Greta Morgan, “Ends of the Earth” by Lord Huron, and “Meanwhile Back in the City” by The Presidents of the United States of America

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Gender is Complex… Let’s Keep it That Way

Several years ago, I decided to go back in time and watch hours of childhood home movies. I had just gotten divorced, quit my job, and was living alone for the first time in my life. In a desperate effort to confront my unprocessed trauma, I assumed that these painfully unfiltered, first-hand representations of my childhood might be a good place to start. I closed all the windows, crawled in bed, and nervously hit “play” as if I were preparing to watch an eight-hour slasher movie starring me as the main victim.

There were a few videos that stood out. (Don’t worry, the videos I’m about to recount didn’t depict anything particularly traumatic… I’ll get back to that storyline later).

The first was of me and a friend naked in my bedroom in 1991. We were both three years old. My dad was there, as was this little girl’s mom. The topic of genitalia came up. Apparently, my friend, let’s call her Mary, had recently learned about vaginas and penises, and how to tell them apart. She explained in broken yet adorable three-year-old English that her brother had a penis, and that she and her mom had a vagina. “What does Anya have?” her mom asked. Mary shook her head. She didn’t know. My dad chimed in, “Why don’t you take a look!”

Mary walked up to me, crouched down to look at my crotch, and very excitedly proclaimed “GINA!” Everyone laughed and cheered, but I sat still, confused and contemplative. “Mary said you have a vagina!” my dad said gleefully, trying to get me to join in on the fun.

After a few more seconds of silence, I leapt up, grabbed my vagina with both hands in an unmistakably similar manner to how men frequently grab their balls, you know, like this, and shouted “I have a penis!”

“What?” My dad asked, genuinely confused. I repeated myself clearly, still standing. “I have a penis,” I said. My dad responded again, “No, you don’t have a penis, you have a vagina.”

I sat down on the bed, shook my head pitying his ignorance and said “Naaah”.

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#120 Growing Up Maasai in a Complex, Changing World with Elia Edward Mollel

Chris and I had the pleasure of spending ten days with Elia on our trip to Tanzania last month, and sat down to record a podcast with him at Lake Eyasi. Elia is half Maasai, and spent much of his childhood being raised by his Maasai grandfather. He has a great deal of knowledge and insight about the complexities and conflicts between the Maasai and the “modern world,” because that complexity informs his life and identity. In this conversation we speak about his experience learning about wildlife, the land, astronomy and what it means to mature as a man within his Maasai community, and the shift into his adult life as a safari guide. We speak about Maasai culture and tradition, climate change, spirit animals, tourism, education, and population growth. Elia gives some unique and important context to the experience of coming from and living in two very different worlds.

Get in touch with Elia through Gladiola Adventure.

Songs featured: “Korobela” and “Asante Sana” by The Soil

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#119 Rerooting our Stories and Rewilding our Mythology with Sophie Strand

Sophie is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. We speak about personal and collective mythologies and how so many of our stories have been deracinated from their roots in ways that perpetuate harm. We discuss the importance of rerooting and rewilding these narratives by listening with our whole bodies, and becoming aware of how our individual story is a part of an overarching ecological matrix. We touch on how we’ve both worked to reframe our own sensitivity and illness, and the complexities of Psilocybin, masculinity, Jesus, spirituality and magic.

Find Sophie at and on Instagram, on Substack and check out her course with Advaya. Pre-order her book The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine.

Sophie’s Book Recommendations: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut and Inflamed by by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel

Songs featured: “Gold Star Mothers” by Hammock, “Meet The Moonlight” by Jack Johnson, and “Dust” by Ryan Montbleau

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