Precisely! Podcast

About Precisely! Podcast

Conversations on politics, practice, and activism with The Arrow Journal contributors. thearrowjournal.substack.com (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/s/precisely-podcast?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Precisely!

Category

religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 Mar 2025

Latest episode

24 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

15 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Apr 2026

   "Discipline and Danger: Martial Arts and Movement Practice" with Autumn Brown

   Welcome to Precisely! a podcast by the team at Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal;  in these times of increasing chaos and possibility, the arrow symbolizes the courage to define a clear direction for how we gather, practice, and get free. In season three of Precisely!, host Brooke Lavelle and special guest co-host, katie robinson, talk with our guests in our upcoming Like Water series—Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown. (http://Brown.In) In this episode, Brooke and katie speak with mother, movement leader, and musician, Autumn Brown, on themes of discipline, danger, and relational dynamics in the context of martial arts and movement practice. Autumn’s organizing work is rooted in Black feminist and fugitive freedom movements, and for over 20 years she has organized for healing justice, developed movement strategy, and trained organizers in consensus process, facilitation, and racial justice. This conversation is rich — dive in!Autumn will present in our Like Water Series on April 28th. To join us for the series, visit: https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water. These interactive seminar sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live on Tuesdays from 12-1:30pm ET. You are welcome to drop in for a single session. To read the full issue of The Arrow Journal, and to access our full digital archives, join us on substack @thearrowjournal. We'd like to thank our podcast producer, OB McDougall, our co-host katie, robinson, our Co-Directors, Brooke Lavelle & Maha El Sheikh, and our managing editor for the arrow and this special issue, Ashley Wilson. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   21 Apr 2026

   "Violence, Selflessness, and Other Lessons from Zen" with Reverend Greg Snyder

   Welcome to Precisely! a podcast by the team at Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal;  in these times of increasing chaos and possibility, the arrow symbolizes the courage to define a clear direction for how we gather, practice, and get free. In season three of Precisely!, host Brooke Lavelle and special guest co-host, katie robinson, talk with our guests in our upcoming Like Water series—Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown. (http://Brown.In) In this episode, Brooke and katie speak with Reverend Greg Snyder on themes of violence, interdependence, and the needs of our movements in these times. To join us for the series, visit: https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water). These interactive seminar sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live on Tuesdays from 12-1:30pm ET, beginning April 7, 2026. To read the full issue of The Arrow Journal, and to access our full digital archives, join us on substack @thearrowjournal. We'd like to thank our podcast producer, OB McDougall, our co-host katie, robinson, our Co-Directors, Brooke Lavelle & Maha El Sheikh, and our managing editor for the arrow and this special issue, Ashley Wilson. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   16 Apr 2026

   "Self Sovereignty is Self Defense" with Paloma Schultz

   Welcome to Precisely! a podcast by the team at Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal;  in these times of increasing chaos and possibility, the arrow symbolizes the courage to define a clear direction for how we gather, practice, and get free. In season three of Precisely!, host Brooke Lavelle and special guest co-host, katie robinson, talk with our guests in our upcoming Like Water series—Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown. (http://Brown.In) In this episode, Brooke and katie speak with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt (and former lawyer), Paloma Schultz, about applying principles of self defense -- from a stance of care for all -- to our relationships and our movements. To join us for the series, visit: https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water). These interactive seminar sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live on Tuesdays from 12-1:30pm ET, beginning April 7, 2026. To read the full issue of The Arrow Journal, and to access our full digital archives, join us on substack @thearrowjournal. We'd like to thank our podcast producer, OB McDougall, our co-host katie, robinson, our Co-Directors, Brooke Lavelle & Maha El Sheikh, and our managing editor for the arrow and this special issue, Ashley Wilson. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

4. 

   6 Apr 2026

   "Spiritual Warriorship" with Cynthia Ong

   Welcome to Precisely! a podcast by the team at Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal;  in these times of increasing chaos and possibility, the arrow symbolizes the courage to define a clear direction for how we gather, practice, and get free. In season three of Precisely!, host Brooke Lavelle and special guest co-host, katie robinson, talk with our guests in our upcoming Like Water series—Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown.In this conversation, Brooke Lavelle and katie robinson speak with movement leader, relational facilitator, and martial artist, Cynthia Ong. Cynthia shares lessons on warriorship from her kung fu teachers and how she’s applying those lessons in political and ecological organizing work through her incredible organization, Forever Sabah in Borneo. To join us for the series, visit: https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water). These interactive seminar sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live on Tuesdays from 12-1:30pm ET, beginning April 7, 2026. To read the full issue of The Arrow Journal, and to access our full digital archives, join us on substack @thearrowjournal. We'd like to thank our podcast producer, OB McDougall, our co-host katie, robinson, our Co-Directors, Brooke Lavelle & Maha El Sheikh, and our managing editor for the arrow and this special issue, Ashley Wilson. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

5. 

   2 Apr 2026

   Precisely! Season Three is Here: Listen to "Water Finds a Way" with Maha El-Sheikh, katie robinson, and Brooke Lavelle

   Welcome to Precisely! a podcast by the team at Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal;  in these times of increasing chaos and possibility, the arrow symbolizes the courage to define a clear direction for how we gather, practice, and get free. In season three of Precisely!, host Brooke Lavelle and special guest co-host, katie robinson, talk with our guests in our upcoming Like Water series—Cynthia Ong, Paloma Schultz, Reverend Greg Snyder, and Autumn Brown. In this opening conversation, Brooke and katie speak with Courage’s Co-Director, and our seminar series co-curator, Maha El-Sheikh. The trio discuss how water found them, how this investigation into water came to be, and how water can help us find a way forward in these times of violence, chaos, and uncertainty. To join us for the series, visit: https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/like-water). These interactive seminar sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live on Tuesdays from 12-1:30pm ET, beginning April 7, 2026. To read the full issue of The Arrow Journal, and to access our full digital archives, join us on substack @thearrowjournal. We'd like to thank our podcast producer, OB McDougall, our co-host katie, robinson, our Co-Directors, Brooke Lavelle & Maha El Sheikh, and our managing editor for the arrow and this special issue, Ashley Wilson. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

6. 

   10 Sept 2025

   Bringing it Home: Pluriversal Practice in Everyday Life with Maha El-Sheikh

   In the fifth and final episode of our second season of the Precisely! podcast, host Brooke Lavelle talks with Maha El-Sheikh, Co-Director of The Arrow and Courage of Care, about how we build pluriversal capacity in our everyday lives and work. Together they point to ways in which we are already pluriversal and how we can lean into that knowing in order to build muscle for and commitment to meeting and embracing multiple world and ways of being. Listen in! Maha Co-directs Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal. With 20 years working in the international humanitarian sector, Maha’s work currently focuses on the social injustices underlying our global crises. As a facilitator, she is inspired by 15 years living and working in Palestine and Lebanon, learning how connection to heart, beloved community, mutual aid, joy, and compassion can serve as antidotes to oppression, colonization, injustice and violence. She is eager to support those working in the aid sector to not only find sustainable ways of working in the face of ongoing violence and destruction, but also to find ways of seeking alignment—personally and professionally—with values of love and liberation.Maha is also the co-founder of the first non-profit, volunteer-run yoga center in Palestine, and brings her experience in studying and teaching trauma-informed yoga, somatics, and meditation to explore the interconnection of healing, social transformation, and justice. Maha is one of the creators and facilitators of our (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice)Pluriversal Practice Seminar (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice), which is now available for self study! Study and practice with us. Many thanks to our podcast producer, OB MacDougall! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

7. 

   4 Sept 2025

   On Relational Frame-Shifting Towards Pluriversal Practice with Katrine Bregengaard

   In the fourth episode of our latest season of the Precisely! podcast, host Brooke Lavelle talks with Katrine Bregengaard about the ontological shift necessary to grasp pluriversality (And yes, we break down ontology; or at least we try to!) Together, Katrine and Brooke explore why the “pluriverse” is not the opposite of the “one-world”. Instead, they consider the profoundly relational frame shift needed to really catch on to the power and possibility—as well as the inherent agency and vulnerability—of pluriversal practice. Listen in! Katrine has partnered with Courage on numerous programs and currently co-leads our (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice)Pluriversal Practice Seminar (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice), which is now available for self study! Study and practice with us. Katrine Bregengaard (she/her) is a philosopher, activist, and contemplative teacher based in Copenhagen. She teaches critical and decolonial approaches to human rights theory and practice, while using her background in Buddhist meditation and somatic practices to facilitate the integration of inner work with collective change, as a vital component of embodied liberation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

8. 

   28 Aug 2025

   Softening the Grip of the One-World (and Our Habits of One-Worlding) with Farah Mahesri

   In season two of our Precisely! podcast, host Brooke Lavelle talks with the ever-brilliant Farah Mahesri about how we can soften the grip of the one world, as well as our habits of one-worlding. We talk COVID, collapse, grief-tending, and maintaining—and stepping through—portals of possibility. Listen in! Farah has partnered with Courage on several projects, and currently co-leads our (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice)Pluriversal Practice Seminar (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice), which is now available for self study! Study and practice with us. Farah Mahesri (she/her) works as a strategy, organizational and leadership development thought-partner and collaborator for social justice, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. She previously worked at Tides Advocacy, a 501c4 organization, and its sister organization Tides (a 501c3 entity) providing strategic, political and compliance support to multi-entity organizations working to build independent political power and work toward collective liberation. In this role, she helped to develop and launch several power building funds including for COVID response and to support climate justice and political organizing; and created a peer learning program to connect progressive executive directors together. She also provided strategic and political advice to organizations such as Dream Defenders, Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, California Environmental Justice Alliance Action, Detroit Action and others. Previously, as a Muslim-American coming of age during the post 9-11 era, Farah worked with international organizations working on the anti-war/peace agenda. Since 2022, she has been working as an independent consultant supporting organizations to align strategy to operations and navigate the new realities of how we work and interact at work. She sits on the board of multiple organizations, including LA Defensa and Creating the Future and hosts a podcast on applying liberatory principles to the future of work. She organizes with Alliance of South Asians Taking Action. Farah lives in Oakland, California. Thanks to our producer, OB MacDougall, and the entire Courage and Arrow team! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

9. 

   22 Aug 2025

   What is "One-Worlding" and How Does it Show Up in Our Movements for Justice? with Jorge Salazar

   In season two of our Precisely! podcast, host Brooke Lavelle talks with grassroots organizer and Director of the Inner Activist, Jorge Salazar (https://www.inneractivist.com/about-us), about the nature of “one-worlding”, and how we can catch it even in our movements for justice and liberation. Jorge moved to Canada as a refugee from Colombia in late 2000, and has used his own immigration journey, life experiences, training and education to bridge communities and facilitate positive change within government, organizations and grassroots groups for more than 15 years. Jorge has worked to support connections between diverse communities, particularly between indigenous, immigrants and refugees among others, in BC, Canada and the Americas. He has worked with Immigrant Services Society of BC, MOSAIC, the International Institute for Child Rights and Development - University of Victoria, City of Vancouver, the Ecumenical Task Force for Justice in the Americas, PeerNet BC and most recently as a Manager for the Fresh Voices Initiative with the Vancouver Foundation. Jorge has partnered with Courage on several projects, and currently co-leads our (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice)Pluriversal Practice Seminar (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice), which is now available for self study! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

10. 

    14 Aug 2025

    Precisely! Season Two is Here! Listen to "What is the Pluriverse?" with katie robinson

    In season two of our Precisely! podcast, host Brooke Lavelle talks with writer, scholar, interdisciplinary artist, and Courage faculty, katie robinson. katie is devoted to the exploration of what is present and possible outside of the white supremacist colonial imagination, and helps makes the idea of the pluriverse accessible, inviting, and alluring. katie is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where they are writing a dissertation at the intersections of depth psychology, decoloniality, and police and prison abolition. katie leads Courage’s Succulence (https://courageofcare.org/succulence-a-healing-and-integration-program-for-relational-facilitators/) program, and has co-designed several other courses within Courage of Care, including our (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice)Pluriversal Practice Seminar (https://courage-of-care.teachable.com/p/pluriversal-practice), which is now available for self study! Our team wishes to thank all of our guests and co-collaborators on the Precisely! podcast, seasons one and two, as well as our co-leads for our Pluriversal Practice Seminar. Special thanks also to our teams at Courage and The Arrow, and our producer, O.B. MacDougall. To learn more about the work of Courage of Care and our events and our offerings, follow us on substack @thearrowjournal. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

11. 

    31 Mar 2025

    Pluriversality as Relationality: Spiritual and Social Transformation with Ashley Wilson

    In our final episode of our inaugural podcast series, Precisely!, host Brooke D. Lavelle speaks with The Arrow’s Managing Editor, Dr. Ashley Wilson, about the pluriverse, and why it matters not only for justice but also for spiritual practice. Ashley Wilson earned her PhD in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2019. Her anthropological training, an aspirational practice in clear seeing in and of itself, ultimately led her to the spiritual path. She is now an active practitioner in the Plum Village tradition and finds pure joy in working at the intersection of the academic and dharma worlds. She also works in educational publishing and shares the practice of mindfulness and meditation through personal coaching sessions and retreats. She delights daily in the practice of solo motherhood and seeing the world anew through the eyes of her young son and littlest teacher, Sage. The Arrow Journal and our Precisely! Podcast is made possible through the generous support of our members. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to access our full digital archive and weekly relationSHIFT sessions. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

12. 

    25 Mar 2025

    Embracing Our Kin through Deep Listening Practices: Intersections of Kapwa and Sonic Meditations with Marlo De Lara

    In our fourth episode, host Brooke D. Lavelle talks with artist and colleague Dr. Marlo De Lara about her engaging essay, “Embracing Our Kin through Deep Listening Practices: Intersections of Kapwa and Sonic Meditations.” This essay appears in our recent special issue, The Power of the Pluriverse (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/p/new-issue-the-power-of-the-pluriverse). Read the full essay and access our full digital archives by subscribing to our substack. What’s the difference between listening and hearing? You can listen to someone’s words, but you can hear their warmth. What does deep listening mean in today’s world and what could it teach us about this shared experience of human survival? From the essay: Deep Listening takes us below the surface of our consciousness and helps to change or dissolve limiting boundaries. When we begin to shed the illusions of separated selves, it becomes more clear that we are present beyond our own mindbody worlds. In other words, body experiences and sensations break the barriers between us. In the 1970s, Pauline Oliveros, whose musical career was centered around improvisations with others, created a series of exercises making sound and intentionally listening with all our senses, leading us to sharing intimately on a spiritual plane. These sonic meditations and text scores were instructions on how to be in Deep Listening Circles (DLSCs) with one another. To be present with our bodies through these exercises provided openings that could be difficult to access in other areas of our busy lives. To connect with others by listening, moving, and dreaming with others, our conscious experience of life is amplified. Marlo De Lara received a PhD in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds and an MA in Psychosocial Studies at the Centre of Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex. Their practice works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. Learn more about Marlo’s offerings here: https://linktr.ee/marlo.delara This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

13. 

    17 Mar 2025

    The Middle Path of Zen: Reconciling Everyday Heartbreak and Rage with Possibility with Monika Son

    In our third episode, host Brooke D. Lavelle talks with beloved friend and colleague, Dr. Monika Son, about her moving personal essay, “The Middle Path of Zen: Reconciling Everyday Heartbreak and Rage with Possibility.” This essay appears in our recent special issue, The Power of the Pluriverse (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/p/new-issue-the-power-of-the-pluriverse). Read the full essay and access our full digital archives by subscribing to our substack. From the essay: “For a teaching on social justice in my chaplaincy program, my cohort and I were offered a teaching on freedom and liberation by Jarvis Jay Masters, a dharma teacher who has lived the past twenty years of his life on death row. His death sentence came after being wrongfully accused of a crime while serving time for something else. At the end of our time together, we asked what he needed from us, and he replied, “your prayers.” No person was exempt from tears as words of prayers appeared on the Zoom chat of our call. After our call, I sat with the heaviness of his injustice and the injustice of all whose lives have been impacted by incarceration—those who are currently physically imprisoned, their family members, and the staff working in prisons. I thought about my uncle, who spent twelve years in prison and was deported and separated from his two daughters and brother (my dad), and how I never really got to know him. I thought about the students I had the privilege of teaching, many of them Black and Brown, a few formerly incarcerated, some corrections officers, police officers, and others preparing to enter law school. Our time with Mr. Masters allowed me to vividly see, for the first time in some time after teaching at a college for criminal justice, the interconnection of all the different lives that cross paths in the devastation of incarceration. Although those of us who are marginalized in this country may not suffer from physical imprisonment, the suffering of oppression is like a prison of the mind. Liberation, or being free from the conditioning of white supremacy, is what we are seeking. I used to teach on the 13th amendment in my education and justice courses. I explored with my students, most of them of Black and Brown lineages, which bodies are “free” and how to critically examine the policies/laws in our systems that undermine “freedom.” On some level, however, I never felt like I was really teaching about policies or systems, and I think my students felt it too. My failed attempts to teach about systemic oppression were likely the beginnings of an inquiry into liberation and the desire to be in community with others who were also on the spiritual path of this inquiry. I recalled the deep yearning to be free from the mental prison of racism and the experiences of suffering it created in my life and the lives of those around me. I used to think that some of us (those of us who bore the burden of injustice) really deserved to be free. Surely, there had to be a respite somewhere down the road because I could not understand why the pain of othering was only a burden for some. At times, the injustices of the world left me feeling like the world was hopeless and dark and that the light at the end of the tunnel shone for others, but not me and my people. I thought that some of us have the luxury of knowing freedom, to even imagine it, and some of us don’t. Feeling helpless and trapped, I turned to teaching and mastering concepts linked to injustice to gain some control. I taught in order to free others and to be freed. If I could teach others to identify, prevent, or change racism and oppression, I would surely be emancipated from their damage, right? For many years my study and work on issues of equity, power, and privilege consumed me, leaving me at worst apathetic and at best a serial self-righteous shamer of those who were complicit in systemic oppression—myself included. But that evening after chaplaincy class, as the energy we created together with Mr. Masters began to settle deep into my psyche, two questions he posed invited further investigation: How do I get out of this attachment to who I think I am? How do I get out of this attachment to how the world has treated me?” Monika L. Son, Ph.D. (she/her), is a consultant, certified Embodied Leadership Coach and trauma informed facilitator. As a trained psychologist and expert facilitator with a twenty-year career in teaching on issues of access, opportunity and justice, she is skilled at supporting and building containers that examine issues around identity, oppression, power and privilege. In that time, Dr. Son has found that embodied, contemplative based skills and practices are what seed and ground sustainable transformative change. Her deep passion is to support change leaders who choose to bring fierce loving radical love and compassion to the spaces they impact. Ultimately, her joy is to cultivate healing and facilitate the increasing presence of light in humanity. Monika is a student in the Buddhist Soto Zen lineage and graduate of the Upaya Chaplaincy program. She holds a practice of meditation, yoga and somatic practices for more than a decade. She is daughter of Dominican immigrants, a parent of two mixed raced boys, and enjoys planting, gardens and dancing bachata and travel adventures with her husband John. Learn more about Monika at: https://www.serenterowholebeingcoaching.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

14. 

    10 Mar 2025

    Psychedelics as "Transgressive Agents of Liberation" with Valeria McCarroll

    In this episode, Brooke Lavelle is joined by Dr. Valeria McCarroll, psychedelic educator, speaker, and guide, for a discussion of her essay, “Transgressive Agents of Liberation: Psychedelics and Pluriversality,” which appears in The Arrow Journal’s issue, The Power of the Pluriverse (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/p/new-issue-the-power-of-the-pluriverse). From the essay: “What role do psychedelics play in the face of global cataclysm? Today, psychedelics are undergoing a resurgence of interest for their capacities to treat and address trauma, addiction, depression, as well as a host of other potential applications currently being explored. The use of psychedelics, however, can be traced much further back than contemporary applications for mental health. There are thousands of years of practice and wisdom that come from indigenous use throughout human history. While psychedelics are broadly understood as non-specific amplifiers of consciousness, to those engaged in hospicing modernity—the craft of holding space for the collapse of unsustainable systems while nurturing conditions for more regenerative ways of being, in pleasure activism, or in soul midwifery, they are perhaps better understood as transgressive agents of liberation. To transgress is to go beyond the prescribed borders of something. Transgressions are, in the words of feminist scholar bell hooks, “a movement against and beyond boundaries.” In her visionary pedagogy of education as a liberatory practice, hooks encourages us to “open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions.” Transgression is, in this way, an essential practice for a thriving pluriverse–a world in which multiple ways of being, thinking, and relating are honored and co-exist. Where do psychedelics fit in? Psychedelics transgress our ego boundaries. As a psychic container, the ego generates a story of separation, creating a sense of distinction between self and the world. What we think of as ourselves, our normative experience of consciousness, is a limited experience, an orientation to what comprises the real constituted through a story of separation. Psychedelics, as transgressive agents, disrupt the containing aspect of the ego and its separation-based narrative. It is one of the reasons people seek them out: for the experience of ego-dissolution, of mystical union with a nondual divine. It is also part of where their healing potential lies: beyond ego dissolution there can be an experience of profound interconnectivity. In this way, the dissolving of the ego can be likened to the rending of the perceptual veils that color our experience of the world with “I am.” Subsuming of our sense of selfhood can fundamentally challenge our assumptions about who and what we are. This experience can be deeply healing if one is entrenched within an ego-structure scaffolded around intergenerational trauma, collective and cultural paradigms of oppression, or personal wounding. At the same time, when the lenses of our perception are altered and the borders of our normative consciousness transgressed, one finds oneself thrust into a series of questions about what constitutes “the real.” These questions hold the potential to open our minds, bodies, hearts, and spirits to a multiverse of possibilities.” Precisely! is a reader-supported publication. To read the full essay and access our digital Arrow archives, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Valeria McCarroll, Ph.D., LMFT is a psychedelic educator, writer, and speaker. Formally trained as a guide in expanded states of consciousness, she teaches critical courses on psychedelic humanities to students at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her background includes licensure as a marriage and family therapist, a doctorate in psychology, a certificate in psychedelic therapies and research, as well as thousands of hours of study and practice in a variety of therapeutic and spiritual traditions. Having been in the field of psychedelic work for over a decade, Valeria has developed and taught curriculum for the training of psychedelic guides, as well as having served as a consultant in the synthesis of ethical codes and navigating rupture and repair processes. Her interests lie at the intersection of nondual wisdom traditions, somatics, psychedelics, and social and transformative justice. You can find her at valeriamccarroll.com (http://www.valeriamccarroll.com/) and somadelics.com (http://www.somadelics.com/) Download & read her most recent article, "Mysticizing Medicine: incorporating nondualism into the training of psychedelic guides" (https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/EAMAQEFZBZDYVUURUUUJ/full?target=10.1080/03080188.2022.2075199) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

15. 

    4 Mar 2025

    Toward Pluriversal Practice in Our Movements with Maha El-Sheikh and Katrine Bregengaard

    In our first episode of the Precisely! Podcast, host Brooke D. Lavelle sits down with Maha El-Sheikh and Katrine Bregengaard to discuss their collaborative essay, “One-World Worlding in Our Movements: A Call and Path for Pluriversal Practice,” which appears in the The Arrow Journal’s special issue, “The Power of the Pluriverse (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/p/new-issue-the-power-of-the-pluriverse).” Read the full essay, which includes suggestions for pluriveral practice, via substack https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/ (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/) Members also receive access to our full digital archives and our weekly practice sessions, RelationSHIFT. Follow us on socials to stay up-to-date on events and other announcements: https://www.instagram.com/courageofcare/ (https://www.instagram.com/courageofcare/) https://www.instagram.com/arrowjournal/ (https://www.instagram.com/arrowjournal/) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe (https://thearrowjournal.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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