Why did Persephone eat that pomegranate seed? As seasons shift and the Spring Equinox approaches, science gives us an explanation. The earth rotates on its axis, and the side that faces the sun has daylight and the other side is in the darkness of night. However, the Earth also revolves around the sun with a …Read More
Category: Podcast
Story: Truth and Story ~ Joel Ying
“Stop making up stories!” I overhear an exasperated mom talking to her 4-year-old. In this context, the word “story” has become synonymous with lying, making up fiction, not telling the truth. However, in the context of the art of storytelling, making up fiction does not mean that a story does not contain a deeper truth, …Read More
Story: Spring of Youth
Storytellers in my tradition look for stories that hold some sort of “magic.” We tell stories that we love–sometimes for reasons that we know and sometimes we just keep telling them until we figure out why. This story has held me since I first heard it. Folk stories travel across the world and adapt to …Read More
Story: Love or Money ~ Joel Ying
There are some stories that you do not really know until you’ve heard it directly from the people that have lived it. Growing up, I knew my parents story of immigration from bits and pieces of overheard conversation, stories gathered second hand told by other relatives, and gaps filled in from similar stories that I …Read More
Story: Ninth Night
“Show me the manner in which a Nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.” ~ William Ewart Gladstone In this podcast story, I explore the tradition of Ninth …Read More
Story: The Graveyard
“Don’t go into the graveyard after dark!” Perhaps like my friend, Janis McCall, you grew up with this warning. But really… is there anything to fear in graveyards? “Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards,” said Samuel Beckett. However, every story has a reason to be told. This story comes to me from …Read More
Hearse Song ~ Special Halloween Podcast
This spooky Halloween season, I got a chance to perform at Leu Gardens in Orlando, Florida, with the cast of “Haunting Tales,” formerly called “Ghosts in the Garden.” Last Friday, the morning was beautiful, but the afternoon brought torrential rains. Will people still come? The organizers talked about cancelling the show. Ninety minutes before the …Read More
Little Dandelion ~ Soul Growth with Astral Shaman
Story + Meditation = Healing. I met Astral Shaman in a meditation and healing workshop more than a decade ago. I immediately fell in love with his Scottish lilt–the way words sound like song, warm and welcoming, literally music to my ears. As a child, I lost my own Jamaican accent after starting first grade …Read More
Meditation: Space
Don’t think of a purple elephant! What do you do? … You think of a purple elephant. Let’s use the science of the mind in our favor. What you focus on is what persists. Let’s practice shifting our focus onto space. If your mind goes to the tightness and dense spots, just shift your focus …Read More
Meditation: Reclaim Your Story
What if you could hit the pause button? If your inner storyteller is moving down from one worst case scenario to the next, the stress and tension are building up. The body does not distinguish between real stress and imagined stress, so when the mind (and the news) is playing the same story over and …Read More