In this podcast we meet CIIS faculty member Sundari Johansen and speak about how her academic background in religious studies informs the critical perspective and frameworks she brings into her course on Hindu Tantra. We discuss research as deep listening and self-transformation, and get into the problems of traditional western ethnographic methodologies based upon the distinction between the insider and outsider. Sundari also shares why she was lead to invert the scholar-practitioner model into the practitioner-scholar model as a way of problematizing and making productive the entangledness o ..read more

Today we speak with Lou Florez about his life as a diviner and metaphysical reader who facilitates spiritual connectivity and transformational empowerment throughout his myriad roles as a Priest, lecturer, author, medicine maker, and activist. We speak about afro-carribean diasporic magical traditions and the problems of their systemic exclusion in the Euro-Western knowledge academy. Lou speaks of the importance of unknown, called the great mystery in world wisdom traditions, and we go on to discuss this in relation to the transformative powers of the arts, specifically music, and how the embo ..read more

In this episode we meet Krysti Keener, a student in the East-West Psychology/MFA Masters Program, and hear of how she came to cultivate a transformative and healing artistic practice through opening to the liminal power of found objects. We discuss the problem of how we conventionally frame artistic practice and identity in relation to the culture industries and share strategies of exit which aim to liberate the practitioner from artistic labour to artistic transformation. We discuss how such a change of milieu based upon spiritual and holistic world views can produce new forms of creativity a ..read more

In this podcast we meet Matt Segall, core faculty in the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness Program at CIIS. We discuss the need for new methods of research beyond the limits of siloed disciplines producing interdisciplinary knowledge. In research, Matt speaks of the importance of disclosing one’s own metaphysical groundings and epistemological assumptions in order to build frameworks of transdisciplinary engagement, which are spaces of discovery, creation and the invention of new concepts and languages. We also speak about Carl Jung, Rudolf Steiner relations to transdisciplinary ped ..read more

Today we speak to East-West Psychology adjunct faculty Susana Bustos, about growing up in Chile and how her roots in music and psychology lead her to study music therapy. We then discuss how South American Indigenous healing practices can be considered as a forms of earth-bound spirituality, and how that gives rise to alternative notions of relationality bound by a local ethics of care. Susana speaks about plant medicine as psycho-integrators and we discuss the importance of integration in Indigenous healing practices. The discussion ends developing ideas about sonic ecology in which Susana sh ..read more

In this podcast we meet CIIS student Lucian Dante Lazar to discuss his research at the intersections of spirituality and the arts, aiming towards the cultivation of a holistic science of creative becoming inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. We discuss esoteric approaches towards a pedagogy of creative education based upon experimental methods of radical freedom and epistemologies of spiritual identity. Lucien Dante Lazar (b. June 24th, 1994 in Evanston, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist whose praxis is founded in the intersections of art, science, and spirituality. He received hi ..read more

In this episode we meet Preston Vargas, the director of the Center for Black and Indigenous Praxis, and Deanna Jimenez, Assistant Professor in the Somatic Psychology Department and head of the Emerging Black Clinician Fellowship. We discuss strategies of navigating white academic space as a black scholar, the notion of bodies of culture, the importance of Afrocentric Healing modalities, scholar-activism, the importance of arts, as well some fundamental ideas in the emerging field of Black Psychology. Preston Varvas earned an M.A. in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness as well as ..read more

In this episode we speak with EWP adjunct professor Dr. Butterfly, along with students, Tayina Fenelus and Cameron Rice, who both took his class on African Cosmologies last semester. We speak of intergenerational transfer of knowledge in African traditions, and other important ideas in African cosmologies such as consubstantiation, ritual, story and song, and practices of divination. Dr. Butterfly shares his views on how African cosmologies can “help one rediscover ways in which one can be soulfully attached, reconnected, and participating in activities that enrich our lives, give them meaning ..read more

In this episode, we speak to Cindy Shearer, head of the MFA, and Debashish Banerji, chair of East-West Psychology about how their ideas on the vision of interdisciplinary education and creative scholarship lead them to create joint EWP and MFA degrees, as well as creative pathway dissertation track. We speak about transdisciplinary methods of arts-based research from the perspective of a scholar-artist, and the importance of art-making in forming new approaches to academic inquiry, practice, and research. Joint EWP/MFA Degrees and Creative Pathway Dissertation Cindy Shearer, DA, is the foundin ..read more

In this episode, we speak to Cindy Shearer, head of the MFA, and Debashish Banerji, chair of East-West Psychology about how their ideas on the vision of interdisciplinary education and creative scholarship lead them to create joint EWP and MFA degrees, as well as creative pathway dissertation track. We speak about transdisciplinary methods of arts-based research from the perspective of a scholar-artist, and the importance of art-making in forming new approaches to academic inquiry, practice, and research. Joint EWP/MFA Degrees and Creative Pathway Dissertation Cindy Shearer, DA, is the foundin ..read more