Inner Nature Podcast Series

Tara C. Trapani


 

The Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University has just released a new podcast series titled Inner Nature. Each episode will be a rich conversation between two figures in the environmental field, focusing on inner work and practices that will help us hope, strength, energy, and spiritual fortitude for the work ahead. 

From their site:

The Inner Nature podcast series is a collection of conversations between thought-leaders exploring the intersection of contemplative practice and environmental action. The series explores how we can tend to our inner lives so we have the creativity and clarity to imagine the future we know is possible and the mental and emotional stamina to work toward that vision, even if it takes a lifetime. Each month, we'll release a new conversation between some of the greatest contemplatives of our time as they reflect on how environmental activism is essential to our own, personal journey from separation to wholeness.

These conversation partners explore questions like:
How could transforming our inner lives help us transform the world?
How are introspection and imagination crucial to a thriving planet?
How is environmental work essential to the contemplative endeavor?
And how can we stay connected to the healing power of nature, even as we experience grief and guilt over compounding environmental crises?

Together, we’ll look at how the contemplative journey shapes our mindset, which ripples out into our relationships with one another and with the earth.

 

At the Spring Creek Project site, you can listen to the series trailer and the first episode with Kritee Kanko and Kaira Jewel Lingo. You can also listen to these via Apple, Spotify, and most standard podcast platforms.

Here is the description of the inaugural episode:
In the first episode of Inner Nature, which is part 1 of a 2-part conversation, Kritee Kanko and Kaira Jewel Lingo set a foundation for understanding the mutuality and reciprocity of contemplative practice and environmental action. They invite us to consider many questions: How might we meet and hold personal and collective grief, anger, and trauma? How can we deepen our sense of “interbeing,” or interdependence? And how do we summon the courage to question the status quo, and build the wisdom to respond with a clear, sacred “no,” as is necessary, to protect one another and our planet? This conversation unfolds an acknowledgment of both the individual and systemic responses needed to the climate emergency. In doing so, Kaira Jewel and Kritee make clear the critical interconnectedness of environmental and racial justice.

Future episodes will be released once a month. Here are some of the upcoming episodes:
February: Kaira Jewel Lingo and Kritee Kanko, Part 2
March: David James Duncan and Fred Bahnson
April: Lyla June Johnston and Riane Eisler
May: Patricia Jennings and Owsley Brown
June: Dekila Chungyalpa and Mary Evelyn Tucker

New episodes will be announced on the Spring Creek social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and on the project website