Takeaways:

• In this episode, we delve into the transformative journey of identifying one's true self post-divorce, emphasizing the importance of self-discovery.
• Kristen Crabtree shares her insights as a divorce coach, illustrating the necessity of understanding personal identity beyond relational labels.
• The discussion highlights the psychological mechanisms at play when individuals feel disconnected from their true selves, often manifesting in emotional turmoil.
• We explore the significance of peeling away societal layers and masks to reveal one's authentic self amid personal crises and transitions.
• The conversation addresses the vital role of vulnerability and authenticity in fostering meaningful relationships and personal growth.
• Listeners are encouraged to engage with their emotions as a compass for aligning with their true selves, facilitating a deeper understanding of their life purpose.

Takeaways:

• The podcast delves into the importance of understanding natural cycles in personal productivity.
• Tigrilla Gardenia shares insights on how corporate culture often disconnects us from nature.
• The conversation emphasizes the significance of deconstructing one's identity for personal growth.
• A central theme is the relationship between humanity and ecology as discussed in Confucianism.
• Listeners are encouraged to embrace their natural rhythms and honor downtime for increased creativity.
• The discussion explores the concept of plant music as a medium for connecting with nature.

In this episode of The Living Conversation, Adam Dietz and co-host Anthony Wright speak with Tigrella Gardenia—plant advocate, coach, and biomimicry practitioner joining us from Italy, where she lives in the spiritual community of Damanhur. We explore plant–fungi collaboration, biomimicry as “learning from nature,” and what changes when nature stops being a commodity and becomes kin.

We also talk about prescribed fire vs. chemical control, “quiet sitting” in the Confucian tradition, Damanhur’s “meditation with your hands,” and a simple daily practice Tigrella recommends for anyone: breathing with a plant—a felt sense of our reciprocal relationship with the living world.

In this conversation:

1. Tigrella’s path: music/tech → performance → plant advocacy → coaching as a “multi-passionate”
2. Biomimicry and why plant–fungi relationships are a foundational model in ecosystems
3. The cost of treating nature as something to control (and what changes when we relate instead)
4. Prescribed fire, Indigenous land relationship, and why ecosystems need human listening—not domination
5. Quiet sitting + learning from the forest (inside patterns / outside patterns)
6. Damanhur: an esoteric community, “meditation with your hands,” art as sacred embodiment
7. A daily practice for reconnection: the shared breath (oxygen/carbon dioxide reciprocity)
8. Seasonal rhythms, hustle culture, and returning to natural cycles (“uptime” and “downtime”)
9. The planet’s “breathing” and the Daoist intuition of reverse and return

Guest: Tigrella Gardenia

Find her online: search “Tigrella Gardenia” (Instagram/YouTube/Facebook) and her website.

Takeaways:

1. Maintaining a journal serves as an invaluable tool for self-reflection and personal growth.
2. Kristen Swan emphasizes the importance of recognizing and celebrating genuine moments of joy in daily life.
3. The concept of a non-judgmental observer is pivotal for effective journaling and self-discovery.
4. The discussion highlights the necessity of integrating humanity into business practices for holistic success.
5. Writing can be a transformative experience, allowing individuals to express their creative selves.
6. The conversation underscores the significance of aligning personal values with professional endeavors to foster authenticity.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. KristenSwan.com

Kristan describes her approach as non-denominational: an exploration of what’s bigger than us, whether that shows up through religion, nature, or the cosmos. We talk about timed writing as a way to “clear the decks,” how people often love the idea of writing but struggle with the doing, and why handwriting (devices left at the door) can create a different kind of quiet.

Kristan also shares an adult turning point: choosing to be baptized in the Episcopal Church, not as a performance of belief but as a body-level encounter with the message “you are whole as you are.” From there we explore how a sense of self evolves—through the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we inherit, and the stories we dare to share.

Guest: Kristan Swan

Website: KristinSwan.com

Banya explains how repeated thoughts can “feed” sensations in the body past the famous 90-second window, why blockages aren’t enemies (they’re trying to help), and her four pitfalls that keep patterns stuck: identifying, judging, suppressing, and trying to get rid of the thought/emotion.

We also explore a practical grounding technique for anxiety and public speaking: bring attention to the hara / dantian (chihai)—and even place a hand there, press, or tap to gather energy and settle the system. Finally, Banya connects the Five Elements to house directions and emotional clearing—like cleansing the east side for wood/liver/anger—as a simple way to “move energy” in daily life.

Guest: Banya Lim (Spiritual Acupuncture + Energy Coaching)

Website: banyalim.com

Offer: Free clarity session for listeners (via her website)

Chapters / timestamps

00:00 Energy coaching + “no accidents”

01:05 Emotions → blockages → the body “speaks louder”

03:00 Awareness first, then build a new relationship with the blockage

05:25 The “four things” that keep thoughts stuck

06:10 The 90-second emotion principle (and why humans keep re-feeding it)

10:25 “Blockages have a zip code” in the body

12:20 Clearing space + beginning-of-year energy

14:20 Five Elements + directions in the home (east/wood/anger etc.)

16:40 Forgiveness + rephrasing the inner story

21:05 Public speaking anxiety: ground in the hara/dantian (chihai)

24:00 Final takeaway: body tells truth + body helps dreams

Topics we cover

1. Energy coaching + acupuncture meridians
2. Somatic therapy + stored “energetic packages”
3. Thought loops and emotional reinforcement
4. Forgiveness as an energetic practice
5. Five Elements + emotions + directions in the home
6. Hara/dantian grounding for anxiety and performance

spiritual acupuncture, energy coaching, traditional Chinese medicine, five elements, meridians, emotional blockages, somatic therapy, forgiveness practice, dantian, hara, chihai, grounding technique, anxiety relief, public speaking nerves

Hashtags: #acupuncture #TCM #FiveElements #somatics #energyhealing #mindbody #qigong #meditation #healingjourney

Note: This episode is for educational purposes and is not medical advice.

We explore why symptoms often return when the deeper pattern underneath them hasn’t changed, and how the Five Element theory maps emotions to organs (like fear and the kidneys, anger and the liver/gallbladder, sadness and the lungs). Banya shares how intuition can be felt in the body (not just thought in the head), how food/color/taste cravings can be energetic signals, and why “going within” matters when the outside world feels loud.

We also talk about desire—not as something to crush, but something to understand—by tracing the feeling behind what we think we want, and learning how inner alignment becomes outer change.

Guest: Banya Lim (Spiritual Acupuncture + Energy Coaching)

Website: banyalim.com

Free clarity session: available via her website

Topics include: spiritual acupuncture, energy coaching, Traditional Chinese Medicine, yin-yang, five elements, meridians, emotions + organs, intuition vs desire, mindfulness without forcing meditation, inner peace.

We also move into practical terrain: emotional baggage as “unfinished lessons,” why meditation is the inversion of awareness, and how to take the meditative mind “back into the village” — real life, relationships, and responsibility.

Guest: Dean Graves

Website: deangraves.org (DeanGraves.org)

In this conversation

1. What a social memory complex is, and how “individuality” changes as consciousness evolves
2. The Law of One and why “all of consciousness is conceptual”
3. “Free will intoxication” (the whiskey metaphor) and the enlightenment path as sobering up
4. A provocative take on emotion: one spectrum (like/dislike), applied thought-by-thought
5. Awakening as turning awareness inward and seeing how the “false self” perpetuates unhappiness
6. Service to others vs service to self as a critical evolutionary choice
7. Why meditation works, why it’s hard, and how motivation shifts from “running from the stick” to “chasing the apple”
8. Bringing practice back into the village: maintaining inner freedom while living ordinary life
9. Closing takeaway: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

1. 00:00 Intro + Dean’s ongoing contact with his teacher
2. 01:05 Social memory complex + archetypes / structure of the universe
3. 05:20 “Intoxicated with free will” + Creator / subject-object framing
4. 10:03 Emotional baggage + what “emotion” is
5. 12:07 Awakening = inverting awareness inward
6. 15:46 Service-to-others vs service-to-self (polarization)
7. 20:46 Meditation + “bite of the apple” + healing
8. 23:11 Bringing meditation “back into the village”
9. 25:39 One thing to practice: Gandhi / be the change

Law of One, social memory complex, free will, consciousness, meditation, mindfulness, awakening, emotional baggage, service to others, spirituality, nonduality.

Psychotherapist and author Phyllis Levitt (America in Therapy: A New Approach to Hope and Healing for a Nation in Crisis) joins hosts Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz on The Living Conversation to ask a hard question:

What if our political crisis is, at its core, a mental health crisis?

Drawing on decades of work with trauma, family systems, and abuse dynamics, Phyllis maps what we’re seeing in the U.S. onto patterns we’d recognize instantly inside a violent household: power without accountability, normalized cruelty, and victims who are retraumatized just by witnessing events—even when they’re not the direct target.

We talk about:

1. How to answer a child who asks, “Where’s mommy?” after a politically charged killing
2. Why Phyllis sees current U.S. politics not as “left vs right,” but as an escalating mental health emergency phyllisAudio transcript
3. The psychology of aligning with the “bully on the playground” and how unhealed victims can become abusers
4. Secondary trauma: why you don’t have to be directly attacked to be deeply affected by constant violence and threats
5. Cult dynamics, double binds, and what it means to “deprogram” people without dehumanizing them
6. Anger vs hatred: how to turn righteous anger into constructive action instead of burnout or vengeance
7. The difference between belonging and safe belonging—and how wounded people can be pulled into movements that feed on fear and division

Adam and Anthony bring in their background in Chinese philosophy and Confucian family ethics—including the image of “outlaws of the marsh” who withdraw when government becomes unsafe, and the I Ching’s reminder that history moves in cycles of rise and decay.

They also connect Phyllis’s work with:

1. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and the refusal to answer hatred with hatred
2. The idea of seeing the “goblin” of projection instead of the human being in front of us—and what it takes to reverse that
3. The claim that spirituality is the one thing that can’t be co-opted, and why tending your own inner life is a form of resistance

Throughout, Phyllis returns to a simple, difficult standard: holding compassion and accountability together—recognizing the deep wounds behind abusive behavior and insisting on limits, consequences, and a collective commitment to healing.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, enraged, or just numb watching the news, this conversation is meant as a kind of group session: an attempt to name what’s happening, protect your sanity, and point toward ways of acting that don’t simply repeat the cycle.

Dean begins with what he calls an awakening experience: that moment when we realize that conventional success isn’t making us happier. From there he unfolds a cosmology in which our enduring self is a metaphysical consciousness pattern that lives through thousands of incarnations, evolving across different “densities” of consciousness. According to Dean, humans currently inhabit third density, learning responsibility and awareness in a particularly intense range of consciousness.

He describes how chakras function as “assessment points of consciousness” at both the metaphysical and incarnate levels, and why stages like the terrible twos and the turmoil of adolescence are so chaotic: new levels of awareness open before we have the information or maturity to meet them.

Dean also reframes free will as the perception of separation—the originating “distortion” that allows creation to unfold and beings to experience themselves as autonomous. Over many lives, he says, the evolutionary path is a gradual surrender of that separation into a sense of unity, ultimately moving toward what he calls a “social memory complex,” where many once-separate beings share one consciousness.

Along the way, Adam connects these ideas with Confucianism and modern science—heaven, star-stuff, and our destiny to bring harmony into our particular web of relationships. They compare Dean’s view of incarnation to John Lennon’s “instant karma” and the hero’s journey, and Anthony draws out implications for trauma, illness, and the way the mind shapes the body.

Dean also touches on:

1. The idea that our metaphysical self has already lived thousands of incarnations with specific learning purposes
2. First and second “densities” as the consciousness of inorganic matter, fire, plants, and animals, laying the foundation for human experience
3. The archetypical mind as a blueprint of how we process thought and build a sense of self
4. Why different children in the same family can be so radically different, based on their metaphysical development
5. The feeling that humanity is in “Groundhog Day” and his claim that this is actually our fourth planetary cycle

Throughout, Dean returns to awakening not as a one-off mystical event, but as taking responsibility for our own evolution—stepping out of automatic repetition and actively participating in the path of awareness, love, wisdom, unity, and stillness.

Connect with Dean Graves:

Website: ddeangraves.org — books, podcast, and contact info

In this follow-up conversation, Fran Bailey joins Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz on The Living Conversation to go deeper into her energetic work with individuals and groups. Drawing on the Enneagram, the chakra system, and her own intuitive seeing, Fran shares how she helps people move out of self-judgment and back into grounded presence.

We start with the Enneagram’s roots in Gurdjieff’s movement work and the idea of head, heart, and body types arranged in a circle. Fran explains how she uses this map in her healing practice—especially with “head types” whose energy and attention can get stuck in the sixth chakra, looping through anxiety and overthinking.

From there, she describes guiding people to move energy beyond the edge of the aura, then down through the chakra system to the first chakra to ground into the earth and come back into their bodies. In groups, she’ll invite everyone to “watch the energy” around one person so they can begin to see and feel for themselves, dissolving some of the “woo-woo factor” and recognizing that working with energy is another way of working with the emotional and mental patterns we all live inside.

A big theme of this segment is permission and non-judgment. Fran talks about telling clients, “Don’t apologize for where you are. I’m not judging you.” That simple stance creates a breath of space where people can begin to imagine actually loving themselves, instead of clinging to external expectations of who they “should” be.

In this episode, we explore:

1. Gurdjieff’s movement work and the Enneagram as head/heart/body types
2. How Fran uses the Enneagram and chakras together in her energy healing
3. Guiding “head types” out of mental loops and back into embodied grounding
4. Group work, collective energy, and teaching people to see and feel energy for themselves
5. The importance of “encouragement without apology” and why self-judgment is a root of disconnection
6. Grounding as a living relationship with a changing Earth, and Fran’s evolving sense of Mother Gaia’s energy
7. Flow states, forgetting ourselves, and being at one with something larger than the isolated ego
8. How Fran measures healing: clients becoming more upright, unapologetic, and simply okay with themselves

Along the way, Adam connects Fran’s work with Daoist emptying of the mind and the idea that forgetting ourselves allows a clearer, higher view of our own thoughts and energies, while Anthony reflects on validation, holding space, and inviting students and clients into their own highest vitality.

Connect with Fran Bailey:

1. Website: franbaileyhealer.com (sessions, meditations, and more)

Fran shares how dance was her first language: a way to “speak through the body” without words, growing up in a musical and metaphysical Christian Science home with ballet classes in the barn. From there, she trained in dance at Ohio University, then gradually realized she could sense and work with energy in others, a realization that eventually led her to study with healers like Rosalyn, John Friedlander, and Gloria Hemsher, and to twelve years at the Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How dance and movement opened Fran’s awareness that “everything is energy”
• Working at the Alliance Institute as an energy healer alongside MDs and acupuncturists
• Seeing and feeling energy in clients: cords, resistance, and patterns in the field
• Using the Enneagram to understand “head types,” “body types,” and how people disconnect from their own felt sense
• How stored memories and fear patterns show up not just in the mind, but in the energy field—and how to gently work with them
• The importance of permission in healing, and why clients have to do their own inner work for changes to stick
• A striking story of a therapist with a herniated disc whose pain and diagnosis unexpectedly shifted after an energy session
• Navigating the “woo-woo factor” with physicians and psychologists, and staying humble about where people are on their journey

Fran also introduces The SHEVA Method, developed after receiving the word “SHEVA” in meditation as an acronym for Seeking Harmony in Energy, Voice, and Action: and she shares how this method has continued to refine over years of teaching and client work.

Connect with Fran Bailey:

• Website: franbaileyhealer.com (free meditations, her book, and more resources)

We start with Frederick Brown’s 1950s sci-fi micro-story “Answer” — where a galaxy-wide computer is asked, “Is there a God?” and replies, “Now there is.” From there, the conversation opens into real questions facing students today.

We explore:

• AI as efficiency tool vs cultural force
• The ethics of AI in defense and autonomous weaponry
• Student frustration with AI’s impact on writing and learning
• When professors encourage ChatGPT over human tutoring
• Whether AI mirrors human consciousness or represents a different kind of “mind”
• Smartphones, adolescence, and the problem of unprepared attention
• How COVID reshaped social habits and comfort with in-person life
• Why small groups and real dialogue still matter for forming identity and community

This is part of our ongoing collaboration with the SSU Philosophy Club, bringing lived philosophy into public conversation; not just theory, but the everyday reality of staying human in a high-tech age.

In this episode of the SSU Philosophy Club series, Sonoma State philosophy students join hosts Anthony Wright and Adam Dietz to talk honestly about work, school, and the stories we tell ourselves about “making it.” Colette, Andrew, and Peter share real experiences from jobs and internships, some great, some pretty rough, and explore how those moments shape character, confidence, and direction.

Along the way, we keep circling one live question:

How much of who we become is really up to us, and how much is given by luck, opportunity, or privilege?

We don’t land on a simple answer, but we do try to name what feels true from the inside of college life right now.

In this episode:

• Why certain jobs and internships feel “character building” (and when that’s just code for bad conditions)
• How grit, persistence, and showing up actually play out in real student lives
• The role of luck and opportunity: who gets access to which doors, and when
• How our stories about being “self-made” affect the way we see ourselves and others
• What philosophy can offer when you’re trying to choose a path that’s not just about money or status
• The tension between gratitude for what you’ve been given and the desire to claim your own effort and growth

This conversation is part of an ongoing collaboration with the SSU Philosophy Club, exploring what philosophy looks like when it’s lived, not just studied.

Adam brings in Confucian and Buddhist language to ask how we might “harmonize” AI rather than demonize or worship it, suggesting that our real task is to cultivate ourselves so we use the tool without letting it use us. Nick takes up Anthony’s koan-like question—“Does AI have Buddha nature?”—and responds from Tibetan Buddhist philosophy: why inanimate systems, however powerful, still lack sentience and will, and why consciousness arises from a stream of previous moments of consciousness rather than from mere complexity of code. Along the way they touch on nature spirits, projection (does the tree really “speak” to us?), and the limits of the human mind in grasping exponential change.

From there, the conversation widens into the nature of mind itself. Adam describes the danger of attaching even to “non-attachment,” and the need to let desires, ambitions, and identities settle so that the “true self” can emerge and be integrated in everyday life. Nick contrasts Zen’s stripped-down focus on realizing the nature of mind with Tibetan Buddhism’s vast toolbox of tantric cycles and practices, warning about spiritual materialism and the reification of emptiness itself. The episode closes with Adam introducing The Way Between Podcast as a space for deeper, longer-form explorations of philosophy East and West, and with all three sharing how listeners can stay connected to their work.

Adam introduces The Way Between as a more flexible, long-form space to explore East–West philosophy in a story-driven way: how thinkers like Socrates, Confucius, Laozi, and Hui Neng emerged, how their ideas shaped cultures, and how their influence still reaches our lives today.

From there, Adam, Anthony, and guest Dr. Nick Egan dive into:

• Socrates’ image of the wise sea captain and why philosophy is the “art of navigation” in life
• How Adam’s Philosophy 101 class planted the seed that led him to change his major and devote his life to this work
• The Tibetan Buddhist framework of view, path, and result—and how “view” quietly shapes everything we do
• Dr. Yi Wu’s integral life philosophy and his triangle of reality, practice, and theory
• Zen stories of Hui Neng and how a single exchange between teacher and student can become the most important moment in the universe
• Nick’s experience of a Zen Roshi responding, “This is Nirvana,” and how that answer cracked ordinary thinking
• Tibetan pointing-out instructions on the nature of mind, and why we may glimpse it many times without recognizing it
• How our “story” about reality locks us into patterns—and how Socratic questions can loosen that story
• Adam’s time teaching freshman philosophy, planting the first seeds of “examining your life” in students who may not even know what philosophy is yet
• Jung’s sense of the hero’s journey and the challenge to actually cultivate the soul in ordinary life

Along the way, they explore Zen, Tibetan Buddhism, Confucianism, and Western philosophy as different ways of pointing toward the same question:

How should I live?

And they return again and again to the idea that philosophy is not just a subject—but a daily practice of view, conversation, and self-cultivation.

Connect with our guest: