The Numinous Podcast with Carmen Spagnola: Intuition, Spirituality and the Mystery of Life
TNP66 Aftab Erfan on Safe Spaces
I'm so pleased to welcome to the podcast, Aftab Erfan, Director of Dialogue and Conflict Engagement at the University of British Columbia.
Aftab is an experienced facilitator and longtime trainer of the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy.
When you watch the video clips at the top of the DeepDemocracy.ca website, you can see me standing behind her business partner and co-facilitator, Sera, who is speaking animatedly. She's "amplifying" Jeremy - one of the tools used in this facilitation method to quickly get to the heart of a matter. My face is cropped, I'm wearing a white blouse, hands in pockets. My posture pretty much says everything about what I think of "hope" in the context of the Is Hope Bullshit? Civic Dialogue they convened. My feelings about hope have evolved a bit since then. It was a life-changing day. Myrna Lewis, (co-developer of the Lewis Method), is just to the left of screen wearing taupe, hand on her necklace.
The book Aftab references in this episode is called Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair by Sarah Schulman. Sounds like essential reading.
Along with Jessie Hemphill (my guest on TNP65), Aftab co-facilitated a Civic Dialogue I convened in my hometown called Yes, I'm Privileged. Now What? I received a lot of feedback from that event, all of it positive. Since then, I've seen it galvanize members of my community around social justice in a way they didn't before. Many have told me it was the experience they needed in order to show up and speak up and put their privilege to work on behalf of marginalized populations.
If your organization has the funding and desire to tackle hard topics in order to move forward together, you should definitely reach out to her.
More episodes from The Numinous Podcast with Carmen Spagnola: Intuition, Spirituality and the Mystery of Life
TNP149 Spiritual Hygiene for the Holidays with Carmen Spagnola
This special episode includes a 30 minute trancework exercise. I stack 4 different spiritual hygiene exercises, one after the other, to connect with earth, water, air and fire.
This episode …
TNP148 Seeing Yourself Through The Apocalypse With Lindsay Tunkl
Lindsay Tunkl is an artist and the author of "Origins & Endings: Seeing Yourself Through the Apocalypse". It's a divination deck and self-reflection inkblot kit that helps us grapple …
TNP147 Tom Hirons Tracks Collapse + Meaning Through Poetry
Sometimes A Wild God is a powerful poem written by storyteller, author, wilderness vigil guide, and poet, Tom Hirons. In this episode, I ask the poet …
TNP146 Carmen + Holly on Collapse Psychology and the Importance of Grief Ritual Accountability and Play
In Part 2 of my conversation with Holly, we explore collapse grief and death rituals in COVID times, and share fairly extensively about why …
TNP145 Holly Truhlar on Tending the Threshold of Collapse
Holly is a psychotherapist and a lawyer, and what she calls a “collapsitarian” – she’s spent a long time tracking collapse from multiple perspectives …
TNP144 Mimi Young on Intuition + Pandemic Plant Medicine
I'm talking with Mimi Young about clairolfaction, wonderful plant allies for pandemic times, and how to work with tea in a magical – even ancestral – …
How you can listen to this podcast
You can listen to episodes right here on the website, or if you prefer, in a podcast app. Listening in an app makes it easier to keep track of what you’ve already heard, listen without using your data plan and many other conveniences.