SDI Encounters

EP052 - Spiritual Practices of Sufi Islam - Azra Rahim

Azra Rahim has a BSc in Molecular Biology and holds an MD.  She describes herself this way: “Muslim Sufi.  Spiritual Quester. Truth seeker. Globe trotter. Lover of food, flowers and all things green. Indiscriminate dispenser of hugs. Kisser of all things beautiful."
Azra came in to the SDI Studios to share about her experiences growing up in Iraq, India, and Montana, how she came to Sufism, a form of mystic Islam, and a little bit about the workshop she is offering during our 2020 Conference in Santa Fe in April, which is called Seeking Feminine Wisdom from our Muslim mothers: poetry, writing and whirling as spiritual practice.
Azra’s workshop description states: “Islam offers a system of guidance that brings into balance and integration the masculine and feminine energies.  Never has such integration been more important, given the stark disharmony in which the feminine and the masculine exist in the world today.  When energies are balanced, there is healing that takes place not just at an individual level but a societal level.  This healing extends to the earth, who is Mother - the ultimate manifestation of the nurturing generosity of the Divine Feminine.  When integrated and healed - our soul being at peace, we become beings that reflect the Divine Unity.  We can offer others only what we are, in every relationship including that of spiritual companion. 
In this workshop, we begin this work of integration.  We will start by attuning ourselves with a seated Zikr (chanting remembrance of Allah).  Then, one by one, we will welcome these mothers into the circle by singing their name. Aarda (Earth).  Hajar (Hagar). Maryam (Mary).  Khadija (Wife of Prophet Mohammed).  Fatima (Daughter of Prophet Mohammed). Peace and Blessings upon them all.  We will share their stories.  Some interfaith, some uniquely Muslim.  We will share some poetry by Rabia Al- Adhawiya.  We will engage in a short writing exercise.  We will conclude with a standing Zikr with Sufi whirling and turning.  (Please bring thick socks to turn in, in case we are on a hard surface)”
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Support for this week's podcast comes from SDI Journeys. SDI has been leading passionate travelers on spiritual journeys around the world for over 25 years -  not just vacations, but truly exceptional trips filled with inspiring and enriching experiences. We have upcoming journeys planned for 2020- in Iona Scotland, and an Ignatian Journey through Spain. Explore our site to find out more – sdijourneys.org.

EP051 - Technology, Contemplation, and Interspirituality - Jeff Genung, Kate Sheehan Roach, and Brother Wayne Teasdale (!!)

Interspiritual pioneer Brother Wayne Teasdale wrote in his seminal book The Mystic Heart, “Daily spiritual practice is the technology of inner change.” 
Jeff Genung and Kate Sheehan Roach work at the intersections of digital media and technology, contemplative practice, and Interspirituality. We talk about these intersections in this episode, and give a taste to what they’ll be sharing as workshop presenters at our upcoming Santa Fe Conference in April – which you can learn about at sdievents.org.
Jeff is co-founder and president of contemplativelife.org, a non-profit digital hub that connects people and communities with transformative practices. Kate serves as Director of Content for Contemplative Life, and they are both facilitators of Transformation365.org, an online experiential practice network.
Towards the end of this episode, Jeff shares a recorded contemplative practice by the late Brother Wayne Teasdale. I invite you as you listen, to participate in this practice, and share the sacred space that Brother Teasdale offers us. Note that there is a four minute period of silence during this space, from approximately minute 44 to minute 48.
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Support for this week's podcast comes from SDI Journeys. SDI has been leading passionate travelers on spiritual journeys around the world for over 25 years -  not just vacations, but truly exceptional trips filled with inspiring and enriching experiences. We have upcoming journeys planned for 2020- in Iona Scotland, and an Ignatian Journey through Spain. Explore our site to find out more – sdijourneys.org.

EP050 - Art, Creativity, and Spiritual Companionship - Matt Whitney

Intro: We kick off the New Year of SDI Encounters episodes with an interview with your host, Matt Whitney! This was the idea of SDI's Executive Director, Reverend Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, to flip the script and have him interview me. So here’s our conversation, in which I (Matt) share my own personal story as a visual artist, how I came to work at SDI, and how I’ve come to understand the role that spiritual companionship plays in all our lives.
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Support for this week's podcast comes from SDI Journeys. SDI has been leading passionate travelers on spiritual journeys around the world for over 25 years -  not just vacations, but truly exceptional trips filled with inspiring and enriching experiences. We have upcoming journeys planned for 2020- in Iona Scotland, and an Ignatian Journey through Spain. Explore our site to find out more – sdijourneys.org.

EP049 - 2019 Highlights of SDI Encounters

It's the end of the year and it's time for a clips show! I (Matt Whitney) have pulled several highlights from the 50 episodes that we've now published under SDI Encounters and placed them here as we take a tour of the last 11 months since we launched this podcast. Thank you to all who have been listening, thank you for sharing and following this podcast, and thank you especially to all our guests who have shared of themselves. I hope this podcast has been and will continue to be enriching and inspiring for all of us, as we share the important and diverse work of spiritual companionship around the world.

EP048 - Support and Participate in Our Public Square of Spiritual Companionship

SDI is the Home of Spiritual Companionship - an inclusive, global learning community of people from many backgrounds who share a common passion and commitment to the art and contemplative practice of spiritual companionship.
For thirty years, SDI has served this community through educational events, publications, and outreach programs, helping people connect with one another and with the Divine in their own lives. Through this work, SDI seeks to help cultivate a more interconnected, more peaceful, and more just society.
Matt Whitney, Creative Director of SDI, invites all of us to support the work of SDI through a number of ways, to help us all advocate for the healing work of spiritual companionship. Below are suggestions and links to various offerings:
Please subscribe, rate, write a review, and share this podcast with a few friends! As we share the word of spiritual companionship we support the work of professional spiritual companions and invite others into the rich community of spiritual wayfarers and travelers.
Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter Discover, and our quarterly publication Listen.
Follow us via social media - Facebook, Instagram, or Instagram
Donate to our Diversity Scholarship Fund
Become a Member of SDI
Attend an Event - learn more about our upcoming conference in Santa Fe. Scholarships are available!
Thank you for supporting SDI and the work of spiritual companionship!

EP047 - Connection with the Living World through Animals and Art - Straja Linder King and Madeline Rugh

In this episode Frederica Helmiere talks with Straja Linder King and Madeline Rugh over web conference software, on therapeutic connection with the living world, via art experiences, and in relationship with animals. Straja and Madeline are facilitating a workshop at our 2020 Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their workshop description states:
"Through contemplative speaking, walking, making, and sharing we will practice multi-sensory and ancestral art forms that facilitate presence and connection with the living world which is our archetypal template for companioning. We will follow the guidance of award-winning Shiloh Shepherd therapy dogs Twillow Roses and Tala Rain of Alberta, Canada. Taking our cues from the spirit of the dogs, participants will take a contemplative walk (amble) on a scent, sound and shape journey of embodied presence “finding”, in the manner of our ancestral hunter/gatherers, something that calls attention to itself whether human made or natural. Returning to our room, our forms will be “arranged” (another ancestral art practice) within a hoop in the center of the room forming a contemplative community Mandala. During this practice of arranging, and sharing participants will listen to the narrative of their found forms listening with both the “ear of the heart” and to the heart of the world as the human animal bond is embedded in the soul of humanity."
Straja Linder King is a Registered Art Psychotherapist and Board Certified counsellor working with verbal and non-verbal treatment modalities. She is the first to merge these two non verbal interventions both in her practice, research, and teachings. A printmaker, published poet, writer and Animal-Assisted specialist (both canine and equine). Linder King’s innovative work (medical research in stroke recovery) specializes in working non-verbally and she has extensive focus in bereavement including complicated and disenfranchised grief.  Linder King pioneered art in healing from a spiritual/nature-based perspective in Alberta and developed the Strawberry Tree Studio for Spiritual Directions, the only open art studio in Western Canada working with award winning International Therapy Dogs for over a decade. Madeline Rugh is a consultant and educator specializing in the role of art, nature and spirituality in health and wellness. She holds a doctorate in adult and community education and is currently an associate adjunct professor for Pratt Art Institute in New York City and for the University of Oklahoma Master’s in Counseling program.
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Support for this week's podcast comes from SDI Journeys. SDI has been leading passionate travelers on spiritual journeys around the world for over 25 years -  not just vacations, but truly exceptional trips filled with inspiring and enriching experiences. We have upcoming journeys planned for 2020- in Iona Scotland, and an Ignatian Journey through Spain. Explore our site to find out more – sdijourneys.org.

EP046 - Roleplaying Games as Spiritual Companionship - Rabbi Menachem Cohen

 
On this podcast we share a diverse range of stories and practices that involve spiritual companionship, and where I really get excited is when people are inventive and creative with the ways in which spiritual companionship is expressed and practiced. So it is with deep joy that I present this episode to you – the intersections of spiritual companionship and roleplaying games!
Frederica Helmiere talks with Rabbi Menachen Cohen, whose work and research involves the use of role playing games (of which the best known is Dungeons and Dragons) can be utilized as a medium for spiritual companionship. Rather than playing a mythical character, the player is actually able to put something of themselves into the character, or even test out some characteristics of one’s True nature that perhaps have been repressed or hidden in one’s everyday life. The roleplaying game becomes a safe space for trying out the traits and ethics that one might desire to live out in their actual lives.
Rabbi Menachem is presenting a workshop on this topic at our 2020 Conference in Santa Fe, which you can check out by registering for our conference at sdievents.org.
Rabbi Menachem’s own website is whatmakesyoucomealive.net.

EP045 - My Boss is a Zen Priest - On Metamorphosis

This week I’m running the lastest episode of a series I’m calling “My Boss is a Zen Priest” –  so my boss is SDI’s Executive Director, Reverend Seifu Anil Singh-Molares. He’s my manager and he provides oversight on the things I’m working on, and he’s also an ordained priest in the Zen Buddhist tradition. We have weekly one-on-one check in meetings, where I tell him about the things I’m working on, and he provides feedback and insight. And because we work at SDI and my boss is a zen priest, that feedback and insight often delves into deep dives around spirituality.
In this conversation we talk about our most recent publication of Listen – a digital publication that you can read on our website, sdiworld.org – and the inspiration for Rev. Seifu’s article, and my illustrations, on the concept of metamorphosis.
As you listen to this conversation, and all the metaphors we contemplate as descriptors for the spiritual journey, I invite you to reflect on this point in your own journey, and how you might define it.
As you reflect on your own sacred story, and yes your own story is indeed sacred, what are some metaphors you would use to tell this story? What’s in that cocoon of yours right now, being combusted? I invite you to journal on these questions, and share with a spiritual companion.
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Support for this podcast comes from Spiritual Companionship For Our Times, SDI’s annual gathering of spiritual companions happening in Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 23 – 26 2020. Registrations are now open, with Super Early Bird pricing through September 15th. We’ll be celebrating SDI’s 30th Anniversary, and charting the road ahead as we seek to welcome more and more people to the transformational gifts of spiritual companionship, and to make this healing modality available to every person on the planet. 
Learn more now about our annual conference at www.sdievents.org.

Ep044 - Finding Agency in Brokenness and Embracing Change - Bayo Akomolafe and Jiordi Rosales - Part 2

The next two podcasts revolve around a conversation between SDI staff and two curators of The Emergence Network -learn more about their work at emergencenetwork.org. Bayo Akomolafe will be familiar to some of you – he was a keynote speaker at our Annual Conference in March 2019, and recently facilitated an SDI Webinar. He was joined by co-curator Jiordi Rosales, our executive director Rev Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, and Director of Events and Programs Frederica Helmiere.
This conversation came out of a retreat space, and they’re driving in the car, so there’s automobile noise. I also debriefed their conversation with Frederica, which we hope will frame the conversation they are having around seeing, openness, and brokenness. It’s an invitation to explore  how we interact with one-another, some of the sacred assumptions we operate out of, and what it means to companion during these troubled times.
Last week’s episode was about grief – accepting that things die – not just people but systems, institutions, and ecologies. Grief is real and we learn to experience it well, but we also, in finding that death is a normal and natural part of everything, learn how to work with it, be in relationship with it, and to practice hope and resilience.
This episode contains Part 2 of our dialog. Please check out Part 1 of this episode here.
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Support for this podcast comes from Spiritual Companionship For Our Times, SDI’s annual gathering of spiritual companions happening in Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 23 – 26 2020. Registrations are now open, with Super Early Bird pricing through September 15th. We’ll be celebrating SDI’s 30th Anniversary, and charting the road ahead as we seek to welcome more and more people to the transformational gifts of spiritual companionship, and to make this healing modality available to every person on the planet. 
Learn more now about our annual conference at www.sdievents.org.

EP043 - An Invitation to Brokenness - Bayo Akomolafe and Jiordi Rosales - Part 1

The next two podcasts revolve around a conversation between SDI staff and two curators of The Emergence Network -learn more about their work at emergencenetwork.org. Bayo Akomolafe will be familiar to some of you – he was a keynote speaker at our Annual Conference in March 2019, and recently facilitated an SDI Webinar. He was joined by co-curator Jiordi Rosales, our executive director Rev Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, and Director of Events and Programs Frederica Helmiere.
This conversation came out of a retreat space, and they’re driving in the car, so there’s automobile noise. I also debriefed their conversation with Frederica, which we hope will frame the conversation they are having around seeing, openness, and brokenness. It’s an invitation to explore  how we interact with one-another, some of the sacred assumptions we operate out of, and what it means to companion during these troubled times. Having listened to these conversations I contemplate an exploration of the boundaries of spiritual companionship, and finding new avenues for being in the world – how to live, how to die, and allow for things to die well.
This episode contains Part 1 of our dialog. In next week's episode, we'll publish Part 2.
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Support for this podcast comes from Spiritual Companionship For Our Times, SDI’s annual gathering of spiritual companions happening in Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 23 – 26 2020. Registrations are now open, with Super Early Bird pricing through September 15th. We’ll be celebrating SDI’s 30th Anniversary, and charting the road ahead as we seek to welcome more and more people to the transformational gifts of spiritual companionship, and to make this healing modality available to every person on the planet. 
Learn more now about our annual conference at www.sdievents.org.