Based in the Tahoe Lake region of California, Nicole Brucato Cooley is a drama therapist, singer, musician, yoga teacher, and a real renaissance woman after my own heart. Nicole shares stories from her life and private therapy practice that have lead her to have many insights about the simple medicine of physical embodiment, human connection and the power of play. She also plays "Wayfaring Stranger" for us at the end! Bonus: Astrological Weather Report from Vedic astrologer Donny Boots.

Donny Boots is an Irish-American poet and Vedic astrologer who grew up in Queens, and happens to be the first Artist-in-Residence at The Nest. Donny sits down with me on a fine fall afternoon to talk about his training under a Taoist tea master in Oakland, his path to discovering his Celtic roots by studying Jyotish astrology and the King Arthur mythology that's showing up in the current new moon.

This is a very raw update on The Nightmare We Are Living from my little corner of the world-- reporting on the end of summer from the wild fire zone of Northern California. Hoping this helps all of you out there! This episode is just me talking into my phone while I water the marijuana plants. No script, filters or polish. Just me, talking to you. I'm keeping it real out here, ya'll, hope you are too. Follow the love!

This episode is about understanding the difference between an Artist and an influencer. For many years, influencers have occupied the space in popular culture and the Collective Imagination that is typically held by real Artists. Real Art transforms the creator and the audience, it comes into being through a collaboration with its locality— using everything and anything that is available— it’s a collaboration involving materials, labor, planning, creation and distribution— using all of your local resources— in your town or in your profession. And then it grows from there. In the way that Prince can thank the underground Minneapolis music scene for his origin— we all start somewhere small and local. Grass-roots style.

The best Art— meaning the Art that endures throughout history— is organic, as opposed to manufactured. Mistaking influencers for Artists is very dangerous for the health of the Culture. It’s the equivalent of mistaking corporate fast food for a farm-raised, home-cooked meal. I’m emphasizing the difference to help us understand what it is we’re missing in our souls right now, too. I want to us re-calibrate our senses and re-train ourselves to actively seek out irreplaceable, authentic passion— the radiating energetic vitality and alive-ness that is real and makes your loins swell! Our job now is to find and cultivate that passion in ourselves AND others.

Whatever your dream is, now is the time to go for it. There is no “better” time. There is only now.

If not now, when?

If not us, who?

In this episode, I explain my approach to doing shadow work...which, if you know me at all...you know damn well, that it's just as fun and weird as I am!  I was feeling like there is too much heavy stuff on the internet about shadow work being "dark"-- like it's some intense, scary confrontation. But being in the dark just means that it's not visible. So, I explain some of my ways in and the benefits of taking the time to learn this language-- so you can better integrate the wisdom of your dreams, intuition, imagination, shadow AND even your inner child-- into your conscious, waking life.

Dang. Life has been hard lately, hasn't it? I'm right there with you. This episode is about the anguish I'm having breaking up with my online spiritual teacher of 4 years, who doesn't know me at all. Because that's the world we live in. But I got to the limit this type of learning.  As I try to extract the lessons from it, I reflect on what it means to be a teacher, how culture can be thought of as soil for our consciousness and the work of real Artists of composting the shit and shadow of humanity in the underground so that beautiful things can grow.

Kim Manfredi is a prolific oil painter and one-time yoga guru who just opened a new public studio for her art in Palm Desert, CA. Many years ago, Kim founded a large yoga community in Baltimore, where she introduced yoga to thousands of people and trained hundreds of teachers, including Trixie! Recorded in-the-flesh in March 2021, this was the first time the teacher and student had seen each other since 2012. Trixie and Kim catch up in real time and Kim recounts her Covid experience, her journey from engineering major to finding art and yoga and they explore some of the ways spirituality and creativity intertwine.

Recorded days before of the debut of his first book— THE GOOD HAND—  this is a great conversation with friend, folksinger, playwright and fellow Artist, Mike, about his page turner of a memoir about a year he spent working on an oil field in North Dakota.