Nadia Colburn, PhD and Kelvy Bird discuss mindful art-making, the power of pausing, the power of creativity to see differently, and Kelvy’s book, Generative Scribing: A Social Art for the 21st Century. We also discuss the process of writing this book.
Align your story®
Align Your Story Interview Series
Interview with Leslie Salmon Jones: Afro Flow Yoga
Leslie Salmon Jones is a co-founder with her husband, Jeff Jones, of Afro Flow Yoga. This is an embodied practice integrating joyful dance movements of the African diaspora with meditative yoga and live music, promoting individual and collective healing in a compassionate, non-judgmental, inclusive, and safe environment. And since 2008, they've been committed to healing legacies of trauma worldwide.
Lisa Marie Rankin and Goddess Wisdom
Rankin is the author of The Goddess Solution: A Practical Spiritual Guide, published by HarperCollins. The book teaches women how to apply goddess wisdom to modern-day issues like sex, money, parenting, and divorce. She also teaches a six-week online program, The Goddess Solution Masterclass, that teaches women how to step into their feminine power to approach life with energy, confidence, and joy.
Devi Lockwood: Interview—Climate Stories, Ordinary People, Breaking Silence
Devi is the author of 1,001 Voices on Climate Change published by Simon & Schuster in August of 2021. She is currently the Commentary and Ideas editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Previously, she worked as an editor and writer at The New York Times Opinion Section and as the ideas editor at Rest of World. Devi spent five years traveling in 20 countries on six continents to document 1,001 stories on water and climate change.
Ross Gay: Interview—Be Holding, Gratitude, Delights
In this interview, I talked with Ross Gay about his wonderful work, his new book Be Holding, his Book of Delights, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, and how to practice, attention, gratitude, and care both in poetry and in our difficult but also joy-filled world.
Healing Presence: Interview with Sister Dang Nghiem
“My name is sister Dang Nghiem. ‘Dang Nghiem’ is Vietnamese for ‘Adornment with Nondiscrimintaion.’ My teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh (called Thay by his students), gave me that name when I ordained as a Buddhist nun in May 2000… I discover my name as I practice it. For me, nondiscrimination means to let go of the separation inside me, the idea that I am this and I am not that. It also means to let go of the discrimination that you are different from me and you will not understand me because of our different life experiences. This kind of discrimination brought me a lot of suffering and kept me feeling alienated and misunderstood. When I practice nondiscrimination, I gradually let go of that separation inside me and around me.”
Conscious Business & the Spiritual Wisdom of Sounds True: An Interview with Tami Simon
Tami Simon is the founder and CEO of Sounds True, a multimedia publishing company that Tami founded in 1985 at the age of 22 with the mission of disseminating spiritual wisdom. Today, still faithful to its original mission, Sounds True has grown to have nearly 110 employees and a library of close to 2000 titles featuring some of the leading teachers and visionaries of our time. Sounds True is a pioneer in the conscious business movement, and Tami leads in a way that values their multiple bottom lines, which include relationship and mission as well as profit.
The Healing of Narrative: An Interview with Lewis Mehl-Madrona
Lewis Mehl-Madrona is a pioneer in teaching about the transformative power of story in healing and in bringing together conventional medicine with Indigenous wisdom. He’s the author of six books, including the wonderful Coyote trilogy, Narrative Medicine, and most recently, with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. Trained at Stanford University as a medical doctor, Lewis is certified in psychiatry, geriatrics, and family medicine and also has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a specialization in neuropsychology.
The Miracle of Daily Practice: A Conversation with Snatam Kaur
SNATAM KAUR is an American singer, peace activist, and author raised in the Sikh and Kundalini Yoga tradition. She has an amazing ability to transform traditional Sikh chants of India into a contemporary sound that appeals to the modern ear and awakens an ancient yearning in the soul.
The Wisdom of Frances Moore Lappé Excerpt From World Hunger: 10 Myths
Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of 18 books including Diet for a Small Planet, which has sold more than three million copies worldwide. Frances was named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sin-clair, and Julia Child) whose work has changed the way the United States of America eats. Her most recent work is World Hunger: 10 Myths, which she and Joseph Collins wrote together (October 2015, Grove/Atlantic).
Attention As Prayer: Interview with Poet and Chaplain, Martha Serpas
Martha Serpas is the author of two collections of poetry, Côte Blanche (New Issues) and The Dirty Side of the Storm (W.W. Norton). Her third book The Diener, is coming out in 2015 from Louisiana State University Press. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Southwest Review, and Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion, as well as in a number of anthologies, including the Library of America’s American Religious Poems.
Nadia Colburn interviews Kelvy Bird about mindful art, how we see and Generative Scribing
Nadia Colburn, PhD talks with Melanie Brooks about her book Writing Hard Stories
Nadia Colburn talks to Melanie Brooks about her book Writing Hard Stories. When I began writing my memoir, “All the Things I Couldn’t Say,” I set out to put my story to rest. To let it go. But writing through it has, instead, given me something tangible to hold on to. I know now that a completed memoir will not be the closing chapter on my experience. A story like mine doesn’t really come to an end. I will carry it with me, and my life will continue to be shaped by the impact of the events. By giving its pieces words and contour and structure and meaning, I’m practicing ways to carry my story differently. I’m learning to balance it in a way that lets me see beyond it to some of those other stories I still have to tell.
– Melanie Brooks
Nadia Colburn and Harrison Blum on Embodied Buddhism
Nadia Colburn and Harrison Blum discuss embodied Buddhism, Buddhism and social justice and more.
Nadia Colburn and Jillian Pransky: on Deep Listening
Nadia Colburn interviews Jilian Pransky on the importance of listening to our bodies, calming our mind and body, and holding our stories better to come into greater awareness and purpose, and on Jillian Pransky’s book Deep Listening.
Copyright 2023 Nadia Colburn