Spirituality | Inner Work Archives - The Quake City Portal

QCP #031 | Karen Nani Apana, Ph.D. | The Questions We Live With, Higher Worlds, and How to Find Stillness in Biography Work

Prisma Coloring Courtesy of Edwin Hacking

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Dr. Karen Apana is one of the founding members of the San Francisco Waldorf School – first founded in 1978. She has been a lifetime teacher, mentor, and student of Anthroposophy for over 40 years. For over 25 years, she has been teaching biography work and has a private practice for biography counseling in San Francisco. She also holds frequent biography workshops all over the Bay Area, and although she is now retired as a Waldorf teacher, she still mentors and advises teachers in the Bay Area and all over the globe.

She was born and raised in San Francisco, and as you’ll find out in this conversation, she is a local, cosmic gem. In this conversation, you’ll learn about Anthroposophy and some of the philosophies behind Rudolph Steiner. She also offers a firsthand account of someone born into a generation of San Francisco coming into social consciousness during the 1960s, which eventually set the stage for many spiritual seekers, creators, activists, artists, and life enthusiasts today.

QCP #026 | Julie Rogers of TLC Transitional Life Care | On TLC, End of Life, Working with Grief, and Dharma

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Julie Rogers is the Founder and Director of TLC Transitional Life Care, a Vajrayana Buddhist non-profit organization dedicated to the education and support of individuals and their families during the end-of-life transition. This program is centered in the SF Bay Area and southern Oregon, and is available online and via Zoom. She is a writer, author, mother, educator, and administrator, and has been a caregiver and hospice volunteer, as well as a Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist for almost 40 years.

QCP #024 | Martin Jay Ruiz | Roll, Fall, Get Up: The Way of Wrestling and Skating

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Martin Jay Ruiz is someone that found his way on a skateboard and later on to the wrestling mat as a troubled youth. At an early age, he found the blank canvases of the skate deck and the wrestling mat to be the wide-open spaces that allowed his soul the room for infinite expansion. To this day, his heart never lost its passion for the two mediums.

He came from the streets of Santa Maria, California, pulled to the magnetic energy of San Francisco – a pilgrimage for skaters because of its steep, long, concrete hills that can send one bombing down a dance between weightlessness and death.

As a former collegiate wrestler for SF State, he became the wrestling coach for Lowell High School, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the United States. Under his tutelage, he’s coached both boys and girls to multiple state championships. Martin also coaches wrestling to adults at Fight Culture Gym in Daly City; he earned his Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and is still an active competitor at thirty-three.

QCP #022 | Stephanie Crawford, Death Doula | Death is Not Taboo

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Our next guest, Stephanie Crawford, is a hospice care nurse and Death Doula. She recently founded Awakened Endings – an end of life service and community dedicated to helping others understand and prepare for a better death.

QCP #020 | Victor Thai, Tech Shaman and Conduit to the Psychedelic Realm

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Victor Thai is one of the most interesting people I know. He’s the son of Vietnamese refugees and grew up as one of the only Asian kids in Richmond, Virginia.

I met him five years ago, training Jiu-Jitsu at the same gym where we spent a lot of nights after class doing some extra rolls. He was a newcomer to San Francisco from Virginia, and he introduced me to my first few psychedelic experiences.

He grew mushrooms from home, stocks a variety of teas in his pantry, owns fancy teacups and tea sets, and is one of the most fluid and creative competitors I’ve ever had the chance to share the mat with.

QCP #017 | Tom Brown III | How Reconnecting with Nature Teaches Resilience, Self-Reliance, and Awareness

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YOUTUBE STREAM here.

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Tom Brown III is the founder of FutureNature and T3Photography. He is a lifelong practitioner and living guide of ancestral skills, a frequent contributor, and a consultant to the Anchored Outdoors network. He is a lifelong practitioner of ancestral skills under his father Tom Brown Jr. – prolific author and Founder of Tracker Wilderness Survival School.

Tom has devoted his life to passing on his knowledge of these skills. He works diligently as an educator, a steward of the land, to help return the connection to the natural world and awareness back to our wild selves.

He joins us from his homestead in Oregon by Mount Hood – his home base for sharing his knowledge and experience through teaching, writing, and photography. He hopes to, in his words, “help people see Nature through his eyes, leading them to understand that spectacular natural beauty can be found anywhere, no matter where you may be.”

I believe that our ability to be resilient is not gone; it’s simply re-awakening what we already have innately in us through the examples of how our ancestors lived and what people like Tom bring to light. To recognize our abundance, that we do have it all, and that there is always much to learn about our home here on earth and how to undo our distractions, even if only a little bit, to become better stewards of the land.

It was an honor to sit with Tom III and listen intently as he shared his passion for learning and sharing some of the knowledge passed on to him by his father, Tom Brown Jr., and his grandfather, Stalking Wolf, who taught his father. And it was also great to hear some perspective from someone who, through his lifetime devotion to a life outdoors and educating others to find their own way in life, figures out ways of balancing both modern and primitive aspects of our human experience.

NOTES | MENTIONS

TOM BROWN III LINKS AND MORE INFORMATION

Find Tom’s work and class schedules here https://www.tombrown3.com/
Tom demos the Proper way to walk in Nature
The Tracker School
Tom’s Trusted Organizations for Further Education

QCP #014 | Ivan C Lopez – Artist, Ceramicist + Muralist | Healing Through Creativity, Plant Medicine, And Listening To The Universe

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Ivan C Lopez is an artist from San Francisco by way of Columbia. He co-founded and helped build Artillery Art Gallery – a creative community space in the heart of the Mission. His passion to provide space for community inspires others to find what has been explorative and healing for him. Through ceramics and painting, Ivan hopes to bring balance; within a connection to the natural world alongside the concrete walls of the city.

I wanted to speak with Ivan because he connects this idea of the modern human being returning to our wild selves by communing with our indigenous selves. Not only through embracing creativity, but through encouraging and teaching others to pick up a brush to play with colors. Or taking a lump of clay and sitting at a table to be creative together. In this way, we embrace our childlike curiosity to explore and meditate upon the infinite ways of knowing ourselves, just in the same way we were created from virtually nothing.

In this conversation, Ivan shares his creative process, his journey in his lifetime exploration of art, self-discovery, and community.

Please enjoy this stream of consciousness conversation beneath a canopy of redwood trees in McClaren Park San Francisco, on Ohlone Rammaytus land – with the artist, the wild human, the mindfully grounded, Ivan Camilo Lopez.

Ivan’s Instagram: @ivanclopez
Artillery Art Gallery
Ivan’s Art here.

SHOW NOTES

QCP #011 | River Pember, Early Childhood Teacher | Finding Balance Through Embracing Feminine Energy

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River has a passion for holistic teaching. Beginning with her experience with the Wilderness Youth Project, and now with her work teaching at a Waldorf Elementary School aftercare program.

While teaching early childhood students at the school, she also trains to officially become a Waldorf Education teacher. As a graduate from UC Santa Barbara, she earned a Bachelors’s Degree in Feminist studies. Some of the many experiences that she graciously shares on this episode include traveling abroad to Thailand where she studied Buddhist Social Theory, and was welcomed to spend time around an all-women sect of Buddhist monks.

When she’s not teaching she can be found sailing in the San Francisco Bay or spinning a fire hula hoop.

RESOURCES + SUPPORT FOR TRANS/ LGBTQ+ COMMUNITIES IN SAN FRANCISCO/ BAY AREA

NOTES | MENTIONS | RESOURCES

QCP #010 | Emerging Stronger from Pregnancy Loss

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Meet our dear friends, Ria and Raul Pelayo. In their four years of marriage, they come forward with their struggles in starting a family due to recurring pregnancy loss. Despite the heavy topic of discussion, they bring such a cheerful, light hearted energy.

We are also joined by my wife, JoAnn. Both of us wanted to do an episode like this from the beginning of starting this podcast, but couldn’t conceptualize what, or how it could be done until Ria came forward with her forth miscarriage on social media. Together, we hope to provide a safe space to empower others to start their own conversations or seek help in dealing with grief, loss, trauma – the things that are hard to bring up casually, or are considered “downers” to bring up in conversation.

This is not a substitute for professional help, and we strongly encourage those who struggle with anything to seek help.

Ria and Raul have graciously offered to be a resource to those experiencing similar struggles on social media via Instagram:

Ria Pelayo | @rialittleteapot

Raul Pelayo | @coolraul

NOTES | MENTIONS | RESOURCES:

QCP #008 | Toño Ramirez | Finding The River of Our Authentic Self

Apple podcast link | click here.

Toño Ramirez is a free spirit, a truth-seeker, an explorer. I’ll stop there because he, in my opinion, is only bogged down by more labels. I first met him on a trash cleanup organized by Vince of RefuseRefuseSF.org (our first guest on the podcast).

Toño (alias used for privacy purposes) earned a bachelor’s degree from The Ohio State University, a master’s degree from UC Berkley, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. All degrees in his background are in the field of Mechanical Engineering.

I was hoping to have a discussion to learn about engineering, and how they might apply to set goals, to create something actionable for me and whoever listens. However, I ended up keeping my notebook closed and tucked away because what follows is something more spontaneous, honest, alive, and profound in so many ways I never expected. This conversation touches on many topics and would be beneficial for those who currently struggle or who have struggled with loneliness, compulsions and addictions, depression, or anyone questioning their self-worth.

I hope you’ll hear Toño is someone that has done the work and is an example of if you look and let the universe do its thing, embrace your truth, embrace your truest self with love, that (in his words) “the universe/everything will conspire to reward you.”

Please enjoy this dip into a winding river of conversation with Toño Ramirez.

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