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Carrying on with “business as usual” is not working for humanity. It’s not working for the rest of the planet either.
The good news is that Business as Usual isn't the whole story.
"The Great Unraveling" is part of the story, too. As we all can see, there are many intersecting crises happening around the world.
And here at Turning Season we're focusing on a third plotline: the global adventure story Joanna Macy has called "The Great Turning":
our collective shift toward life-honoring, life-sustaining ways of being human.
I’m Leilani Navar. I'm a Chinese Medicine Practitioner, a Dreamworker, a mother, and a lover of Earth and great conversation.
As I write this, I'm among piñon and juniper trees, feeling at home, and feeling well. But I grew up in a land of orange trees, palms, and a whole lot of concrete, with multiple health challenges.
One day, when I was in high school, my naturopath told me I needed to eat more raw food. As I was speaking the question, "You mean, straight out of the produce section?", he was saying the words, "Straight out of the ground."
Oh. Right.
A suburban kid, I was definitely disconnected, but also deeply concerned.
I was seven when I heard about pollution and the ozone layer, and started a branch of the club Kids for Saving Earth. We started by picking up trash. We collected dimes to buy an acre of rainforest. In high school I moved into environmental activism. At sixteen, excited about improving my own health holistically, and seeing the connections between personal and global health, I knew my work was going to be in natural medicine. I began my training in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts with NATSTA in 2007, and earned a Masters Degree in Oriental Medicine at NUNM in 2012. Post-graduation, I realized I had never seen a sustainable, balanced way of life, and wanted to find one.
Now, 30 years after collecting those first dimes, I'm living in a yurt in the mountains of Utah with my husband and two children, continuing to heal and grow, and deepening my love for being alive. We grow food (straight out of the ground), our kids play in the woods, we're in a small community where people look out for each other, and we live in as balanced, reciprocal a relationship with the Earth as we can.
We’re not off the grid, we still drive cars, and we buy things wrapped in plastic, but our hearts are full and we’re rising to our own roles in The Great Turning.
I serve the community here in my clinical practice, offering acupuncture, herbal medicine, and qigong. I help people tend to their physical and emotional health - and the connection between them - through practical wisdom from Chinese Medicine, and insights from their own dreams. In personal health and global outlook, it lights me up to see people feel relief, and a new sense of possibility.
To keep me heartened, actively hopeful, and honoring my pain for the world, I turn regularly to the work of Joanna Macy, who's been bringing her incredible heart and brilliant mind to meet these times since before I was born. "The Great Turning" is a term of Joanna's, and refers to one of "The Three Stories of Our Time." You'll hear more about all three stories on the podcast.
EPISODES
Episode 16: News on Amazonian Women’s Healing Center, International Treaty on Plastics, and Reconnection Ecology at Wildlife Sanctuary
This is the first “news” episode of Turning Season Podcast. I had the idea to do short episodes like this while listening to a 5-minute NPR podcast a few months ago. It was a very quick, back-to-back series of stories with the sense: “Here’s what you should know.” It included something like, updates on war…
LISTEN NOWEpisode 15: The Non-GMO Project, Right Relationship, and How Powerful Each of Us Truly Is (with Megan Westgate)
Have you ever noticed that little butterfly on some packaged foods, labeled “Non-GMO Project VERIFIED?” Maybe you even look for the butterfly before you buy, and feel better about eating what’s inside because of it. That’s you exercising your power in one of the most intimate ways possible: how you take food into your own…
LISTEN NOWEpisode 14: The Body is Our Gateway (with Petra Bongartz)
How do we get from, “We know we have to change,” to “We’re actually changing”? As a society, or even as individuals? As you’ll hear my guest Petra Bongartz say at the beginning of this episode, we’ve known for a long time that we need to change – and yet, we haven’t changed. Why not?…
LISTEN NOW