Robert Wing Sensei is the founder of the Mountain Warrior Institute, Warrior of the Heart seminars, and the director of Wise Actions. As an Aikido practitioner, Wing Sensei is a student of both Koichi Kashiwaya Sensei and Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan, and founder of the Aikido curriculum at Naropa University, where he continues as the senior teacher of its Aiki-ken and Aiki-Jo club on campus in Boulder, Colorado.

In this episode, we talk with Wing Sensei about three types of language (representational, immediate, and structural), Aikido as a structural language, the asking of ‘physical questions’ in the martial arts, ‘internal martial arts,’ the meaning of ‘ai’ (harmony) and ‘ki’ (energy), ‘effective distance’ and ‘joining’ in Aikido, the idea of conflict and ‘entering and turning’ into it, fighting and not-fighting, his seminar 'the Art of Hosting Important Questions,' and centering and the effective use and right application of power.

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Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is a fellow student of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, an author and psychotherapist focusing on intergenerational trauma, and one of the senior rabbis of the Jewish Renewal movement. Tirzah is the author of Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom, and the newly republished With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith.

In this episode, we talk about the evolution of Tirzah's work on intergenerational trauma, pros and cons of the popularization of the concept of 'trauma,' Tirzah's recent teaching trip to Berlin amidst the rise of Neo-Fascist politics, Jewish & Israeli reactions to the events of Oct. 7th as an unhealthy trauma response, the conflation of Jewish identity with Jewish nationalism, the search for authority in the opinions of Reb Zalman (Tirzah and Netanel's teacher), Reb Zalman's desire to pray across dividing lines and include God in worldly decisions and problems, the 'seeds' we inherit from our ancestors and which we choose to water, the potentially transformative impact of psychologically based ancestral healing, and the image of the two cherubs atop the Holy of Holies as a metaphor for masculine/feminine balance.

You can learn more about Tirzah and her work on her website.

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Rory McEntee is the the President and Executive Director of Charis Foundation for New Monasticism and Interspirituality, which he co-founded with Netanel Miles-Yépez and Adam Bucko. Rory holds a Ph.D. in Theological and Philosophical Studies in Religion from Drew University, has co-authored The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living, and authored the forthcoming The Sacred/Secular Binary: Challenging the Divide in University Culture and Democratic Societies.

In this episode, we look at the different ways in which people are ‘interspiritual’ today and how interspirituality is not separate from historical religious traditions. We also explore the ’spiritual-but-not-religious,’ an interspiritual path, the idea of ‘depth’ in spirituality, the sacred/secular binary, and meeting God in everything. We then look at inter spiritual practice, the vertical and horizontal aspects of Charis Meditation, Charis Circles and the possibilities of interspiritual community, as well as the Charis Snowmass Dialogues, and the twelve Charis Community Vows.

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