Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Podcast

Afleveringen

1. Money as a spiritual practice with Raffaello Manacorda

   5 november 2026 · 1 uur

   Afspelen
   Money, like sex, is charged with shame and guilt, rarely discussed at the dinner table, and impossible to opt out of. In this episode, Simon welcomes back Raffaello “Raffa” Manacorda: ISTA lead facilitator, member of ISTA’s governing council, and a self-described practical philosopher who has spent the past decade exploring money as a portal to self-knowledge and embodied living. Lees meer

   Raffa spent more than ten years living in communities with very little money, and he shares how a repressed desire for more ease with it eventually pushed him to stop avoiding money and start studying it with the same curiosity he brings to sexuality.

   Raffa makes the case that much of our pain around money comes from a mismatch between our bodies and an increasingly abstract, digital financial system. Our nervous systems evolved to handle food, shelter, and land, not numbers on a screen, yet money remains deeply emotional. He explores the pull between fear and greed in the markets, why money is one of the most ruthless and honest mirrors for shadow work, and what it means to keep your sense of self steady whether your account is up or down.

   The conversation also gets practical:

   Why knowing the exact details of any debt you carry is non-negotiable.

   Retirement as a question of values: do you want to keep working, or sit in a garden writing poetry?

   Cryptocurrency as the “electric ether” element, and a gateway into wider financial education.

   Why understanding compound interest and inflation is a basic survival skill.

   Starting points for learning, from Investopedia to YouTube to mentorship.

   For anyone living paycheck to paycheck and feeling the world slip away financially, Raffa offers a grounded first step: not investing, but getting informed.

   This episode is for anyone who has avoided their bank balance, felt torn between spiritual values and financial needs, or wondered what an embodied relationship with money might feel like.

   Find Raffa at raffaello.life, where you can join the w…

2. Different minds, same space: making workshops work for neurodivergent people with Javi Martinez

   20 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 16 min

   Afspelen
   What does it take to make a transformational space work for people whose nervous systems process the world differently? In this episode, host Simon Marvell speaks with Javi Martinez, a licensed mental health counselor, ISTA faculty member, and caretaker of ISTA's feedback stream. In her day job, Javi works mostly with autistic clients, and she brings that clinical experience into a frank conversation about how neurodivergent people experience workshops, retreats and trainings like ISTA's, and what facilitators and participants can do to make those spaces better. Lees meer

   Javi describes autism as a different form of intelligence rather than a disorder, often marked by intense emotional depth, literal thinking, and a longing to know "the rules" of flirting, touch and connection. She broadens the discussion to ADHD, complex trauma and borderline personality disorder, looking at both their challenges and their gifts, from rejection sensitivity to the "superpower" of hyperfocus.

   The real gold here is where Javi gives tips on how to make these spaces more accommodating for people with neurodivergencies. She speaks about:

   Sensory load: emotional release sounds, loud music, incense and essential oils, and several people talking at once.

   Course descriptions that state the real level of intensity, including practices like extended eye gazing.

   Welcoming stimming, pacing and comfort items.

   Reading silence as possible deep presence rather than disconnection, and seeing lots of questions as a way of arriving at genuine consent rather than "being in your head."

   The episode closes with a question that applies to everyone: when we feel discomfort, is it showing us a real edge to grow through, or a nervous system that needs care? Javi explains why participants, not just facilitators, need tools to tell the difference.

   This episode is for facilitators, space-holders, and anyone who has felt out of step in a group process.

   Find Javi through her faculty profile at: https://ista.life/pr…

3. Leadership, energy, and the shamanic path with Juan Es Alzate

   1 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 18 min

   Afspelen
   Born in Medellín, Colombia, and raised in Chicago listening to hip hop, ISTA facilitator Juan Es Alzate never imagined he would become a shaman. In his early adult years, he ran a successful club-night promotions company, immersed in a scene that didn’t seem to require traversing subtle worlds in the way that only shamans can. Or so he thought. Lees meer

   A first awakening through Reiki, followed by a dramatic second encounter with the plant medicine ayahuasca, sparked Juan Es’s discovery of his gifts as a healer. He found that he could clearly hear his inner guidance and finely attune to the needs of others. These were powerful moments—strikes of lightning, as he describes them—but they marked only the beginning of his training.

   What he has discovered in the decades since, and what he shares with us in this episode, is an approach to leadership grounded in the energetic and environmental awareness he has developed along his path. For Juan Es, leadership is very different from “being the boss.” It requires a wider vision, an orientation towards synergy, and a willingness to take responsibility for the change you want to see in the world.

   Any leader might align with these values. Bringing a shamanic perspective to them, however, means learning to trust your capacity to perceive and engage with subtle energy. That can require a leap of faith—and, for Juan Es, one place to begin is by turning inward and working with the seemingly unsolvable problems within yourself.

   Juan Es speaks about his own journey from nightlife promoter to healer, shaman and facilitator, and about the importance of following the path that genuinely calls you. It may look very different from the paths others are taking. But, as his story suggests, much of our difficulty can arise when we ignore or resist that calling.

   Find out more about Juan Es:
   https://www.luminoushealer.com/
   @juan.es.alzate

   And find out more about ISTA:
   https://ista.life/
   @ista.community

   Support the show

4. You're going to die: get intimate with death

   29 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 8 min

   Afspelen
   What happens when we stop treating death as life’s great failure? In this conversation, Atilla Çidam explores what he calls an intimacy with death: a willingness to encounter aging, loss, heartbreak and impermanence rather than organizing our lives around their avoidance. His provocative idea of the “ecstasy of decay” asks whether the marks of time on the body might be approached with curiosity, tenderness and even celebration. Lees meer

   The conversation moves through three kinds of death: the death of the body, the death of what we love, and the death of identity. Attila argues that facing impermanence can change how we love, loosening the impulse to grasp, manage and control the people around us. Rather than making life less precious, the knowledge that everything passes can make our participation in it more immediate and wholehearted.

   From tantric charnel-ground practices to contemporary transformational work, Simon Marvell and Atilla consider what it means to build the capacity to stay present with experiences we would rather escape. Their discussion ultimately expands beyond the personal: what might our communities, politics and economies look like if they were not built around a fear of death? For Attila, intimacy with death is fundamentally life-affirming: an invitation to recognise impermanence and commit more fully to being alive.

   About Atilla Çidam

   Atilla is an ISTA facilitator with a PhD in psychology whose earlier career involved designing programs with governments, the World Bank and UNICEF. He left that career to study dance, movement, Tantra and shamanism, shifting his work toward an integration of mind, body, emotion, soul and spirit. He is a co-founder of Dance Meets Tantra and Emergency Brotherhood, and his current work explores intimacy, transformation, embodiment and our relationship with death.

   In this episode

   Attila introduces three domains of intimacy with death: the impermanence of the body, the inevitable loss of what and whom we love, and the …

5. Japan's Forgotten Sacred Sexual Rituals

   13 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 17 min

   Afspelen
   Imagine if sexuality wasn’t separate from spirituality, but woven into the sacred landscape itself? Lees meer

   In this episode, Simon speaks with ISTA faculty member Aya Kamānakai about her journey to reconnect with the ancient sexual and spiritual traditions of Japan. Born in Japan but raised largely abroad, Aya describes how returning to facilitate ISTA trainings in her homeland opened an unexpected path back to her ancestry. She rediscovered a culture in which sexuality, spirituality, nature, and ritual have long been intertwined.

   Their conversation traverses Shinto animism, erotic shunga art, sacred phallic and vulvic shrines, sexual festivals, kami, ritual rope, queer and transgender expression, and Japanese understandings of sexuality as life force. Aya shares about traditions that remain alive today, from shrines dedicated to sexual deities to festivals where enormous phallic omikoshi are carried through the streets.

   Aya and Simon also explore what happens when cultures become disconnected from these traditions. They consider the effects of religious suppression, Westernisation and modernity, and ask what it might mean to recover ancestral knowledge without romanticising or bypassing the more difficult parts of our histories.

   Perhaps we’re living through a time of increased cultural remembering, Aya suggests. She invites you to become curious about your own ancestry, the land beneath your feet, and the forms of embodied and animist knowledge that may still exist beneath the surface of contemporary life.

   Support the show

6. The Art of Repair: healing ruptures and deepening intimacy with Dr. Hazel-Grace Yates

   21 juli 2026 · 1 uur 5 min

   Afspelen
   What if conflict wasn't something to dread, but a doorway to deeper intimacy? Lees meer

   In this rich conversation, Usha Rose sits down with Dr. Hazel-Grace Yates, intimacy and relationship coach, somatic practitioner, and creator of The REPAIR Process™.

   With a PhD in Human Sexuality and over two decades of facilitation experience, Dr. Hazel-Grace blends nervous system regulation, kink-aware communication, and embodied practice to help people move from reactivity and shutdown into courageous, heart-open repair.

   At the core of their work is a simple teaching: conflict is not a failure of intimacy, it is the initiation into it. Dr. Hazel-Grace walks us through why slowing down before any difficult conversation is essential, how to resource your nervous system, and why it's valuable to acknowledge any power dynamics present before entering the repair conversation. From empathy and permission all the way to restoring integrity, this is a framework for finding your way back to trust and connection after any rupture, big or small.

   Whether you're healing a deep breach of trust in your most intimate relationship or wanting to feel less activated when you run into someone in the world, this episode offers a compassionate, embodied map for finding your way back to each other, and to yourself.

   Find Dr. Hazel-Grace at drhazelgrace.com

   Or on Instagram: @drhazelgrace

   Support the show

7. Creating from Eros with Arion Light

   30 juni 2026 · 55 min

   Afspelen
   In this episode, our host Luis Pinto speaks to Arion Light about how to create your life, relations, and livelihood from your Eros. Lees meer

   Arion's insights come from a lifetime of coaching clients and soul-searching. Most importantly, consistently letting go of any rigid identity and connecting with something deeper, what he calls our "Essence."

   He speaks about how he discovered his greatest Love through his wife's passing from cancer. He was left to raise their 2-year old without her, an experience which cracked him open to feel just how precious our life-force really is. He now calls this Love his "Boss."

   The conversation also explores:

   how YOU can get embodied references to transform your reality, and actual stories from his clients and friends.

   how he created the Embodied Business Institute and helps conscious entrepreneurs–or "Wisdom Business owners" as he calls them–build businesses from the ground up from the vibrating pulse in their core.

   Tune in for this alive transmission, especially if you've been searching for practical ways to live your life aligned to your true purpose.

   To get in touch with Arion, you can visit his website: www.arionlight.com
   or Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/arion.light

   Support the show

8. Following Your Impulses with Komala Lyra

   26 februari 2026 · 1 uur 4 min

   Afspelen
   Komala Lyra has been teaching the art of realness for decades. That might sound strange. Isn’t everything real? But Komala helps people distinguish between what is truly authentic for them and what comes from external expectations. She guides people to become sensitive to their inner experience, to what life is calling them toward, and to what is happening in their hearts and bodies. Lees meer

   Following your impulses, she suggests, can lead you down the path of realness. In this episode, Komala speaks with Simon about how learning to trust those inner signals can open the door to a more liberated life.

   Along the way, she shares three powerful insights. When we listen to our impulses and say “yes” to them, we invite transformation. Ayurveda offers a framework for understanding how we digest not only food but also energy and experience. And when someone disappoints us, it can be a valuable opportunity to reflect on why we did not see it coming.

   These ideas may sound bold, even provocative, but Komala presents them with warmth, care, and deep humanity. She shares personal stories, including deciding to marry her partner after knowing him for just 24 hours, growing up in an environment where her body could move freely, and why she enjoys knitting, even in the height of summer.

   Simon and Komala also discuss her latest book, Intimacy: Ayurveda & Sexuality, as well as the immersive community experiences she hosts on her land in southern Portugal.

   Tune in for an intimate, thought-provoking, and joyful conversation.

   To learn more about Komala and her work, visit her links:

   Website: https://www.komalalyra.com/

   Land project, Monte California: https://www.montecalifornia.net/

   Latest book: Intimacy: Ayurveda & Sexuality (2025)

   Instagram: @komalalyra

   And to learn more about ISTA, visit our website:

   https://ista.life/

   Or follow us on Instagram: @ista.community

   Support the show

9. Repair in relationships: the key to living in integrity with Mischa Byruck

   30 januari 2026 · 1 uur 11 min

   Afspelen
   In this episode, men’s coach Mischa Byruck shares how we can use our biggest mistakes as catalysts for profound personal transformation. Lees meer

   For Mischa, coming to terms with our mistakes leads to a deeper understanding of what true integrity means. Integrity is not just about following rules, but about aligning your actions with your foundational values and being in wholeness with yourself. It is a nuanced, lifelong practice, not a state of perfection.

   And there are many life-enhancing benefits of this inner work: a sense of calm, satisfaction, and the ability to walk through the world with pride in how you're living.

   But this process cannot be completed alone. Mischa underscores the importance of having accountability structures and being open to feedback from others to maintain this integrity.

   Whether you're looking to deepen your own self-awareness and authenticity, or seeking to support others in this journey, this episode offers valuable insights. Mischa’s expertise as a men's integrity coach, combined with his humble, relational approach, make this a must-listen for anyone interested in personal transformation and building a more whole, integrated life.

   About Mischa:

   Mischa Byruck is a men's integrity coach who supports his clients to turn their biggest mistakes into their greatest opportunities for transformation. He also consults organizations to bring accountability, power awareness, and trauma-informed practices into leadership. Mischa is certified in somatic trauma therapy with extensive training in harm reduction, counseling, sexuality, and anti-racism. His clients include Sacred Sons, ISTA, kink.com, and DanceSafe.

   Support the show

10. Magick: listening to the current of life with Dane Tomas

    8 januari 2026 · 1 uur 17 min

    Afspelen
    There are moments when effort ceases to have the effect it once did. When pushing, planning, and deciding create more tension than less. At these junctures, we can sense that the next step won’t come from thinking harder, but from listening more deeply. Lees meer

    In this episode, Simon Marvell is joined by artist, creator, and transformational guide, Dane Tomas, for an exploration of how we can each embrace magick, release ourselves into sensitivity, and learn to listen to the current of life.

    Dane shares his understanding of magick not as spectacle or superstition, but as intentional action aligned with the deepest layers of self, cosmos, and consciousness. He guides us through the relationship between will and surrender, and the surprising overlap between the path of the magician and the path of the mystic.

    The conversation weaves through themes of cultural lineage and spiritual inheritance, questioning where our practices come from and what it means to work with traditions that genuinely fit our bodies, nervous systems, and lived realities. Dane reflects on his journey through Western esotericism, sex magic, shadow work, and non-dual practice, and on the moments where letting go of identity became a doorway to profound change.

    A central thread of the episode is listening to the current: learning to attune not just intellectually, but somatically and energetically, to what wants to move through us — in ritual, creativity, sexuality, and major life decisions.

    This episode invites a shift in orientation away from forcing clarity, and toward trusting the subtle movements already shaping our lives.

    To learn more about Dane’s work, visit his links:

    👉 https://www.danetomas.com/
    👉Instagram: @dane.tomas

    If you loved this episode, please rate the podcast and share it with your friends — it helps this work reach more people.

    To learn more about ISTA, visit our links:

    👉 https://ista.life/
    👉 Instagram: @ista.community

    Support the show

Alle 73 afleveringen →