For the People Podcast

In this deeply intimate episode, host Aliko Weste sits down with Chelsea for a vulnerable conversation about pregnancy, grief, love, motherhood, and the profound transitions that shape a human life.As Chelsea enters her third trimester, she reflects on the emotional threshold between maidenhood and motherhood, the tenderness of creating life while carrying grief, and the responsibility of becoming part of a continuing ancestral line. She opens up about losing her mother to a drunk driver, navigating her father’s terminal illness, and how deep pain became a catalyst for purpose, presence, and a fuller devotion to life.Chelsea also shares the extraordinary story of meeting her partner Giordani in Costa Rica, a love that began across a language barrier and grew through trust, devotion, and deep presence. Together, she and Aliko explore what it means to feel truly held, to heal old wounds with men, and to raise a son with a new vision of masculinity rooted in safety, tenderness, strength, and love.This episode is a soulful meditation on life and death, divine timing, immigration, partnership, ancestral healing, and the sacred responsibility of bringing new life into a changing world.Connect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/

Antonia Songbird is an elemental priestess, songstress, devotional dancer, writer, earth activist, and ceremonialist devoted to the healing of humanity and the earth. She creates sacred containers for personal healing and collective awakening — bringing people together through cacao ceremonies, song circles, interactive workshops, and tea pouring to raise consciousness and restore harmony between people and the elements. Antonia is the founder of Vibe Tribe Worldwide, a ceremony circle and event production organization, a temple dancer with GodMa Rising, and an active priestess serving the Goddess Temple of Ashland — where she holds weekly sacred circles.Connect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/

Arthur Wald is a lifelong meditator, entrepreneur, and spiritual teacher who guides others in accessing flow states for personal mastery. As a Director and Lead Facilitator at Know the Self Academy, he trains students in techniques for bridging inner work with real-world impact. A queer man in a long-term partnership, Arthur brings both lived experience and professional insight to his work, supporting others in transforming their deepest struggles into the foundation of their greatest powerConnect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/

Rabbi SaraLeya Schley was ordained in 2005 by the ALEPH Ordination Program, for which she currently is on the academic Va’ad and faculty. An elder and advisor, she has been involved with Wilderness Torah and its offshoots since 2007. She authored a 2020 responsum about Medical Assistance in Dying that was published by the Integral Halachah Institute and is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Hartman Institute. A resident of Sparks, NV, she is mother to 3 and savta to 5. She continues to be involved with various Renewal communities as prayer leader, teacher and elder, and is Rabbi Emerita at Chochmat HaLev, Berkeley.Connect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/

In this special episode, Aliko Weste shares a powerful talk originally given at the Conscious Growth Convergence in Lost Valley, Oregon. Titled Returning to Our Houses of Magic: A Comprehensive Historic and Neuro-Somatic Inquiry and a Cyclical Map for the New World, this workshop brings together history, healing, somatic awareness, decolonization, and visionary world-building.Aliko explores the history of capitalism in Middle Age Europe and offers three pathways for healing from its effects, drawing from personal experience in business, community work, and inner transformation. The talk also weaves in insights from Dr. Michael Yellowbird on neurodecolonization, reflections from trusted community voices, and a deeper inquiry into where the “map for the new world” may already be hidden.This episode invites listeners to consider how healing, history, identity, and collective imagination can help us return to our own “houses of magic” and participate in building a more conscious future.Connect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/

About Mo WashburnMo Washburn is a queer bodyworker, community care practitioner, and deep listener based in Sebastopol, California — on the unceded homelands of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples.Mo's path has been anything but straight. From the corporate world to farming, from bodywork to doula care to song circles, they have spent years finding their way back to the same question: how do we heal the separation that permeates our culture? That question sits at the heart of everything Mo does — and it's exactly what brought them to this conversation.As a queer practitioner, Mo knows firsthand what it feels like when the dominant definitions of masculine and feminine don't leave room for you. Their work — whether through healing touch, circle singing, or community gathering — is an ongoing act of making more room. For bodies, for stories, and for the full spectrum of who we are and who we're becoming.Mo practices with unconditional love, deep presence, and a refusal to make assumptions. Instead, they listen. They witness. They respond.We're so glad they're here.-----------In this episode, Aliko Weste speaks with Mo Washburn about language, gender, curiosity, and the importance of getting clear about what we mean. Together, they explore how terms like masculine and feminine can both help and limit us, why slowing down creates deeper connection, and how living beyond the binary can invite greater authenticity for everyone.Through personal stories, spiritual reflection, bodywork, song, and honest conversation, Mo shares their journey of genderqueerness, self-trust, and expression. This episode is a beautiful reminder to ask before assuming, listen before defining, and meet people in the fullness of who they are.Connect with ushttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/https://www.instagram.com/mo.washburn/

DR. JESSICA TARTARO (she/her) is a cis-gendered, able bodied, second generation Sicilian Jewish Intimacy Coach, Mediator & Connection Facilitator who draws from over 20 years of experience in the healing arts facilitating individuals, couples and groups. Through her one-of-a-kind workshops, Jessica powerfully weaves together the threads of Conscious Intimacy, Authentic Relating, Positive Psychology, Trauma Healing, Improvisational Dance and Mindful Embodiment. Plus, she loves to play. Former Fulbright scholar, Jessica has founded communities across the country dedicated to healing the collective experience of belonging. On the Olympic Peninsula of Washington where she currently lives, Jessica is facing her greatest intimacy challenges yet as a mother to her fierce and fiery toddler, Joya. To stay current on her evolving offerings, inquire about her private coaching and check out her adorable toddler photos, go towww.DrJessicaTartaro.com@doctartaro----------------------In this powerful and deeply human conversation, host Aliko Weste sits down with Dr. Jessica Tartarot, an intimacy coach, mediator, connection facilitator, and longtime healing arts practitioner, to explore what it really means to build relationships that can hold conflict, repair, parenting, and belonging.Jessica shares how becoming a mother reshaped everything she thought she knew about intimacy, nervous systems, healing, and the hidden needs we carry from childhood into adulthood. With honesty and humility, she reflects on the impossible pressure modern parents face when they are expected to meet a child’s endless needs without the village that human beings were designed to have.Together, Aliko and Jessica explore generative conflict, relational intelligence, emotional literacy, child nesting, cooperative child rearing, attachment wounds, spirituality, and the loneliness created by modern individualism. The conversation moves from parenting and community care to adult relationships, showing how much of our pain comes from never being taught how to ask for what we need, repair rupture, set boundaries, or stay present when intimacy becomes uncomfortable.Jessica also introduces her evolving work around helping couples and communities move beyond private struggle and into shared support. Through her “We Two” project, she invites couples to tell the truth about relationship challenges, not as a sign of failure, but as a way to normalize struggle, widen the pool of empathy, and remind people that they are not alone.This episode is an invitation to rethink conflict, parenting, partnership, and community as sacred places of growth. It is for anyone who has ever longed for deeper connection, more support, and a more honest way of being human together.Connect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/https://www.instagram.com/doctartaro/

Bio: Elliot Barnette lives and works in Seattle, WA. They are a passionate Jewish professional and love working towards building deeper relationships with their local community. In their free time, Elliot enjoys reading, writing, drinking tea, and spending time on the couch with their Great Dane.Aliko Weste sits down with Elliot Barnette for a deeply honest conversation about race, privilege, whiteness, shame, accountability, and what it means to stay present through discomfort.Together, they explore the emotional weight many white people carry when confronting privilege, and why the goal is not to seek absolution from people of color, but to use power, access, and resources in service of the collective. The conversation moves through themes of internal repair, community responsibility, racial dynamics in relationships, the Pacific Northwest’s culture of emotional distance, and the quiet ways power can show up unconsciously in everyday life.At the heart of the episode is a simple but powerful invitation: take a deeper breath. Rather than freezing, avoiding, or rushing past uncomfortable truths, Aliko and Elliot reflect on how deeper presence can create more space for honesty, resilience, compassion, and real connection.This episode is a thoughtful entry point into Season 3, inviting listeners into the kind of brave, tender, and necessary conversations that help us return to each other, to community, and to the world we want to build.Connect with mehttps://www.instagram.com/theealikomountain/Guest's linkhttps://www.instagram.com/theelliotbarnette/

With over 20 years in corporate coaching and leadership development, Renee is both a Certified Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) Coach and Certified Health Coach (CHC), with additional training in Functional Nutrition. Drawing from her personal journey overcoming anxiety, she has developed powerful healing practices that work with the body’s natural capacity to restore and thrive. She offers customized, multi-dimensional programs that guide leaders to become their most self-loving, adventurous, and sacred selves—ultimately embodying a life that is Devoted, Forgiving, Fearless, Wise, Magical, Provocative, and wholly liberated.Renee's Story: https://youtu.be/VA23cGD5WVA?si=jZDzFZ9ybLPlcRzORenee, founder of Karma Free Living, is a transformational life coach, author, public speaker, and gut health expert dedicated to helping people find freedom, empowerment, and self-love. Through her unique approach, she provides Visionary Leaders with the tools to achieve sovereignty over their energy, offering them the freedom to live boldly, fearlessly, and in harmony with their highest selves.Website: https://healthyinspiredyou.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/renee.andreasen or Renee AndreasenYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZJ2ovai-8DG_e5EuGFxkngInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/reneeandreasen/

Rafa Kalapa (Alan Rafael Seid) grew up bilingual and bicultural in Mexico and the US.For over 30 years he has been a researcher, student, and teacher of modalities for living in harmony within ourselves, with each other, and with the planet.He coaches leaders and Changemakers on how to maximize their positive impact. You can see what his clients say about working with him at https://RafaKalapa.com/testimonials.He lives in the North Cascades of Washington State, and is founder and co-convener of the Kalapa Wisdom School for Changemakers at https://theKalapa.com.

Meg Evans is a former competitive figure skater who left home at 16 to train with Olympic coaches, mastering the demanding world of elite sports. After retiring from competition, Meg embraced a radically different path, dedicating herself to learning primitive survival skills and using wilderness therapy to support troubled youth. Now focused on outdoor education, Meg is passionate about connecting people with nature and exploring the world through travel.

Leo Cosmo Farbman (he/they) is an Ashkenazi Jewish parent, reparations organizer, ancestral wisdom carrier and death doula. His practice weaves together the work of wealth redistribution, land return, ancestral healing and cultural repair towards personal and collective balance. They are an apprentice to the Afro-Indigenous healers of Drinking Gourd, the Sacred Logistician of the Reparations Summer campaign and co-founder of the Kolibri Foundation. Leo lives on Duwamish and Coast Salish land in Seattle, WA and enjoys eating bread. They can be reached at [email protected].

Vila Loukas has been serving people in the healing arts for over 20 years. She is certified as a Healer and Guide with the Modern Mystery School International. Vila brings a unique blend of keen insight, deep compassion and fierce commitment to her work with clients and students who are ready for greater light, flow and empowerment in their lives.As a teacher of metaphysics, Vila specializes in guiding people to delve deeper into their own awareness of self, connection to spirit and capacity for self presence. She is dedicated to helping individuals find and express their own beautiful, unique and brilliant light not only to assist with personal fulfillment, but to anchor greater light for the world that so needs it right now!

Tada Hozumi (穂積 理彰) was born October 13th 1977, in Basel Switzerland, on the 670th anniversary of the destruction of the Knights Tempar.Through the years or 2016-2020 they pioneered "cultural somatics", an open-source framework for social change, which understood groups of humans, from families to whole nation states, as having interwoven collective nervous systems. This innovation, which seamlessly tied social activism and somatic psychotherapy together, created a paradigm shift in both fields.On the Chinese New Year of 2023, after a three-year hiatus from teaching, writing, and speaking, Hozumi officially announced, alongside their wife and collaborator, Rein Lo, the release of their new project, Lunmu (龍夢) , which explores the interweaving of IRL and URL worlds through ritual art, based on the foundational cosmology that the world we live in is a simulation generated by a "Dragon's Dream".Since the spring of 2023, Hozumi has returned to Japan to take up their work as a member of The Hozumi clan, one of Japan and the world's longest documented and unbroken shamanic lineages, who trace their roots back to the antiquity of Mesopotamia.Hozumi believes that we are in a global spiritual rebirth and that the Japanese spiritual system has been intentionally protected and preserved by their ancestors and similar Japanese clans for this exact prophesied time.It is their life's work to share this gift of their ancestors with the rest of the world."Tadahozumi.orgLunmu.io

Tad (he/him) is a digital advertising and programmatic media pioneer with a passion for helping sole proprietors, small businesses, and non-profits create effective and manageable brand strategies. Since 2018, he has created and led communities of small business owners in orchestrated, grassroots marketing and fundraising campaigns for non-profits such as Meals on Wheels, The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Josh Gibson Foundation, and Buck Leonard Association for Sports & Human Enrichment. Tad and his wife Karen Fassio are co-founders of Abundant Marketing Collective.

Rhys-Thorvald Hansen is a folk artist and facilitator whose work seeks to erode the barriers between self and place. Living along the coast of the Salish Sea, Rhys draws inspiration from the rhythms of the land, water, and those with whom humans share the earth.As a multimedia artist focusing on textiles and digital illustration, Rhys' work is concerned with the multiplicity of patterns that echo across time and place, and using queer ecology to challenge commodification and objectivity. While they are currently fixated on needle felting and all-things-sheep-and-wool, their passion extends to a variety of fiber handcraft tools and techniques. In addition to their studio art, Rhys uses the arts-based creative empowerment to transform group processes and culture as a facilitator. With a focus on serving groups that intersect food systems or land stewardship, their practices are rooted in experiential learning and embodiment. You can find them online @rhys.earth.

Nala is director of “The Well, An Oasis for Animist Ritual,” supporting innovative ways of restoring grieving and lamentation culture from around the world. For 25 years, she has been tending the lands and waters of her permaculture homestead, both physically and ritually. Hands in the soil, she is honored to practice a low-tech, ecosomatic lifestyle on an Island beside the Salish Sea, in Washington USA — the traditional lands of the Chimacum and S’Klallam people.From her handbuilt earthen sanctuary at the edge of the woods, Nala has been cultivating the old-tyme “wisewoman” skills for decades. Weaving Griefwork and Ancestral Healing, Nala moves us beyond the psychological, and into the realm of Ritual. She specializes in helping people who feel rootless, culturally orphaned, and spiritually homeless reclaim our birthright of belonging to our own ancestors. Through a deeply somatic and liberatory approach towards deconstructing whiteness, we become more rooted in relationship with who we come from, and the lands where we live.

Today's episode features Tao Fallenstar, a visionary entrepreneur and new paradigm business consultant. This Episode dives into the truth about our social structure, law, and society. Tao specializes in common law, legal strategies, and innovative structures like private churches, ministries, and blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations. This is a must listen.

In today's episode, we have the pleasure of hosting Jody Poth, a native Washingtonian and a distinguished local performance artist. I talk to Jody about her journey with performance, the truth and grief of the work, and how art and dance can support all of life. 

In this Episode I talk to my dear friend Brittany Anglin about life, race, art, and what it's really like to be Black in the PNW. 

This short episode is about change, solidarity, and how to find somatic trust with the Universe. This episode features Ahlay Blakely's song - Everything is Change. 

I have the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Wagner who's an incredible author and writer who influences so many people in the United States to tap into their intuition and subconscious through wild writing. In this Episode we explore the journey of creative business development and success.

This is a special episode of For The People podcast from an event Bex Lipps and I produced in April 2023 at Seattle University called Fucking Real. This Episode dives into all topics of militant social justice culture, pain, trauma, cancel culture and the social dynamics that run our generation. 

In this Episode, I interview Lydia, an Iranian Armenian American folk artist and multi-instrumentalist on her journey of creating her music, life, and The School for the Great Turning. This is a must listen episode for personal and life development skills. 

In this episode we here from Sara, CEO of Leverage Lab, leverages 20 years of experience at the intersection of business and sustainability. Listen to how Sarah supports and businesses to exceed expectations for people and the planet inspired by care for the climate.