For this episode, Mary spoke with Katja Biesanz, Katja says of herself, "I help people like you to discover and to integrate different parts of themselves." She provides this service as a professional counselor, drawing on her experience as a dancer, poet, masseuse, and forest farmer.

By the time she was 12, Katja and her family had livied in four different countries. Several of these countries, and ones they traveled through, were dictatorships; the things she saw through her child's eyes have stayed with her. She routinely draws on them. including using them to help shape how she thinks about climate change and climate action.

Katja is also profoundly skilled in dance and movement. She draws on this knowledge in her therapeutic work. That service is also significantly influenced by her immersion in Latin American cultures, experience she credits with seeding in her the capacity to sense the energy people carry.

Finally, it's important to mention Katja's commitment to land stewardship and restoration. As you can imagine, ours was a wide-ranging and rich conversation, entirely in keeping with the suggestion that each of us is our own wilderness.

You can learn more about Katja by visiting her website at katjabiesanz.com. You can also check out this facebook link to - The Land - TEMENOS where Katja and her partner practice forest farming - tending and harvesting only the plants that grow in the ocean-front rainforest ecosystem. 

Below you’ll find references for the three books authored by Joanna Macy that Katja mentioned early in our conversation. You’ll also find the list of characteristics shared by dictators that Katja has compiled as a diagnostic tool and as a warning.

Perhaps most powerful in our time talking together were Katja’s offers of ways for considering our energy fields in relation to those of each other and all of the natural world. Let’s take what she suggests and open to the possibilities.

Joanna Macy (2012). Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy.

Joanna Macy (2007). World as Lover, World as Self.

Joanna Macy (1991). Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory.

Distilled List Dictator Traits (in progress)

• Admires “Strongmen”
• Showmanship — Entertainment — Display
• Emphasizes Masculinity & Denigrates Women
• Violence - Instigating and Threatening
• Uses Military Domestically
• Uses Plausible Deniability to Instigate Chaos
• Special Clothing of Followers - Cult
• Demagoguery - Becoming what the Crowd Wants
• Emotion - Anger, Fear, Mean Humor and Hate
• Desensitization, Numbing, Dehumanizing
• Uses Religion, Usually Cynically
• Jingoistic Nationalism vs. Patriotism
• Scapegoating/Playing the Victim
• Self Enriching, Feeding Plutocracy (if Loyal)
• Cultivates “True Believers”
• Creates Division
• Lies Repeatedly & Discredits Reliable Sources
• Projects Unowned Parts of self
• Government is Self Serving — Retribution, Money & Power
• Harms Minorities, Women and Ultimately the Country
• Drains Resources, Steals Wealth, Harms the Natural World,
• ...
• Not taken seriously until too late

MUSIC ~

This episode includes music by Gary Ferguson and these other fine artists.

Jazz Waltz - Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

 Southern Jazz Bossa Nova - Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay

 Beautiful Piano and Flute Instrumental- Music by Denis Pavlov from Pixabay