Akasha Skaldeman, our special guest on this Elements of Community podcast episode, dives deep into how to create a strong sense of community. From unifying connections to exploring what it takes for individuals and groups to bond together, prepare for an engaging conversation about building meaningful relationships!

Connection is essential to Akasha and her village community, whose members come together regularly to practice activities such as ecstatic dance, meditation with singing bowls, and invigorating yoga. She sees that cooperation within a community is the only way for everyone to ensure survival without individually preparing with limited resources.

Akasha firmly believes that prepping alone can only get you so far and that establishing collective support systems between fellow community members will foster resilience during difficult times. Connection with others provides an invaluable resource - not only on a physical basis but also an emotional one.

As far as leadership within community settings goes, Akasha states that it is most effective when there is clear prioritization when it comes to young people and when a loving yet consistent attitude is displayed by leaders. It also helps when authority roles are shared in the community so that no individual is burdened with too much responsibility. The connection among its members builds strong communities where everyone feels valued.

Other subjects we covered on the show:

• Akasha has tapped into a remarkable power - the authority of being a grandmother - to keep her family connected and united despite conflicting opinions.
• She also discussed how dancing could be used to activate one's superpower.
• Then, Akasha talked about a project that would create a community-run co-op store where people could buy food at reduced prices in exchange for five hours of work per week.
• Lastly, Akasha shared the meaning of her name with a twinkle in her eye, like she was sheltering an ancient secret.

AND MORE TOPICS COVERED IN THE FULL INTERVIEW!!! You can check that out and subscribe at https://pbp.li/eoc35.

If you want to know more about Akasha Kaldeman, you may reach out to her at:

• Website:  https://spaceoflove.nu/ 

                 Eat Real Food!

                 https://dalhemeko.com/ 

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akasha.skaldeman/

And you showed up in my life immediately thereafter. And thank you. Thank you for coming and joining me. Would you like to tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

And yeah. Very interested in community.

Lovely. Thank you so much. Can you tell us a little bit about the community that we're talking about today?

By the way, just to seed this, I love this community cuz you and I of course, have had this conversation already, so I'm excited to talk about this.

Yeah. By community. I have two different ideas of community. So the one is where I live in a village, and have a lot of contact with the other people in the village. And that's not so common in Sweden. Maybe nowhere else either I mean anymore. But the many people moved here that were looking for a better solution to things.

And so there's all kinds of lovely things that have come in the village, the, they took over the train station, some people and another organization, an environmental organization, was able to support them monetarily for buying, and fixing up this train station. So now it's a, like a cultural center.

Lovely. I remember from our conversation that you also have deep connection inside that community, the community of your village. You guys do, you know, you do events together. I think you were talking to me about a dancing event.

And you know, it's always happening every Monday that makes it able to happen.

Yeah, so, I would call that a common project, a project of the community where we get together and we do something together in order to deepen our community connection and further our purpose. And if that's true, And it may not be. And of course you are a power. We had a great conversation.

Yeah, I would go with that definitely. It's definitely a time to exploration and just love, giving yourself love, doing what exactly what you wanna do in that dancing time. But also we do come together and we exchange a few words and we, you know, make sure it happens every week and things like that.

So it's a sweet, it's a sweet activity, then there's a center five minutes away by feet where there's also meditations, yoga, music courses all kinds of different things. And that brings together other people in the community and of course people from far away also. But then, you know, the Thursday night meditation is, and singing bowls, that's only local people generally.

Yeah, no, we don't do Zoom in the community, but people come from farther away. That's what I meant. I mean, there's the village where you can, pretty much, everybody can walk to, you know, a few, couple kilometers, three, four kilometers to each other. It's not more than three kilometers really, but yeah, people drive here from the big city called Gothenberg, which is an hour away.

Mm. That's amazing that your community is so deeply connected that it's, it's encouraging other people to come in and experience that.

Yeah, you could say that, it sort of sounds, maybe we don't wanna, it's a course center, so they have people coming from all over, you know, and that center could be located anywhere, but it is located in this community of people.

That's what I'm seeing. It's not an accident.

And you and the community there are supporting it. You're supporting it partly monetarily. You're supporting it energetically. You're supporting it with the way that you hold together the village as a community, not just as a village.

Right, right. But it, that's it. I don't want to make this sound too like flowery and stuff because there's people who don't go to that place, don't support it. Maybe don't even like some of the things that go on there, but it doesn't really matter, does it?

Did I say we were having a healthy discussion?

And choosing to interpret it that way.

Yeah, no, I'd say people that we don't really discuss things you can also in a fairly healthy way avoid discussion.

Sure.

Yeah. And, you know, people can do their thing. Like, they do their thing and we do our thing, but we live, we're neighbors. I mean, I'm really, I've really been reflecting on how divide and conquer is a huge method of making people powerless.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

That's beautiful. Talk about that more.

Well. I don't know. It's just, I don't know what aspect of that you want me to talk about because Divide and Conquer is just, I'm just realizing the extent of that as a method of making people weaker. And we've seen it where, you know, between races, between genders, but now there's more genders to get more upset about to divide us more and different countries, different religions.

All that stuff has fomented separation.

That's such a good word, fomented.

You know that that's why we're here chatting, right?

Well, I don't know

Not necessarily that that's their belief.

What we're talking about

Like, humans are better in community and me too, when I see the separation, regardless of what's driving it, when I see the separation, I see weakness. And when I see people coming back together, like what you're doing, I see strength.

Some kind of a fight and people have gotten together and made it. But they've never quite succeeded, is what he said. Because of what, okay. I'm not gonna have, I'm not gonna expect you to guess in fighting. So that's the same, that's the word he used, but that's the same thing I'm talking about.

We start bickering with each other, husbands and wives, you know, families, I mean, every single unit. And so it's like, I mean, I have a big family. We're, you know, 16 people altogether. And that's downwards, that's not upwards with my family of origin. You know, and different things happen and totally, totally different philosophies and agendas in that family.

You know, I'm like, I don't wanna see them today, just, I might get angry, but you know, cuz I want to, it really work. It's work. It's not just simple to be the nice grandmother and make pizza and things like that. It's like also clear about my values, and trying to share my values.

So this is, especially with boys, some people in the audience might recognize this. So, you know, grandma has to be a bit strict and that's not popular, but it's just what has to be done and it has to be done in a nice way. So, yeah. So family and not allowing ourselves to be divided.

I love that. And you're sort of personally using, you know, inside your own family. You're using the authority as a grandmother to help people continue to come together, even with their disparate opinions.

Which is natural, right? There's nothing wrong with that. And what I'm calling attention to here is the beauty of you using that positional authority to bring people back together again.

Right? And reconnect that family. Reignite the community inside your own family.

That's beautiful. And you're doing the same thing in your village.

In the village. Yeah, I just, I don't have to solve all the conflicts that come up in the village the same way I do with. Not that I solve all the conflicts in my family either, but, you know, it's just, it's a priority.

I mean, let's be honest. Nobody can.

Yeah, it's a priority to get discipline.

Bringing them together.

Yeah. I just, you know, I think of it as what are your priorities? What are my priorities? And my priorities would always be the young people, you know, these kids, and especially the kids that are here because of me. You know, it's, so I take this job of being a grandmother really seriously. I can't let my own kids. I mean, you could say, you can't control it at all, but, absolutely not.

Yeah. I love it. That sort of leads us nicely into a question. How do you consider leadership inside a community, and what makes a great community leader?

Well, you know, it's really funny because we have you know, before I lived where I lived now I lived in a community for 16 years and it was people that came together and we had a course center that was our common purpose. And another we where, you know, having people come and go to courses, meditation, yoga, weaving.

And he was an important person in the community and it was like couple years of fighting and, you know, dispute, but I'm sort of talking about two different things here because the thing was, you asked me about leadership.

People took different responsibilities. Somebody was doing carpentry and getting other people to help, and somebody who's doing the kitchen and somebody who's doing the garden. And it wasn't like it developed organically.

Yes, I agree.

Yeah, there was no leader. And to me, when you talk about having a leader in a community, then I'm not sure what kind of community that is. Because...

oh, this is beautiful.

Can I give you some language for this?

Yeah.

Because I love this and you're a hundred percent on track with me. This is fantastic. Believe it or not, you are only the second of my guests that has been able to articulate this and it's hard for you to see, but I'm actually over here like quivering with excitement cuz that was so beautiful.

It was awesome. So I have started talking about leadership in a very different way from the way the rest of the world talks about it. And here's why, most of the people in the world talk about leadership from a static perspective, and so I have in my own term named that static leadership. Now static leadership is not normal human.

And seeding leadership, giving it up, releasing it back to the community when you are not the right person to help the community take the next step and so, if that's, I mean, it's beautiful that, that you just said that even without me seeding, s e e d i n g without me seeding that idea because I'm so delighted, like really, I'm quivering with excitement here.

How cute. Yeah, I mean, that's, it's number one, the whole idea of leaders, and one person. But you know, at Fin Torn, are you familiar with Fin Torn?

Yeah,

Our audience probably is not so can.

Okay, so it, I like to call Fin Torn, the mother of all communities, and it started in 62, beginning of the sixties in Scotland, and three people got together, and then other people started coming.

They were, because one of the people, two of the people were very intuitive and one was receiving messages from God and the other one was receiving messages from the Devas the angels or the nature spirits. And they were, so, they started off, they were on sand dunes and with really terrible soil, and they had nothing. They were really poor.

All these people that were interested. Just for fun, I have this book that I just picked up again and started reading again. You read it every day. And this was the messages that the woman got from God. They're dead now. These, the two of the three are, not with us anymore.

For those who are listening, it was Eileen Caddy opening doors within.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so that was a community, and what I was gonna say about that in terms of leadership was that of course the people who did actually started had some, they probably created a rather a structure that was, you know, pretty clear. But there were facilitators that was the organization system.

And the thing was that in our community, when I lived in our community in Sweden, in this period 74 to 90 We were actually creating the same thing, and I didn't know about Fin Torn, and then somebody came and said, oh, this is like Fin Torn. And then I'm like, oh, tell me about Fin Torn. And then I went there a few times and it was already, you know, it's kind of my natural thing. It wasn't that I was copying them, so, so.

I think that's a natural human state actually is, we step forward to move the community forward and when we're done with that piece of our journey, somebody else will step forward and and we encourage it.

It's exhausting.

Yeah. And then there's, you know, there's all kinds of areas to, you know, like I'm taking care of the dance area, today I was thinking, you know, one of my.

I also put on a festival and last year we had the theme of activating your superpowers. And today I was thinking, you know what, what I wanna do is to activate. Because, and I was thinking in terms of dance, you know, and in terms of movement and in terms of doing things with your bodies, you know, running and chopping wood and all that, and you know, being in the force and, you know, doing, actually activating your body to do good things, you know.

Yeah.

Beautiful. Thank you. How will you help people activate their superpower?

Well, that's what Dance or Die is. My daughter doesn't like the name, but I think for me, I kept it even though she doesn't like it. And I usually listen to her because for me, in my age, at my age you know, I gotta keep moving. I don't wanna be, you know, sitting, getting stuck cuz it's very serious

I love it. So this is a, that title is actually a message to you from you.

Add he still hasn't. died.

Right.

I think that's a good coincidence. Let's say correlation is causation in this case.

Oh,

Because reality is what we make of it, and I'm gonna make that my reality.

Okay. Good.

Dance or die.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

I could talk about, I'm a belly dancer and I'm all kinds of other dance things that I love and I could talk a dance about dance for other, but let I could talk about dance for a long time.

You could, how does dancing activate people's superpower?

You know, I always use music that's made by real people. It's not technologically electronic stuff. And so I have these feelings in my heart of the way, the music or the words. It's usually, it's world music and then, but then I feel like when I stretch out my body and express all these things that I'm feeling with my body, it's fun, but it's also it's like allowing my body to become less dense and [00:26:00] more porous. So, the idea is that I let spirit in and in the spaciousness that I create.

That's beautiful. I love it.

Thank you, thank you.

I got a few different ways to connect with that in my own world. And let's see where that takes us. The first is people talk about emotion as energy being in motion.

Yeah, there you go.

And it is absolutely certain, I mean, this has been scientifically studied and shown.

We store emotional triggers in our body. And the more that we can move our body, the more we can move those emotional triggers and either resolve them or release them however we need to. And or if we don't they, they get stuck. Like it actually gets stuck in your body and it starts to cause problems, as it sits there and is stuck.

Well, there's more to it. Right? So that's the basic, that's the get free part of it. But what you talked about was actually more than just getting free. What you talked about was a level beyond that.

Yeah. It's the creativity and it's expression and it's, I mean the funny thing is I have this, that I'm not clear about is that I have this experience of being a belly dancer and performing alone for, you know, not in a group, but at parties and things. And then I have an audience that's like, you know, so I'm performing for these people. And that's one experience. It's really fun.

So it's different experience, but it's just really generating your own joy.

Mm. So, you know, like just the feeling of your body moving these different things. And like I said, when you have a little bit of pain and you move in, it sort of, oh, oh, you can relate to that, can't you? It feels good, you know? Some places I think I should be able to move more, but little stuck, but yeah, but I also mean the expression, the expression that the music inspires and all that.

That's lovely. Little story. My wife and I used to do a couple of different things related to music together often. We used to dance together and we particularly like the Latin dances, so Menge, salsa. We used to dance together a lot, and we haven't for a while.

And I love you know, part of the reason why this whole podcasting thing works well for me is because I really love having that microphone in front of me. Not necessarily because I want people to hear what I say, but it's just fun. And so I used to do karaoke a lot, like that used to be a regular part of what I do.

So this past week I've been in Sarasota. Not an important part of the story, but just whatever. And we both me and the people that I was with, we both went out dancing one night. And we went out and did karaoke on another night. And both of these just sort of reignited the passion for the music within me.

Let's do this, and after karaoke, I called her up and I was like, we have to get back to karaoke. Like now she doesn't sing, but she loves to show up and be there while I'm singing. So, I'm so with you Akasha, that being in the music, it doesn't just release the stuff that you're holding onto.

It does do that, but being in the music opens you up to a flow that is greater than, it releases, but it also opens you up to a flow that is greater than just releasing.

Oh, I think it's really fantastic that you manifested this talk about dance or die, you know, because I promise you now you will get your wife to dance and she will get you to dance also and do karaoke.

No, that's great.

We've just sort of,

what I

let life pull us away. And this just reminded me that we need to not let life pull us

away.

And I mean, what better thing to dance? You can just do it at home, you know? It's nice. I always make a little atmosphere, you know, if it's dark, it's candles, and you know, good music and, just, it changes everything changes, you know, like maybe you're in your kitchen, but your kitchen, in your living room, but still you've changed the atmosphere.

You know, maybe you put on some aroma therapy or something, and

Mm-hmm.

music and that's all you need. And I also dress, I also put something other than my work clothes on, but you don't have to that, but it's fun.

I think that's a great recommendation. People should do that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I realized when I named it the five elements that the one I forgot was purpose. And that's the one I wanna talk about cuz that's definitely, you know, an important part there. So what, see, because when you talk about community, then I have like the, I have my community of my family.

That's amazing.

Yeah, you know, it's not a no big job. And then, oh, I'll tell you, this is kind of cool. This is

What you mentioned was an actual measurable benefit of co the cooperation of community that the people who jump in and say, I want in on that, and then we get it cheaper.

Yeah. And we have people sharing cars here. And we do here in the farm, and my family, and other people here. You know, and then.

How dare you deprive big corporations of their little bit of extra profit.

Yeah. And we don't have TV's in every room. We have one TV for everybody.

But let me tell you about my, this idea that I'm just developing. Cuz I think it can be appropriate because there's a lot of going on about food right now. And yeah. So we wanna start, I want, I, we want to start, some people wanna start a community where I mean co-op, a co-op, co-op that's like an, a store right?

Where The food is the cheapest, best, I mean, organic good food. Now I'm thinking of grains and beans and stuff like that, dry things. And then of course we have all our farm vegetables and stuff and eggs. But the thing was we forget about that. I just think about things we will buy in, in large quantities and then we're gonna distribute them or sell them or whatever.

And so everybody's worked and everybody's bought the food they need at the cheapest possible price. But my idea was that it wouldn't be an association, it would just be a group of people. Who and that do the main work, like say five hours a day. For one day a week, say it like that, one day a week, and that we would go and sit in the store and it would be like a cafe and a store because there would always be a person there so that when the people come to buy their food or pick up their food, there's gonna be a connection between them.

And then they would have to put on a percentage for everybody that's coming, but it would still be so low that it would be beneficial for them. And anybody could come. They didn't have to just be in the association. And then the people that are sitting there, they maybe get a 10% discount on the food.

Hmm.

So, that would be, I mean, they would do it mostly just for fun and to be there. It's not like a job, but you're getting a reduced price for your food. So I feel like that's, so that's the model that I'm suggesting to people and I'm just, I just told few different people, what do you think about this?

Mm-hmm.

The, yeah, the community, the village shop.

What a lovely idea.

There was a shop, there is a shop here now, it's been here for years. Nobody goes to it. It's a little health food shop that's, you know, we should all go to, but it's not cheap enough. So people go and buy stuff cheap and it's not as a heart center. And so we're gonna take the same place and transform it into a heart center.

So yeah, it's really exciting.

Service first. Value First. Community first.

I would.

Yeah. And you know, and then you wanna also have developed, it's not something that you, yeah, that's something that you build up. Right?

Let's be honest, right? I mean, when you look at prepping, let's be honest. Like, let's say that that one small family survives. Then what?

Yeah, exactly. I got all my stuff, and yeah I dance too.

Yeah. Now what?

What are you thinking?

What you gonna do? I mean, you survived. Cool. Now you're gonna live 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, all by yourself, and then you're done too. If we can't survive together, we don't survive.

And I just, I mean, I feel like we never lock our door and I feel like, we had a door locked on the farm. That's the only place that ever anything got ever got stolen, they broke the lock, you know, and they, so they didn't steal any of the stuff we had out, you know, and, you know, now we have a store on the farm that you just come and you just take your stuff and you pay with.

Honor system.

Yeah. And works fine, you know, and if somebody wanted to steal a carrot or something, you know, go ahead. We usually put stuff out. Also, when we have too many zucchini and stuff, we give them away.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, you know what, I have more power to the people who feel like they need to prep, but seriously, if we can't survive together, we don't survive.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, not a bizarre idea. I'm gonna shoot these people that want to eat. You know, when instead you can just, I mean, I always think about it when I buy a whole lot of food. You know, we're gonna be people that the people would come to and you just have the soup ready, you know, and you know, what's the fight about?

Yep.

These are my potatoes. Yeah.

Yeah. What's the point? Do it together or don't do it at.

Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah. And if you have that conviction, like we were talking about before, that never divide and conquer. These aren't your enemies. You can offer them something. You know, I know there's bad guys in the world, but that you have to do the self-defense thing and all that, but I'm just not expecting them on my doorstep.

It's true.

That's where I come from. And it sounds to me like you're there too. Nobody wants to be bad. Like, we want to be good. We just have the wrong story going on in our head.

Exactly, exactly. For various reasons. Yeah.

Well, I'm hoping that this episode with you is helping people tell a different story that when you locked your door, that's where things got stolen, and when you stopped locking your door, things stopped getting stolen.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you. I'd like to wrap up my episodes with three really powerful questions. First one is for the people who are just absolutely in love with you, and they should be, how can they find you?

Oh, I don't know. I think just by my name.

All right. Any website or social links or anything?

I have Facebook. Facebook is good enough. Yeah, that's maybe old fashioned. They, I don't know if you have young people listening, cuz I know young people don't have, it's boomers. Did they talk about boomers where you are? Yeah. Or I'm a boomer.

We definitely do.

Yeah, I learned that from my grandchildren.

Yeah.

That lived on Bali. They moved here from Bali and they're calling me a boomer. I'm like, where did you get that from?

Yeah,

That's what boomers are. Cool. Just look you up by your name. That's beautiful.

Yeah. My name is very unique.

Yeah, it sure is Akasha Kaldeman. Second question, is there something that you wish I had asked you so far but did not?

No, not that I can think of.

No magic question that unlocks the power of the universe?

That's too big of a question.

I love it. I get it. I love it. The third one is you told me a little story, and I'm not sure if you'd be willing to tell it, but where does your name come from?

I'm now on my third and Akasha means, Akasha. Yeah, that name came into my head. It was a revelation and intuitive revelation, which I don't have more than one of those haven't had yet in my life. Or maybe too, and I just heard that name, and it was like, that's your name, Akasha.

And so I didn't know, I wasn't quite sure what it meant, but I was aware of the Akashik records that I learned about when I studied Rudolph Steiner. And I thought it had to do with remembering. And I thought, well, that's a good thing. I need to remember things. This is about 15, 16, 17 years ago. And then I looked it up on the internet and it said that it was the ether or the fifth element or the sky or the field or heaven.

I'm creating, by choosing my thoughts and choosing to, to be loyal to my I was [00:46:00] thinking in Swedish. Now my beliefs convictions. That was the word. Yeah. You know that there's more to life than we see. You know, it's not, it's this hard stuff that you can knock on and, and stuff. There's something there.

one's, This one's pretty hard for most people.

Yeah, right. There you go. There you go. But there is some, and it's good, you know, and I, so I'm what, whether you call it God or whatever, it's good. It's life affirming it's life force and that I try to stay in contact with and imagine that, and I imagine the powerfulness of that, and I use that to create in the ether.

I love it.

Yeah.

Here's one of the things that I find particularly delighting about that story. It used to be, and it unfortunately is not quite so common anymore, but it used to be very common for people to change their name as they move through stages of their life. So you'd start out as a child and you would have a child name and you'd move into adulthood and you'd have an adult name and it would be different.

And then you maybe would move into another phase of adult. Maybe you achieved mastery in ssomething and you would get a mastery name. And then you might move into elder and you'd get an elder name. And each time that you moved into a new phase in your life, you would have a name that went with it.

I totally agree with you. I mean it, it's so weird that. It should be, I mean, my mom was really mad when I changed my name and stuff, but I thought just as you do, just as you explained, you know, you go through these different stages and it's really good to make them more real, and you change and you get more clear about your intentions, and who you are and what you're here to give, what your gifts are and everything.

And whether, I mean, it'd be nice if the community gave you new names. That's probably what has happened in the tribes, you know, earlier.

Yeah, that was part of it.

Me too. Akasha. Thank you. You've been a delight and a gift. Do you have any parting words?

Oh my gosh. How much time do I have?

As much as you'd like?

I was just thinking because I do have this because we talked about tribal roots and I'm on my way to Brazil to live with a tribe. And I was thinking about, you know, the tribe, it's all generations all together.

Yes.

Without devices connected with nature, connected with the plant world, connected with the food , you know, connected with their clothes, they're making their weaving, all their stuff, they're making their jewelry.

And this is gonna be such an amazing, I think this is gonna be a life changing experience for me to live with it's only a few a month, but one month.

I think it would be it's so sort of what I've always wanted to do, so,

I'll be delighted to hear how this gets reflected in your name. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Anything else?

No, it was enjoyable ha having home a conversation with you and yeah. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Thank you for joining me, Akasha.