Today’s podcast episode is the final episode of the Dandelion Effect Podcast as we know it. We are tying a beautiful ribbon on a project that began in the fall of 2020 as an avenue for continued positive outreach and community engagement in the heat of the pandemic. This podcast has far exceeded our expectations, and while it’s bittersweet, we are moving onto different creative adventures that we are all so excited for!

As a way to wrap this up, we’ve decided to bring it full circle and give you a compilation episode of a handful of voices from within the Feathered Pipe Ranch team, an inside-out approach, so to speak. It’s an ode to the Ranch: the changes we’ve been through over the years, the gratitude for this project, and a chance to hear from staff, board members and family members, why they believe this little retreat center in the forest of Helena, MT is, in fact, a life-changing place. 

We have six guests on today’s podcast—Howard Levin, Anne Jablonski, Matt Lambie, Amanda Ellefsen, Eric Myers and Crystal Water—all weighing in about what keeps them coming back year after year, and adding their two cents into where this ship is heading as we look toward the future.

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Effie Baldwin is a U.S. Army veteran, Positive Discipline Educator, Associate Member of the U.S. Golf Teachers Federation and the founder of Believing in a Better World LLC. After earning her Kemetic Yoga Certification in Egypt, she became an instructor for Veterans Yoga Project then later a board member for the nonprofit. She’s also an End-of-Life Doula and facilitates Emotional Emancipation Circles to promote healing caused by race-based discrimination within communities of African-descent.

Prior to becoming her own boss, Effie spent almost 30 years working in high-level positions with the state and federal government in Senior Policy, Grants Administration, and Program Management—and despite this long list of accolades, she admits that her greatest accomplishment is raising two life-embracing adult children.

In this conversation, Effie explains the similarities between Kemetic Yoga and golf as two activities that people can do “from cradle to grave,” and the virtues and ethics that are necessary for both: patience, honesty, mindfulness, focus, discipline—all with the result of self-regulation and self-responsibility. Effie came to yoga through, running, of all things. That is to say, she literally ran herself into the ground and yoga was prescribed by a nurse practitioner as a way to rebuild her immune system and ease her pattern of intensity throughout life. It changed the trajectory of her life, and for the last six years, she’s added that to her repertoire of service-oriented work.

She’s a self-proclaimed optimistic realist, a way of viewing the world through practicality and positivity, giving people and situations the benefit of the doubt. She also recalls questioning the “rules of engagement” very early and crafting a life of learning, growing and independently investigating the truth—as she calls it—to decide what made sense for her own happiness, not what was projected onto her from society.

We end by highlighting the importance of nurturing the children of our communities and pouring love and energy into youth, whether they are your own kids or not. The next generation need us to show up as positive, responsible and whole-hearted role models just as we need them to carry on the legacy of our families and improve the impact we have on this planet.

Believing in a Better World

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Alison Zak is an author, yoga teacher, environmental educator and anthropologist, and in her self-written bio, she also adds, importantly, that she is an animal. Her new book Wild Asana launches June 27th and is a delightful mix of wildlife science, Hindu mythology, Eastern philosophy, and personal stories that help us draw connections between our bodies, our minds, and the animals that inspire our practices. As if writing and teaching doesn’t keep her busy enough, Alison also founded the Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund, a nonprofit that educates the public about the benefits of coexisting with beavers and provides resources and address human-beaver conflict.

Alison has a long history connecting with animals, and when her primate studies took her across the world to Indonesia, she learned firsthand how nuanced the relationship can be between humans and non-human animals, and she began to grasp the importance of deconditioning what we’re taught through society—that humans are superior and that other animals are only worth saving if they provide value to us. Of course, if you take the time to learn about different animals, you realize that each species possesses remarkable traits and skills that are integral to the ecosystems they live in. And if you do want to look through the lens of value-to-humans, it can be argued that every animal provides value because we are all intricately connected within the cycles that create our planet, our food, water, air, and soil. This truth has been known since the beginning of time, and modern research continues to publish findings daily that remind us of our interconnectedness.

Alison’s creative outlets and offerings suggest powerful, yet incredibly simple ways that we can begin to connect with our fellow animals, not only to understand our true role in the greater interdependent ecosystem of the planet, but to also experience the often sought-after feelings of awe, wonder, and unity that we go looking for in spiritual practice, travel or relationship. In her new book, Wild Asana, she teaches people how to connect with and embody animals through the yoga poses that are named after them: scorpion, cobra, fish and downward-facing dog, to name a few. She uses the framework of the Three C’s: Curiosity, Compassion, and Connection, suggesting that the last category of connection can be taken even deeper, practicing yoga with a capital Y, meaning union, and that if we can reach that state of union with another animal, there’s no longer a question as to why this other being is important, because he or she is me. There’s no separation.

Come with us, into a wild and wonderful interview that will leave you feeling inspired to learn more about the animals you encounter in your everyday life or those you have a secret curiosity about. I guarantee that after listening, you’ll want to go out into the world and experience it for the epic, magical place it is and remember that PLAY is one the most primal animal actions, shared by almost every species, certainly other animals like us in the mammal classification.

Alison Zak Website
Human-Beaver Coexistence Fund

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