Modern Animism Radio, a holistic spiritual path

You named the ache (Part 1). You understood the trauma underneath it — the freeze, the protector, the structural split (Part 2). Now comes the turn: the bridge back.In Part 3 of From Numb to Known, we reframe disconnection itself. This isn't a story about something broken in you — it's a story about a torn thread in a living web, and torn threads don't carry shame, only the need for mending.In this episode, we explore:→ Why disconnection is relational, not personal — a repair story, not a self-improvement story→ What the land, the seasons, the animals, and the ancestors have been doing this whole time (hint: they never stopped reaching)→ Why the relationship is waiting, not gone — and why the fact that you're listening right now is proof something in you kept the thread→ How trauma lives in the body — and why the body is also the way back→ Sensation as the first language of reconnection, before meaning, before storyThis is for the deeply feeling people — the ones who've felt the glass between themselves and the living world, and who are ready to understand that the bridge across it was never missing. It's been there the whole time.Part 4 is coming soon, where we begin the actual practice: grounding, small presence, reciprocity, and finding your people.#FromNumbToKnown #Animism #SomaticHealing #NervousSystemHealing #TraumaRecovery #EcoSpirituality #NatureConnection #DissociationHealing #AncestralTrauma #Embodiment #PolyvagalTheory #SpiritualAwakening #HealingJourney #EarthBasedSpirituality #FeltSenseWant to go deeper? Join me here:https://www.patreon.com/cw/PanSocietyAnimismLaura Giles is an animist licensed clinical social worker who specializes in healing trauma. She founded Pan Society to make animism accessible to modern people. She delights in helping people to find their own spiritual path and awaken their innate spiritual wisdom.For more information about Laura Giles, see her websites at https://linktr.ee/lauragilesBumper credits: Music from Pond5. Videos from Pixabay and Pexels.

What does it mean to listen to a gravestone? Jason Church has spent his life finding out. As Chief of Technical Services at the National Park Service's National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, Jason is one of the country's leading experts in cemetery preservation and monument conservation — but his relationship with these sacred places began long before any credential. It started in fourth grade, in a cemetery in Wilmington, North Carolina, with a caretaker who showed a curious kid things most people never get to see.
In this conversation, Jason talks about what cemeteries hold — not just names and dates, but stories, artistry, spiritual presence, and the living pulse of community memory. We explore the craftsmanship of anonymous stone carvers whose finest work sits in forgotten corners of the country, the oral histories that disappear when a marker crumbles, and what it actually felt like to raise his family inside Laurel Grove South Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia — one of the most historically and spiritually significant African American burial grounds in the South.
For animists, cemetery preservation isn't maintenance. It's reciprocity. It's relationship. And Jason Church has been living that truth since he was nine years old.

Chapters00:00 The Seeds of Curiosity: A Childhood Fascination07:17 Living Among the Dead: Caretaking in a Cemetery11:31 The Art and Science of Preservation16:39 Community and Connection: The People Behind the Graves26:12 Legacy and Storytelling: Keeping Memories Alive#CemeteryPreservation #Animism #AnimistPodcast #SacredLand #CemeteryConservation #HonoringAncestors #GravestoneRestoration #HistoricPreservation #DeathPositive #FolkArt #OralHistory #BurialGrounds #AncestorVeneration #LaurelGroveCemetery #NationalParkService #SpiritInTheGround #CemeteryHistory #SacredSites #GraveyardCulture #TendingTheDead🔔 Subscribe so you never miss an episode👇 Tell us in the comments — what cemetery has stayed with you?Want to go deeper? Join me here:https://www.patreon.com/cw/PanSocietyAnimismLaura Giles is an animist licensed clinical social worker who specializes in healing trauma. She founded Pan Society to make animism accessible to modern people. She delights in helping people to find their own spiritual path and awaken their innate spiritual wisdom.For more information about Laura Giles, see her websites at https://linktr.ee/lauragilesBumper credits: Music from Pond5. Videos from Pixabay and Pexels.

You know the world is alive. You feel it in flashes — in the forest, in a quiet moment, in a flicker of connection that feels like coming home. And then it's gone, and you're back behind the glass, watching your own life from a distance.
This isn't a failure of your spirituality. It's not that you're "not doing it right."In Part 2 of this series, we go deep into what trauma actually does to the nervous system — and why the same sensitivity that draws you toward animism, toward feeling the aliveness of the world, is also the thing standing between you and actually landing inside it.

We explore:
* Why dissociation is a protector, not a flaw
* The three layers of wounding: personal, ancestral, and collective
* Why hypervigilance often underlies spiritual sensitivity
* Structural dissociation — the biology of why you can know connection is real and still not feel it
* How to begin honoring the parts of you that learned to protect you
This is for the deeply feeling people. The ones who light the candles, sit with the trees, do the practice — and still feel that pane of glass. You are not alone in this, and you are not failing.

Part 3 is coming soon, where we start talking about what healing this actually looks like.If this resonated, I'd love to hear which part hit hardest — drop it in the comments below.
Want to go deeper? Join me here:https://www.patreon.com/cw/PanSocietyAnimismLaura Giles is an animist licensed clinical social worker who specializes in healing trauma. She founded Pan Society to make animism accessible to modern people. She delights in helping people to find their own spiritual path and awaken their innate spiritual wisdom.For more information about Laura Giles, see her websites at https://linktr.ee/lauragiles

Most films about religion play it safe. They make faith the light that saves everyone, or the darkness that corrupts everything. The Pilgrimage (2017) does something braver — and rarer.Through six characters, this quiet Irish film maps the full spectrum of what religion actually does to human beings. Raymond sees any rock as a potential relic and uses the Crusades as a machine for wealth and absolution. Geraldus is a true believer who turned in his own father as a heretic — not for power, but because the institution has replaced his conscience entirely. Brother Ciarán shares Geraldus's faith exactly, and yet dies forgiving his torturer with his last breath. The mute was set adrift without oars for something terrible he did, found by Diarmuid, and has been choosing smallness as penance ever since. And Diarmuid himself — young, quiet, the only one whose faith has never been used for anything — is the only one pure enough to touch the relic. And the only one who understands what must be done with it in the end.This video is a deep-dive psychological and spiritual reading of The Pilgrimage — one of the most honest films about faith ever made, and one almost nobody is talking about.Chapters00:00 The Dual Nature of Faith in Hollywood02:32 Exploring the Characters of 'Pilgrimage'04:51 Raymond: The Pragmatic User of Faith08:32 Geraldus: The True Believer's Tragedy12:06 Brother Ciaran: Faith in Action16:07 The Mute: Guilt and Redemption20:07 Jermud: Pure Spirituality24:10 The Pagans: The Old Sacred27:11 The Power Dynamics of Religion30:04 The Universal Need for Meaning32:41 The Final Sacrifice and Its Implications37:10 The Honest Exploration of Faith#Pilgrimage #spiritualityvsreligion#FilmAnalysis #ReligionAndFilm#FaithVsReligion #MovieExplainedWant to go deeper? Join me here:https://www.patreon.com/cw/PanSocietyAnimismLaura Giles is an animist licensed clinical social worker who specializes in healing trauma. She founded Pan Society to make animism accessible to modern people. She delights in helping people to find their own spiritual path and awaken their innate spiritual wisdom.For more information about Laura Giles, see her websites at https://linktr.ee/lauragilesBumper credits: Music from Pond5. Videos from Pixabay and Pexels.

Do you feel present in the room but absent from it? Like the river used to speak — and now it doesn't?
For those of us who understand the world as alive and relational, disconnection isn't just a social problem. It's a cosmic one. When the felt sense goes quiet, we lose touch not only with people, but with everything that speaks.
In this first episode of From Numb to Known, we name the specific ache of disconnection that animists often feel most deeply — and we explain why you are not broken. You are severed. And severing is something that happens to people, which means it can be understood, and slowly, carefully, healed.
We explore interoception — the sense through which you feel yourself and the world — and how trauma and modern life together turn it down. We talk about why genuine empathy requires a body that is available to receive, and why that availability is exactly what gets shut down under prolonged stress. And we hold space for the particular grief of ancestral disconnection: when the lineage that held these practices was broken before we were born.
This series is about returning to a connected way of life. This episode is where we begin — with the truth of where we are.

Want to go deeper? Join me here:https://www.patreon.com/cw/PanSocietyAnimism