Wild on Purpose

Olivia Broughton is a Ceremonialist, Medium and Guide helping us to honor the sacredness in all moments. She is a student of the cycles and rhythms of life and holds the flame that all of Life is Ceremony.

In this conversation, Olivia and I explore the nature of Ceremony and how life’s most important thresholds and transitions — such as marriage, death, illness, birth, birthdays — hold the potential for deep healing, awareness and connection. We traverse through Olivia’s early years as a highly intuitive child and how fully claiming her gifts was part of her re-wilding journey.

Olivia and I have been working together for several months now on my own transitions through death, marriage and my commitment to Self. This conversation is intimate and touches on some of the more meaningful perspectives we can take as we discover the sacredness in all of life’s experiences.

Show Highlights:

• How Olivia reclaimed her intuitive gifts after having to compartmentalize them as a child in order to be ‘normal’ at school
• Navigating the realms of ‘internal wildness’ of psychic and mediumship abilities by leaning into innocence
• Untethering from conditioning by tracking your internal parts and inner child, while bringing compassion to the parts of you that are afraid of being authentic
• The value of intentionally pausing in life to recalibrate and allow the death and rebirth process to take place
• Seeing all of life as ceremony, especially the sacred threshold crossings of death, birth, marriage, loss, and transitions — and how to actually be with them intentionally

~ CONNECT WITH OLIVIA ~ 

Paul Millerd and I share a passion for creating our own paths in life — passions born from the discomfort of initially following other people’s paths and then fortified in the aliveness that comes from following our intuition.

Paul left the ‘default path’ a few years ago and discovered what he truly wanted in life by allowing himself to travel and wander aimlessly. A former scholastic and career high-achiever, Paul eventually learned how to stoke the flame of his own curiosity, listen to his intuition and align his work and life with something much deeper inside himself.

Today, Paul is the author of the book, The Pathless Path, which offers an incredibly practical roadmap and series of perspectives that can help us live well and come more fully alive.

Here are a few highlights:

🎓 Paul’s journey through scholastic & career high-achievement and the courageous choice to leave it all behind

🧭  Advice for those who want to take a break from their career and reconsider their life path — plus how to do so without a financial buffer

🗺️  How to leave the conventional path — or the ‘default path’ — of success, work & money and forge your own ‘pathless path’ while contending with the reactions of friends, family and colleagues

💭 Discovering your own 'illegible ambition' — which is ambition you can't really explain or understand (especially to your parents) yet you know is right for you

⚡️ Learning to follow your intuition, sense of aliveness and non-productive desires to ultimately find yourself — plus the magic of 'wandering'

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Jenny Lee is an Embodiment Mentor, Vocal Empowerment Coach, Breathwork Facilitator and incredible musician out of Oregon. Her vision is to 'activate coherence (the harmonic union of feeling, thinking, and doing) as the most powerful tool for self-healing. 

In this conversation, Jenny and I unpack what it really means to "stand in your truth" and how truth is intimately connected with your nervous system, childhood experiences, attachment strategies and physical health.

This episode is for those who desire to use their voice more, speak with greater authority and authenticity, design a life that feels aligned for them, expand in communication skills, heal relational wounds and better understand the energetics behind their voice, throat and vocal power. It is also for you if you're a healer, facilitator or coach who is actively helping to guide people more closely to their own truth. 

Show Highlights:

• Understanding 'interbeing,' learning that true freedom includes consequence and finding the sweet spot between limitation and boundlessness
• Self-empowerment as a necessary pathway for our individual growth but not the end destination; why we must come into relational empowerment for true thriving
• Truth and vulnerability as necessary gateways to genuine human connection; and the titration of truth based on the state of your nervous system
• The throat chakra as a bridge between the head and the heart; our expression and our intentions; and the seat of the will — if you want to express more love, heal your throat
• Coming into right relationship with fear as a guide back to ourselves

Lastly, just a heads up that we experienced some sound quality hiccups and there are some slight echos in the background. 

~ CONNECT WITH JENNY ~ 

Today’s guest is Brooks Barron ⭐️

Brooks is the founder of Starlight Leadership and was the co-guide on my 11-day wilderness-based vision quest in May 2021. He offers the world a unique blend of executive coaching, wilderness initiations, medicine journeys and soul guiding. His passion is to support leaders who are courageous enough to follow their inner truth, lean into their darkness and embody their light out in the world. 

In this conversation, we discuss Brooks’ personal, educational and professional re-wilding journeys — from Stanford Graduate School to a San Francisco climate tech startup and eventually into the wilderness. His story traces the success paradigm of the ‘traditional path’ and highlights that fulfillment does not come from titles or achievements. Rather, it comes by prioritizing the needs, desires and genius of our soul.

We discuss our shared experience on wilderness-based vision fasts with Animas Valley Institute, the teachings of Bill Plotkin, transforming within community and the playful potency of cannabis sativa as a healing plant medicine.

If you are someone who has longed for greater meaning, depth and purpose in your life or are a leader looking to create more meaningful change in the world, this episode is for you. Please enjoy!

Brooks lives in Carbondale, CO with his wife and their newborn baby girl. If this episode resonates with you, please reach out to Brooks and/or Kelly and let us know.

~ RESOURCES MENTIONED IN EPISODE ~

My very first guest is Jonny Miller, my life partner and fellow curious researcher.

Jonny is many things, including the creator of Nervous System Mastery ~ a 5-week online bootcamp for cultivating inner resilience ~ which combines his expertise in the nervous system, fascination with the breath and passion for creating embodied learning experiences. Jonny is a clinically trained Facilitated Breath Re-Patterning facilitator and nervous system specialist, as well as an avid surfer, meditator, biohacker and freediver. 

In this conversation, we put our partnership roles to the side and dive into Jonny's professional and personal unfoldment story. We talk about both of our initiations into grief and how going 'all the the way through' challenging emotions can lead to profound peace and wonder. He opens up about his explorations of psychotechnologies, including meditation and plant medicine, as well as the important differences amongst breathwork modalities. 

When it comes to re-wilding, Jonny has an amazing story of growing up in a creatively repressed London society and hitting burnout as a startup founder. He eventually found consistent access to his full aliveness through travel, athletics, embodiment practices, mens work, the nervous system and more. Not only has Jonny intuited his way through his own conditioning, he now helps others do the same by educating on the critical importance of nervous system literacy. 

Please enjoy this long, semi-meandering and epic conversation! 

~ OFFICIAL LINKS ~