In this multi-faceted episode, I am so grateful to speak with fellow Jungian Analyst in training and movement magician, Mackenzie Amara, AKA 'THE INKED SHRINK", about the role that culture plays in our minds and in our lives. We go into our mutual love of the intersection of the soma and psyche and how she always includes elements of analytical psychology, myth, alchemy, and shadow work in her teaching and how dance and depth psychology are part and parcel for her and cannot be separated.

A few things we talk about:

The place that Jungian theory holds in our modern world, and how Jung's wisdom can be used to understand how it's rapidly changing
What happens when minds socialized by western culture try to absorb eastern philosophy and mysticism
What it means to recognize our wholeness, and our complexity as individuals
The mercurial nature of being in relationship with other humans
The place and importance of irrationality, non-sense, and non-linear in our lives and minds

Golden nuggets of wisdom from Mackenzie...

"That next step is the only thing that you can do right now. So you have to start where you are or otherwise you’re nowhere."

"We’ve been culturally programmed and religiously programmed to avoid that recognition [of evil] in ourselves lest we give into too deeply."

"When the culture can’t hold the experiences of another culture’s religion or zeitgeist or tradition, you just sort of fall through."

"You can’t move beyond the next movement. Whether that’s the next breath, or admission or confession, or the next twirl or the next partner, or the next eye gaze. "

About Mackenzie

By trade Mackenzie is a writer, coach, & 5Rhythms® teacher. By vocation she is a Jungian analyst-in-training & Clinical Psychology doctoral student. By design she is a collection of fractal, holographic cells dancing around some strange attractor for the sake of who knows what to live an insignificant, mythic life reflective of the mysterious vital spark within her. She identifies as a series of memories & unverifiable subjective experiences of self-hood to which she is rather fondly attached. She has a penchant for scholarship, the occult, pedantic erudition, morbid humor, grandiosity, nihilism, & semi-responsible hedonism. Born in the shadow of New Age culture into a fractured family system & the subjective experiencer of (arguably) extreme early childhood trauma, her life’s work is to heal psychic wounds—her’s & other’s—that she & others become strong enough to contend with the unconscious quicksands & transpersonal abysses which lap at the periphery of developing consciousness. She is an emergent property of Being playing at becoming sovereign. She really, really loves butter.

Connect with Mackenzie through @theinkedshrink or learn more by visiting her website!

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