Sharon Gardner on re-rooting Afro-Caribbean 'veganism', food justice and body re-connection

In the loud of the ever-changing world, what does it truly mean to engage in silence with intention? How can intended, desired pause open up possibilities for deepening relationships with oneself and community beyond the realms of verbal communication? This month, we bring to our show Pamela Dangelmaier, a sought-after motivational speaker, TEDx presenter, and mindfulness coach, who has a passion for intentional silence and empowering individuals and leaders to embrace quiet moments as a gateway to clarity, creativity, and meaningful action. As a founding member of the Mindful Coach Association, published novelist, e-commerce entrepreneur, and mindfulness advocate, Pamela infuses every aspect of her life with the same practices she teaches - pausing, listening deeply, and engaging with presence. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Environmental justice work speaks to the visceral nature of systemic oppression, lived through the bodies of Indigenous and local communities at the frontlines of climate crises and ecological degeneration. To defend the land, water and other natural resources is not a question of choice but survival for many communities protecting their territories from extractive industries. How do we then, as allies and advocates, choose to take the risk of offering our voices and organising with environmental defenders, in the movement to collective freedom and justice? This month, we bring onto the show Abby Reyes, an author and recognized leader in driving community climate solutions. Her first book, Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice releases today, May 6, 2025, from North Atlantic Books. Truth Demands is a salve for anyone navigating the open waters of grief and essential reading for the emerging climate activist and those becoming more ecologically aware. The book chronicles Abby’s own healing journey and pursuit of justice after the loss of her partner and two other land rights advocates when they were murdered near Indigenous U’wa territory in Colombia in 1999.  Born and raised in Virginia, Abby began her climate work conducting rural environmental legal assistance in the Philippines, her father’s homeland, and later walked alongside the Colombian U’wa Indigenous pueblo in their fight against big oil – an experience at the center of Truth Demands. Today, she is the Director of Community Resilience Projects at University of California, Irvine, where she supports leaders from climate-vulnerable communities and their academic partners to accelerate community-owned just transition solutions. A graduate of Stanford University and UC Berkeley Law, she clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, co-chaired the board of EarthRights International, and is an advisor to the National Association of Climate Resilience Planners.  Abby has been recognized as a “Model of Resistance” by Barnard’s Scholar and the Feminist Conference, has a TEDx talk on How to Come Home and has discussed her work with the Law & Political Economy Project. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area. This conversation centres the themes of Truth Demands addressing embodiment as resistance, chronic fatigue and exhaustion in environmental justice work, and body reorganisation through rest. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

With increasing awareness of the environmental and health benefits of plant-based food practices, what power does re-rooting the values of the western vegan movement hold in tending to the generational wound of food injustices for BIPOC communities? How can we begin to trace ancestral ways of cooking to build more sustaining connections to the land and our bodies, whilst retaining the stories and flavours of our homelands? We ground these questions in this episode with Sharon Gardner, a plant-based nutritionist, a cookery school teacher, and the founder of Core of Life (UK), and Wholistic Wellness with Sharon. Sharon holds a Degree in Health Sciences and also holds a diploma in teaching Pilates, which she uses as a tool to teach people how to use their body, so that it benefits them in their everyday life. Her work involves supporting individuals on their wellness journeys through facilitating and empowerment. As a plant-based chef and holistic wellness practitioner with Caribbean heritage, Sharon loves to share her knowledge and story through infusing the “vegan flavours of the Caribbean” in the dishes she creates and shares with all those she has the pleasure of working with.  Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode resources, shownotes and episode archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Water bears life, cleanses old wounds and carries stories of resilience and hope between generations. Water is intuitive, liquid magic that holds our hydrophilic bodies in development as children and brings familiarity to the world as adults. Yet, our reductionist scientific training strips the enchanting beauty of the element, reducing it to a “resource” that can be tested on, fragmented and controlled as a commodity. How can we then open up the sciences to alternative ways of tending to the needs of our waters and lands that hold space for stories, re-connection, pause and appreciation of inherent beauty? This month, we bring onto the show Mary Trudeau, a professional engineer specialising in water management and urban water infrastructure, and is the Director of an environmental consulting company. She is also the author of a children's book, A Tale of Two Planets, written to inspire awe and wonder for our amazing planet. Mary has worked in the environmental field for over 30 years and believes the first step to resolving our many challenges is to reconnect with the wonder and beauty of life on Earth, rekindling reverence and remembering, with humility, our place as planetary caretakers. Mary's diverse interests are reflected in her formal education, with degrees including a Bachelor of Applied Science (Civil Engineering), an Arts Degree (English Literature) and a PhD (Physical Geography). She is a part time professor at the University of Ottawa.  Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode resources, shownotes and episode archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

In our personal and collective efforts to resist and transform burnout culture, many of us engage in embodiment and mindfulness practice, only to re-enter the cycle of burnout in our working lives. How can we shape and design our workspaces so they invite more space for regenerative growth - one grounded in nature’s principles of reciprocity, diversity, rest and care? What can a workspace intimately connected to the needs of the body look like within head-centric ways of working? In this month’s episode, we bring to the show Monica Sander Burns, a certified Forest Therapy guide and founding partner of Society of Trees, an organization helping to bring the rejuvenation of nature therapies to the workplace. Monica has guided hundreds of participants through Nature therapy sessions that have been designed to replenish and restore a depleted workforce. In our conversation, Monica maps out what a biophilic workspace can look like, embedding nature immersion in our working lives that interweaves human and ecosystem wellbeing as remediation to workplace burnout culture. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode resources. Connect with us on Instagram and Facebook.

Amidst political instability, humanitarian and ecologies crises and social fragmentation, where do we begin to create space for designing our freedom dreams for ourselves and our communities? How do we give ourselves permission to dream of a liberated future within creatively restrictive systems?  In this first episode of 2025, we bring onto the show Dr Michelle Pledger, the founder of Living for Liberation, an organisation that supports liberation of self, systems and society, and academic focusing her research on cultivating culturally responsive teaching and classroom management for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Michelle is committed to disrupting inequity in education and cultivating a community of practitioners who honour the lived experiences of all their students and educators. Her book, LIBERATE! Pocket-Sized Paradigms for Liberatory Learning is a must read for any educator who aspires to design educational experiences that are responsive to culturally and linguistically diverse young people. Whether it is through the vehicle of project-based learning, culturally responsive-sustaining pedagogy, or freedom facilitation, her hope is to develop educators and students who think critically, act empathetically, and live a life of liberation. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode resources and archives. Follow the show on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).

Take a pause and ask yourself - have you tuned into your senses today? Have you been able to take a moment to tap into the senses that help regulate and make meaning of our inner landscapes as portals to the ever-changing outer worlds? As we begin to come to the end of the year, we hold space in this reflection episode for the sacredness of the places of our bodies in helping us navigate and make sense of these challenging and constantly changing times. By weaving together sensuous experiences throughout the episode, our host Agrita Dandriyal grounds the body as the primary place we make sense of our inner and outer landscapes in a call for deep remembering of our roles and responsibilities as current stewards and future ancestors of the land. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access all episode resources, shownotes and archives. Follow the podcast on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything). Support us by giving the podcast an iTunes rating so that we can reach other wonderful humans like you!

Whilst living in realities polluted with ableist, colonial and capitalist values of human domination and subordination of the more-than-human, where can we seek inspiration and hope for manifesting alternative futures of inclusivity, vulnerability and reciprocal care? How can tracing trails of injury and resistance to generational disablement of human and more-than-human communities equip us with the necessary tools for building a disabled future that is grounded in the values of living with and caring for the body and the environment? This month, we are joined by the wonderful Sunaura Taylor, an artist, writer and author of Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (The New Press, 2017) and Disabled Ecology: Lessons from a Wounded Desert. Taylor has written for a range of popular media outlets and her artworks have been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. She works at the intersection of disability studies, environmental justice, multispecies studies, and art practice. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in the Bay Area with her daughter Leonora, husband David, and their two cats, Rosie and Pirate.  In this heart-felt episode, Sunaura offers us ways of mapping out disabled ecologies by framing our ecological crises as a multispecies disablement that extends out to biotic and abiotic bodies, human and more-than-human life, and across generations. Using the themes of her book Disabled Ecology: Lessons from a Wounded Desert as a grounding, Sunaura sows seeds of hope and radical imagination for a disabled future, which resists ableist and colonial systems of power to foster values of alternative caregiving and meaning-making of the diversity and beauty of our worlds. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything). Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access all episode resources, shownotes and archives.

As we mourn human-induced ecological loss and violence to the more-than-human world, what space do we hold for grieving what we have lost in ourselves by creating walls that were once blurred boundaries between our bodies and the ecosystem? How do we create joy from what remains of our lost capacities to communicate and connect to other bodies through languages of the heart? This month we bring to the space Leah Rampy, a writer, retreat leader, and educator who weaves ecology, spirituality, personal stories, and practices to help others deepen their relationship to the natural world. With experience as a teacher, professor, corporate and nonprofit executive, and leadership consultant, she began a decades-long journey to understand what lies beneath our unwillingness to change our interactions with the natural world. Her growing commitment to reweaving soul and Earth has been informed by leading over a dozen pilgrimages and many more retreats, extensive reading and research, her contemplative practice, and she shares her wisdom of the living world through her book Earth and Soul: reconnecting amid climate chaos. Leah has taught in public schools and universities, held leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies, offered executive coaching and leadership consulting through a company she founded, and led a nonprofit organization. Leah holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum from Indiana University. The episode explores the complexities in grieving ecological loss and degradation community fragmentation and environmental inaction, particularly bringing focus on the paradox of reconnecting to the natural world we were never apart from. Our conversation invites moments of reflection on how we see our ecological crises through a human lens but also how we see ourselves placed in the ecosystem, from moral responsibility to collective identity. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything). Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access all episode resources, shownotes and archives.

Making livelihoods from artistic passions is essential for sustaining art communities and preserving the art itself, but many artists find the joy of creating being lost within the struggles of survivorship and power imbalances of our capitalistic world. What can de-commodifying creativity look like for artists seeking more fluidity and joy-making in their creation processes but also balancing their business needs? This month, we bring back to the space the wonderful Maanarak of Grey, the artistic alias of Radinka Ustasia, a multidisciplinary artist from the Caribbean island of Bonaire. From 2010-2023 Maanarak has lived, studied, and worked in the Netherlands, with the highest qualification she obtained there being a Bachelors of Science in International Development Management, majoring in Rural Development and Innovation, at Van Hall Larenstein in Velp. During her study program, she minored in Art and Creativity at work and this is where she started an exploration of combining her competing passions.  In this episode, we extend from the previous episode's themes of artistic expression and playfulness in activism and development to explore the ways in which we can balance capitalistic tendencies to monetise joy and basic financial needs in our lives, and challenge urges to perfect and structure as a way to expand our limitless imaginations. Connect with Maanarak on Instagram (@maanarak.art). Follow us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything). Visit mindfullofeverything.com for episode resources and archives.