Earth-bound Spirituality, the Ethics of Care, and Indigenous Song as Medicine

New Books Network

Today we speak to East-West Psychology adjunct faculty Susana Bustos, about growing up in Chile and how her roots in music and psychology lead her to study music therapy. We then discuss how South American Indigenous healing practices can be considered as a forms of earth-bound spirituality, and how that gives rise to alternative notions of relationality bound by a local ethics of care. Susana speaks about plant medicine as psycho-integrators and we discuss the importance of integration in Indigenous healing practices. The discussion ends developing ideas about sonic ecology in which Susana shares an experience of singing as mystical encounter with sentience, and we explore immanent approaches to learning the ethics of cross-cultural confluence through deep listening.

Susana Bustos, Ph.D. (CIIS, 2008), M.A in Clinical Psychology and in Music Therapy from Chilean universities, is adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and other schools in the Bay Area and abroad. Susana also conducts independent research on entheogenic shamanic traditions of the Americas and holds a private practice in Berkeley, CA. Her teaching, research, and clinical work focus mainly on the healing potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness, their integration into ordinary life, and on the quest for adequately bridging Amerindian cosmologies and practices into the West. Susana has written articles and book contributions on the interphase of shamanic song and healing and on entheogenic integration, and she lectures internationally on these topics. She directed the Spiritual Emergence Network in the US between 2016 and 2020.

The EWP Podcast credits

• East-West Psychology Podcast Website
• Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
• Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP Core Faculty) and Jonathan Kay (PhD candidate)
• Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
• Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
• Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
• Music at the end of the episode: Magic Stones, on the album Forest Dwellers by Jonathan Kay and Andrew Kay
• Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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