Podcast 60: Wild Women Changing the World: Air, Song, Breath & Healing

Our 60th episode!

Air is not a metaphor. It’s the medium. In this kickoff to our Wild Woman season, we get practical about breath, voice, and time in nature—how they shift stress, clarity, and courage. We also talk anthem-as-activism (Casablanca), hummingbirds as teachers, and why humming or chanting counts as a real practice.

What you’ll hear:

• “Inhale prayer, exhale intention”: a simple daily ritual you can actually keep
• Joy as resistance: glimmers, birdsong, and staying human in a chaotic world
• Forest bathing without the incense: what the research says about cortisol, blood pressure, mood
• Finding the wild woman you tucked away—and letting her sing

Listen, then tell us one air practice you’ll try this week. New here? Subscribe and share this with someone who needs to breathe again.

Sources & links:
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki (bio): https://www.servantsofthelight.org/about-sol/
“120 minutes/week in nature” study (Scientific Reports): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44097-3

Sponsor: 

Minerva Educational & Wellness Treatment Center — classes and resources: https://minervaed.com

#TwoCronesPodcast #WildWomen #ForestBathing

Minerva Educational and Wellness
Provides Educational and Wellness Counseling Programs, Alternative Holistic Treatments/Therapies

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Two Crones and a Microphone. I am Linda.

And I am Betty. And I’m Sally. We are so excited to launch our Season 4 of Two Crones and a Microphone.

And this year, our season topic is “Seeking the Wild Woman.” This podcast will be about wild women changing the world. We’re so excited about the power and grace and stories that we are going to be telling this season. And guess what? As wise crones, we are the wild women. Come join us.

So, I love the wild, wily women crones. So, let’s get started on our exciting podcast on how wild women work with the element of air to create change in ourselves and in others, in the world at large.

Yes, change happens at the speed of thought—which, by the way, Linda saw on a bumper sticker on a car, but I think it’s amazing. Wisdom is everywhere; you just have to look for it.

Well, you know, we’re going to be doing a lot of different things during the time that you’ll sit with us here, but for today, we’re here to explore air. It is such a wily element. Speaking about wild, wily, wise crones—air is wily in itself. You might ask why. Well, you know, you don’t know; you will now. It took us two months to get the script together for our air podcast.

Earlier this year in Season 3, we’ve been covering the elements of fire, of water, of earth, and those just sort of rolled out of us. Nope, not air. Air has been wily. But this is why it’s gotten us to the place here and now where we’re weaving talking about the wild woman. And so what does she do? If it’s windy out, she goes out and dances with the wind. Have you ever tried that? I have. It’s a lot of fun.

So, air: it’s around us all the time. We take it for granted. It supports us our entire life and it’s expressed as breath, as song, as sound, as wisdom. And so we really invite you to let this be a season of listening deeply and breathing fully.

A couple of years ago, I had a friend who sent me the most amazing card, and I wanted to share the poem that’s actually by Maya Angelou because it speaks to some of what we’re talking about, and it’s become kind of one of my favorite poems. So, it talks about wild women: “A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself.” And again, that was on a greeting card and attributed to Maya Angelou. I just think that’s lovely.

We are surrounded by air our entire lives, and we don’t think about it unless we have a hard time breathing. Whether it’s smoke in the air, whether we happen to have some kind of congestion in our lungs—and then we go, “Oh, we’re having a hard time breathing.” But I like to think about it in terms of sound and vibration. And a lot of the work that we did with Oshana was about sound and vibration and healing. Think of the piano or the organ, maybe the flute, the shofar (a conch shell, a trumpet), and other wind instruments like the bassoon or oboe. Drums are vibrational—we talk a lot about using drums, whether we’re doing that in an older tradition with a drum that has the symbols on the side, or however we’re using them. For thousands of years they’ve been used to dance, to meditate, to get in touch with the earth, to get in touch with that wild aspect of ourselves—wild aspect of ourselves as women—because on the podcast we are all women or identify ourselves as women. But it stirs our souls.

Absolutely. Instrumental music and voice celebrate our relationship with air in songs ranging from stirring to soothing. Think about a drumbeat and a song you may sing to that drumbeat, and then think about a lullaby—two different things. A lullaby is soothing to anybody: an adult who is ill, a child, an infant, even your pet if you’re a pet parent. Your furry little friend. I know Luna loves it when I sing to her—she really does. She’s very happy; she just sits there and listens.

When we were getting the podcast together and talking about stirring songs, I was thinking about the movie Casablanca. Most of us of a certain age have seen that movie more than once. For you younger folk, if you’ve never seen it, I highly encourage you to watch it. It’s an old classic—Humphrey Bogart and, oh—menopause brain—what is the female lead? I’ll think of it. Anyway, it’s amazing. And it was made right around the time we were getting ready to enter World War II, so it had a lot of patriotic themes. It was set in Casablanca with a group of expats—French—living there at the time. Ingrid Bergman! Thank you. So anyway, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman— they have a history in the past, and they meet in this nightclub. As they’re in the nightclub, a group of Nazi soldiers enter. They were really blustery. They would come in and take over—that was their thing: taking over. The woman who was the singer in the club stood up and started to sing the French national anthem. Talk about a wild woman moment. She got the whole club up singing. Even now, I remember how stirred I was—her courage and her voice. That was a wild woman moment that ultimately did change the world, because it helped people realize: we can stand up. We don’t have to hit or fire weapons; there are other ways to do this. Casablanca—Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman—it’s a classic. I really encourage you to watch it. Perfect moment.

Sally, you’re on mute, my dear. I had a little dog moment at my house, so I muted myself. But it does make me want to rewatch the movie. It’s been a long time, but I remember it—quite an amazing movie.

Music helps us feel connected and adds inspiration to our lives. And just think about the word inspiration—an air-related word: to inspire, to breathe in, to breathe in intention. We’re always wanting to weave in things that Oshana taught us, and one of the things she taught us that I think is very powerful: inhalation is prayer and exhalation is intention. So we breathe in our thought or our prayer—whatever it is—when we take our moment to stop and think. And when we breathe that out—whether we’re breathing it into a prayer bundle or into our hands—it’s whatever our intention is. One of the things I love to breathe in—and I’m going to speak for Linda and Betty here as well—is breathing into my hands the intention to help and to heal, so that wherever I put my hands, it’s with the intention to help and to heal, to guide and protect. That, in my mind, is the universal prayer that Oshana taught us to do. I invite you to think about the same thing—whether you’re breathing that into your hands and then using them to help feed a grandbaby, or to sew something for yourself or someone else. It’s a lovely way to take that breath and to bring that intention forward.

When we teach our Reiki classes, we teach our students how to do that before they start working on a client—because you are activating your hands and expressing your intention to help and to heal.

And I love including this quote from Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki—who is also a teacher to many of us—about the element of air. She associates air with speech, laughter, song, birds, the mental processes we have, and conversation with the divine. Each breath is an alchemical process—a magical, divine transaction. In symbiosis with the plant kingdom: we exhale what the plants inhale, and vice versa—that communication we have with trees and plants. We are exchanging back and forth because we take in what the plants give off.

Thank you. It’s a way of unity. I know we’re all attuned to herbalism in our own way, but as an herbalist I love meeting a plant that way. If I walk up to a tree, I might consciously inhale what the tree is giving off and thank the tree with my own exhale, which it will incorporate and use. It’s a way of meeting and greeting that uses breath in a sacred manner and uses breath as a blessing. I love what you added about what Oshana taught us about breathing into our hands—because I do that as a daily practice after I do my four directions—just to say, “May these hands be blessed in the way that’s needed.” Using our breath as a sacred tool is an option each of us has; we can each embroider on it and use it in our own ways.

There are so many things about air. We’ll be talking about air for a while. But I also love the notion of joy as resistance. I love the glimmers. I love to go find glimmers. For me, that kind of deep connection is an element of joy—it helps me express joy. And let’s be honest, when the world is torn asunder, our job is to stay, as best we can—and I know it’s not easy—grounded and focused. When we do that as a wild woman, when we express our joy and our joyful moments and share a story about birdsong with someone else, it opens up their capacity for joy as well. Then we stay joyful in a crazy world; that helps rebalance us and the people we know and love in our communities. I include all beings in that—not just us two-leggeds.

Air has to do with mental processes, with mental clarity and critical thinking, and the ability to see clearly. The word “clairvoyant” is seeing clearly; that has to do with mental processes as well as the visual. Air can contribute to clarity, and we’ll touch on this many times. Qualities of voice can be deeply healing—whether for personal healing and just exhaling with a sigh to release tension, or vibrational healing in song and music, being part of the song of the spheres. We’re automatically there already. That’s one of the things I love about air: because it surrounds us all the time, we are surrounded and embedded with the ability to be that wild woman—to be the being who expresses through air, through cognition, through intuition, through wisdom, through prayer, through healing—through all the things. So, I invite you to join us.

We talk a lot about Hildegard because she was—she’s our favorite wild woman from a thousand years ago. Amazing. She did a lot of singing. She composed an opera—she was the first woman to compose an opera. She and the sisters sang a lot of their prayers; they chanted a lot of their prayers, because when you put that out there, that sound carries. It’s just a beautiful thing. I know in my own prayer life I do sing some of my prayers. We have friends who follow a Celtic practice of chanting a lot of Celtic prayers—it’s amazing.

And Hildegard often said to sing, because “the song of rejoicing softens hard hearts.” It does. She said, “Don’t stop singing.” A thousand years later we are still listening and singing her music. I’ve sung some of her music in chorus. It’s beautiful—and if you listen to it, it really hits you right in your heart, your heart chakra. It stirs you. You feel better after listening to this type of music. I don’t know if you remember back in the day when heavy metal came out—Sally’s face!—that music could be very destructive because it hit you in all the wrong spots and brought up all the wrong thoughts and possibly feelings. So, there’s a perfect example of how music can do the opposite also. And we can’t have music without air. You cannot sing without taking in a deep breath and letting it out.

Air is what we need to live. Between air and water, it’s one reason we haven’t gotten to Mars yet—we’re not sure what’s up there; can it sustain life? Maybe. But we need air. I liken it also to birdsong. When I take Luna out in the morning and the birds are waking up—oh my God—it’s beautiful, like a symphony. They’re talking to each other and singing to each other. Now we’re entering fall, so what do we have in the air? Air stirring the leaves and bringing those sounds in. It makes you feel good; all is well with the world when you hear that. Just sink into it. Allow it to get into your field and help you connect with the divine. It’s really magical.

In the Two Crones newsletter—the Strong Sun’s Moon newsletter—I wrote about hummingbird. I’m always amazed: if you watch birds in flight, obviously they’re fully surrounded by air. Hummingbirds—those tiny, amazing beings that zip around and hover—are totally held by the air and the beating of their wings. You can hear their wings move so fast; you can hear them flying with that buzzing or humming sound. I have some fun stories about hummers, but my all-time favorite is from a friend outside New Orleans. She was sitting quietly at her patio table in the morning when a hummingbird perched on her cup of tea and stayed for a time, just hovering on her cup of tea. What a gift—to share a cup of tea with those sweet little beings.

I invite you to think about sound and vibration and the ability to fly. Some of us would love to be able to fly, to be fully held—whether we become paratroopers or windsurf or zipline. Even zip-lining—fully surrounded by air and having that almost-flying feeling. It’s fun.

We wanted to talk a little about how to find the wild woman in you. Some of us might be thinking, “There is no wild woman in me.” When I thought about the women in my lineage, I first thought, “Well, I don’t really have any wild women in my lineage.” But we’re asking you to think about: What is the craziest, most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done? How did it feel? Have other people called you wild? I’ve been called wild and crazy and a little bit off the edge. What does it mean to be wild? When we talk about wild, wily, crazy women—what does that mean to you? Do you want to be called wild? Maybe not. We’re inviting you to think about that as part of our wisdom practice today: What would it mean to be called a wild woman?

Some of us may say, “No, I don’t want to be called a wild person.” But what is a wild woman? Someone connected and rooted to the earth, intuitive, and in the webwork of all creation— in harmony, connected with our family (whatever that is, because it isn’t just two-leggeds). Our connection to everything that walks and talks and swims and flies on this earth—that family of beings.

What if you stuffed the wild woman in you away—like you don’t think she’s there at all? Have you stuffed her away—that shadow part of yourself? The goddess embodies all of those aspects. In this journey, as we talk about this this year, we invite you to think about the aspects you may have tucked away. That wildness that as a little girl you were told, “Girls don’t get angry. You must always behave. You must not say anything unkind. You must not argue. You must always be demure and poised.” And the matching hats, purse, gloves, and shoes. How could you be wild and wear a red hat and purple shoes? Many of you are laughing because you’re younger and you’re like, “What are you talking about—wearing gloves?” But a lot of crones remember the matching hats, shoes, purse—and we must wear gloves. Not just to church—everywhere. So we tucked away that wild woman because girls were not supposed to be wild; we were supposed to match. Heaven forbid you have a thought or a statement that doesn’t match what’s in the room. We’re here to say: let’s talk about that. Let’s find the glimmer in that and explore and honor that aspect of ourselves.

And we talk a lot about women, but we can’t forget the men who have been told to tuck away their wild selves—or to totally live their wild selves. That’s a whole other thing we could get into, but not today.

I think being a wild woman is what we’ve been doing all these years and not recognizing that’s who we were. Oshana really taught us to be wild women and to go against the norm. In the ’80s, you’d see things on TV about “tree huggers.” Well—hell—we’re tree huggers. We always have been. We talk to our trees and birds and communicate with the wind. I remember during a hurricane having to get my mother out of her house. The wind was fierce. I got out of my car, opened her screen door—the whole thing just unhinged. That’s how bad the wind was. We had to replace the door. I remember saying to the wind, “Calm down. I’m on a mission of mercy. Just calm down,” because the wind’s a living thing to me. As are trees and birds. If I find a feather on the ground, I pick it up—because that’s part of the bird, and a lot of times they leave them as gifts.

We have to bring that into ourselves and realize: this is what we need to express out into the world these days. If we don’t step into our power, it’s going to be more disastrous. This is our time to step out. I teach people how to hug trees. Our friend Sylvia had a whole thing about bringing down blood pressure by putting your feet on the earth, hugging a tree, and letting it all be transmuted.

The elements—all of them—are there to work with us and support us. That’s why we talk about communicating with the trees, birds, elements. It goes beyond blood pressure; there is a pulse there, and we can exchange thoughts or pictures or breath—as I was talking about earlier—with leaves on the trees. It creates reciprocity—it’s a form of conversation. It’s really important; it helps us realize we are part of the net of light, the webwork of life.

The good news is there’s lots of research now—forest bathing and everything out there—that actually talks about how it helps our health. We have a body of research now for those of you who like the facts that says what we know is true.

Betty, did you want to talk about how to take a feather walk?

Where I live we have all kinds of birds and trees. Frequently when I take Luna out, we go to the back where the forested area is and walk through. I can’t tell you how many turkey feathers I’ve found—this was an old turkey farm. I’ve found hawk feathers (which, by the way, you’re not supposed to have—it’s a predator bird), and I found an eagle feather one day. When I see these feathers, I pick them up because it’s a message from the bird. It is a message from Great Spirit. A hawk feather in particular is a message from Great Spirit. There are many things you can do to honor that feather. I’m not as gifted as Sally who can bead feathers so they’re gorgeous, but I’ll wrap it in red, with a little tobacco, and I’ll use it to smudge people, or to clear the energy around Luna if she’s jumpy. You can use the feather to help clear the air. I often give one to clients—I tell them this is a gift from Mother Earth to you through the bird. I show them how to clear their aura, the energy field around them, by brushing down with the feather. It affects it. If you know how to use a pendulum, you can check the chakras before and after— you’ll see a distinct difference. If you’re a therapeutic touch practitioner, an energy worker—do a hand scan, feather the person, then rescan. These are all gifts; you don’t have to go to the store to buy them. Granted, in the city, you may have a pigeon feather—but it’s still a feather. Pigeons are convivial; they like to talk and gather—big community—they talk all the time.

I remember a time when I was living in Connecticut where I developed a relationship with a group of crows. They had watchers in the trees—one or two would watch because I’d sometimes put vegetable parings—compost things—on the wood’s edge. They knew to look for me. Over a year or two, every time I’d come out, one from the top of the tree would call the others. Five more would come in, and they’d have whatever feast I laid out. One day I’d just finished working, and I was a little distracted. I was going out my front door to get my mail. A crow up there was so agitated—calling and calling. I stopped and said, “Oh my, you have so much to say right now.” It kept going. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw on the driveway where I was headed—there loped by a wild bobcat. At least two and a half feet tall and three feet long. Bobcats in Connecticut are big and fierce. It glanced over at me and kept loping up the driveway. I was so thankful to that crow. They had adopted me, and they warned me something was coming. True story. The kind of possibilities that can arise out of communicating.

And listening. Stop and listen. Change your course of action.

I went out the other day to check the hummingbird feeder, and a hummingbird came and stayed right in front of my face. I remember thinking, “You’re thanking me for feeding you.” It’s around us. It’s available to anybody. The key is what Sally said: take the moment. If you let yourself get caught up rushing around and using your phone on your walk to follow social media, you’re going to miss it. You have to slow down, or you’ll miss all of it.

I was so glad I paid attention. I have a couple other stories too. One time I was carrying stuff out to my car. I had the back door propped open. Every time I walked out the house door, the car door went thump and closed. It was the winds being playful. “Okay, you have my attention—hi.” It was the funniest thing—I laughed out loud. “All right, you guys are being playful.”

Without going into detail: if you’re into astrology, some of us are air signs. I’ll fess up—I’m an air sign. My spiritual name is an air name. Linda is as well. So there are a lot of sacred meanings associated with air. Breath, song, chanting—speech, poetry—are all impelled by air. They’re a form of spell-making; invocations to the divine. Air moves within and around us; it moves the plants and caresses or blows all around us. While we haven’t talked a lot about smoke today, smoke in the form of incense or a candle flame or a fire may grant us wisdom if we pay attention to how it moves in the air. One of the things Oshana taught us is how to read smoke and the messages you get—whether through doing chanupa, reading smoke around a fire, or smoke from your grill. All ways of looking at the messages and beauty offered to us by air and by smoke.

Back in the day, people understood you could communicate with the different elements, and we’ve lost that. We spend a lot of time trying to retrieve it. Honestly, it’s not that hard. Center, ground, slow down, and listen. That was one of the big things Oshana taught me. Remember, I grew up in Brooklyn; I worked in Manhattan and Queens—busy places where you didn’t have this. When she started teaching us, I found that even in those places, if I would just stop and listen, it would be there. Even though everything was like—around—center, ground, listen, and you’ll hear it. It’s a practice accessible to everyone. It doesn’t matter where you are.

Of course, now I live here and it’s easy. Sometimes I’m sitting in my living room and there it is. The bird feeder’s out; I can see the birds. They come and look in the window. I can hear the wind outside. It’s amazing. It is quiet here; I don’t have to deal with all that ruckus. And not in this podcast, but in one of our next air podcasts, we’re going to talk about weather and wind and air. A clue: both Sally and I have air-related names that might be a little weather-related too—and it’s amazing, because there is an ability to communicate there too with wind and air as an element.

Betty, would you like to let us know about inspiration related to breath?

Inspiration. Of course we form words to create meaning; we did talk about singing, reciting poetry, chanting to pray. A lot of times, for myself, when I’m outside I’ll start riffing—chanting. I’ll start—words just come to me. A couple of months ago we did a little ceremony for something, and all these words came to me; I was singing them, circling and singing. It seems to be happening more and more lately. Is it because I’ve been reading a lot of Hildegard? Possibly—she might be coming through. It’s so much fun. When I say my rosary—I say it daily—often I sing the prayers because it lightens my mood. That’s a big part of it. I could be feeling blah—maybe I watched the morning news and think, “Why did I watch that?” But once I get into the singing and chanting, it helps me get rid of the stuff weighing me down so I can go out and smile at people and be kind and not get caught in the dark abyss.

Air is a carrier. My hairdresser is Vietnamese, and when she cuts my hair she says under her breath, “Beautiful. You’re beautiful. This is beautiful. You will look beautiful.” She’s doing affirmations you can barely hear. How wise is that? She’s working around your skull and head—the point of cognition and speech. Another way to use your breath: use your breath.

Many of us don’t think we can sing. That’s another part of putting away that wild aspect of ourselves by saying, “I have a hard time staying on key, so I shouldn’t sing.” Embrace letting yourself do that. Sing with your whole heart and let it go.

Sometimes I tell people to hum. If you’re worried about carrying a tune, hum. Everybody can hum.

As someone trained as a singer, sometimes we have to unpack the pseudo-perfectionism we think singing needs and instead open back up to the wild singer within.

We have so much more to say about air, but to summarize: our wisdom practice for this is to think about how you use your words—humming, singing, chanting, quiet words to yourself. As a wild woman, what do you want to express? Think about that. The spirit of air can show up to aid you—it aids all of us. How is air calling you? Keep your curiosity open.

Remember to listen—air will speak to you.

And a reminder about our four pillars: our touchstone of Oshana, our collective wisdom as crones, our interesting guests (we have some great interviews coming up), and creating community. Don’t forget to see the Two Crones and a Microphone website and look at our online classes. Look at our Instagram and Facebook posts. Betty recently started a Substack. And our YouTube site. We want to hear from you—what do you find valuable about our podcasts? What’s a word of wisdom you can take away? “Hey, you said this during a podcast; it made me think. I practiced that skill, and this was my experience—thanks for opening that door.” We want to hear that and share it with others to support and create a community of wise, wily women and men who want to follow some of these practices.

And a special shout-out to those keeping us going financially by sending a few dollars every month—that really helps us continue to share our podcast with others. Please spread the word. If you’re on social media, you’ll hit us someplace—we’re busy getting on the various platforms. Share the word. I’ve recently run into a couple of people who said, “Yeah, I found you on Facebook.” I was walking Luna; one of my neighbors I don’t know well came running out and said, “I found you on Facebook.” This is great—what you’re doing. That makes our hearts feel good—that we’re helping you. Leave a comment; you don’t have to run out of your house, but I love that.

And thanks to people who sign up for the newsletter—the audience is growing. If you haven’t signed up, go to the Two Crones and a Microphone website and sign up. It’s free; they come out monthly. Sally writes our newsletters—they’re in-depth with gems of wisdom. Highly encourage you. Lovely illustrations; fun to read; aligned with the 13 moons. The Berries Ripening Moon—and the one for September will be out by the time this podcast is out. Yay. Don’t forget to check our blogs too on Two Crones and a Microphone.

As always, we’re giving you ways to be kind to yourself and to others, which is so important today. Many thanks to Minerva Educational and Wellness Treatment Center (minervaed.com), where we have all our classes, for sponsoring the podcast. As always, our podcast is dedicated to sharing techniques to aid you in navigating the very muddy waters of our time—giving you ways to get out there, be that wild woman, and spread kindness. Just let it all flow.

We want to encourage you to go seek your glimmer and always remember: walk in beauty. All is made beautiful.

Thank you. Bye!