Ecology & Environment

Discover how spiritual ecology invites deeper connection with nature, fostering well-being, reciprocity, and environmental care.

A doctoral student in CIIS’ Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program explores how phenomenology, empathy, and place-based practice reshape ecological understanding.

CIIS alum Missy Lahren is fighting to give forests, rivers, and living ecosystems a formal voice in the legal system.

Many of us feel disconnected from our family stories and traditions, which can create a sense of loss of home and belonging. Pacha philosopher and ecopsychologist Lorena Saavedra Smith believes reconciling with our ancestors’ traditions and weaving ourselves back into our history is a therapeutic endeavor that deserves to be embarked upon with respect and authenticity.  

In this episode, Lorena is joined by Susana Bustos, faculty at CIIS’ Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research for a conversation on her book, Awaken Your Roots, which explores belonging through the medicine of nature, cultural connection, and ancestral wisdom. Lorena shares how to access tools to interweave your dreams with your deep roots. With a focus on ancestral wisdom and our relationship with nature, she offers a pathway to move through anxiety to rediscover your inner wisdom.  

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 19th, 2026. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

How CIIS honors the Earth through curriculum, retreats, events, and practices that root learning in the living world.

Dr. Jeanine Canty on Earth Justice, Ancestral Roots, and the Ecological Self 

Seedkeeper, author, mentor, and founder of Sierra Seeds, Rowen White is a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty. With the increasing industrialization of our food and the erosion of biodiversity within cultural contexts, Rowen works to guide and mentor mindful eaters and food/seed sovereignty leaders in their capacity to lead, vision, and nourish a deep-rooted transformation. For Rowen and many others, cultivating a culture of belonging needs to be at the heart of food systems change—inviting a diversity of perspectives and voices, cosmologies and values.

In this episode, Rowen is joined by CIIS Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Change Michelle Glowa for an inspiring conversation exploring Indigenous seedkeeping and food sovereignty.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on November 19th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

It is possible to heal ourselves and our planet if we are open to the power of integrating multiple and often conflicting views. In their lives and work, authors and CIIS faculty members Alka Arora, Jeanine M. Canty, and Sara H. Salazar demonstrate this power and possibility.

In this episode, we are joined by these three inspirational scholars for a conversation exploring their personal and professional experiences straddling social and ecological issues and how navigating these edges has surfaced new models and practices for collective healing.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 1st, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, CIIS Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Professor Sean Kelly has a deep and fortifying conversation with psychotherapist and author Francis Weller.

Together they explore ways of moving together through the anxieties, difficulties, and sacred transitions of 21st-century life. Featuring insights from Francis’s latest book, In the Absence of the Ordinary, this conversation frames our current era as a rough initiation—an upending experience of profound trauma and transformation that demands us to reorient our ways of thinking, being, and relating.

This episode was recorded during an live online event at California Institute of Integral Studies on September 10th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Dr. Elizabeth Allison on training leaders for ecological change.

The 7th Annual Religion and Ecology Summit will celebrate the sacred waters of the world.

A massively diverse group of organisms, fungi support and sustain nearly all living systems. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality, and even intelligence, into question. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disasters. By examining fungi on their own terms, we are changing our understanding of how life works.

In this episode, Merlin Sheldrake, biologist and author of the bestselling book Entangled Life, is joined by CIIS Professor of Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Elizabeth Allison for an illuminating conversation about the ways these extraordinary organisms, and our relationships with them, change our understanding of the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel, and behave.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 5th, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Dr. Lyla June is a renowned Indigenous musician, songwriter, poet, hip-hop artist, human ecologist, and community organizer. Her music and message center around intergenerational and inter-ethnic healing and are poetic articulations of Indigenous philosophies.

Through her vibrant art across mediums and extensive community organizing efforts, Lyla offers pathways forward for Indigenous liberation and creates solidarity for Indigenous communities and their allies.

This episode was recorded live in San Francisco on November 3rd, 2023. Lyla was joined on stage by Preston Vargas, CIIS Director of the Center for Black and Indigenous Praxis, for a powerful evening of song and conversation exploring her life, art, and community organizing. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Recent Ecology, Spirituality and Religion grad on queering the outdoors

A personal reflection from Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion graduate, Charlie Forbes, in honor of the program's 10-year anniversary

CIIS Climate Psychology Professor Leslie Davenport reflects on the emotionally charged psychological effects of climate change with the PBS NewsHour

As the climate changes, many therapists have been helping patients with a relatively new diagnosis that has a variety of names: eco-anxiety, climate anxiety, climate despair, eco-despair, and eco-grief.

No matter what you call it, many of us are feeling the same things and asking ourselves, and each other the same question. With ecosystems failing all over the planet, is there any reason for hope?

In this episode, author Craig Chalquist is joined by ecotherapist Linda Buzzell for an inspiring conversation about tackling our climate anxiety by cultivating eco-resilience.

This episode contains mentions of suicide, abuse, and trauma. It was recorded during a live online event on April 14, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Professor and Students Step Up for Sacred Lands Under Threat

Seeing the suffering of the planet and that of humans as inseparably linked—the ecological crisis as psychological crisis, and vice versa—opens the door to a mutuality of healing between people and nature. At the heart of both chronic and acute forms of narcissism is a socially constructed false self—an isolated, damaged ego in a delusional cycle of selfishness.

In her work, CIIS Professor Jeanine Canty uses the lens of ecopsychology to show that the pervasive and extreme forms of narcissism we find in many modern societies are the result of alienation from the natural world. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In her forthcoming book, Returning the Self to Nature, Jeanine shares how we can move beyond a world that revolves around selfish and disconnected identity models, and step into healthy relationships with ourselves, our communities, and our planet.

In this episode, Jeanine is joined by CIIS Lead for the Climate Psychology Certificate Leslie Davenport for an inspiring conversation on visualizing and embodying the wild naturalness of being human, and how to gain skills to begin experiencing a courageous, pluralistic, and ecological self.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 8th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Author, cultural ecologist, and geo philosopher David Abram has been an inspirational leading voice at the intersection of ecology and philosophy for over 25 years. A close student of the traditional ecological knowledge of a diverse array of Indigenous peoples, his work articulates the interconnection of humans both with the varied sensitivities of the plants and animals upon whom we depend, as well as with the agency of the places that surround and sustain our communities.

In this episode, David is joined by CIIS philosophy faculty Matt Segall for an inspiring conversation on the wild intelligence of our bodies, the ecological depths of our imagination, and the ways in which sensory perception and wonder inform the relation between the human animal and the animate Earth.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at First Unitarian Universalist Church & Center in San Francisco on May 19th, 2022. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Celebrating Earth Day every day with CIIS' sustainability and social justice initiatives

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to more fully reveal injustices, inequities, and imbalances that contribute to climate change, ecological degradation, and economic instability that threaten our individual and collective well-being. This potent time invites us to consider questions like: How can we cultivate individual, collective, and ecological resilience in this unstable new reality? What lessons does the pandemic offer for addressing climate change and human health?

This episode features Natalie Metz, licensed Naturopathic Doctor, herbalist, faculty member and mentor in the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research, and Elizabeth Allison, Professor of Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion, in a conversation exploring connections between human health and the health of the planet. They discuss the current global narratives in medicine and climate change, and how each narrative relates to human and planetary health. Natalie and Elizabeth explore the microcosm and macrocosm of embodied health and the emergence of a new consciousness that embraces collective well-being.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 18, 2020. You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Our Ph.D. candidates and alumni are among those generating responses to the heightened existential challenges we face

In this episode, authors Sean Kelly, Sam Mickey, and Adam Robbert are joined by public radio journalist and Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness graduate Kat Snow in a conversation about ecology as a connective science and its impact on our society.

This episode was recorded during an event on June 14, 2017 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this episode, Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Professor Elizabeth Allison provides an exploration into spiritual ecology. Discover how deepening our relationship with the natural world helps us thrive.

This episode was recorded during an event on March 12, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this talk, Professor Jacob Sherman discusses the role that philosophy might play in diagnosing and responding to the our global climate crisis.

At CIIS, Jacob Sherman serves as Professor and Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department, Chair of the program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, and also teaches in the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 5, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Elizabeth Allison takes on recent natural disasters and the practice of a feminist ethic.

The Religion & Ecology Summit featured leaders in the ecological, religious, and justice fields to bridge the divide between religion and the environment

Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Ph.D. students Laura Reddick and Kimberly Carfore were invited to write for Huffington Post.

Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion alumni Kia Jones works with No Coal in Oakland campaign to prevent coal exports in the Port of Oakland

The histories and convergence of the Religion & Ecology Summit

Students, alums, and faculty represent at Utah conference