How People Grow: Finding Wisdom in Every Season
We often see the world not as it is, but as we are. So if we’re to view the world differently, we need to learn to see ourselves differently. Join David Achata, PCC, on ”How People Grow,” a podcast dedicated to shifting your perspective. Through insightful conversations with guests, co-hosts, and friends from his life, David explores the diverse ways we evolve in work, relationships, and spirituality. Discover how your unique lens shapes your experiences and learn to navigate life’s complexities with greater clarity. Support this podcast and read weekly articles see: https://davidachata.substack.com/ To learn more about David's work see: https://jointherootedway.com/
Episodes
What happens when the life we expected suddenly changes?
After not being accepted into a PhD program, David entered a two-day silent retreat—and in that liminal space, and had a dream of his grandfather in the Amazon of Peru. In this episode, David tells that story and how nine months later, he is preparing to travel to the very place he saw in that dream.
In this episode, David explores what it means to cross a threshol...
What happens when we begin paying attention to the desires that keep calling us toward something deeper? David sits down with Rev. Dr. Peter Traben Haas to explore desire, spirituality, contemplation, and the mysterious process of becoming who we are. Together they ask what our deepest longings might be trying to tell us—and whether desire can become a kind of compass for the journey.
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In this interview, David Achata speaks Dr. Elizabeth Santiago. She is a writer, educator, and mentor who teaches at Emerson College in Boston, where she works in literature, storytelling, and narrative. Through her work with The Untold Narratives, she has mentored emerging writers from diverse backgrounds in finding and telling the stories that matter to them.
In this conversation, Elizabeth and David explo...
David sits down with filmmaker and storyteller Stanley Pomianowski, founder of Duck Duck Productions, to explore why the Hero’s Journey continues to show up across cultures, religions, films, and human lives. Stanley helps us see how stories mirror our own journeys of transformation—and what happens when we recognize that we may be living inside a story much larger than the one we thought we were writing.
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David Achata introduces the new season of How People Grow, Becoming Who We Are—an exploration of the inner journey of transformation. Drawing from the Hero’s Journey, Brian McLaren’s stages of faith, Richard Rohr’s Order → Disorder → Reorder, and the wisdom of writers like James Hollis and Rumi, David reflects on desire, identity, dreams, spiritual development, and the courage to listen to the life unfolding...
In the late 1960's John Perkins nearly died in the Amazonian Jungle of Ecuador... he was saved by a traditional healer and it changed his life.
In this season finale episode, he shares his story.
John Perkins is a New York Times bestselling author, international speaker, and activist best known for his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and other works including The World Is As You Dream It. A former chief economist at a major...
Can plants really teach?
In this episode, I speak with Francisca Santibáñez, founder of Plant Spirit Talk, about plant communication, and her own journey of healing that reshaped her life. Raised across Brazil, Chile, and California, Francisca traces her lineage to the Tupi-Guarani people of Brazil and has spent over a decade studying plant healing with Shipibo teachers in the Peruvian Amazon, alongside other Indigenous linea...
Leonard “Casey” Church is a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, of the Bear and Crane clans. A former U.S. Marine, he is a cultural practitioner, teacher, and spiritual leader who has spent decades working to restore Indigenous ceremony and identity in contemporary life. He’s the author of Holy Smoke and Native American Rites of Passage, and his work explores how ritual and ceremony can foster healin...
Lorena Saavedra Smith is the author of the new book, Awaken Your Roots: Reclaim Your Ancestry and Sovereignty by Heeding the Jaguar’s Call.
Lorena is a Pacha Philosopher, an Eco-Psychologist, and a wellness consultant dedicated to helping individuals heal through ancestral wisdom, nature reconnection, and holistic well-being.
She joins the podcast to share Pacha Philosophy, and her ideas on how to reweave the broken soul.&nb...
Dr. Damian Costello joins us this week to talk about the role of visions in an indigenous worldview.
Dr. Costello is an international expert on Nicholas Black Elk, a Lakota Medicine Man. Damian is the author of Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism, and holds a Ph.D. in theological studies from the University of Dayton. Currently serving as the Director of Postgraduate Studies at NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community, he...
Dr. Stephanie Goins joins the show this week to share what it means to "Walk in a Good Way." Stephanie calls on her research working with former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, her work as a Psychologist, teacher, and more.
Dr. Goins helps us understand in this episode some of the factors that come into play when we think about living in a good relationship with ourselves, the earth, and others.
Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley, Ph. D., is a farmer, activist/scholar, distinguished speaker, teacher and wisdom keeper who addresses a variety of issues concerning American culture, faith/spirituality, justice, race/diversity, regenerative farming, our relationship with the earth and Indigenous realities.
In this episode, he talks with us about the Harmony Way of native cultures and how that impacts how we live with one another and even g...
In this episode, David Achata interviews Danny Zacharias & Chris Hoklotubbe's about their new book, Reading the Bible on Turtle Island: An Invitation to North American Indigenous Interpretation.
Their book explores the historical and systemic dismissal of Indigenous worldviews within Western Christian circles, specifically how colonial practices labeled these cultures as "problematic" and stripped them of their theologica...
Welcome back to Season 6 of the How People Grow Podcast.
This season focuses on what indigenous wisdom could teach us today. In this introductory episode, David Achata overviews for us why this conversation is important and what the word "indigenous" means.
David takes us on his own journey of embracing his native roots. He'll take us on a journey to the Andes Mountains, we'll learn from a Lakota Medicine Man, we'll talk abou...
Father Len Cowan is a retired priest in the Anglican and Episcopal Churches. Today he runs the Abbey of the Way, a retreat center in Worcester, MA. Learn more about the Abbey here: https://www.abbeyoftheway.us/
In this season five bonus episode, Len shares with us his fascination with the Irish and how he returns to Ireland regularly to learn of the life of St. Patrick and the unique form of Christianity that took root there.
...In this bonus episode, David Achata challenges us to look at the Holiday Season as a time to remember "The Religion of Jesus" vs. "The Religion about Jesus." Who were the Magi that came from a distance of 1600 miles? Why did they go to Jerusalem? What do their beliefs about power, wisdom and authority show us for our time today in 2025?
As we finish 2025 and look ahead to 2026 - here's a Christmas message to contemplate. ...
In our season finale, David Achata sits down with legendary author Parker Palmer to explore what it means to live a rooted life. Discover the wisdom of prioritizing faithfulness to your true values over the pressure of external effectiveness, and how integrity deepens as we grow old.
In this episode, Parker Palmer quotes a poem by William Stafford.
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
If you don't know the kind of person I am...Jeff Vanderstelt is the Executive Director of http://saturatetheworld.com/ an organization committed to equipping the church to live out of its identity in every space and place. He also helped found the Soma Family of Churches and lives near Seattle, Washington with his wife Jayne, and their family.
In this interview, Jeff shares his story of learning to be himself. After many years of personal work, Jeff reflects on his own...
Tim Ross is a Cherokee teacher, retired pastor, missionary and current seminary teacher. In this episode Tim shares with us native ways of praying, as well as the concept of becoming a "Sticker" - meaning, someone who stays and invests in a community.
Tim's teaching work can be found at NAIITS, an an indigenous seminary. To learn more about Tim and his work, check out https://naiits.com/
Lisa Sharon Harper is an author, theologan, teacher, and consultant. She is the founder of https://freedomroad.us/ and gives her life to helping others learn to do justice in just ways.
This is Lisa's second appearance on this podcast. To listen to her first interview, go back to Season 2 and check out our season finale.
In this episode, Lisa shares about a recent trip to Brazil to work with an influental church there, ...
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