Ep.47 - Honoring Place-Based Wisdom with Stephanie Michael Stewart, MD

Dr. Stephanie Michael Stewart is a psychiatrist working at the intersection of mental health and ecological consciousness. I am grateful that she sat down with us to share her evolving understanding of trauma, embodiment, and healing on the Mindbend Podcast.

Drawing from her clinical background, she reflects on how psychiatric work inside traditional institutions has illuminated the limitations of Western medical frameworks—and how stepping outside those systems has allowed her to reconnect with land-based, somatic, and ancestral forms of wisdom. Her approach blends science and spirit, grounded in years of experience treating patients while also listening deeply to what the natural world teaches.

Dr. Stewart describes how personal practices like walking, observing nature, and being in relationship with land became essential to her own healing journey. She speaks about "Returning to the Mothership," a project rooted in her desire to help others remember what it feels like to be in right relationship with the Earth. The conversation touches on themes of slowing down, listening to grief, and reclaiming the body as a site of both memory and regeneration. Her voice is gentle but firm as she stresses the need to listen to place-based wisdom, from those people and communities who are often not included in the commercial conversations around healing and medical science.

She encourages listeners to ask better questions, to pay attention to the rhythms of the land, and to honor intergenerational experience. In the end, this episode offers a layered and contemplative look at what it means to be a healer in times of collapse—and how the practice of psychiatry can be expanded when it is in conversation with ecology, story, and spirit.

Follow Dr. Stewart:

Instagram: @dr.stephaniemichaelstewart

Website: www.worldwidewellness.io

Follow MINDBEND IG: @mymindbend

Watch Full Episode on YouTube: @mymindbend

Website: www.mymindbend.org

This is an Operation Podcast production, connect with us @operationpodcast

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