This interview marks a symbolic full-circle moment. Maíra Irigaray, was Lizzie's former professor at the University of Florida, and now her co-facilitator on a retreat in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. Maíra Irigaray has walked many career paths, notably as an environmental lawyer, teaching and completing her PhD in geography of indigenous resistance, Amazon activist, a mother, shamanic healer, and one of the most extraordinary humans you will ever encounter.

This conversation will ask you to consider what is possible when you finally lay down the titles you collected to prove your worth, your "good enough" — and remember who you were before the world told you who to be.

• From lawyer to activist to healer: how nearly a decade of hardcore environmental law and indigenous rights activism led to burnout, and then to a completely different kind of awakening.
• "Loss can protect forests, but only love creates protectors." How Maíra stopped trying to save the Amazon through outrage and started bringing people to fall in love with it instead.
• The indigenous wisdom that reshaped how Maíra lives
• Why nature is not somewhere you go — it's something you belong to. And why the Amazon doesn't change who you are, it simply removes everything you're not.
• Reciprocity as the foundation: how Maíra's work with indigenous communities on the Tapajós is built on years of relationship, consent, and direct financial support — not tourism, not extraction, but true partnership.
• Intuition as a practice: how Maíra moved from a woman with a plan for every plan, to someone led entirely by inner knowing.
• Growing up in an ayahuasca church, being introduced to plant medicine at seven years old.
• The witch archetype reclaimed: not woo-woo, not a costume — the most intuitive, embodied, wildly wise part of you that the patriarchy tried to domesticate.

If this episode lit something up in you share it with a woman in your life who has everything on paper and still feels like something is missing. She knows who she is, she just needs to remember.

Connect with Maíra Irigaray PhD

• Instagram: @maira.irigaray_ @insamauma
• Website: www.insamauma.org/aboutus

The Retreat — UNTAMED

October 29 – November 2, 2026 · Tapajós River, Brazil · Five days. Eight women.

One of the most breathtaking rivers on earth. This is not a wellness retreat. This is a reclamation. UNTAMED was born from a vision to bring women into the Amazon not to be improved, but to be remembered. To strip away the conditioning, the performance, the version of you that everyone else "needs" — and meet the woman beneath all of it.

What you'll experience:

• Sacred ceremonies with a Tupinambá Shaman around real fires, with prayers in languages older than nations
• Deep rainforest immersion — hands on ancient trees, pink dolphins in transparent water, white sand beaches as far as you can see
• Amazonian plant baths prepared with intention
• Circle, storytelling, and sisterhood — the kind built around a fire, not small talk
• Movement, embodiment, and wild feminine practices
• Living and dining aboard a high-end vessel on the Tapajós with private cabins and local Amazonian chefs
• A portion of every retreat goes directly to the indigenous communities of the Tapajós — supporting their sovereignty, their projects, and their culture on their own terms.

Apply here: www.insamauma.org/untamed

"The Amazon doesn't change who you are. It simply removes everything you're not." — Maíra Irigaray

In this Nature Series on The Bonded Podcast, Dr. Patty sits down with Jen and Jason, the husband-and-wife founders of HapBE Valley — an equine and wellness retreat farm nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains just outside Asheville, North Carolina. What began as Jen's lifelong love of horses and a solo retreat that changed everything became something neither of them could have planned.

This is a conversation about leaving behind the life you were conditioned to live, following a calling into the unknown, and discovering that horses have an extraordinary ability to show us exactly who we are. Horses are attuned to energy of other beings and their environment for their evolutionary survival, which allows them to sense and reflect the relational dynamics in our life because we carry this energy with us. Equine therapy and retreats provide space for self-awareness to grow into self-compassion for your healing. If this sounds intriguing you must listen to learn more!

HapBE Valley Equine & Wellness Farm

Website: hapbevalley.com Instagram: @hapbevalley Facebook: HapBE Valley Email: info@hapbevalley.com

Equine Experiences — No riding. Just presence, connection, and real-time feedback from horses who don't lie.

Signature Self-Discovery & Self-Compassion Retreat — HapBE's flagship retreat combining equine-facilitated learning with sound healing, yoga, breathwork, and meditation.

Mother Hunger® Healing with Horses Retreat — Coming October 2026. A four-day retreat for women ready to explore the mother-daughter attachment wound, held in a small container of eight with licensed therapists trained in the Mother Hunger® framework and the healing power of horses. Learn more: https://hapbevalley.com/upcoming-retreats/

Wellness Experiences — Sound healing, yoga, breathwork, Reiki with horses, and more — offered individually and woven into retreats.

If this episode awakened or inspired you, please leave a positive review to support the growth of this wisdom and continuation of making these podcasts possible!

Today we sit down with Gabrielle Lanzoni, a regenerative health educator and consultant working at the intersection of agriculture, nutrition, and consumer education. Gabrielle's journey began with a health crisis, a move to Italy, and the realization that the food system, not her body, was broken. Now through her platform Lanzo, she's on a mission to connect the dots between soil health, human health, and planetary health for everyday consumers. This one will change the way you think about how what's on your plate does more than satisfy your hunger.

• How living in Italy resolved years of chronic inflammation, brain fog, and digestive issues
• What regenerative agriculture actually is
• The soil microbiome and the human microbiome striking similarities
• We're experiencing a hidden hunger epidemic: about 2 billion people are nutrient-deficient not because they aren't eating enough calories, but because the food itself has lost 40–60% of its nutritional value compared to 30 years ago
• The mental health connection: ultra-processed food consumption directly correlates with depression and anxiety symptoms
• The mindset around food matters too — research shows that eating in good company actually lowers inflammatory markers, even when the food itself isn't perfect
• Your body has innate wisdom — color, flavor, and aroma in food are nature's signals that nutrients are present
• Energy and intention around eating impacts digestion

• Gabrielle Lanzoni www.lanzohealth.com IG: @lanzohealth
• Sacred Treehouse www.sacredtreehouse.org @sacredtreehouse

Visit your local farmers market — introduce yourself to vendors, ask how they farm, and start building a relationship with your food source. You don't even have to buy anything at first. Just being in that environment is its own kind of medicine.

Look for these certifications on packaging:

• ROC — Regenerative Organic Certified (the gold standard)
• Regenified
• Greener World
• Soil and Climate Alliance

Documentaries:

• Kiss the Ground
• Common Ground
• Groundswell

Read: Growing a Revolution by David Montgomery & Anne Biklé