Starting December 4th, 2025
A yearlong course of mythic study, somatic practice, storytelling, song, threshold exploration and nature immersion with The Emerald podcast’s Josh Schrei and many special guests.
An ongoing platform for deepening our connection to myth and story and to community, ecology, and cosmos.
Ritualizing our Reconnection to a Living World
Welcome.
The Emerald podcast lives at the heart of a growing movement that seeks to reclaim connection to living land, to awe and wonder, and to the story of what it means to be a human being.
Mythologist, somatic instructor, and storyteller Josh Schrei of The Emerald podcast introduces The Mythic Body, a yearlong course and ongoing community platform for dedicated participants who want to better understand the ecstatic, animate heart of myth and story, deepen their access to the imaginal core of human experience, explore foundational knowledge common to global ritual traditions, and enhance their practice in their own traditions.
Through mythic study, somatic practice, ritual repetition, nature immersion, threshold exploration, and shared story, participants will recalibrate and deepen their relationship with body, community, ecology, and cosmos.
The course has deep relevance and deep applicability for bodyworkers, somatic instructors, therapists, depth psychologists, storytellers, public speakers, artists, writers, activists, policy makers, community builders, and all knowledge seekers.
Course Pillars
Mythos
The myths of the world aren’t abstract ideas. They are meant to stir a somatic experience of connection to the natural world and the larger cosmos. Our study will focus on the myth as a key driver of human experience that is ritually enacted and somatically felt. We will discuss and invoke myths from around the world and explore specific ways to apply mythic understanding to our daily lives.
Nature Immersion
Participants will be invited to increase their time spent in the natural world and will explore the specifics of their relationship with nature and natural forces in new and dynamic ways. Together we will explore methodologies of listening to land, re-enchanting land, and growing our relationship to land.
Ritual Repetition
Building on foundational knowledge, participants will structure a repetitive daily practice based within their own traditions, designed to connect them to a regular ritual rhythm. This repetitive practice will deepen over the length of the course as participants expand their understanding of the key components of ritual, the somatics of ritual, and how simple ritual provides a foundation for daily life.
Invocation
99% of human tradition has been conducted through the medium of oral invocation. Honing our understanding of the dynamics of oral invocation has implications for all teachers, students, practitioners, writers, storytellers, and knowledge seekers. Through storytelling, listening, and vocalization practice, students will awaken and hone the human instrument as a vehicle for transmission in their own teaching and practice traditions.
Devotion
At the heart of this course is the understanding of the simultaneously tiny and grand place that the human being holds within the cosmos, a recognition that naturally generates awe and wonder. This devotion is the backbone for all of our study. Students will develop a program of regular ritualized offering around an object of devotion within their own traditions and explore how access to awe and wonder can be architected on a regular basis.
Somatic Practice
Our journey into the mythic heart of human experience will be anchored with regular breath work and simple guided somatic meditative practice. Participants will also design their own somatic practice based on expanding access to threshold states and deepening access to foundational somatic energetics. Somatic practice will be accessible for all levels.
Threshold Exploration
Human beings once had ready access to deep states of seamless connection with the natural world and spent long periods of time in these flow states. Course participants will explore their own thresholds — what activities take them into the state of deep connection to nature and cosmos — and over the course of a year, will increase the time they spend in threshold states and cultivate simple exercises to access these states.
Participants will receive
- Access to a full year on the course platform and the opportunity to continue to participate beyond that year.
- 24 multimedia presentations that go deep into the heartbeat of global mythic traditions. Each presentation explores a particular theme or facet of animate tradition and references dozens of mythic stories and lineages.
- 30+ guided meditation and movement practices designed to help participants embody each course segment.
- An archive of myths, stories, and songs related to each course segment told and taught by Josh and course facilitators.
- 3x monthly zoom calls with Josh and course facilitators.
- Monthly calls with a range of guests and contributors.
- Ongoing weekly practice suggestions, invitations, and prompted discussions that will help deepen the participant’s experience of the course material.
- A vibrant international community of participants and practitioners available for connection and community support.
- Space in which to share and platform the participant’s own skills, arts, stories, and offerings.
- Ongoing updates to course presentations and practices and new course material as it arrives.
- Opportunities for local gatherings and practice meetups with other course members in their region.
Course Facilitators
Joshua Michael Schrei
Josh is the founder and host of The Emerald podcast, which draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and mindfulness, art, science, literature, and more. A writer, teacher, and a lifelong student of the cosmologies and mythologies of the world, Josh has sought to navigate the living, animate space of the imagination and advocate for a world that prioritizes imaginative vision.
Skye Cielita Flor
Skye is a longtime student of animate tradition and brings a foundation of deep apprenticeship in Taoist healing and Shipibo curanderismo. She is a facilitator of Experiential Deep Ecology, a Grief Ritualist, Folk Herbalist and a curator of immersive group experiences that focus on the reclamation of animist perception, mythic imagination and ritual rhythms.
Portia Richardson
Portia is an interdisciplinary healing practitioner, teacher, animist ritualist, and songcatcher who walks the thresholds between what is seen and what is felt. Through her music (Scinnlaece), earth-honoring practices, and cultural carework, she invites remembering of the body as temple, of story as portal, of life as prayer. She is devoted to the sacred work of bridging connection and cultivating belonging to Self, to Spirit, to community, and to the more-than-human world.
Eve Bradford
Eve has spent decades exploring the fertile intersections of art, activism, medicine, and magic—as educator, ritualist, and mentor. Her work centers around the syncretic, embodied spiritual philosophy of Animist Daoism—woven from decades of study and cultivation of elemental wisdom, indigenous & mystic traditions, deep ecology, systems theory, poetry, embodiment and creative practice.
Course Guests and Contributors
Saro Lynch-Thomason
Saro is a song leader and folklorist and uses song to help connect our modern bodies to folk knowledge, people’s history, and everyday reverence for the animate world. She has studied and taught folk songs from Appalachia, Scotland, England, the American South and beyond and is the primary curator of The Mythic Body’s song archive.
Scout Wiley
Scout is a writer and ritual artist living on lands traditionally stewarded by the Cherokee. Sourcing from the movement lineages of Butoh and Laban-Bartinieff, as well as the trance-induction techniques of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Scout creates imaginal-somatic practice containers designed to reawaken humanity’s relationship with the living world.
Rose B. Simpson
Rose (born, lives, and works in Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) is a mixed-media artist whose work explores the impact, both emotional and existential, of living in the postmodern and postcolonial world. Growing up in a multigenerational, matrilineal lineage of artists working with clay, her practice is informed by indigenous tradition.
Peia Luzzi
Peia is an America-born song collector, writer, and multi-instrumentalist based in the mountains of Appalachia. Uncovering melodies wrinkled and wise with time while taking care to honor their language and stories, Peia brings a piece of herself to each song she carries.
Kanani Aton
Kanani Aton is a Hawaiian cultural practitioner who loves to share insights from her tradition, and is guided by a native mindset inclined to teaching, servant leadership, and taking care of the land.
Leah Song and Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia
Rising Appalachia is an internationally touring folk ensemble steeped in the soul of the South. It is the brainchild of Atlanta-raised sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, rooted in the rich musical traditions of their family and their journey into song as performers, writers, and song catchers.
Simon Thakur
Simon is the creator of Ancestral Movement — an approach to embodied practice aimed at radically transforming and expanding the sense of self, by exploring and rediscovering patterns of movement and awareness that are part of our species’ history, both recent and ancient.
As well as…
Nyoongar writer and researcher Jack Mitchell
Poet and Storyteller Tom Hirons
Singer and ritualist Marya Stark
Author, artist, and ritualist Dr. Maya Ward
Tantric scholar and practitioner Dr. Ben Joffe
Mohawk midwife, activist, and women’s health advocate Katsi Cook
Author, Singer, Keener, and Songwriter Mary McLaughlin
Author, artist, and Celtic Tree Lore Specialist Yannick Dubois
Founder of Nature’s Apprentice Claire Dunn
Bard and artist Eden Knutilla
Course Structure
• The course is a self-paced learning model with a recommended time of 9 months – 1 year for completing the initial material. This self-paced model is anchored with regular 3x monthly calls to establish a rhythm of connection, practice, and exploration.
• The course is facilitated on an online platform through which participants access presentations, practices, archived stories and songs and discussions, interact with other course participants, initiate conversation threads and highlight their own perspectives and works.
• Participants will be offered the opportunity to organize into small group learning pods to deepen the course experience.
• Regular zoom calls happen 3x monthly (two calls with Josh, one with course facilitators), are 2 hours long and are a combination of led practice, multimedia presentation, and group discussion/breakout discussion.
• After completing the initial course material, participants will be welcome to continue their journey on the online platform which will be updated with new presentations and contributions on an ongoing basis. The online platform is meant to be an ever-expanding community resource and a deep mythic archive available to all participants.
• In-Person immersions on the island of Kauai will be held throughout the course year and are an optional addition to the course. Immersion costs are not included in course costs. Participants will receive information about immersion dates upon registration.
The next round of The Mythic Body course starts December 4th, 2025. People who register will receive updates, course agreements, and orientation videos in advance of the start date of the course.
The Mythic Body Pricing Structure
• Early Bird Pricing
August 23 – October 21 $1170
• Full Tuition after
October 21 $1350
Payment plans are available at checkout
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