The Emerald Podcast Grant Program

The Emerald podcast is dedicated to fostering community and giving back to our patrons who support and engage in the work of keeping an animate vision alive.

We are now accepting grant applications until November 19, 2025.

The mission of The Emerald Podcast Grant Program is to support projects and innovators that offer spiritual solutions to social challenges, center the sacred, and cultivate our connection to a living world to address the growing societal crisis of meaning. Our grant program is dedicated to helping support this important work and help bring our community’s heartfelt creative projects to life. 

The program offers funding ranging from $3,000-$5,000 for small-scale projects initiated by patrons of The Emerald Podcast and the funding is available for patrons only. To find out more about this program and some of the projects our community members are working on, while deepening your connection to the topics Josh explores on The Emerald podcast, we invite you to join us as a Patron. 

The two categories of projects we aim to support:

Category A

  • preservation and revival of Indigenous or ancestral stories and storytelling techniques specifically related to spirit, animacy, and animism
  • preservation and revival of traditional arts techniques specifically related to spirit, animacy, and animism
  • translation/research related to rare or endangered spiritual traditions 
  • facilitators exploring Indigenous/traditional communication models
  • preservation of traditional plant/medicine/birthing knowledge that incorporates an animate vision

Category B

  • original artistic/theatrical/musical/dance productions exploring themes of animacy, imagination, and spirit 
  • individual artists/writers/storytellers exploring spiritual or animate themes in their work
  • community builders and designers exploring alternative models of communal engagement
  • programs designed to re-introduce people to sacred land and sacred ritual
  • rites of passage work with young people

This grant program is about cultivating the spark of life. Together, we aim to awaken wonder, and rekindle and deepen our relationship with spirit.

We welcome active patrons to submit their applications by November 19, 2025. Funding will be awarded on December 19 2025. To become a patron of The Emerald Podcast, we invite you to join here.

For partnership opportunities, please contact our grant program team at grants@themythicbody.com.

We look forward to seeing the transformative ideas that emerge from our community.

We invite you to meet the inaugural recipients and their projects we are honored to support:

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Code of Trauma: Traditions of Healing

A limited podcast series dedicated to preserving and revitalizing Ukrainian cultural heritage by bringing traditional healing practices, such as grief songs, into dialogue with modern trauma education. As a trauma educator and practitioner, Daniela gathers lamentations, expert insights, and personal stories to show how cultural memory can transform the way we face loss. More than an educational resource, this project is part of a growing movement to reclaim the dignity of collective grieving and memory, and to create cultural spaces where sorrow becomes a source of connection and resilience.

“The grant gave me the strength to stand with such a sensitive theme in difficult times. It enabled me to find allies, build a recognizable voice for the project, and feel less alone while opening/holding space for conversations on grief and memory that our culture urgently needs.”
Daniela May

Kindling the Spirit: Singing down carbon to sing up spirit

Singing spirit down deep into the land is how Nyoongar people kept it safe with the arrival of the tall ships in the South West of Western Australia.  Elder Uncle Noel Nannup says “Nothing is lost! It is time to begin singing spirit back up.” This project involves the reintroduction of cultural burning and production of biochar through traditional methods at an ‘On-Country’ camp next to a cultural site of Yarrigin Rock in North Kununoppin, 260 km north east of Perth, Western Australia. The camp brought together  Nyoongar and  Wadjals (white fellas) in a way that linked traditional cultural practices of cultural burning practices and the contemporary science of biochar making and use. The grant has been used to support the running of the camp and production of a video that focus on how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can walk together towards 2029, which marks 200 years of colonisation of  Nyoongar Boodja,  Perth, Western Australia.  Importantly the video and the overall Kindling the Spirit project is part of the longer journey of shifting from just walking together to working together, as they explore the prototyping  of an  indigenous-led biochar enterprise.

“The Emerald Podcast Grant helped us bring together diverse skills to explore the cultural and scientific basis of cultural burning and biochar.  We now have a video of the sharing of knowledge and insight between Uncle Noel Nannup (an esteemed Nyoongar Elder) and Professor Stephen Joseph (one the world leading biochar scientist). Now we can show the world.”
Mike Mouritz

Safe House 7

A psycho-spiritual protocol that is rooted in the perspectives and technologies of ancient West African spiritual tradition blended with western therapeutic praxis. The protocol was developed to create a space for communities that hold collective historical trauma to restore into a more balanced relationship with aspects of oneself, others and the planet. Safe House 7 comprises of seven “thresholds” or concentrations that incorporate: ancestral acknowledgment and exploring multigenerational legacies, storytelling, intrapsychic harmony of the Self , oracular practices, earth based communion, and reciprocity as ritual. Safe House 7 centers relationship and community as both a container and technology in our restoration process towards wholeness.

“Funding from the Emerald Podcast Grant Program made it possible for our inaugural launch of Safe House 7 as a group. The last 5 month project has been so rich and everyone involved was deeply impacted by the depth of material and relationship created through the process. I am infinitely grateful for being granted this funding for something I believe will continue to grow and provide others with alternative ways of healing.”
Urana Jackson

Remembering Forward

The preservation of traditional knowledge and practices related to Mushkiki (Medicines), Aki (the Land, Great Lakes, Michigan), and Ahnangokwan Gikendaasowin (Star Knowledge) through Adisokaanaag and Dibaajimowinan (Stories) held by an Elder Odawa Anishinaabe knowledge-keeper, traditional doctor, and pipe man for the Anishinaabe community in Michigan. Ariel Clark (Eddewagiizhigkwe, Both Sides Of The Sky Woman, Mikinaak Dodem, Turtle Clan), will support this knowledge-preservation project. Ariel is an enrolled Tribal citizen of Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

“This funding has allowed the knowledge-preservation to expand and include more members of the community, including Youth, who are the future, through supporting travel, food and accommodations. Significantly, it enabled us to purchase a good camera for documentating, which is also now being used for filming another Elder knowledge-keeper.”
Ariel Clark

Moatian Joibo

Seeking to preserve traditional Shipibo-Konibo stories by recording, transcribing, and translating them. While it focuses on the sacred Noya Rao tree story, also known as the Komankaya myth, it will also include other stories shared by the Mahua family, a renowned lineage of Shipibo-Konibo healers. The project emphasizes language revitalization and cultural preservation by documenting the language as spoken by elders, which retains its original structure and vocabulary. Modern Shipibo, in contrast, has been heavily influenced by Spanish, leading to significant changes over time. By capturing the elders’ language, the project seeks to preserve its authentic form and ensure its continuity. While Shipibo-Konibo culture is gaining recognition in the West—often reduced to ayahuasca tourism—most educational materials are filtered through a Western lens. Moatian Joibo aims to provide unaltered resources that reflect the true essence of Shipibo-Konibo language and culture.

“Receiving the grant brought our project to life. Once only words, it found form and motion. The support gave us clarity and momentum. Most meaningfully, it inspired curiosity among some young Shipibo-Konibo community members, allowing them to re-explore their stories—an interest that will hopefully grow into reconnection.”
Clémence Lobert