Priestess Initiations: Where Psychology Meets Sacred

Litha: Summer Solstice, Embodied Sovereignty, and the Courage to be Seen | S2 Ep.14

Litha mythology and astrology, 2026 Summer Solstice ritual, and the Oak King’s surrender at his peak | somatic psychoeducation, nervous system safety, embodiment, and the courage to be fully witnessed The summer solstice doesn’t just bring more light, it brings more you. As we move into Litha, I’m holding the longest day of the year as a real threshold: a moment when the world is bright, the season is loud, and the body has to decide whether it will open or brace. This is priestess work in real time, rooted in the Wheel of the Year, nervous system wisdom, and the ancient human instinct to mark the sun’s peak as sacred. We walk through the roots of midsummer traditions as a fire festival: bonfires, ritual leaping, protection petitions, fertility symbolism, and land-based practices that honor both ecology and spirit. Then I name what often gets missed, water. Sacred wells, rivers, dew, and bathing aren’t side notes, they’re the balancing element that keeps solar energy from turning into burnout. If you feel more yin than yang, or if summer intensity hits your system hard, water rituals can be a direct path into solstice without forcing yourself to “perform” the season. From there we enter the mythic heart of Litha: the Oak King and the Holly King, and the teaching our culture has nearly forgotten, yielding at the peak. We also go straight into visibility as a somatic state, the witch wound thread that makes being seen feel risky, and the current astrology amplifying it all: Venus in Leo opposing Pluto, and Chiron moving into Taurus and asking whether your body is safe to inhabit at your actual size and pace. You’ll leave with simple, grounded practices for sun beings and moon beings, plus a relational reminder: we need people who can witness our light without consuming it. If this lands, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s learning to take up space, and leave a review so more people can find this work. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571277/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://caseydunne.substack.com] Follow Casey Dunne on Substack [https://caseydunne.substack.com]  Educational Resources and Priestess Initiations Website [https://priestessinitiations.com/] * Books I Love [https://bookshop.org/shop/caseydunne] Shop through this link to support independent bookstores and this podcast. * Discover Your Goddess Astrology Placements [https://priestessinitiations.com/goddess-astrology-mapping-your-souls-journey] * Wellness Guides by Casey [https://priestessinitiations.com/wellness-guides] This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link] [https://open.spotify.com/artist/7r09BMrubCJCsTPHirp5vg]

Blood Mysteries | Somatic Wisdom for PMS, PMDD, and Cyclical Wellness with Gabby Rivas-Field, MA, LPCC | S2 Ep.13

The week before your period can feel like a different personality takes the wheel and it’s terrifying when no one can explain why. Gabby Rivas-Field, MA, LPCC [https://somatictherapypartners.com/our-team/gabby-rivas/], a somatic psychotherapist who works at the intersection of hormones, mental health, and the female nervous system, joins me for an honest, clinical, body-based conversation about PMDD and what actually helps. We name the lived reality: irritability, rage, anxiety, depression, shame spirals, sleep disruption, and that disorienting “light switch” after ovulation. Then we ground it in a clearer model: PMDD is often a nervous system sensitivity to normal hormone fluctuations, not a moral failure and not proof that you’re too much. [Work With Gabby!] [https://somatictherapypartners.com/our-team/gabby-rivas/] We also talk about why PMDD is so often misdiagnosed, including the painful and common confusion with borderline personality disorder, and why cycle tracking is essential for getting the right diagnosis and support. We walk through the menstrual cycle as inner seasons, with practical nervous system tools for each phase: rest and warmth in inner winter, gradual momentum in inner spring, connection and preparation in inner summer, and boundary-setting plus vagus nerve support in inner autumn. From there we widen the lens to trauma physiology and attachment. We explore how early life stress can sensitize cortisol and survival responses, why somatic therapy can reach what talk therapy can’t, and how relational safety, co-regulation, and community support can lower stress and increase steadiness over time. We also discuss the fuller treatment picture beyond “just birth control,” including SSRIs that can be used cyclically, integrative lab work, and realistic lifestyle shifts that honor the world we actually live in. [PMDD Wellness Guide by Casey [https://priestessinitiations.com/wellness-guides]] If you want language for what’s happening in your body and a path forward that includes both psychology and the sacred, subscribe, share this with someone who needs validation, and leave a review with the one insight you’re taking into your next cycle. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571277/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://caseydunne.substack.com] Follow Casey Dunne on Substack [https://caseydunne.substack.com]  Educational Resources and Priestess Initiations Website [https://priestessinitiations.com/] * Books I Love [https://bookshop.org/shop/caseydunne] Shop through this link to support independent bookstores and this podcast. * Discover Your Goddess Astrology Placements [https://priestessinitiations.com/goddess-astrology-mapping-your-souls-journey] * Wellness Guides by Casey [https://priestessinitiations.com/wellness-guides] This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link] [https://open.spotify.com/artist/7r09BMrubCJCsTPHirp5vg]

Inkling: The Temple of Ixchel, The Earthquake, and the Crone

Ixchel, Mayan goddess of the moon and medicine — sacred site pilgrimage, somatic ritual, crone initiation, and what a 6.1 earthquake at an ancient temple has to do with poison as medicine. The wildest moments on a trip aren’t always the photos, they’re the seconds when your body goes still and something ancient feels close. We’re back from Mexico and I’m sharing a quick, spontaneous inkling from Priestess Initiations while I finish editing a longer, more structured release coming Saturday: Blood Mysteries, a rich conversation on the menstrual cycle, PMS, and PMDD with my friend Gabby (an LPCC here in Colorado). I also pull back the curtain on the very real indie podcast process of recording on one mic and taking the time to do it well. Then we go to Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women, and into the orbit of Ixchel, the Mayan moon goddess tied to medicine, weaving, the sea, and multiple aspects that echo maiden, mother, and crone. At Punta Sur, her sacred site and the easternmost point of Mexico, I talk through what it felt like to touch the temple stone and receive an unexpected inner vision: an old woman moving through darkness, chanting and drums, snake medicine, and the unsettling clarity that poison can also be healing. As if the landscape wanted to underline the message, we experience two earthquakes, including a 6.1 that shakes the hotel room. We also witness sea turtles mating and feel the paradox of pleasure, fear, creation, and destruction braided together. The theme that lingers is simple but demanding: trust the spiral, even when the lesson is unnamed. If you want a deeper dive on Ixchel, Isla Mujeres, and what “crone wisdom” actually looks like in real life, tell me in the comments. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves goddess lore and pilgrimage stories, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571277/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://caseydunne.substack.com] Follow Casey Dunne on Substack [https://caseydunne.substack.com]  Educational Resources and Priestess Initiations Website [https://priestessinitiations.com/] * Books I Love [https://bookshop.org/shop/caseydunne] Shop through this link to support independent bookstores and this podcast. * Discover Your Goddess Astrology Placements [https://priestessinitiations.com/goddess-astrology-mapping-your-souls-journey] * Wellness Guides by Casey [https://priestessinitiations.com/wellness-guides] This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link] [https://open.spotify.com/artist/7r09BMrubCJCsTPHirp5vg]

Plant Medicine, Body Sovereignty, and the Plants Your Ancestors Knew | S2 Ep.12

Nutritive herbs, mineral-rich teas, and reclaiming your own medicine — earth-based spirituality, plant sitting, and somatic psychoeducation for chronic illness, hormonal health, and learning to receive what plants are trying to tell us. Half your medicine cabinet may have started as a plant and once you see that line, you cannot unsee it. I am Casey Dunne, a somatic therapist and priestess, and I am deep in a community herbalism certificate while living with fibromyalgia, endometriosis, PMDD, and the hormonal-metabolic terrain of PMOS. This is my first spring without allergy shots and without daily antihistamines, and I share what that withdrawal taught me about the nervous system, sensitivity, and why “gentle and steady” can be its own kind of power. We move through the grief and nuance of modern pharmaceuticals: foxglove, willow, yew, and the long history of extraction, optimization, and patenting. I am not anti-medicine. I am pro-truth, pro-dose awareness, and pro-remembering that many bodies do better with sustained nourishment when the goal is long-term support for chronic inflammation, seasonal allergies, and cyclical health. Then we get practical with nutritive herbs and mineral-rich infusions, including the “weeds” you might be pulling from your lawn. I break down why nettle, raspberry leaf, and marshmallow matter, how an overnight tea draws out minerals, and why safe sourcing and pesticide history are essential. We also widen the frame into earth-based spirituality and ancestral remembering through plant sitting: a simple, receptive practice of listening with the body. If you want herbalism basics, nervy-system-aware wellness, and a grounded approach to plant communication, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves herbs or needs allergy support, and leave a review so more people can find the work. Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571277/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://caseydunne.substack.com] Follow Casey Dunne on Substack [https://caseydunne.substack.com]  Educational Resources and Priestess Initiations Website [https://priestessinitiations.com/] * Books I Love [https://bookshop.org/shop/caseydunne] Shop through this link to support independent bookstores and this podcast. * Discover Your Goddess Astrology Placements [https://priestessinitiations.com/goddess-astrology-mapping-your-souls-journey] * Wellness Guides by Casey [https://priestessinitiations.com/wellness-guides] This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link] [https://open.spotify.com/artist/7r09BMrubCJCsTPHirp5vg]

Chiron, Hygieia, and Tending Yourself in a System That Profits From Your Depletion | ST S2 Ep.11

Spontaneous Transmission: The mythology of the wounded healer — somatic psychotherapy, healer burnout, and what it actually means to tend yourself in a system designed to extract from you. If you’ve ever been the person everyone leans on, the one who can hold a crisis with calm hands while quietly falling apart inside, this one is for you. I’m taking you into the archetype of Chiron, the wounded healer, and asking the question that sits underneath so much caretaking: who holds the mantle when the healer is bleeding too? I tell Chiron’s myth as a mirror for modern healer life: rejection, difference, mastery earned the hard way, and the kind of chronic wound that won’t “positive mindset” itself away. From there, I name what so many systems try to keep hidden. Burnout isn’t just a self-care issue, and it isn’t a personal failure. Under patriarchy and extractive work culture, professions like nursing, teaching, therapy, and social work are asked to give endlessly while being structurally undervalued. When we keep the wound personal, the architecture stays untouched. Then I turn toward Hygia, the goddess of hygiene and maintenance, as the counterspell to the quick-fix fantasy. We talk about unglamorous daily tending, boundaries that actually protect your nervous system, and what it means to build a sustainable life inside real limits. With Uranus entering Gemini, I frame this as a longer arc: a seven-year re-write of what your wound means and how your limits can serve you, not cost you. If this lands, subscribe, share it with a fellow caretaker, and leave a review so more healers can find their way back to themselves. What boundary would change your life the most? Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2571277/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://caseydunne.substack.com] Follow Casey Dunne on Substack [https://caseydunne.substack.com]  Educational Resources and Priestess Initiations Website [https://priestessinitiations.com/] * Books I Love [https://bookshop.org/shop/caseydunne] Shop through this link to support independent bookstores and this podcast. * Discover Your Goddess Astrology Placements [https://priestessinitiations.com/goddess-astrology-mapping-your-souls-journey] * Wellness Guides by Casey [https://priestessinitiations.com/wellness-guides] This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Intro music composed by my dad, Mike Dunne: [Spotify link] [https://open.spotify.com/artist/7r09BMrubCJCsTPHirp5vg]