Shapeshifter

Tears, Textile and Untold Stories with Rena

What if vulnerability and creativity weren’t weaknesses — but the truest form of strength? In this episode of Shapeshifter, I sit with Rena, an artist, healer, and creator, to explore the transformative power of crying, vulnerability, and ancestral connection. From the intimate moments of shedding tears to the tactile joy of silk painting, Rena shares how she turned her lineage, intuition, and life experiences into a living practice of self-expression, connection, and healing. Recorded with honesty, laughter, and song, this episode is a gentle reflection on the ways our bodies, hearts, and creativity guide us — often more wisely than our minds. Join us as we explore: * The Healing Power of Tears: Why allowing yourself to cry is not weakness, but a release of cortisol and a path to joy, endorphins, and connection. * Vulnerability as Permission: How showing up fully, even when it’s uncomfortable, gives others a “permission slip” to do the same. * Heightened Senses & Intuition: How Rena’s unique ways of sensing the world—through hearing, touch, and energy—inform her creativity and work with women. * Doula Work & Life Guidance: The magic of intuition, life cycles, and holding space in both birth and creative practices. * Ancestral Wisdom & Textile Legacy: How Rena’s Yaya inspired a lifelong love of weaving, crochet, and storytelling through textiles — transforming laborious work into art, connection, and healing. * Art as Story & Healing: The power of creating pieces that carry stories, pass on energy, and connect generations. * Song & Presence: Rena shares a snippet of her song Saga Po, a reminder of joy, love, and embodiment through sound. This episode is for those who feel deeply, who create from the heart, and who are seeking ways to live fully, vulnerably, and joyfully. Artists, healers, mothers, space holders, and those who hold stories close — this conversation is for you. ✨ Connect with Rena * Rena’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/renazen_world/]— follow for silk art, storytelling, and creative expression in motion * Rena’s Bespoke Scarves [https://www.renazen.co.uk/]🧣 — explore her silk-painted creations and commissioned pieces on her website * Rena’s LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/renazen_world]— connect for collaborations and professional enquiries 🌿 Remember: Showing up fully is a gift — to yourself, and to the people who need to see that it’s possible. It’s here!!! The Joy Witch Cacao is now available to buy [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/shop/p/cacao-for-ritual], from El Salvador to the world! Get your Mayan horoscope sign here [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/mayan-astrology] ✨ Want more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram @carogomez_joywitch for deeper conversations on unconventional thinking, creativity, and spirituality! Spread the joy! Did this episode leave you feeling empowered or inspired? Help others find the same magic by leaving a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback is like fuel for the show, and it helps others discover the power within themselves. ✨ Want more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram @carogomez_joywitch for deeper conversations on unconventional thinking, creativity, and spirituality! Spread the joy! Did this episode leave you feeling empowered or inspired? Help others find the same magic by leaving a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback is like fuel for the show, and it helps others discover the power within themselves.

#26 - Lead like a tree

What if leadership didn’t ask you to climb higher, speak louder, or move faster — but instead invited you to root deeper?  In this episode of Shapeshifter, I share a living philosophy that’s been growing within me for years (but I didn’t know it!): Leading like a tree. Recorded in the presence of winter trees, birdsong, and big blue skies, this episode is a slow, honest reflection on leadership, legacy, and the deep exhaustion many of us feel with the dominant models of success, urgency, and visibility. This isn’t a strategy-heavy episode, it’s an ancestral remembering, rather than a terrestrial one. Join me as we explore: * Why Traditional Leadership No Longer Fits: Questioning urgency, extraction, hierarchy, and the idea that it’s “lonely at the top.” * Rooted Leadership: What it means to lead from lineage, ancestry, and the body — not from algorithms or market gaps. * The Tree as Teacher: Understanding leadership through roots, trunk, branches, fruit, leaves, and soil — and how this living architecture applies to your work and life. * Fulfilment Beyond Metrics: Why multi-six-figure success without nervous system safety and joy isn’t success at all. * Visibility Without Burnout: Honouring cycles, seasonality, and presence without betraying yourself. * Leadership That Lasts Generations: The story of living tree bridges in India and why true leadership is often for people we’ll never meet. * A New Way Forward: Introducing Lead Like a Tree — a living practice for those who are done with forcing, hustling, and performing. This episode is for the shapeshifters, the quiet leaders, the artists, witches, space holders, mothers, elders, women of depth and creators who feel the call to do things differently. Slowly, honestly, and in reciprocity with life itself. If your work took 20, 30, or 50 years to fully bloom… would you still do it?  If the answer is yes, this episode is for you.  🌿 Remember: you were never meant to do this alone. Let’s grow something that outlives us.   LEAD LIKE A TREE [https://carogomez.myflodesk.com/leadlikeatreealivingpractice] – a living practice for those that don’t fit inside traditional leadership models, we begin February 17 It’s here!!! The Joy Witch Cacao is now available to buy [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/shop/p/cacao-for-ritual], from El Salvador to the world! Get your Mayan horoscope sign here [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/mayan-astrology] ✨ Want more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram @carogomez_joywitch for deeper conversations on unconventional thinking, creativity, and spirituality! Spread the joy! Did this episode leave you feeling empowered or inspired? Help others find the same magic by leaving a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback is like fuel for the show, and it helps others discover the power within themselves.

#25 - Hold steady, witch: how to find your role in a world on fire

In this raw, and nuanced, reckining filled episode, Shapeshifter returns from a short break and I speak about the noisy world we live in — and what it really means to find your role within it. From political flashpoints across the globe to the addictive hit of online outrage (takes one to know one), I share how easily we can get swept up in cycles that make us feel alive… while quietly distracting us from the deeper, harder work in our own homes and spirits. This is not a call to disengage. It’s a call to discernment. To choosing where our fire truly belongs. And it’s a reminder that when the world grows louder, our roots can grow deeper. Anchored in the soil of legacy, spirit, and your calling. In this episode we explore:  • The addictive dopamine of outrage and why it feels like action  • How world events outside the West (Nepal, Panama, Mozambique, Colombia) can shift our perspective  • Why online noise can mask unfinished inner work  • The grounding practice of rooting deeper when the world rattles  • Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Map and the roles of healer, disruptor, storyteller, weaver, and more • Letting your purpose unfold in its own time (my journey with Ancestral Awakening) • The gift of not forcing your calling to “pay the bills” — and what happens when you give it time • A preview of Blood and Bones, my Día de los Muertos gathering with Eda, an Amazonian medicine woman   Resources & Mentions: • Conversation with Eda, Medicine Woman Episode 17: This is not community help [https://open.spotify.com/episode/0cS5ImlSb7AtyFjv3s8NWu?si=c687ea065dc14932] • Deepa Iyer’s Social Change Ecosystem Map, find out more here [https://www.socialchangemap.com/] • Ancestral Awakening waitlist for 2026, join here [https://carogomez.myflodesk.com/4f96be44-a221-4b5a-8d4a-b39ef3d79314] BLOOD & BONES day of the dead gathering with Eda, icaros, cacao and connection – join the waitlist here It’s here!!! The Joy Witch Cacao is now available to buy [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/shop/p/cacao-for-ritual], from El Salvador to the world! Get your Mayan horoscope sign here [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/mayan-astrology] ✨ Want more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram @carogomez_joywitch for deeper conversations on unconventional thinking, creativity, and spirituality! Spread the joy! Did this episode leave you feeling empowered or inspired? Help others find the same magic by leaving a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback is like fuel for the show, and it helps others discover the power within themselves.

#24 - Channeling a technicolour life with Franca

In this radiant, real, and sometimes ridiculous episode, I sit down with my luminous friend Franca—spirit-channel, clarity-weaver, queen of sequins and silence. We talk about what it really takes to speak your truth in public, the invisible risks of visibility, and the awkward tension between “I want to share this” and “What if I get cancelled?” (Spoiler alert: block and bless, darling.) We cover everything from commenting on Instagram posts with actual courage, to the truth about menopause (hint: it’s not always a liberation parade), to channelling spirit in the kitchen with a pot of bean soup. It’s raw, deliciously witchy, and full of technicolour permission to be in the mess and the magic. Franca shares her journey with HRT (and the surprising reconnection to spirit that followed), the birth of her alter-egos Queen and Chiquita, and how the art of being seen is always shapeshifting. Whether you're someone who’s mid-transformation, hiding drafts in your reels folder, questioning the vibe of “wellness perfection,” or just here for the petty rage and the sequins—this one’s for you. In this episode we explore: * The art of sharing your voice without self-censorship * Why we second guess our intuition  * Losing and reclaiming your spiritual connection in midlife * Dancing in the dark as a portal to channelling * Chiquita & Queen: Franca’s fierce, funny, illustrated alter-egos born from menopausal chaos * What it really means to channel—and how to trust it, even if it feels made up * Why creativity is a fun, messy, divine transmission (yes, even when the phone hits your face) ___ 🌿 Resources & Mentions: * Franca’s website [https://www.francamunoz.com/] and her instagram [https://www.instagram.com/franca_munoz/] – follow for on point biz and life guidance with a side of sass and glitter * Africa Brooke’s book The Third Perspective [https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-third-perspective/africa-brooke/9781399722520] * The College of Psychic Studies website [https://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk/] * The Joy Witch’s substack [https://substack.com/@joywitch] ___ Ancestral Awakening [https://carogomez.myflodesk.com/ancestralawakening] is open for applications, my most honest and transformative offering yet, opens this September. If you’re ready to go deep into your lineage, roots, and ancestral memory, so that you can build a spiritual spine (trust me, your business doesn’t need another funnel) there’s a spot for you in the circle.  JOIN HERE [https://carogomez.myflodesk.com/ancestralawakening] It’s here!!! The Joy Witch Cacao is now available to buy [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/shop/p/cacao-for-ritual], from El Salvador to the world! Get your Mayan horoscope sign here [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/mayan-astrology] ✨ Want more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram @carogomez_joywitch for deeper conversations on unconventional thinking, creativity, and spirituality! Spread the joy! Did this episode leave you feeling empowered or inspired? Help others find the same magic by leaving a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback is like fuel for the show, and it helps others discover the power within themselves.

#23 - Not a business, not a hobby, just a calling (that pays)

It’s not a ladder, it’s a spiral case! In today’s episode we have a layered, spiralling exploration of artistry, creative integrity, and the sacred economics (can economics be sacred!?) of living a life paid for by your gifts. What do you call it when your work doesn’t fit into the boxes of “business” or “hobby”? When it’s too magical to be reduced to content, too alive to turn into a funnel, and yet—yes—you still want to be paid? And be paid well. This is a love letter to the shapeshifters. To those who refuse to call themselves content creators, CEOs, or scalable machines. Who build altars and communities. Who trace their business model back to the ancestral fires, not marketing dashboards. Join me as we explore: * Calling vs. Content: Why your work is not content and why calling it that might make your body recoil. * Redefining Success: How to live a life paid for by your gifts without turning your creativity into a machine. * The Voice of Doubt: Giving space to the inner critic obsessed with metrics, funnels, and “doing it right”… and offering it a wise response. Yes, I’m literally shifting between voices and personas here! * Sacred Trade: Why exchanging your magic for money isn’t sleazy, it’s part of your legacy. * The Spiral Staircase Model: Building a life and body of work that grows inward, outward, and upward—at your own rhythm and in cycles that flow. For the artists, mystics, witches, and misfits who: * Feel allergic to strategy but still want to thrive * Want to be profitable without selling their souls * Have a “thing” that moves others, not because of a CTA but because it’s real, ancestral, and alive This one is for you. You don’t have to call yourself a CEO to be taken seriously. Your work is sacred. And yes, it can pay your bills, feed your family, and buy you that ticket to the Orkney islands. ___ 🌿 Resources & Mentions: * Rena's sacred scarves [https://www.renazen.co.uk/new-page] * Episode 7 [https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Bpt8yYdb0jNLT5ag89XEu?si=164c84af5d9641c5] – Don’t Require Your Art to Pay Your Bills * The Somatic School [https://www.thesomaticschool.com/book-an-intro] – Body-Oriented Coach Training (get in touch if you're curious) __ Coming soon: Ancestral Awakening, my most honest and transformative offering yet, opens this September. If you’re ready to go deep into your lineage, roots, and ancestral memory, there’s a spot for you in the circle.  Join the waitlist for Ancestral Awakening here [https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63a4838a1488000c28b9ba66] It’s here!!! The Joy Witch Cacao is now available to buy [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/shop/p/cacao-for-ritual], from El Salvador to the world! Get your Mayan horoscope sign here [https://www.themayanschoolofembodiment.com/mayan-astrology] ✨ Want more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram @carogomez_joywitch for deeper conversations on unconventional thinking, creativity, and spirituality! Spread the joy! Did this episode leave you feeling empowered or inspired? Help others find the same magic by leaving a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. Your feedback is like fuel for the show, and it helps others discover the power within themselves.