About this episodeRev. Syd is joined by Leah Garza to discuss “if loneliness is a living system, then what?” They frame loneliness as connected to colonial ontology’s enforced separation and discuss how institutions use isolation as social control. Rather than pathologizing loneliness, they explore acceptance, belonging, and shifting from good/bad binaries to preference and choice. They discuss illusions of separateness (atom-scale perspective), knowledge from dreams and psychedelics, tools like medication and gender-affirming care as extensions of the body, and noticing connection through nonhuman companions like a spider and a dog. The episode opens and closes with Aeon Ginsberg’s poem “Poem in Which I Transition into Water.”
Dr. Leah Garza (she/her) is a Los Angeles–based scholar, professional mystic, and facilitator whose work explores the intersections of decoloniality, ontology, posthumanism, and ecological futures. As the founder of Crystals of Altamira and creator of the year-long Living Systems curriculum, she has guided nearly 300 students across three cohorts to collectively wonder: if extinction is inevitable, what else is possible?
That same question now animates Living Systems Consulting, which she co-founded with Katie Robinson to bring this work directly into organizations ready to ask it. Leah brings nearly two decades of experience in education as a teacher and organizer, alongside extensive work in systems planning, curriculum design, and facilitation — grounding her theoretical work in the lived, practical realities of how institutions actually function, and where they fail the people inside them.
Her teaching and research ask how decolonial pedagogies can cultivate public spaces of intellectual intimacy and nurture relational ways of being, particularly for those living "above the Abyssal line." Leah brings both rigor and whimsy to her practice.
She holds a PhD from Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco Psychologies program. Her dissertation "No one is superfluous in a Living System; Relational pedagogies in praxis", explores decolonial pedagogies as a means for transforming reality. She has prior degrees including an M.A. in Depth Psychology (CLIE), an M.Ed and teaching credential from UCLA, and a B.A. in Linguistics from Northeastern University. Across all her work, Leah's approach is guided by curiosity, resonance, and the conviction that transformation can be not only possible but joyful.
You can learn more about Leah at crystalsofaltamira.com, wearelivingsystems.com, and wearelivingsystemsconsulting.com