WELCOME TO
CALLING IN
THE HEALERS
Calling in the Healers is a hyper-local podcast based in Lawrence, KS, built for and with community, where we explore what healing means in all its forms—from personal journeys to community-wide transformation.
LISTEN TO THE LATEST EPISODE
Episode 05 | Sit, Savor, Heal w/ Ashley Combs
August 28, 2025
In this episode of Calling in the Healers, nutritionist, mama, and community leader Ashley Combs invites us to see food as more than fuel — as medicine, memory, and momentum. She shares the philosophy behind Breda’s Bentos, where colorful, balanced meals become invitations to slow down, “sit and savor,” and spark what she calls “spiraling up” — positive reinforcing patterns of health and vitality. Together, we unpack how mindful eating supports the gut and nervous system, how cultural foods like adobo, bibingka, and lumpia carry ancestral love, and how social media often distorts nutrition advice by taking it out of context. This is a conversation about reclaiming joy and presence at the table, and about how even small choices in nourishment can ripple outward into resilience, balance, and community healing.
-
In this episode of Calling in the Healers, we sit down with Rebekka Schlichting — filmmaker, professor, mama, culture keeper of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, and co-founder of Dear Woman Productions. Together, we explore storytelling as both cultural preservation and a pathway to healing. From ceremonies on the Sac & Fox Nation reservation to youth workshops at KU, Rebekka’s work bridges traditional knowledge and modern media. She shares how returning to homelands, speaking ancestral languages, and reclaiming narrative sovereignty can bring deep intergenerational healing.
You’ll hear about:
Building the Native Storytelling Workshop at KU and creating access for Native youth despite funding cuts (with support from Vision Maker Media and the Billy Mills Running Strong Foundation)
The origins of Dear Woman Productions and its commitment to Native-led, women-centered film projects
Honoring the legacy of Peyton Canku through projects like Rez Monster and the forthcoming documentary Walking the Footsteps of Our Ancestors (about the Otoe-Missouria people returning to their Nebraska homelands)
Migration stories that weave German, French-Canadian, Wichita, and Ioway lineages with the lived realities of boarding schools, schizophrenia, resilience, and reclamation
The healing power of laughter, language, and ceremony in the face of historical trauma
Whether you are a storyteller, a community leader, or someone navigating the complexity of mixed identity, this episode offers powerful reflections on how stories themselves can be medicine.
💚 Shoutout to Bluebird Taylor-McKown at Baker Wetlands, who leads education programs that teach young people about reciprocity, connect community back to the land, and embody the practice of rematriation as a culture keeper caring for the beings and ecosystems — like the wetlands — that need our protection.
🎬 To follow Rebekka’s work, check out:
💻 Dear Woman Productions
📽️ Native Storytelling Workshop (KU School of Journalism, in partnership with Running Strong Foundation for American Indian Youth)
📚 Walking the Footsteps of Our Ancestors (film in progress) -
JUNE 27, 2025
In this episode of Calling in the Healers, we sit down with Zach and Whitney Schneider, personal trainers and co-owners of a community gym in Lawrence, Kansas. Together, we talk about movement. Both how movement heals, as well as the work it takes to heal when we can't move the way we want to (e.g., recovering from a debilitating injury). Throughout the episode, we unpack the way commitment to our health in the long term sets us on a path to personal resilience, community connection, and lifelong strength.You’ll hear about:
Inclusive fitness practices for every type of body
How to build a gym culture rooted in compassion, not comparison
What this approach to fitness teaches us about adaptation and community healing
Growing up in rural Kansas, recovering from injury, and staying rooted in place
Whether you’re a fitness professional, a community leader, or someone healing their relationship with their body, this episode offers powerful insights into how movement can become medicine.
🎧 Listen now
💪🏽 If you’re looking to join the community that Zach & Whitney have built, you can reach them at:
📧 zach@schneiderfit.com
📱 (620) 481-9631
💻 https://schneiderfit.com/
📍 3201 Clinton Pkwy Ct, Lawrence, KS 66047 -
JUNE 20, 2025
In this episode of Calling in the Healers, Nick Pineda sits down with Courtney Eddy King—Indigenous scientist, cultural steward, and greenhouse manager at Haskell Indian Nations University—for a conversation about the work of healing land, memory, and self.Courtney shares her journey into ecological restoration and her relationship with the land—as someone reclaiming cultural knowledge that colonial systems continue to seek to erase. Together, they explore what it means to rebalance ecosystems and why public land care serves as a mirror for how much we truly value the land and sovereignty of the other-than-human species that live on it.
In this conversation, we explore:
What it means to restore not just prairie ecosystems—but cultural memory
How the land can become a teacher when ancestral knowledge is missing or broken
The tension between progressive environmentalism and lived Indigenous realities in Lawrence
The emotional and ancestral depth of working with plants as material and kin
This episode is for anyone hungry to feel rooted again—anyone looking to begin, or begin again, with the land beneath their feet.
🎧 Listen now
⚒️ If you’d like to volunteer with the
Haskell Greenhouse you can learn more about their work at their website and follow them on Instagram.
Volunteer days are held regularly.
And if you’d like to begin removing invasive honeysuckle in your community, check out this video from Cincinnati Parks. -
JUNE 12, 2025
In this opening episode of Calling in the Healers, host Nick Pineda sits down with Cris—great-grandmother, sponsor, and longtime member of the Lawrence recovery community—for a conversation that is equal parts laughter and tears. It's about being honest and showing up for yourself so that others can do the same.Together, they reflect on what it means to say yes to change, the role of truth-telling in recovery, and why healing is a lifelong, relational practice—not something we earn or perform. Cris shares how a pivotal boundary from her therapist led her to her first recovery meeting, how she grew into the role of sponsor for others, and how she brings an "attitude of gratitude" wherever she goes.
This episode is a reminder that we don’t need to be perfect to be powerful—and that some of the most transformative work in a community happens quietly, through honest friendship and steady presence.
In this conversation, we explore:
What it means to begin a healing journey later at any stage of life
How the recovery community models a different kind of leadership
The difference between saving others and walking alongside them
Why “taking the cape off” might be the most powerful thing we can do
🎧 Listen now and explore what recovery, honesty, and healing mean in your own life.
⚒️ If you or someone you know is struggling with recovery or addiction, help is always within reach.
HAVE A QUESTION
FOR AN UPCOMING EPISODE?
HAVE A LOCAL HEALER
YOU WANT TO NOMINATE?
SUBMIT HERE!
Join your host, Nick Pineda, as we explore the BIG and small ways the people of the Lawrence community are imagining and building futures where we ALL can thrive.
-
Whether it’s in our bodies, our relationships, our workplaces, our ancestry, our environment, or our broader living community, by sharing authentic narratives, forgotten and remembered practices, and modern insights, our goal is to uncover what healing means here, for all of us, and how it can be a source of inspiration both within this community and beyond it.
-
This project aims to create a space for understanding healing as a holistic, collective, place- and land-centered process—embracing the body, heart, mind, spirit, and our deep connection to the more-than-human world. It is a platform for us, by us, about us to capture the dreams our community has for the future we want to build together.
-
Individualism can teach us to seek out (and tell) entertaining and memorable yet inauthentic “hero narratives.” This is the collective fantasy that one singular figure is responsible for profound social change. In this space, we believe true leadership, change, and healing in community come from many voices, actions, and shared efforts. We will never center the story on one person or organization. We won’t solely focus on founders, leaders, or singular authority figures. We are committed to celebrating the collective nature of healing by seeking out a range of voices contributing to a shared dream.