John Snyder, pioneer of guitar pedals and founder of Electronic Audio Experiments, explores the intersection of engineering, creativity, and the endless pursuit of great sound.

This week on The Indie Spiritualist, Chris and John discuss:

• John’s journey as a musician, creating guitar pedals and altering sound
• What it was like finishing a PhD in an electrical engineering program during the coronavirus pandemic
• How Electronic Audio Experiments took off
• Blurring the lines between art and science
• Guitar gear as an extension of the instrument itself
• Navigating creative burnout and the gap between efforts and outcomes
• How neurodivergent traits can be valuable in the creative industry and beyond

About John Snyder:

John Snyder is a long-time guitarist with a PhD in electrical engineering. John combined these passions and became the owner and head designer at Electronic Audio Experiments (EAE). EAE is an exploration in sound and texture via electronics. EAE focuses primarily on stompboxes for electric guitar and bass, with occasional ventures into amplification and synthesis. Check out this article from Boston University on John and his work.

“It’s very edifying to do something like this that is really blurring the art that I want to make with the science background that I have. There’s so much subjectivity to it that it feels like an art project rather than an engineering project much of the time.” –John Snyder

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Atheist spiritual director Britt Hartley explores climbing out of the void and building a life that is worth experiencing rather than focusing on what comes next.

This week on The Indie Spiritualist, Chris and Britt explore:

• Deconstructing truth claims and focusing on momentary experience
• How Sufism reopened Britt to spirituality
• The brain’s struggle to make choices without a direction or faith
• Existential bravery and challenging the religions we inherited
• The beauty of living in deep honesty
• Living a life that is worth living, even if nothing comes after we are gone
• America’s movement from theological religion to political religion
• Not claiming an “ism” and putting all options on the table
• Imagination and overapplying agency outside of ourselves
• Looking into the connection between Autism and Nihilism

“I would rather suffer and see than accept some story and never question it and live and die according to some story that I inherited.”–Britt Hartley

About Britt Hartley:

Britt Hartley is an Atheist spiritual director and secular spirituality content creator. She holds a masters degree in theology and considers herself a nihilism survivor and Sufi mystic. She is also a published author, religious deconstruction coach, and program director for Spiritual Direction Training. Check out her book No Nonsense Spirituality and keep up with her on Instagram.

“Mysticism, what still allowed that to take root in me even with all my skepticism, is mysticism is the focus on the experience of what people have called God without having to put specific language around it or a box around it or put it into a manual. That has been really helpful for me to focus on experience as a place you can build even in the void, even in existential crisis. The one thing we can know is that there is something to be experienced.” –Britt Hartley

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Exploring the vital role of boundaries, Dr. Lissa Rankin calls on the medical and wellness fields to confront power imbalances and deepen their understanding of trauma.

Check out Dr. Rankin’s numerous books on trauma, medicine, healing, and more HERE

This week on The Indie Spiritualist, Chris and Lissa explore

• Moral injury and Lissa’s transition out of the medical world
• What the medical world misunderstands about trauma
• Cult-type dynamics within the wellness community
• Naive compassion and recognizing that sometimes we are responsible for our own harm
• Waking up to spiritual bypassing and developing a trauma-informed awareness
• How medical training forces you to dehumanize in order to detach and perform in surgeries etc.
• Going through a reckoning of power imbalance
• Internal Family Systems as a wonderful healing modality for trauma
• Standing up for ourselves and asking for what we need

About Lissa Rankin, MD:

Lissa Rankin, MD, is an OB/GYN physician, author of 7 books, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute and the non-profit Heal At Last, and an encaustic artist who researches radical remission, trauma-informed medicine, and spiritual healing. She teaches memoir writing for therapeutic purposes, in addition to being an educator of Internal Family Systems (IFS). Her TEDx talks have been viewed over 6 million times, and she starred in two National Public Television specials. Lissa is currently co-writing her eighth book with Harvard psychiatrist Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv about the link between relational trauma and medical illness, focusing on how healthy boundaries and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy can help reverse diseases related to nervous system dysregulation caused by traumatizing relationships. Lissa lives with her partner Jeff Rediger and her housemate April Sweazy in the Bay Area, now that her daughter has flown the nest. She thrives on daily hikes in nature, dancing with her Bay Area dance community, singing, writing, DJ’ing music whenever she can, and healthy gourmet cooking. Check out Lissa’s website HERE.

“I was using my naive compassion to enable and tolerate some of the most narcissistic people on the planet without good boundaries and consequences to that behavior. It was shattering to realize that I was responsible for my own harm, I was continuing to keep the door wide open. I was a porous, boundaryless, gap. That was part of the ecstatic part, it was ‘it’s all one, we’re all connected.’ I wasn’t seeing the boundarylessness of that and the boundary wounding that came from my boundaryless mother.” –Lissa Rankin, MD

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