Grand Rising with Ryan Stober & Sheela Rahman: Sedona's Weekly Pulse of Connection

There's a rhythm to community that can't be forced—only tended. And every week, Ryan Stober and Sheela Rahman step into the Grand Rising studio to do exactly that: tend the pulse of Humankind's Sedona gathering place with the kind of spaciousness that makes you remember why you showed up in the first place.

"I am a multidimensional being having a human experience," Sheela says in her introduction, and Ryan replies simply: "Me, too." It's a small exchange, but it sets the tone for everything that follows—a willingness to hold both the cosmic and the immediate, the ethereal and the embodied, without choosing sides.

What does it feel like to be held by breath?

Before anything else—before event announcements or interviews or book recommendations—Ryan and Sheela lead the community through three rounds of breathwork. Four counts in, four counts held, six counts out. Sheela's voice is steady as she counts, and you can feel the room (even through a screen) drop into presence.

"It never fails," Ryan says afterward. "It always gets me ready for the day." It's the kind of ritual that doesn't demand belief, only participation. And that's the invitation Grand Rising extends: show up, breathe, and see what opens.

Sheela shares about her recent Sacred Resonance event, where she brought "the gong, the tuning forks, the sound bowl" into deep dive territory. "We went on a journey into the realm of sound, unblocking stagnant energies and dissolving what is no longer needed to make space for the new." Ryan, still fascinated by the science of the gong, promises a future deep dive. It's clear he's not just hosting—he's learning, right alongside everyone else.

What happens when you treat a book like a treasure hunt?

One of the show's most beloved segments is the weekly call with Giselle, Humankind's unofficial (but very official) book curator. This week she brings a rarity: The History of the Hopi from Their Origins in Lemuria by Oswald Whitebear Fredericks—a book currently valued at $3,000 and almost impossible to find.

"If anyone ever sees this book, buy it," Giselle says. "Don't even question it. Don't even think about it. Just absolutely buy it." She explains that Whitebear, who co-authored the more widely known Book of the Hopi with Frank Waters, was ostracized by his own community for writing this one—for sharing oral traditions that were meant to stay internal. He eventually moved to Sedona, and Whitebear Road, where the public library sits, is named after him.

The book traces Hopi history all the way back to Lemuria and Atlantis, through nine worlds—"we're in the fourth, we've got to move to the fifth," Giselle notes. The copy she's reading? Signed by the woman who published it posthumously, dated 9-1-11. "I read it so gently," she says. Ryan, ever the connector, turns it into a playful challenge: "Let's all have some hopium that we can find this book."

It's book FOMO at its finest, and somehow it becomes a living lesson in manifestation, reverence, and the layers of history that live just beneath Sedona's red rocks.

How does sound become a doorway?

The episode's centerpiece is Ryan's interview with Linda Arnold, a classically trained musician and sound healer who's bringing two offerings to Humankind: a Frequency Friday session and her signature Ethereal Sound Voyage. Linda's background is formal—bachelor's in music, recording arts degree, a home studio—but her pivot into sound healing came from a single, undeniable experience.

"I've always dealt with anxiety," she shares. "At the open house for my sound healing training, someone came around with tuning forks and put them by my ears. I felt like my nervous system dropped like six floors. It was instantaneous." She wrote the check to enroll right there.

Linda's work isn't about transcending the body—it's about integration. "We're not about transcending out of the body but integrating everything and being in the body and having that human experience," she says. Ryan lights up at this. "We're here to have the human experience, right? I'm Brian. I need to let that play out because that's the point. That's how you get wisdom and knowing and growth."

It's a thread that runs through the entire episode: the return to embodiment, the willingness to be here, fully, in all the messy beauty of being human. Linda's Ethereal Sound Voyage is part meditation, part ceremony, part concert—closing out the Divine Alignment Conference and offering what she calls "a transformative tool" for nervous system regulation, emotional release, and creative expansion.

You can watch the full Grand Rising episode to catch the live look at Earth from space ("I'm getting dizzy," Ryan jokes), the full event rundown (Cacao Paint and Drums, ecstatic dance with EIR, DeLady live in September), and the easy chemistry between Ryan and Sheela that makes the whole thing feel less like a broadcast and more like sitting in a friend's living room while the world outside gets a little quieter.

"Enjoy your week," Ryan says as they sign off, "and especially Monday because Monday gets no love." It's that kind of show—where breath matters, books are portals, sound is medicine, and even the days of the week deserve a little tenderness. Watch the replay and let it remind you: you're not waiting for a better world. You're building it, together.

▶ Watch the replay on humankind →