Grand Rising with Ryan Stober & Sheela Rahman: Where Ponies, Sacred Geometry, and Sedona's Comedy Scene Collide

Some morning shows ease you in with news headlines and weather. Grand Rising with Ryan Stober and Sheela Rahman opens with a breathing exercise, a parade of "pretty ponies," and the kind of spontaneous vulnerability that makes Sedona's consciousness community feel like home.

The latest episode delivers exactly what regulars have come to love: Ryan's self-aware humor ("I'm not known as a pony lover... but I can come on here and talk about my ponies"), Sheela's grounded presence, and a guest conversation that veers from sacred geometry into the neuroscience of imagination itself.

Who Are Ryan Stober and Sheela Rahman?

Ryan and Sheela hold the Grand Rising space with a chemistry that feels less like polished broadcasting and more like inviting viewers into an ongoing conversation between friends. Ryan brings levity—his bit about telling his mom he was bored as a kid ("Well, you've got to learn to entertain yourself." "No, I've just got to go to Humankind") captures his conversational warmth. Sheela anchors with intention, guiding a cleansing breath "to clear what is no longer serving your highest timeline."

They're embedded in Sedona's expanding cultural ecosystem. Ryan previews Humankind's partnership with the Big Laugh Comedy Festival and teases comedy yoga with instructor Cheryl, who had participants "barking like a dog during downward-facing dog... channeling our inner dog as a healing practice." When Ryan asks which kind of "heal," Sheela's response—"Both, right?"—is pure Grand Rising energy.

The show cycles through upcoming events with genuine enthusiasm: Frequency Fridays with BioCharger sessions, Mission Mondays meditation, the 928 Light Twerk ("a triple pun," Ryan explains—lightwork, light twerk, and Arizona's area code), and the mysterious Beyond the Veil workshop featuring "conscious costumes" and sound healing.

What Makes the Flower of Life Conversation So Compelling?

Midway through, the hosts call Gisele—interrupting her bed-making—to discuss Drunvalo Melchizedek's "Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life" volumes. What begins as a book recommendation becomes something richer.

Gisele explains that the books are edited transcripts of Drunvalo's workshops from 1985 to 1994, teaching merkabah activation through precise geometric visualization. Sheela describes the appeal: "He overlays all of these different geometries that are found in nature, and crystals, and flowers, and shows all of these correspondences... and how to visualize these geometries in our own field."

But Gisele reveals a striking limitation: "His process for activating that merkabah is very left brain... I don't have visuals, I have to feel everything." She has aphantasia—the inability to visualize mentally—a condition she only discovered five years ago. "I've been a bibliophile my whole life," she says. "Somebody said to me, 'How do you read?' And I'm like, 'I read black words on a white page typically.' And they were like, 'You don't get any pictures?' I'm like, 'What?'"

Ryan is visibly fascinated. Sheela connects it to the clairs—clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience. Gisele proposes her own term: "If I had to name it, I would call it clear frequency, because everything has a frequency. You tap into the field, you recognize, you tap into a frequency, and then you just know."

The conversation touches on whether this affects memory ("they say we grieve differently"), intelligence ("they also say we tend to have higher intelligence levels"), and the possibility of 350 human senses the ancient Egyptians recognized. It's the kind of exchange that makes consciousness work feel less like dogma and more like collaborative exploration.

Why Does This Show Work?

Grand Rising refuses the polished veneer of typical spiritual content. Between the pony photos ("This pony's got bed head. But it doesn't matter because it shows up with a flower"), the live Earth camera segment cycling through Brazil, Norway, and New Zealand, and Ryan's admission that he doesn't understand aphantasia ("I'll be bugging you about it, like, 'Tell me more about this'"), the show feels permission-giving.

Sheela closes with equinox guidance: "What do you want to create? What do you want to build? What do you want to let go of that is no longer serving you? What do you want to call in? What do you want to revoke? What do you want to invoke?" Ryan adds his own spin: "If you can't visualize it, write it down. Go to Pinterest. Just use someone else's inspiration. There's enough to go around."

It's a show that holds space for both sacred geometry and Debbie Gibson ponies, for merkabah activation and making your bed, for the highest timeline and a good nap before the evening dance. In that refusal to choose between depth and delight, Ryan and Sheela model what Sedona's consciousness community is becoming: a place where spiritual practice doesn't require solemnity, where curiosity trumps certainty, and where the morning ritual includes pretty ponies and teachings on frequency in equal measure.

Grand Rising. Indeed.

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