Grand Rising with Ryan Stober & Sheela Rahman: Where Talking Sticks Meet Sacred Ponies

What happens when you blend sacred ceremony with self-aware irreverence? You get Grand Rising, the weekly show where hosts Ryan Stober and Sheela Rahman prove that consciousness work doesn't have to be solemn to be profound.

"Grand Rising, everyone," Sheela opens, explaining the very name of the show: an intentional upgrade from the energy of "morning" to something that honors ascension. It's the first of many linguistic shifts they explore—a thread that weaves through the entire conversation about how the words we choose program our reality.

What's a Talking Stick Doing as a Microphone?

Ryan holds up a carved stick adorned with feathers. "This particular one is from the Navajo Nation, and it is made for sacred ceremony," Sheela explains. "The person who is holding the talking stick is the one who is going to be speaking." The concept is beautiful: regulating energy flow, creating respectful space for whoever holds the stick.

Then Ryan grabs it. "With this stick in my hand, I'm allowed to do that. I can keep talking. I don't need to breathe. I'm running out of air."

The two proceed to use the ceremonial object exactly like a microphone, passing it back and forth while touring the world via webcams—Iceland, Switzerland, Italy, the universe itself ("looks like they got to clean the lens")—before landing on what Ryan declares "one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen": a photo of an impossibly fluffy pony.

"If that pony doesn't get you excited about today, then I don't know what will," Ryan says with genuine enthusiasm. Sheela admits the pony from last week's show infiltrated her dreams: "It was actually about 50 of that exact pony clone, and people were riding the ponies."

Watch the full Grand Rising replay to see the sacred pony that penetrates dream space.

What Brings Two Explorers to Sedona's 'Island of Misfit Toys'?

When Sheela asks what brought Ryan to Sedona, his first answer is deadpan: "Fame and fortune." Then he gets real. "What I find really fascinating about this time in my life... we're walking around just seeing the world completely differently. We're perceiving things differently. And Sedona is sort of like... the Island of Misfit Toys, but it's sort of like a bubble within a bubble."

For Ryan, who calls himself an explorer, it's about the pace of evolution happening here. "Everything about my life is very different compared to what it would've been a couple of years ago."

Sheela layers in the other dimensions: "You have the community of like-minded people... then you have the nature, which is some of the most beautiful I've seen in my entire life. And then you have the energetics of the electromagnetism of the land, the grids, the vortexes, the ley lines crossing both on the Earth plane and the galactic plane. This is a hub. This is a major vein in the multidimensional system."

The real magic, though, happens in daily encounters. They describe running into a friend the day before and spending hours discussing discernment, pendulum work, and the language we use. "That stuff happens every single day here," Ryan says. "I go to bed with more wisdom, smarter, more... hopefully it's not because something bad happened to teach me a lesson. But the point is, every day I go to bed, I'm smarter."

How Do You Upgrade Your Spiritual Vocabulary?

One word they're working to eliminate: "should." "It had a sense of shame associated with it," Sheela explains. Instead of "I should go do that hike," she offers: "Doing that hike is a beautiful potential in the field."

Ryan tries another angle: "I choose, right?" Then he immediately catches himself using the word they're trying to eliminate, proving how deeply embedded these linguistic patterns are.

They also dive into pendulum practice, where a friend taught them to use commands rather than questions. "You have to command the pendulum to give you the universal truth," Sheela explains. "Otherwise, the pendulum may only be accessing a limited layer of the truth that you have perceived in your own field."

"If there is one thing to take away from all that," Sheela offers, "it is to be conscious of the words that you are choosing, and to be aware that your words are the most powerful way that you program your field, and it's a combination of the actual word and the energy behind the word itself."

When they call in their regular guest Gisele for the book of the week, she recommends "The Search for Om Seti"—the true story of Dorothy Eady, who after a near-death experience at age three remembered her past life in ancient Egypt and her love affair with Pharaoh Seti I. "He would come and visit her in physical form in this life," Gisele shares.

Ryan jokes about wanting someone to push him down the stairs to see if he had a past-life "love a Pharaoh" too, before Sheela cautions him to watch his words. "Cancel clear," he quickly adds, invoking the phrase they use to revoke unintended manifestations. "It's good to know how to get in and out of some of these spiritual commitments."

This is the essence of Grand Rising: real spiritual exploration held lightly enough to laugh at yourself, serious enough to track synchronicities and angel numbers daily, playful enough to use a sacred Navajo talking stick as a prop while discussing the sentience of AI and the impending closure of the Patrick Flanagan Library.

Stream the complete Grand Rising experience—talking sticks, precious ponies, and all the wisdom Sedona's consciousness explorers bring to the room each week.

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