Grand Rising with Ryan Stober & Sheela Rahman: Morning Magic, Tiny Ponies, and Cosmic Consciousness

Some mornings call for meditation. Others call for tiny ponies running wild across your screen while you laugh with friends who've had too much coffee. On Grand Rising, Ryan Stober and Sheela Rahman have built something rare: a morning show where breathwork and book recommendations coexist comfortably with strobe-effect pony videos and debates about whether the ponies know how small they are.

"We have coffee, and we talk about the show, and we get all hopped up before the show," Ryan admits in the opening moments. "So we got to get..." Sheela finishes the thought with a grounding exercise—deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, setting intentions for what you want to call in. More joy? More bliss? Productivity? "We're in Venus retrograde right now," Sheela explains, "and that is when the goddess goes into the underworld of introspection."

Ryan's response is immediate: "Sounds like work."

What happens when consciousness meets comedy?

This tension—between doing the inner work and just enjoying the ride—runs through the entire show like a river. Sheela assigns homework: journal what you're choosing, what you're releasing. Ryan counters: "I know what I want more than anything in the world. Ponies." And suddenly, they're watching miniature ponies gallop across the screen, debating whether the signal delay is creating an '80s strobe effect, wondering aloud if the ponies realize they're small compared to regular horses.

"Do you think that they know how little they are?" Ryan asks. "If they saw the other ponies, would they be like, 'Whoa, I thought we were the big ponies. We're just little ponies running around for no reason.'"

It's silly. It's also profound in its own way—a reminder that freedom doesn't require knowing where you fit in the hierarchy. The ponies are just running, and that's enough.

The show flows from there into community updates: Frequency Fridays with BioCharger sessions, Random Rab bringing both downtempo and high-energy dance experiences, Beyond the Veil Halloween celebrations. Ryan delivers each announcement with the timing of a comedian: "You get your rest today so that you can jump around tomorrow. That way, you don't hurt yourself. You're loose, you're warm, you're ready to go."

Can ancient texts teach us about evolving consciousness?

Then Giselle calls in for the book segment, and the show shifts into different territory entirely. She holds up Richard Maurice Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, written in 1901 by a medical superintendent who experienced sudden illumination after an evening reading poetry with friends.

"He had this experience where it was illumination," Giselle explains. "He calls it like a cloud, like fire, what we would call today perhaps as a download... where he was just one with everything."

But the passage that captivates her—and the hosts—is about color perception: "The ancient Greeks, Aristotle and Xenophanes, knew only three colors, and there is no word for any color at all in the primitive Indo-European speech. The blazing blue of the Oriental sky is not mentioned in Homer or in the Bible, nor in the Rigveda or the Zend-Avesta."

Ryan immediately challenges this: "What about Joseph and his coat of many colors? Wasn't that from the Bible?"

"Yes," Giselle responds, "but what did they really mean by many colors?"

The question hangs there beautifully. Giselle offers her theory: consciousness isn't linear evolution but cyclical—we have senses, then we don't, then we remember them again. "The ancient Egyptians said that we had 350 senses," she notes. "All of those, in my perspective, are still active or latent in us. They're just not turned on, quote unquote."

How do you hold space for both the sacred and the ridiculous?

Before anyone can get too serious, character Cheryl bursts in with a wild story about seeing Justin Bieber shape-shift into an eight-foot reptilian at a concert, complete with "men in black" ordaining her "the dispeller of the disclosure." It's absurd performance art, but it sits right alongside the cosmic consciousness discussion without apology.

This is the show's real teaching: you don't have to choose between depth and delight, between grounding practices and giggles. Ryan and Sheela have created a format that honors both the Venus retrograde life audit and the impulse to just watch ponies for a while. Sheela brings astrological wisdom and breathwork. Ryan brings comedy timing and genuine curiosity. Together, they've built a morning container where consciousness exploration feels accessible rather than precious.

"Laughter is the most powerful tool," Cheryl proclaims near the end, and it lands as more than just a joke. In a world that can feel heavy, Grand Rising offers something radical: permission to do your inner work while also being fully, playfully human.

Watch the complete Grand Rising episode to catch the full pony segment, the Patrick Flanagan Library rainbow photo, and all the moments of spontaneous magic that happen when these two hosts simply show up and let the morning unfold.

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