Make Good Trouble
Briana Pegado Responds to the Radical Soul Questionnaire
Healing is not linear. It is a spiral. It is a series of peaks and valleys. It is not a point at which to arrive. It is a glorious process.
Author and disruption advisor Briana Pegado responds to the Radical Soul questionnaire.
Briana Pegado is a multi-award winning Values Compass™ facilitator with over a decade of experience as a high impact social entrepreneur, supporting thousands of creative industries entrepreneurs with nearly a decade of experience as a Founder and Creative Director. As a ThetaHealing® practitioner, life coach, and disruption advisor, she helps sow the seeds for disruptive transformation.
Her new book Make Good Trouble: A Practical Guide to the Energetics of Disruption comes out in April.
Can you loosely define your spiritual identity? (We won’t hold you to it)
My identity in short is deeply spiritual. I was baptised Catholic, raised Episcopalian, and studied all sorts of wisdom traditions. I was lucky to have a best friend who was Hare Krishna growing up whom I sometimes accompanied to temple when I was a toddler. In my teenage years, I was given the opportunity to study comparative religion and dive into Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Then when I got to university, I studied Indigenous Religions of the Contemporary World and World Religions, which included African Indigenous Religions.
Studies aside, I always felt close to the earth, close to nature, and interested in plants. Clairvoyance ran high in my family between my grandmother and her sisters. Between Montessori school teachers encouraging me to find my own way by listening to my inner knowing and an elementary school science teacher, Ms. Jones, who had a peaceable kingdom of about 20 different varieties of animals in her school classroom (she features heavily in my book), I was always connected to a oneness and deeper knowing.
I have always had a somewhat fear-based relationship to Christian imagery which often guided my early memories of engaging with it. Other religions and wisdom traditions felt safer for me to be present with.
My relationship to it has peaked and troughed through an early interest in Tarot. I had my first reading at 11 and then bought my first deck at 13. Astrology was a tradition I was fascinated by early on and revisited during my first dark night of the soul. I have always been interested in better understanding trauma and its very physical presentation since my days of exploring gut health imbalances and a doctor with a practice in functional medicine. I have always been connected to food and wisdom traditions that centre it, like my early interest in sustainable farming after I wrote my first research paper at school. My connection to the universe has morphed and grown — I am so grateful for how prominent the pathways into practice have been through my life experiences, whether through working with a shaman, energy healers, developing a relationship to crystals, and meeting many guides along the way. My spiritually has been deeply earth-centred and energy-led.
Who has challenged and evolved your beliefs?
My beliefs have evolved in stages. From my first years at an Episcopalian school and learning Christian teachings. Our school motto was from the Book of Common Prayer, ‘All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.’ I remember reading that line and thinking, ‘Oh Christianity takes animals and creatures into account.’
I’d been raised by a father that had gone to seminary to escape Portuguese rule in Angola. He could rattle off feast days and stories of saints like he was reciting his middle names. I had discovered I had iconophobia quite young and trying to explain to a Catholic parent that Christian religious imagery caused me to have panic attacks on sight did not go down well. So, I have always had a somewhat fear-based relationship to Christian imagery which often guided my early memories of engaging with it. Other religions and wisdom traditions felt safer for me to be present with.
After three years of critically engaging with Christianity through these experiences and a particular sixth-grade teacher Mr. Wills, who was very open to my questions during our religious studies classes, I moved into puberty with an openness I always had to Christianity, but with a new fervor for its gentle presence in my life. When my mother told me I was going to church, it was not a pastime I would have chosen given I’d had chapel services in my life once a week for three years by nature of me going to school, but it was a process that helped evolve my relationship to all the things that are. Before that point, nature, meditation, and experiencing the world had been my main container for spiritual exploration, then I spent six years on Sunday mornings amongst a group of teens that were not exactly believers, exploring what Christian faith could be to us. At that point, it was a place of belonging, gathering, joy, and at times, collective disbelief. It certainly was a space for community. It was a rich time. It was a rich time I was able to experience alongside my voracious appetite for diving into the depths of other religious traditions. A deep instinct for having more insight into these faith practices led me down an academic journey with them, but I also had a strong meditation practice and a regular musical outlet through a band I was part of.
I am a Manifestor and my role here in this life is to understand my impact on others, which I have not always been completely aware of.
In my adult life, I have been challenged through experiences of exhaustion, ill-health, and healing trauma. My beliefs have evolved through trials and tribulations that have followed a culture of overwork and survival. I am so grateful for the teachers, therapists, healers, coaches, friends and guides that have supported me on this journey.
Do you have any spiritual practices?
I have a number of spiritual practices that have carried me to this point in my life. I observe the wheels of the year, and until recently, I kept an altar that I would change based on the moon cycle. I hold on to my daily rituals of carrying crystals with me and anointing myself with essential oils. Thanks to astrologers I love, my house of worship comes in the form of weekly astrology forecasts, daily updates, regular card pulls, and energetic cleansing ceremonies. My theta healing teacher holds monthly ceremonies for equinoxes, eclipses, full and new moons. My therapist is an energy worker, so she holds space for me weekly to explore and transmute energy. I also work with bodyworkers, acupuncturists, and tarot readers. My practices have changed based on my health and needs, but they remain. They continue to unfold, and I let them guide me.
What is one way you see yourself as radical?
My book Make Good Trouble is all about being a radical. By this, I mean being a radical about my own values. It encourages others to do the same. My presence, views, and questions have always been radical without me always intending them to be. In Human Design terms, I am a Manifestor and my role here in this life is to understand my impact on others, which I have not always been completely aware of.
I’ve worked as a social entrepreneur and in the creative industries after my studies in Sustainable Development. Working in an industry with queer, neurodivergent, creative humans that are not afraid to follow their instincts, create outside of the boundaries of what is expected of them, and allow themselves to be carried by their creativity was a choice I made. I am motivated by the beauty of creating something that did not exist before, which serves me well when I am helping someone set up a community interest company, producing a festival, or making artwork.
While this is a big part of what I do, I also spend a lot of time working with power. Through anti-racism work and working with groups of people looking to organise, the key question I explore through my work is: what are the power dynamics in this space and how do we create systems to hold everyone accountable to stop abuses of power?
Being held by guides, physically and spiritually, as well as creating space for myself to rest, pause, go slow, and be led by the earth is what grounds me. I often have to remind myself of this.
This work is deeply energy-led and guided, but it shows up in the world in less obvious ways to an outside eye. Energy work is central to how I move through the world and work with people from artists to CEOs, but my approach has always been disruptive. Up until the pandemic, I took it personally and sat in this deep feeling of ‘what is it about me that is so disruptive’ because the impact would be explosive, isolating, and deeply destabilizing. Now that I have embraced what that means, I simply lead with that. When I work with people now, they know I am here to create a space for them to be disruptive and to hold them to account by uncovering the power dynamics that exist with the spaces they have created.
We’ll be talking about Make Good Trouble over Zoom for Radical Soul’s Book Club! Join us on May 20 at 5pm PT/8pm ET.
What grounds you?
My spiritual practices ground me. My connections to my ancestors also ground me. I am also grounded by the natural environment. I have experienced great love, belonging, and joy through my chosen family, which has included partners in the past, but mostly has been made up of soul family. Chosen siblings that have held me up, reflected back, and been on this journey of life with me in kindness, love, and support. I have many reasons to feel ungrounded in my life including the shifting sands of my biological family and the nature of my relationship to the places I live. Being held by guides, physically and spiritually, as well as creating space for myself to rest, pause, go slow, and be led by the earth is what grounds me. I often have to remind myself of this.
What gives you hope?
All of the brilliant people doing wonderful work to shift our patriarchal, heteronormative, anthropomorphic, white supremacist, colonial, imperial systems that have caused so much pain, harm and oppression give me hope. There are so many creative and values-led people pouring themselves into building a dreamy future for us all. These are radical, loving humans who believe in putting in the work to build a future they will not be here to enjoy. This concept is present in so many indigenous and wisdom traditions the world over. I am so appreciative of them and grateful to be alive in this very complicated time. There is a world of possibility in front of us and we all have the opportunity to help make it happen.
There is a world of possibility in front of us and we all have the opportunity to help make it happen.
What’s one lesson you keep having to relearn?
Healing is not linear. It is a spiral. It is a series of peaks and valleys. It is not a point at which to arrive. It is a glorious process.
What advice do you have for others struggling with what to believe in?
As Rainer Maria Rilke once said in his Letters To A Young Poet, live into the questions, so that one day you may live into the answers.