Years ago, the spirits said to me that every person born has the capacity to heal the world singlehandedly. That means that YOU and I have remarkable powers. The important lesson for each of us is to understand how to recognize and employ the influences that we can bring to bear to change ourselves and our world. I would like to share some things about myself so you might understand how I approach life and the experiences that have convinced me that we can all have an amazing influence in the universe.
I started my career as a biology and chemistry teacher, teaching science in high school for ten years. I acquired an advance degree in psychology, worked as a counselor, and eventually began a private counseling practice.
I then had a mystical experience that turned my life upside down and inside out. I have spent the last 25 years exploring this experience and how it relates to all of us. I had a vision where an old Native-American woman appeared to me. In my vision she approached me and I asked who she was. She replied:
I am you,
I am your mother,
I am your sister,
I am your grandmother,
I am the Earth.
She had gray hair pulled back tightly in a bun and her skin was wrinkled and weathered by life. She was wrapped in a wool blanket and was smoking a pipe. She asked if I wanted to join in the sisterhood, but warned me that my life would be forever changed. I was doubtful. There was a crow cawing outside my window but instead of hearing caw, caw caw I heard trust, trust, trust. I nodded my head and spoke the word “Yes.”
I remember being extremely nervous, but there was a peculiar kind of strength surrounding and supporting me. We sat down and she handed me the pipe and we smoked it together, passing it back and forth. When we finished smoking the pipe, she spoke again. “Your guidance will be provided. Your medicine that you carry is North—Wisdom, Healing, and Love. Begin now to start reading and learn to understand the Ways.” This propelled me into the study of shamanism and energy medicine, where I became preoccupied with wellness and how to be well.
The part of this exploration that I would like to share with you concerns my discoveries. My mystical experience compelled me to move out of the box of what current research explains about these types of experiences and to study, interact with, and learn from indigenous peoples, cultures and mostly my own spiritual ally’s in the invisible realms. In these studies and explorations, I learned “the ways” that the old Indian woman had referenced. I came to understand that indigenous peoples and cultures view mystical experiences as the norm not an anomaly. I learned much about mystical experiences, some of which date back several millennia. In these past 25 years, I have performed some of the ancient healing ceremonies, including more than 3500 individual soul retrievals, primarily to promote wellness—emotional, physical, and spiritual.
I learned how to contemporize the process so that I could bring these ceremonies to my clients in my private practice. The essential practices remain the same but the context and language that I use with clients allows for clear communication and connects to the spiritual enlightenment that we share today. My practice eventually led to my creating a school that teaches these approaches to spiritual healing that honors the ancient wisdom of our elders, which I believe is pertinent to everyone.
In shamanism or energy medicine we view a person as a spirit, soul, and energy system having a human experience. Every part of you is energy, just as everything else that exists in the universe is energy. Therefore, maintaining your energy system is primary to wellbeing. The practices that we share are beautiful examples of living the truths of caring for oneself and others in the realms of the physical, spiritual, and philosophical.
I want to encourage you to look at yourself as an energy system and how to heal, live a longer life, and be healthier in all your natures by simply thinking about yourself as energy and believing that you are in control of your energy. You are at the helm of your wellness.
Remember every person can heal the world singlehandedly because as you heal yourself, you heal the world. Positive energies in individuals multiply out into the universe and alter all that is around us. Each positive energetic vibration affects all that it touches and our energy is infinite.
Another thing the spirits have consistently taught me relates to a question I always pondered in the study and teaching of biology. Why do we die so young, when we are perfectly designed to live at least twice as long as we do? Again the answers seem to relate back to the maintenance of your energy system.
Think of yourself as a jigsaw puzzle. When you are born, you have all your pieces of the puzzle. As you age you experience trauma and other difficulties. When this happens, we tend to dissociate, which is the psychological term for what we in shamanism would refer to as experiencing soul or energy loss. In the pain that we encounter in difficult times, we experience a numbing condition that is natural and a biological survival mechanism. This loss of energy can be an effective way for the mind to cope and endure pain. However, we need to ask ourselves, “Where did this energy go and how do we get it back?”
This energy is yours, your signature, and your divine essence, and in these traumatic conditions you come to have less of it. In thinking of yourself as a jigsaw puzzle, imagine that you have lost a piece of yourself. Throughout your life, you will lose more and more pieces, which equates to losing energy and potentials. Sometimes the energy loss carries personal qualities with it, such as the loss of confidence, worth, self-esteem or significant values.
You now have “holes” in your system, just as the jigsaw puzzle has open vulnerable spaces. These spaces will then fill with energies that aren’t yours. Remember everything is energy. Words, attitudes, and opinions can infiltrate into your system when you are vulnerable. We call these intrusions. These energies, which are often negative, are intruding into your energy field. Soul loss makes you more susceptible to these invasive forces.
The beautiful thing about the soul, another term for your energy system, is that it is considered a very high energy vibration. It is vibrant, magnificent, brilliant, curious, and creative—the epitome of wellness. Complete wellness is reestablished when the intrusions can be taken out of your energy system and the divine essence can be brought back. This can be done professionally with a shaman; however, I believe that you have the power to do this for yourself, especially if you develop a maintenance program for yourself.
As a licensed professional therapist, I didn’t want to work with clients longer than necessary. It is important for every individual to achieve personal success and not to be perpetually dependent on others. I always wondered why people are in therapy for years; it just didn’t make sense to me. I realized that with therapy a person could cognitively understand what had happened to them, and possibly even why it had happened, but they couldn’t seem to own the healing fully in their body, mind and soul.
When I learned about shamanism and soul retrieval I understood why. The part of the client that needed to own the healing wasn’t even present within the person. Divine essence had floated away in soul loss and the energetic program of the intrusions in their system were having a major influence on the person’s wellbeing. That is when I converted my private psychotherapy practice over to shamanism. The treatment involved clearing out the intrusions in a person and then bringing back the soul pieces, one’s own divine essence. The return of their own divine essence appropriately filled the void and a feeling of completeness ensued. When you fix the energy system then everything else adjusts accordingly.
My pursuit of understanding wellness and how to restore it became an integral part of my life. I was doing two soul retrievals on many days for years, booking out four months in advance, with each person requiring about seven hours of work. After 3500 sessions, I learned a lot!
A doctor once participated in a soul retrieval with me and after he had gone through the procedures told me that many of his patients had brain or spinal cord injuries. Their lives had changed dramatically and some were either paraplegic or quadriplegic and often suffered from extreme depression. He wondered if these methods could work for them? I believe that they can even in these most extreme of circumstances.
There are many dynamics to consider in a healing practice: the individual’s belief systems, the desire to learn something like shamanism, the availability of individuals to receive help. I wanted to bring this healing modality to as many people as possible and I turned to my spiritual allies for help. They suggested that I create guided imagery and provide the major components of wellness from a shamanic perspective on recordings for many to access. People could then listen to them daily and receive the benefits of continual maintenance of their soul. That led to the creation of Awaken, Unburden, Create, a compact disc that I have distributed for several years.
I also devised follow-up steps for clients to employ on their own after our healing sessions. The goal is for the individual to maintain the healing, to make the changes necessary in thinking, and to believe with confidence that they can return to the divine essence they were created with. That was the reason for writing my first book Becoming Yourself, which offers not only explanations but several activities to practice for a well being lifestyle.
I realized that when a person is whole and complete they broadcast an energy out into the world from their chakras and their auric fields that is also whole and complete. That energy is invasive and it connects to every other living thing, since we are all energy. You literally heal others by being in your radiance. To change the world, you don’t need to attend rallies or be on the front lines of protests; although some may find such practices energizing. What you do need to do is focus on yourself. Notice your broadcast out into the world. Is it from a wounded soul or from a wellbeing? Whatever your broadcast consists of is what you are contributing daily to humanity.
How important you are, how influential you are, and mostly how incredibly brilliant and magnificent you are. You are the key to wellness for yourself and for others.