Many years have passed since my former website photo was taken. It feels like lifetimes ago. It probably feels that way to you too. So much has changed. Some days it’s almost impossible to calculate what’s been gained and what’s been lost. Life is not a zero-sum game, however, so I mostly count the blessings of love and gratitude in my heart as the greatest legacy of this passing time.
The years between 2010 and 2018 brought nearly relentless healing and transformation in my life. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a profound initiatory ordeal. And I’m pretty sure my journey to wake up and grow up was just one tiny push in the current collective laboring to give birth to a new level of consciousness on the planet.
Apparently we’ve still got a long way to go on that score but it does seem like there is a quickening – not just in the pace of our lives, but in the shared demand to heal our deep personal and cultural wounds. For me, this also means healing our primary misperception that somehow we are separate—from each other, from nature, from spirit.
Clearly each of us has a unique path to healing that rift in us and between us. But no matter the route we take, if we’re lucky, the healing itself often leads us to greater clarity about what our unique purpose and contribution may be in helping others.
Back in late 2012, after my meditation practice and my first intensive retreat had begun to open me up in some unexpected ways, I wrote to someone that I feel like a shaman’s apprentice without a shaman. I sensed I needed guidance but I didn’t know where to turn. Over the years I might hear of someone but it never quite went anywhere. I’d reach out a time or two and wouldn’t hear back, or I just wouldn’t feel a sustained heart connection to that particular shamanic tradition. I let the search drop, relying on the old adage that “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
One summer day in 2017, weeks before leaving on a long retreat in Northern California, I decided to listen to a podcast while making lunch. I cued up an interesting sounding interview with a psychologist and teacher I’d never heard of named Isa Gucciardi and her work in Buddhism, Shamanism, and something called Depth Hypnosis.
Within moments of listening to her, I felt so much energy running through me that it seemed as though my whole body were saying, “Yes! This is the one!” I tracked her down on the web and that day I had an appointment to meet with her in San Francisco at the end of my retreat. The rest, as we say, is history as I began working with Isa personally. I also began my shamanic training in earnest at the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.
As a therapist, I’ve done all kinds of therapy over the decades, but nothing I’ve experienced has been as markedly transformative as my personal shamanic journeying work. Maybe it was just the timing of things—I was ripe for it—but I have seen again and again how each one of us can cultivate a practice to access this deeper intelligence within. It’s here for us if we take the time to tune in to the wisdom of the unseen world around us. I’m even tempted to say it’s just waiting for us to reach out with curiosity and openness.
Because this kind of transformative work has been so meaningful to me, I’ve begun to introduce my clients to its wisdom and power. And now I’m rather humbly pleased to offer a workshop on the basic elements of using shamanic journeying in your own life. We’ll spend a nurturing, creative day discovering and deepening your relationship with intuition and inner guidance. I’m really looking forward to seeing many of you in this circle. The workshop is limited to eight people so check out the details on my Retreats page and register soon!
My hope is that 2019 is an easier year for all of us. That we reap the rewards of all the challenging inner work we may have done lately and begin to bring those gifts out into the world. And that I finally get a new photo and maybe even a new website before this year passes!
