This is Part 2. Click here to read Part 1.
A Pivotal Awakening in 2019
Looking back, 2019 was a turning point in my personal and spiritual awakening. The transformation began in November when I came to understand grief as a profound, transformational energy capable of opening the heart, mind, and soul. While I had always known grief as a full-body experience that profoundly affects us physically and emotionally, I had not realized it could also serve as a doorway to a deeper connection with the Soul through the pathways of the heart.
As a body-oriented psychotherapist, I recognized that my reaction to sudden death was to go into a state of emotional shutdown or what is known as a high freeze in Somatic Experiencing language. I knew my system was highly skilled at suppressing emotions to manage the “daily tasks of life” as a pattern and this is a very normal reaction to stress. In response, I sought support from a trusted friend trained in SE (Somatic Experiencing) touch work, requesting a table session—not to seek spiritual awakening, but simply to process my emotions.
A Transformative Experience
The session began with a pink light appearing from across the room—warm, soft, and gentle. The light settled in my chest, and almost instantly, grief began to flow. I felt the presence of the person who had passed, filling the space with peace and reassurance that she had found her inner tranquility. As grief poured out and my body trembled, I experienced what I now refer to as a spiritual opening. A violet light of flame streamed through my body, beginning at the crown of my head and moving through each energy center.
For what felt like 20 minutes, I experienced a state of ecstasy, joy, and love, sensing myself in both physical and nonphysical forms. While the experience eventually ended, it set in motion a profound expansion of my mind, body, and spirit—a multidimensional growth that continues to unfold.
The Physical Perspective: Awakening Shakti Energy
From a physical perspective, the spontaneous awakening of shakti energy brought intense heat as it moved through each chakra and psychological system. For me, this energy manifested nightly between 4:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., accompanied by vivid dreams and images. Many of these visions provided insight, though often beyond my immediate comprehension. I came to refer to this period of nightly engagement as “night school,” a process that continued for several years.
I recognized that this awakening had much to do with the collective awakening that is occurring all around us. I found that the endocrine system, lower belly, and viscera held much information for me about the emotions I had repressed throughout the years (even though I have engaged in therapeutic exploration for many years), through my own body-based tracking of these systems. I began to study with a Qi Gong Master who taught courses on embryology and the endocrine system and reexamine how we hold early preverbal emotions in the viscera and lower organs. This information led me back to my training with Somatic Experiencing experts, Kathy Kain and Steve Terrell.
Engaging with Multidimensional Awareness
During this period, my capacity for multidimensional awareness expanded significantly. The sense of site, hearing, seeing, and sensing are the pathways of the deeper ways of knowing. In Somatic Experiencing we refer to these as chanels of the human experience. As mine opened, I was able to have a heightened perception about my life, sense overlapping timelines, and gain creative insights into my sound therapy work. At first, these experiences felt disorienting, but with the support of trusted therapists, I found guidance through a spiritual teacher in Asheville, NC.
With her help, I began studying shamanic journeying as a way to better understand the shifts occurring within my body and psyche. From a scientific perspective, shamanic journeying involves shifting into right-brain consciousness to access the subconscious, explore the deeper recesses of the psyche, or connect with higher realms of awareness. Anthropologist Hank Wesselmann describes this practice as a tool for spiritual and personal growth, informed by Kahuna Wisdom passed down from Hawaiian elder Hale Makua.
Through these teachings, I came to understand the role of sound—particularly the drumbeat—as a portal to altered states of consciousness. Additionally, lucid dreaming became an important tool for uncovering insights about unresolved life struggles, helping me deepen my self-awareness and personal growth.
Revisiting Lost Aspects of Self
Shamanic practices invited me to reconnect with forgotten aspects of myself from my teens and early years of spiritual exploration. For instance, I dreamt of my 20s, a time of intense self-exploration while living in Hawaii. This period of my life was marked by practices such as Siddha Yoga, Sufi Dancing for World Peace, neurolinguistic therapy, and embodied movement. It was also a time when I worked to break free from patterns of codependency and emotional abuse with the guidance of various healers.
One Hawaiian elder gave me a chant that would revisit me in later years. The long forgotten chant resurfaced during a 2020 SE table session with a friend spontaneously as it it dropped into my body word for word. During the session, the lines between time and space seemed to dissolve, and we found ourselves in a shared ceremonial vision. Since that time, The chant appears daily as a ceremonial bookmark that spontaneously supports the medicine sound journeys that I offer. One NC healer referred to it as a medicine song. I was told that we all hold a medicine song within us.
Expanding Spiritual Practices
Over time, I explored additional shamanic-based practices that deepened my understanding of interconnectedness and the interplay between ordinary and non-ordinary realities. Shamanism calls us to awaken to our indigenous nature, which serves as the foundation of many healing and spiritual traditions. As a dogma-free practice, shamanism supports any existing spiritual framework, offering a pathway for experiential learning through the interconnectedness of life.
I also learned to integrate Japanese Reiki healing into my practice, which brought profound personal transformation. As a trauma therapist who was skeptical about adding this to my practice, I sought out training with author and Reiki Master Teacher, Susan Pease Bannitt. To my surprise, I found this to be yet another doorway to the deconstruction of the ego and the healing of the inner child. Usui Holy Fire® III Reiki can very much be misunderstood in the therapeutic world as a way to spiritually bypass the emotional body. I found it to be the opposite in its focus on the healing all the places within us where we do not hold unconditional love. Practically, Reiki is a self-care tool I use as a provider to balance my energy during the day. It is also part of my toolbox as a vibrational healer that can be used with or without sound.
Guiding Self-Healing
Today, I refer to myself as an activator, guide, and teacher. I believe all healing is self-generated, and the guide’s role is to create the conditions for the body’s natural processes to unfold. Each of us has an internal blueprint that drives us toward inner harmony, and aligning with this blueprint naturally brings us closer to wholeness. As a somatic practitioner, I now see this framework—rooted in indigenous wisdom — as the foundation of true healing.
In this work, I often stand between the seen and unseen, creating a space where clients can reconnect with their inner child and Soul, facilitating their journey toward healing and transformation.
Recalibrating the Inner Masculine and Feminine Archetypes
As part of this awakening, I have been deeply engaged in recalibrating the inner masculine and feminine archetypes. Jungian psychologist and author, Anne Baring speaks of our current time frame as a great awakening and rebalancing of our inner archetypes. According to an old Chuckee proverb, “The feminine archetypal energy is by nature shamanic.” The Siberian word “shaman” translates to “one who knows” or “she who flows with the moon.”
My tracking of this energy reveals that the feminine energy awakens in the back, left, and lower half of the body, while the softening of masculine energy occurs in the front, right, and upper body. Many traditions recognize that awakening the feminine or yin channels opens new dimensions of intuition, access to non-ordinary states, and a deeper connection with the inner healer.
My observations align with psychologist’s Stanislav Grof’s pioneering work in transpersonal psychology and breathwork. His exploration of shamanic wisdom and its impact on the psyche and cosmos provides profound insights into our psychological and spiritual development.
Next Steps
In my next blog, I will share my experiences of the role of modern sound healing in our greater awakening and recalibration of our sacred archetypes.
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