My trauma-body awakened in February 1993. Ice poured down as if from the heavens. The season had already been brutally cold. It was February 1993. My husband’s and my small, cinderblock rental cottage stood on a 3000-acre horse farm in Albemarle County, 15 miles south of Charlottesville, Virginia, at least a mile from any major road. By the time the storm passed 2 days later, we could not open the front door. There was an unnerving stillness in the air and the sky remaine

My client, Lisa, the executive director of an NGO in Washington, D.C. is lying on the massage table, fully clothed, as I use my stones, rattles, breathwork, and feathers to encourage her energy body (that bubble of light surrounding and interpenetrating the physical body) to open. I then spin the most blocked chakras clockwise, so they release. After about 10 minutes, I journey into her subconscious to extract an unhealed trauma wound that is causing symptoms of anxiety and d

In my early 20s, I got myself into therapy. Talk therapy, that is. I had a lot to say and process. It was extremely helpful to have a compassionate witness and guide as I tried to understand the complexities of my complicated relationship with my narcissistic mother (though I didn’t have that word back then). My self-confidence was low, my anxiety high. Frankly, I didn’t know who I really was. This was the beginning of a long journey to heal from family trauma. Therapy was

I have a radically expanded view of the meaning and purpose of healing and creativity which speaks to something I call Creative Healership for Peace. Healership is deeply spiritual and transformational work. Healing of the kind I have sought out for myself and which I practice on behalf of others and the world, is deeply, personally transformational. It brings us up against wounds that are both individual, ancestral and collective—reaching into this life and others. It is al

Do you want to know what soul loss is? Do you feel you are missing a vital part of your being? Have you heard the words “soul retrieval,” but don’t know what it means? Or do you think you need one? If so, you have come to the right place to explore this very important topic in both human psychology and the soul. Here are two scenarios which will help you understand the concept of soul loss: When you were a child, did you get a message that some talent you had should not be ex

Current events in 2017 bring me back to the day after 9/11 when I sat in a packed concert hall at the University of Virginia. The administration had set up an open mike event where all members of the campus to share their thoughts and feelings about what had happened. I, like many others, stepped onto stage to speak about my grief and to call for everyone to seek healing not only of the wounds incurred by the previous day’s events, but of their own personal wounds from betr

I live in Charlottesville, VA. On Saturday, August 12, the date of the white supremacist rally here, I was in South Dakota visiting my stepsister and supporting the sacred Lakota Sundance ceremonies. On that afternoon, a friend in Chicago texted me and asked if I was aware of events unfolding violence in my hometown. I looked at the newspaper on my Android. What I saw shocked me. I was filled with grief, anger, and confusion. As so many of us were and still are. Neverthel

Is your energy low? Do you feel drab despite the sun shining so brightly outside? Do you feel stuck in your head with old stories and...

In this third blog of the series on Shamanic Energy Medicine for Treating Trauma and Other Contemporary Afflictions, I go more deeply...

I have a mission to make contemporary western shamanic energy medicine relevant and understandable to practitioners in mainstream...

One day, I was cleaning my house and listening to a radio program on the problem of post-partum depression in women. The researcher being interviewed had done a study of a large group of women who had experienced depression and more mental and emotional imbalances following the birth of their child. These were women who otherwise had been happy to become mothers, loved their babies, and prior to their pregnancy and birth, had never had any serious problems of a psychological

In my blog entitled “Dreaming Violence into Peace, Part 1″, I shared that I had recently had a series of violent dreams which seemed to...