Karma

How do we know when something is happening FOR us and not TO us?

In understanding how karma works, you have to understand its main purpose: balance. Even if you don’t believe there’s such thing as karma, you must know that there are physics that are involved like the 3rd law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

So if we just analyze what’s happening in this life presently and not past lives- it works like this: for every thing we do, we are either exerting positive energy/intentions, or exerting negative energy/intentions. Neutral ones don’t apply because there isn’t necessarily a charge, and we can also assume that in a neutral reaction there’s good and bad so the equality is already taken care of within the action itself and does not engender a reaction. Karma isn’t a tit for tat because the energy is affected by its accumulation of force as well as the energy it’s pushing against- will break this down later.

Say a person does something harmful to someone else. It could go either of two ways: maybe they didn’t mean to cause as much damage as they do upon the other person, but they already knew that they were doing something bad. This would release a karmic effect but what we don’t know is when the ricochet effect will take place. Sometimes it’s instant, sometimes it takes decades or even lifetimes. Say this person does something bad and knows, and even intends, to cause harm to another person. Then the amount of intention/energy that’s exerted is far more than the first case and so the ricochet effect will be more intense. However, it can sometimes get carried into the next life, or other ones, in case there’s a karmic contract involved between these two parties which will carry over as karmic debt (and in some cases, this action might even be the cause of the contract to start). Or, sometimes the perpetrator is working on a spiritual lesson in this life that necessitates the karma be returned in this life, then the timeline does matter. When spiritual people tell you there’s no such thing as linear time in the spiritual world, that concept is true in part, but there are specific axis of linear time that is dealt with even in the spiritual sense.

What also impacts this is if someone knows better. For example, if a little kid did harm, it might be innocent because they don’t yet have the awareness to know its cause and effect. That tones down the intention portion of the equation so the negative energy they’re exerting isn’t as strong, therefore their rebound effect also isn’t as strong. Sometimes people who don’t know any better, especially children, will get a “pass” that they’ll never have to “pay” for karmically. But, say you’re very well aware- the level of awareness you have will also strengthen the intention, which strengthens the rebound effect.

Additionally, the charge of the energy that the original action is pushing against will either decelerate or accelerate the rebound effect.

An example: someone does something harmful to a being who has a lot of light in their field- their light acts as a refraction and not only reflects the karma back more intensely, but also can accelerate the karmic rebound. Think about the effect of shining a light directly at a prism- the light is reflected back in different wavelengths, and often times can be even more blinding than the light itself. Basically you’re forced to see the elements of this light broken down—- i.e. you’re forced to experience the rebounded action frame by frame. The light in their field may also push against the negative intention because by nature a person who’s anchored in light already radiates positive intentions, so there’s a energetic reaction taking place much like chemistry- two polarities come together to create a karmic reaction.

There’s also the possibility that someone does something harmful to someone who has harmed a lot of people- i.e. a bounty hunter kills someone who’s done terrible things to people and plans on continuing. In this case, although the murder itself is naturally charged with destructive intentions, there is a positive effect to this as it’s stopping a worse perpetrator and that will neutralize some of the negative karmic effect of the action. Not to mention, there isn’t light in the energy field that pushes back if we assume that this person is very dark triad.

So that brings me to the question of- sometimes when something “bad” happens to someone, is that their karma returning? Or is that simply a challenge they signed up for in this life time?

When there’s negative karma returning, there’s no “lesson”. Instead, it feels like something must be paid, acknowledged or seen. If you tune in to the energy only, it feels dark, cloudy.

When it’s an event that seems negative but isn’t karma, but is karmic in the sense that you’re meant to experience this to grow, you, if you’re tuned into things beyond the veil will sense there’s a lot of guidance around you and the energy feels light. You’ll get a sense that this is positive and spiritual in origin and it’s rife with lessons, and more importantly, there is a way out.

For example, clients will sometimes have me read a loved one who is ill. Although the disease expresses the same, the energy around it is either light and infused with spirituality or it’s dark and very low vibrational.

If it’s a karmic debt, you’ll find that the attachment to a particular person or situation feels unresolved, or to me, “sticky”. But once you resolve the situation by “paying” the debt in whatever form, all of a sudden that attachment is no longer and you feel that the person and situation is no longer tied. You may never revisit the situation again, or never hear from or see the other person ever again.

This is a topic that wouldn’t be able to be fully covered in several books, but here’s a intermediate primer for now.

Life Update

It’s been a while that I’ve posted anything personal on here.

Almost 2 years ago, I sustained a near fatal injury that I still haven’t fully recovered from. One of the lasting impacts of this was brain damage. Although this path was painful, there was a large part of me, my intuitive knowing, that reassured me that this was the path. We can’t expect “the path”, meaning, our spiritual path, to be a smooth one. It’s meant to be one filled with challenges and events that look like terrible things at the onset, but later reveal a greater wisdom.

Yes, my last 2 years were extremely extremely difficult. But yet, even in the darkest days I found a certain beauty. I found a path to awakening, a path to healing, a path to deeper self love, self care and commitment. I learned truly how to put myself first and set clear boundaries around my time. The amount of self work I’ve been able to complete I couldn’t have done in 15 years time had this not happened. And, it’s in a strange way, set me up for the rest of my life- I now have a foundation of nutrition, biohacking, sleep hygiene, exercise that is so meticulous that I would never have been able to put together had it not been a life or death situation. I mention biohacking because what happened to me was something that on the physical side, makes someone lose their hair, destroys DNA (so then your body can’t synthesize protein or collagen) and changes body composition and contributes to obesity. So in essence, it ages you and destroys your metabolism, but I was able to reverse age and get my body nearly back to its original composition through research, trial and error and a deeply committed approach to cleansing and healing.

On the emotional/mental side, what happened to me not only destroyed my brain chemistry and hormones, but also causes intense anxiety and depression. My baseline for happiness dropped so much that in this difficult journey to regulate it, even the smallest joys or the hour long windows where I feel nearly normal are celebrated. I don’t take anything for granted anymore, and that in itself is a liberating state however hard it was to come by. You can’t appreciate things if you don’t have the right state of mind, after all.

In the past 6 months at least, I’ve struggled with symptoms that look close to early on-set dementia. That’s been something that’s very challenging to cope with, however, I have also noticed that my intuitive abilities, spiritual abilities, extrasensory abilities however you want to address them, have increased exponentially. Intuitive hits used to come in fast- but now it’s like a race car and the depth to which I can perceive and synthesize the metaphysical have reached a level that I’m even having difficulty comprehending.

It hit me like a lightning bolt yesterday- I remember in my studies of psych/neuroscience that sometimes when people experience head trauma they will suddenly be able to access psychic abilities they previously didn’t have. Or, sometimes after a car accident someone will have a life changing kundalini awakening that induces phenomena (I’ve met someone this happened to- he developed the ability to see auras). Or, sometimes people have what is called savant syndrome where one part of the brain is damaged and that activates (or lessens the inhibition) another part of the brain that suddenly breathes life to dormant high level abilities. The ever famous Phineas Gage who had a metal rod run through his head had a total personality makeover. In all of these cases, damage was done to the left frontal lobe.

The parts of my brain that were damaged include the frontal and the parietal lobe. I have a sense that because of this, my brain overcompensated by rewiring and activating other parts of my brain that are not damaged, one of which is the center of intuition. When I tune in, I can actually feel that the lower part of my brain feels much more active and energized that I’ve ever noticed before. With each day, it feels stronger, too.

That may not be the main purpose of this pathway that I travelled, but it is one of the purposes, I’m told intuitively. I also know that this is a permanent change, as my brain trauma heals the wiring will also repair, but the networks will already be established in the lower regions and stay active.

Upon researching, I found confirmation from neuroscientists, and to me this is such a revelation.

Just like any type of trauma for which I’m not thankful for, what results is a cataclysmic chain of events that are as much of, or more of, its contrast (should you be a beauty seeker, a healer, someone who can stay the course and use it as such). I’ve been stuck in moments of self-pity or wallowing in the unfairness of it all as I have about traumatic events from the past, but until we “zoom out” we can’t see what it’s all for and why we had to endure it. In fact, we might not even be able to see that part of us selected it. Because it’s meant to make us better.

So here I am today, with a full head of hair, with my body in probably the best shape of my life, with a level of self-unity that I’ve never come close to before. I may not be able to think straight still, and still feel sick most days, still have a pounding headache and brain fog, but what I do have is a rapidly healing brain that is accelerating past what is considered “normal” abilities (not that I ever considered myself as someone with “normal” abilities nor I’m sure, does anyone who is reading this blog). I can now see that there was no other way for me to get here in as short of a span of time as this has been, despite it feeling way too long. And I can see that the joy, the health, and the success that I’ll experience for the rest of my life is due in part to who I am today and the path of fire I was able to walk through in one piece. And to get here, this is due in part to the little girl I once was, who bravely walked through the fires of her childhood too, alone, but always whole.

Reiki Testimonial

My client C. C. wrote me the day after his first remote reiki session:

Your reiki healing is serious business. I feel profound shifts taking place—old energy still clearing out and am looking forward how energy settles in next few days—things feel brighter and clearer already. I did not know what to expect but the after was so intense in the best way possible, almost like a trip. Definitely will be back for a tune up when it is time

Most people report vivid dreams, elation, relaxation and immediately noticeable benefits right after, but the full shifts (and anchored in intentions if you chose to program those in) usually take a few days.

As you continue to do these sessions, you will usually become more sensitized to the energy of the session before, during and after. As more of your density gets cleared away, you will become more attuned to energy shifts and more open to receive healing. It will also become much easier to program in intentions and see those changes happening in your life right away.

With reiki, we can adjust the subtlest to the most pronounced things. You can choose to program in new beliefs, even rewire the mind. If you think about it- everything, I mean EVERYTHING in your body runs on electric impulses. It’s all energy- synapses, neural networks, nerve impulses etc... so the primary form of change that your body understands is ENERGETIC. With reiki and my particular skill set, we target the most subatomic energies in your body for drastic shifts by influencing them to be how you want them to be.

Primarily, we are ENERGY. At the most basic level, even our cells communicate via energy. We consume calories, which become energy in the body. I think when people who don’t understand this think about the body, they think in terms of matter- i.e. bones, skin, etc.. But… what is holding this matter together? What is holding these atoms together? How do they communicate?

Right.

That’s why these sessions are effective.

Super Session

On my booking page under packages, you’ll find a new offering: Super Session

Essentially this is 3 hours of work in one day- first we’ll start with a Clairvoyant session, then move on to an Integrative and finish with a Reiki session. We can change up the order depending on what’s right for you.

This would be the package to choose for those of you who want to heal as much as possible in the shortest amount of time instead of opting to gradually shift over a longer span of time.

If you want to up level, this is the fastest way to do it.

It is recommended for those of you choosing this format to block out the whole day, as you’ll need recovery time after we finish the session. Your energy field will also be sensitive so it is recommended to minimize disruption. This is undergoing energetic surgery so you’ll want to have the space for a deep recovery before and after.

10-Series Testimonial

Grace first worked with me in a clairvoyant healing, which later led to an integrative, then an integrative 10-series. It was beautiful to watch her shift from fear paralysis to making a power move with her job, her relationships and finding full agency in her life, and even discovering some of her spiritual gifts! —- in just 2.5 months.

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“Maria is an amazing healer! I did the 10 series integrative healing and it made a profound impact in my life. I started to suffer from depression in 2021 and it kept on getting worse as the months went by. I've never been in that bad of a mental state in my life and I knew I needed help. I sought help from a professional therapist for a couple of months but it didn't work for me so I eventually terminated the therapy sessions. After that, around February 2022, my internal voice told me loud and clear that I should try out alternative healing, that's when I found Maria.

During the integrative healing sessions with Maria, we uncovered that the childhood trauma I suffered from my mother has been negatively impacting me my entire life and is hugely contributing to the grief, anxiety, and fear that I experience on a daily basis. Knowing that, we did a lot of trauma relief work and with the help of Maria, I was eventually able to walk out of it and heal. At the end of the 10 sessions, I truly understood what it meant to be present in my body and to be in touch with my emotions --- something that I've always been avoiding subconsciously. Maria also taught me how NOT to be an energy vampire and instead find the power within myself. That was a very hard yet important lesson for me.

This healing journey with Maria was not easy. It required hard work and facing some of my darkest fears. But it was extremely rewarding and effective. As cliche as it may sound, but ‘the only way out is through’,”

10-Series Testimonial

Colby first worked with me with past life regression, when I used to offer that (I no longer offer the hypnosis session, but past life readings can be done with Clairvoyant Healing). He then worked with me with Clairvoyant Healing, which showed us a bird’s eye view template of what he needed to heal. It then became very evident that the 10-series would be the way to go. Below is his testimonial after his 10-series:

“I have a deep sense of gratitude for Maria and the art of her craft.  She embodies her work - she was made for this.

I started into this searching for answers in my past lives, hoping to know what might have happened to me - why do I feel so disconnected with this world, with other people and with myself?  What is my purpose for being here? 

Through our first insightful session, my trust and respect for Maria grew.  Shortly after I decided to go forward with 10 sessions to work through this life, here and now. 

Early in these sessions I came to know and confront the true nature of my father and mother and the trauma of my early years. 

Through this work, Maria always met me in such a steady and assured way.  Memories and flashbacks were pieced together, and we worked through some of the pain held in my body.  I found myself answering questions I hadn’t dared to ask myself before.  There were many intense and long repressed emotions that came to the surface and were processed in these sessions. I now feel that the ‘lost boy’ in me who felt unsafe in his own body, is here with me now and greatly at ease.

Maria was quite adept, sometimes subtle and sometimes direct, at pointing me back to myself, to my own inner strength - to take agency for my life and for my well being - something I learned to give away in my earlier years. Taking greater care of myself is how I am carrying this life forward now.

Though I have more work to do, I’ve never known such long periods of calm and peace.  I am forever grateful for finding Maria and that I took the plunge by reaching out to her,”

My Healing Journey

I’m writing this because I noticed that in the last testimonial I posted, there was a mention that there is no self-aggrandizement in my work. I really felt particularly grateful that this was noticed because I think this in itself takes a lot, a lot of refinement, understanding and measured work. Today it feels necessary to explain what this all means, and the healer’s healing journey because without previous experience, this one insight may elude you as it did, me.

My first few healers were very much all about, ‘your process began when you met ME” or all the descriptions about why someone was super powerful or all knowing or superior to me in some way. In fact, one of my healers said to me, verbatim, “I’m strong and they’re weak, because they’re my patients” at the time I was in my mid twenties, new to all of this, I didn’t understand mysticism or metaphysics then, and so I believed.

I also believed in the savior/rescued dynamic that keeps us all trapped in pitfalls of misery as humans. I thought that these people fixed me, saved me, I completely wrote myself out of the equation. I gave my power away.

Because of these early exposures, I do in fact make sure that everyone in my practice is reminded of their own power. That I’m not saving, fixing or rescuing. I find these steps to be fundamental to healing, because how else can we rise in our own power and sovereignty if we do not first believe ourselves to be capable and independent? It is the very FOUNDATION. If someone takes that foundation away from the first moment you start building a foundation for yourself, which has happened to me in my childhood and in my healing journey, then it is very bad news.

I look at and read over old testimonials that I wrote where I’m delighted by my practitioners (and granted, a few of them, very few, were very good healers) who I believed were beyond my power, or attribute things to them that they “fixed” that were wrong with me. And I shudder. These beliefs didn’t come from me, they came from people telling me, themselves.

I spent years in some turmoil about this, on one hand I do feel that there were particular people who were very helpful in my healing course, but I reflect back as a healer myself, and think about the things they said to me and am just.. devastated. I have compassion, because I know that the true healers that are born of this world with our gifts and mission are put through the ringer in early childhood, in ways that can damage someone’s self-esteem for life. A grandiosity is definitely an offshoot of that, and especially in something that later garners a lot of acclaim for that person in particular can trigger this grandiosity that’s just an offshoot of the abuse we endured as children. A lot of us come from narcissistic and sociopathic caregivers where grandiosity is currency.

However, the ones that truly accelerated my path were those that recognized beyond ego. They were the ones who were humble and showed me the way, and showed me that the way was mine.

Someone’s spiritual process, their awakening, does not begin when you meet someone else. It’s already happening, and the timing of meeting can often come down to spiritual contracts or guides who help guide us to others to help us. Someone can surely trigger spiritual growth in someone else, but no one is solely responsible for someone else’s soul timing. Some healers have very keen awareness for when someone is in process, and others, like myself, make myself available to those who seek my help because I trust that souls know their own timing and what it is they need. My soul, my guides, have always led the way for me, and I just want to remind others that just because someone makes the focus of your healing that it is because of their power does not make it so. Did we not learn anything from Cruella (which is an amazing movie by the way!), those who have power don’t talk about it.

Testimonial from a lovely client!!

When I read this testimonial I had tears in my eyes. Being a practitioner who’s been able to track where she started vs where she is now is… remarkable. A lot of this work isn’t something where we can measure it on a scale or use a measuring tape— as in to say, not quantifiable, as it transforms the quality of life, so it’s hard for myself to put it into words, but Karla did it so elegantly. If I could describe her progress in 1 sentence, it’s, she’s connected to her soul now, she’s connected to her power, she’s connected to her essence and she’s integrated all of it (that’s a bit of a run-on, I know- how do you describe the quality of relationship to self and its impact on all other relationships?). I think it goes deeper than either of us imagined.

Let me start by saying this: a little over a year ago, BEFORE starting the journey with Maria, I thought I wouldn't make it out alive. Life was bleak, and my mental and physical bodies were responding by shutting down. I barely had energy to do much other than binge eat and wallow in confusion, depression, and an unwavering fogginess. A perpetual dark hole.

Cut to starting sessions with Maria: slowly, with hard and consistent work (including a lot of introspection and putting new habits into practice), I started to feel lighter, more joyful, and magnetic to joyful opportunities in life. I went from complete lethargy, to moving across continents and exploring new cities with confidence, with joy, a taste for adventure, and my old exuberance back. I was strong enough to set boundaries and reclaim my independence in family, work, and social contexts. I reconnected to myself - and learned more about what drove me to the dark place I was in, as well as how to create a new life that was worth living.

This is not easy work. You're going to have to face yourself, your internal demons, and potentially uncover shadows that you didn't know existed or worked very very hard to suppress. However, I couldn't imagine going through it with any other practitioner. Maria's knowledge is so deep, and so genuine. There is no toxic positivity mindset as is pervasive in this commoditized space of spiritualism. She's real. She is careful with the speed and intensity at which you progress in the journey. There are no false grand schemes of "buy my services and you will be happy". Maria never pushed her services on me, which I felt was very important to experience given insecurities around being taken advantage of. She is versatile - in language, in technique, in communication - and it was truly amazing to see just how tailored her care is to each client.

It truly is hard to write out in words the impact Maria's work has had on my life, or the rare beauty of her skillset - a truly truly remarkable one without self-aggrandizing or pushing your limits for results. If you're curious, I encourage you to try a single session to see for yourself (and be prepared to be blown away).

All I can say is this, today I live life with a deep sense of gratitude, an openness and ease of recognizing the beauty of life and all the in-betweens (whether seemingly simple or magical/other worldly in scale), a warmth in my heart and openness to love (my self, family, colleagues, strangers, Earth, etc), new dreams that feel genuine and authentic to me and my younger self, and above all, a will to live. This last part I never thought I'd experience again.

Trust your gut & try a session.

PS worth mentioning, I've complete 2 x 10 series with Maria. The investment was every bit worth it. I've also had reiki sessions (again - not imposed by something I felt called to do).

Staying In Your Own Experience

One of the biggest life lessons I’ve ever learned was in an acting class a few years ago. It has even transformed my whole practice.

That’s what I think is beautiful about life, we can make all these connections based on things that seemingly are not connected at all. In the scheme of things, everything we learn becomes a composite within us, and is coming from the knowledge of a collective experience. So all things create what we are, and all ways of learning can enrich our direct experience.

Just a little background, at the beginning stages of my spiritual awakening, I was hungry for knowledge pertaining to healing and esoterics. But then at later stages, like the one I’m in now, I’m learning about broader concepts, life philosophies that broaden my whole understanding about life through nature, through disciplines. It’s really amazing how much we can pull from various subjects.

Anyway, in this acting class my teacher, who was a gifted empath herself, stopped me mid-scene and said, “Maria, you take care of your partner so much in your scenes. Energetically it comes through. Focus on your own experience, it gives your partner more to respond to,”

That clicked. Well, it took some time for me to really digest it. But I understood she meant that my default was that I wanted my partner to be okay, for my lines not to impact them too hard, but by doing that I was robbing them of their own experience. It wasn’t intentional, I had good intentions for taking care of their feelings, but by focusing on them so much I wasn’t contributing the other half of what was necessary for a scene to work. If I had a strong emotion, I needed to bring it, and if it took my partner back, that was their work. In totality, that was the scene.

Having been trained from a young age to naturally be a caretaker, it was like flipping my whole world upside down. I didn’t know how to have my own experience, my own emotions, if I’m honest. So the work began to take shape as I started to dig deeper and find my own emotions, those ones I pushed down in favor of helping others through their own.

In a scene from a few months ago, I remember having a very strong reaction and you could see how hard it hit my partner. He didn’t know what to do, emotionally. As he struggled, you could see that it transformed the way he related to the scene. He suddenly felt so vulnerable, and then he felt so bad because he saw/felt how his words had impacted me, and then our scene developed contours that weren’t there before.

As this framework settled into my life, I noticed that yes, obviously my job involves focusing on my clients’ experiences and emotions, but that the more I have my own experiences (and contain them, for the session) the more my clients have theirs. If I’m lost in the healing, if I’m not there, then I’m not holding space. Although I’m completely focused on my client, I also need to be a very anchored and strong force that comes with the entirety of my life experience and knowledge.

Back when I started healing, I was still working through a lot of the healer/empath dilemma. I was so sensitive to the suffering of others, and that pulls you into the dangerous rescuer dynamic. I always put my clients first, so much that I couldn’t really have my own life. I gave all of my energy, absorbed all their pain, and had nothing left for myself. I’d drop everything if a client needed me. And you know what, that’s not okay.

I will never bring my own stories into sessions unless it's necessary, as sometimes guides will ask of me to share personal experiences to ground certain lessons, but I think that to be a well-balanced healer requires you to focus on living your own life, discovering your own emotions for the 75% of the other time you’re not healing. My balance before was more like 20-80, 20 for me. I’ve noticed that even in that 75% though, it’s about my own healing. The more I can show up sovereign, empowered, the more my clients can too.

That’s something I’m coming to appreciate more and more about being a healer. It’s a calling for me that runs so deep, but more than that, it’s my ikigai— that sweet spot where you don’t feel like you’re working when you’re working. It comes so naturally to me, and I recognize that by having signed this “pact” so to speak to be of service, it means that I understand that healing myself is a continual process and essential for my work. So all opportunities are growth opportunities, and my whole life is based around healing, but not all allocated for the actual healing work itself. It requires you to have a strong sense of self, but also a well contained ego.

Dynamics

In recent years I did a family constellation and we left at a very confusing point. My practitioner asked me if I was “the big one or the small one” in relationship to my mom, and my unconscious had a really hard time answering that. I said, “I’m the big one” my mother felt so small to me in that moment.

But there was clearly some confusion and my practitioner said it was time for us to stop, but that it was worthwhile to investigate this. I put it away for a few years because I always felt in some ways older than my own mom, but it made no sense to me consciously.

It clicked today that a crucial element of our dynamic when I left home to go to college was my mom constantly texting me to ask me advice on how to parent my younger siblings. And of course I would always give it to her because in some senses, I recognized that I knew better and she did too. That was normal to me, I never realized how strange it was until just now as I’m healing through deeper layers of my family dynamics.

The thought, my parent asked me for advice on how to parent. That sits awkwardly. How could a parent ask their child how to parent after having been their parent? Isn’t this hard evidence for the fact that she didn’t know how, didn’t learn from parenting me, and was never willing to learn? Isn’t this evidence for the fact that she didn’t parent me? These realizations cut through me in such painful ways because I was gaslit all my life to believe that I was wrong, that they knew better, that every time I called them out on how they were abusing me that it wasn’t actually happening and I was just oversensitive and crazy and that it was all my problem.

It makes me see that I was always supposed to be the little one, and it wasn’t a failure on my part that that dynamic between a child and her mother was never developed for me. When I try to readjust my size, visually, I feel like I don’t trust her. I don’t feel safe as her child. I’d rather be the big one- my parents’ parent.

I think it can be such a strange wakeup call for those of us who were put in the position of caring for the people who were supposed to care for us because it shifts our relationship to the world. I remember that for the longest time I always attracted these people who were supposed to care for me- whether they were mentors, teachers, or therapists or the like, who actually ended up needing my care. I didn’t understand why I was caring for people I was paying to help me, how come no one would help me? These imbalanced and strange relationships made me cringe, yet they were so much of my reality that for a period of years I realized I was better alone and not seeking help. Help came with too many strings and too much of an outpour from me.

It wasn’t until a point in my life when it started to clear, and I found myself seeking help from people who could actually help me and didn’t break boundaries or didn’t insert themselves into my healing. I found that I experienced a lot of distrust because of past experiences, and operated from a place of defense which gradually dropped over a long period of time. There was usually a phase of resistance at the beginning when in my mind I tried to convince myself they couldn’t help me, but I usually stuck through it and gave them more chances. This to me was fear, because they were unfamiliar to me (and for those like me, unfamiliar is usually the safer option) and not intuition. This was another moment in which I needed to learn to distill the two, because there is sometimes intuition in fear too. I notice that pure fear comes from my mind, where as instinctual fear comes from my gut.

These people were safe because they didn’t tell me how to be, didn’t tell me what to do, and didn’t get caught in self indulgent and self absorbed emotional dumps that had nothing to do with me. They actually listened to me and wanted to know what was going on, and paid attention, they responded. This at the outset felt so scary to me because I’d never experienced it before. In these experiences no one is the big one and no one is the small one, they’re meeting me on equal footing and they’re here to guide and support, not be my authority.

That of course shaped a lot of the way that I practice too in my integrative sessions. There’s an interesting dynamic that forms that’s so particular, because I can sense when the inner child needs a gentle authority and is at the forefront of the healing. Sometimes the child needs to be seen, heard, and encouraged, sometimes they need to be attuned to in ways that were needed but never given. This is often before the adult and the child have established a healthy connection. Then at other points in time, I’m relating to the adult, and the adult can then liaise with their own inner child. Some clients need a parental energy at the start, and some others need a fierce advocate where they’ve never had one before to initiate and reinforce their developing security.

For those of you who are unaware, I studied power and gender dynamics extensively for many many years. What’s most interesting is in our imbalanced society we think that power is something that is taken, because so many of us actually feel powerless internally as the world is ruled by narcissists and sociopaths. If someone had an internal sense of power, they’d realize they didn’t need to take it from a source outside of themselves, but that’s just the codependent framework of the world at large. Oppression, suppression, taking.

What I came to realize was that power is something that’s received, if it’s given. Everyone has their own sense of power, and if they surrender it freely then that’s when it can be received. I notice these points when people try to do it in my healing practice, and I gently say no. I remind them of what they’re doing and that they have power, and I ask them to take it back.

I think that practitioners are in positions that can be very influential. That’s why I’m so careful about who I work with, especially energetically. Even if I’m not declaring my power, it’s a soft power. That’s what hypnosis and all of these modalities are- they’re exerting influence for change. No one ever saw a healer because they wanted to stay the same. I think it can be dangerous when someone’s ego gets involved or they’re not sensitive enough to the power dynamics at play because they can convince you to do things for self-serving reasons and not reasons for your, or for the, highest good. It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind for me, and for people that I personally hire.

In relating to myself, I’m the big one and the small one simultaneously. As I grow, I learn more about how to parent, and thus parent myself. There are some tangible things that can’t be changed, like how I grew up, but there are elements that can be healed continuously and presently. The dynamic between ourselves is always changing and always has room to grow. That’s where I’m coming to in recent times, is that my relationship to me is the most important relationship I’ll ever have. I may not be able to change what was the dynamic between my mom and me, but my relationship to me is in my full control and I can be hyper aware of the dynamics that I co-create, now.