All the things I’ve studied and used in my healing journey aka life (that I can remember)

I thought it might be fun to try and go back in time to try to remember all the different modalities I’ve studied and that I draw on in my life.

I remember being a curious 16 year old and having lengthy discussions about the meaning of life and my purpose. I recently rediscovered the book Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain  which took me back in time to the bookshop in Cooma where I bought it. Around this time I also became really interested in all the different religions and I started reading quite broadly around different religions such as Taoism, Buddhism, Shamanic practices, pagan religions, Rastafarianism, Sufism and more. I became really curious about yoga and kept asking my mum “what is yoga?” She said the only way to know what it is is to just do it. I remember walking up to my first yoga teacher in the park and just asking him “what is yoga?” and he said I would have to just come and do a class and find out. That was the start of my yoga journey and I studied Satyananda Yoga from 1996 for 28 years. The Asana, Shatkarmas and Pranayama helped me gain a new awareness of my body. One particular practice, Yoga Nidra, was taught to me in year five on a school camp. One of the camp leaders gave us a guided meditation that was so pleasant and helped me to feel really calm before bed. Little did I know that was my first Yoga Nidra. When I rediscovered it in my late teens it felt like a homecoming. 

When I was 18 I was working on the ski fields and living in Jindabyne and that is where I first got exposed to essential oils and crystal healing. There was a really gorgeous shop in Jindabyne that had a great range of Oracle decks, crystals and other healing modalities. Those were my first exposure to a New Age store. I loved it. I remember a kit I had with orange oil, Ylang Ylang and Lavender oil with a little diffuser. It opened up a whole new portal for me. Between that shop in Jindabyne and the Gulaga Gallery store, I’ve developed a lifelong passion for crystals. If you’ve been to either of these shops you’ll know why. I still have gorgeous rocks all around me and I guess at this point it’s helpful to say that as well as being a lifelong lover of all these things I’m also a massive cynic.  Even though I love all these things there’s a part of me that doesn’t really believe in any of it and I think that this level of cynicism and discernment is a bit healthy.  Next up was menstrual tracking and reusable menstrual pads. This practice really helped me to get in touch with the reality of my period and it was the start of all my women’s work. At that time I still had too many layers of bodily shame and not enough awareness of the beauty of the menstrual cycle. Lucky for me in the last few years I’ve had a resurgence and reconnection with my menstrual tracking that has really helped me harness the power of this part of my life as a woman.

Next up I would say is Vipassana meditation practice. Even though I didn’t actually make it to a centre to do a course around this age, say 22 years old, it was my first exposure to the practice and the seed was planted. I would actually say this time I was in a massive phase that I call my anti spiritual phase. This arose because I had lived in a yoga community for a time and had some pretty intense experiences with one of the people in the community that really put me off. I decided that if that was a spiritual life I did not want to be spiritual. Needless to say it was all pretty traumatic and a story for another day. So in this non spiritual phase I got pregnant and had to stillborn baby.

Even though I didn’t want to have a spiritual experience, this process of grief and upheaval has been a lifelong companion and gift to me. This is also a story for another time and one that I’ve covered in a bit of detail on a podcast with Tracy Swainson listen here. Grief has been one of the most powerful processes in my life. Having such an intimate encounter with death and the way that grief can really cook me up changed everything for me. It made me feel powerful and strong. I actually think we experience grief all the time and even though some people have a narrative that we aren’t very good at grief I think we are and I have a podcast about that listen here. 

It was during the post natal era after my baby Josh died that I was staying in a Permaculture farm in Bundaberg and that ignited my love for Permaculture. While it’s not strictly a healing modality I think it’s a really important tool and it definitely is the way I think about my living spaces, my interactions in my community and my impact on the world at large. 

In that time after I separated from Josh’s dad he went on a quest to figure out what the heck my life was all about. I developed a funny kind of breathing issue that I couldn’t quite understand. This is when I went for my first acupuncture session. I adore acupuncture. It is a lifelong passion of mine. When everything’s a bit weird in my life I can usually count on acupuncture to sort me out. As well as acupuncture I got super interested in macrobiotic cooking as well as the philosophies of Paul Pitchford and the book Healing with Whole Foods.  In hindsight I was experiencing mild panic attacks and anxiety however my acupuncture is recommended Vipassana again. I did not make it to Vipassana this time but here it is calling me. 

From this time on for the next four years I lived in a yoga community where our primary focus was on supporting women and mothers through yoga practices. During this time I freebirthed my second baby, a beautiful daughter. I’m so pleased I got to birth all my live children at home and highly recommend getting really educated about your body, it’s capacity and considering whether birthing at home out of your vagina is for you. Obviously if anything had happened during those births that had required me to go to hospital I absolutely would have and I really respect the medical system for saving so many women and babies in the last hundred years. I also passionately believe in woman’s innate capacity to birth children. Don’t get me started on that rant, but it is a great wormhole to go down and taught me a great deal about life and myself. I read the Spiritual Midwifery books and books from Janine Parvati Baker that gave me a real transmission.

Having children has been one of the greatest teachers of my life and even though that sounds corny for cheesy it’s because it’s true. Mothering is a Hellfire. It’s also just so exquisitely beautiful. It’s hard to find the words. 

While I was living in the yoga community with my first child we traveled to Confest. If you haven’t been to Confest, I highly recommend it. It’s an absolute life experience. I just love being nude all the time and all the pop-up workshops. It’s totally my place. We also ran our own local women’s camp that started 23 years ago. We are still going strong.  Women’s camp has been another massive paradigm shift for me. Between women’s circle and women’s camp I have found my place. I found a place where I can speak about what is real for me without being judged and it’s pretty hard for me to interact in normal society anymore. I’m basically at a women’s camp all the time and that doesn’t really sit well with everybody I interact with and that’s just too bad really.  The level of intimacy and authenticity I experience at women’s camp and women’s circle have become the benchmark for human interaction for me and I don’t want to go on living in a world of facile meaningless interactions. I love women’s camp and women’s circles so much,  it’s another one of those things that I find it hard to find the words for.  Women’s camp can also really trigger me.  It can trigger my Sisterhood wounds around female friendships and my sense of belonging but lately They have become something I can really work with unless of a harrowing painful experience.  

In 2015 I started my business.  I had a Bachelor of commerce with majors in marketing and I had no plan to start a business.  What I ended up discovering was a beautiful community of online business women and who did I find in the online business community?  Of course I found all my like-minded kindred women in business.  Healers, coaches, hypnotists, naturopaths, kinesiologists and other witches were all gathered in the online groups, hanging out and supporting each other. This was a fun time for me where I explored a bunch of really different modalities that I hadn’t heard of before.  I honestly can’t remember the names of them all.  A lot of women were doing intuitive healing. I’ve done hypnosis. I’ve done archangel channeling. Honestly I can’t even remember the names of them all.  I’ve also seen a lot of local bodywork practitioners because I was experiencing a lot of physical pain and other ailments which I now just understand to be part of being hyper-mobile. I saw acupuncturists, chiropractors, homeopaths, naturopaths and more. I love all of these modalities and have gained so much from them all. 

I’ve studied Australian Bush Flower Essences which I love and I have the full stock kit available to dispense. I have a passion for herbalism although I’m not very well educated on the topic.

In the last year I’ve been doing the Earth Woman course through the School of Shamanic Womancraft with a mentor on Zoom.  I decided to interact with the School of Shamanic Womancraft because it seems to me that their teachings brought together a lot of disparate learnings that I’d been working with. I also felt that if I chose the option to have monthly mentoring sessions with one of the teachers it would give me some more support and structure as I moved into this new era of sharing women’s circles and land camps with women. I just knew that I needed to have some good support for myself so that I could support everyone else with a full heart. What I wasn’t prepared for was all the epic healing that has been happening in the last year.  As well as menopause kicking my butt for better, the Earth Woman course has been healing so many wounds I didn’t even really realize I had. Because I’ve spent a lifetime doing all the work on all the things I really thought I wouldn’t have much more stuff to look at. Haha, very funny.  I have had a great few months so far looking at my Spring self and my summer self and now I’m on to considering the Autumn season and the impact of that on my life. More to come on that in another blog post.

I haven’t yet mentioned all the Western medicine healing that I have experienced through the years including an operation on a deviated septum and a little incident a couple of years ago where I had to go to hospital for a couple of blood transfusions after a bit of a long period. That’s a story for another day.

I’ve also had a bunch of counseling and psychology sessions as well as being a bit of a self-help nut. I’ve read books on so many things from Forest Bathing to Nonviolent Communication as well as doing the Artist’s way and being an artist. Arts and crafts are such a sweet way to heal wounds and bring joy to parts of my experience that can’t be managed through talk therapy or thinking and analyzing.

I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch of different modalities that I’ve interacted with. Like I forgot to mention that I actually did get to Vipassana in the end and have been sitting pretty regularly since 2007. I’ve recently had a bit of a break as I focus more on shamanic work and land/nature based practices because I’m not sure if they will let me come back while I do those things. They have some strict requirements for returning students that often exclude shamanic practice and other meditations.

I also love the Dr  Joe Dispenza meditations especially the Tuning in to New Potentials with the breathwork, yahoo.

Modalities I forgot to mention:

Hypnosis

Oracle decks

Akashic records

Human design

Astrology

Knitting and craft 

Being a mother 

Just being alive and being highly sensitive

Learning to be gluten-free and low carb after being a lacto-ovo-vegetarian wholefoods cook from the age of 18 and a massive HPF (Highly Processed Food) addict. 

Learning to live with body dysmorphia

Self identifying as AuDHD

I’m also currently doing a Graduate Diploma in Writing and Literature with Deakin University which has a delicious focus on creativity. 

Now, mostly, I notice that the more i bring magic into my life – singing – drumming – art – being in nature – being slow – being with women – sticking to my guns – honouring my intuition – loving myself – the more magical my life is. 

That’s enough for today. Much love to you xxxx