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*Editor’s Note: Elephant is not your doctor or hospital. Our lawyers would say “this web site is not designed to, and should not be construed to provide medical advice, professional diagnosis, opinion, or treatment to you or any other individual, and is not intended as a substitute for medical or professional care and treatment. Always consult a health professional before trying out new home therapies or changing your diet.” But we can’t afford lawyers, and you knew all that. ~ Ed

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It was the late 1990s when, at 19 years old, I found myself in a circle of multi-generational teachers who taught me how to heal. The sound of the drum and the lift of the song woke something up in me as we sat in a circle singing and sharing our life stories. It woke an ancient memory—that there is a power and natural magic that arises when people gather.

I had already been working with a shamanic healer since the age of 14. I had begun to have extra-sensory events, and I desperately needed direction for how to work with this electrical energy that flowed through my body. I could pick up on people’s feelings, thoughts, and I’d even have imagery of their life events come into my mind, like I was reading their life through pictures. It was way too much, especially at such a young age. Thankfully, my mother, a healer herself, directed me to local healers who could guide me on my path. 

My teen years were unusual; instead of partying and pushing one’s boundaries like my peers, I was studying healing. I apprenticed with a medical medium at 17, then, due to a spinal injury, I was driven deep within to become my own teacher. I had spent months in bed, learning how to track my own energy and direct the innate healing power every human being has. I poured myself into old books about healing, staved off depression, and learned how to have unwavering faith. It was hard. Some of the hardest, most confusing years of my life. It’s only now looking back that I can appreciate how much I learned in those tender years. 

By 19, I was able to walk normally again and didn’t need surgery. This is when I found myself in Upstate New York, in a circle of healers. I learned that healing doesn’t have to always be serious; we could laugh and sing and tell stories, and, I learned from them herbs can strengthen our vitality and enhance our innate healing abilities. Herbs don’t just work by supplementing our body with therapeutic constituents, they nudge our body toward healing through an invisible energy that animates all things. They connect us to source itself. 

I had left university to study herbal medicine, and right after that, I went to homeopathy school. Herbal medicine taught me the power of plants, and homeopathy taught me (and still teaches me) about the vital force; the invisible force that animates life. I was in love with this work and eager to start my practice. 

While in school, I met a Toltec teacher named Blade. I had a dream I was to spend time in the desert, and within a week, I was introduced to Blade through a phone call (these were pre-internet days) and made plans to move to New Mexico to study with her. 

Within the first week of our apprenticeship, I was to begin to give death to who I thought I was. I spent six months taking inventory of my entire life up to date and breaking down belief systems that kept me from living a full, vibrant life. Toltec teachings show us where we hold ourselves hostage by limiting belief systems, called Agreements.

We can have positive, life-giving agreements, but, more often, we have draining, life-stealing agreements, which perpetuate a living hell. Judgements, self-criticism, comparison, negative belief systems all undermine our vitality. Many of these agreements are inherited, swallowed lies fed to us as young children that we take in and then shape our lives around. My work as a Toltec apprentice was to identify, then breakdown every belief system at a time, hunting these draining cords of energy, and release them. It was long, arduous, and painful. But worth it as I gained energy week by week, month by month. 

Now, 25 years later, I braid these traditions together in my work with clients. Herbalism to feed and nourish the physical body and spiritual heart, homeopathy to strengthen our vital force and interrupt unwanted patterns, and Toltec Wisdom to liberate us from belief systems that steal our energy so we can become more of who we are. 

All three of these traditions teach us that we are not just connected to nature—we are nature. And when we live from this understanding, we move toward our liberation. 

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