Heartfelt Whole Self was born from my own personal journey of learning to love myself and heal my own pain. I was once living a very different life from who I am now. I was living out of touch with Earth, my own body, and my soul's needs. I came to this work and this path through a major life upheaval and spiritual awakening. Looking back it was like a tidal wave that turned the world as I knew it on it’s head. It was an awakening, or a breaking open, of my heart, my senses, empathic gifts, heightened sensitivities, and new levels of awareness.

The Soul is on a unique timeline that is cyclical in nature. It moves with the tides of Great Ocean, the phases of the Moon, and with the rhythm of a greater purpose. The Ancient Ones, our Ancestors, lived in the natural rhythms with their Soul, with the Earth and the Elements, the Sun, Moon and Stars. They made space in life for the needs of the soul because they knew it carried important truth and wisdom to guide their Earth walk. We have now evolved into a society and world that does not make space in day to day life for the soul’s needs, as it once did. We have come to live in disconnect and disharmony with the Earth, our bodies, and our senses.

The soul has a delicate nature, but a powerful presence. It requires a very specific space to be heard and felt. It can only be shut out for so long before we lose all connection to it. It is always making attempts to be let back into our lives and our awareness. In living in disconnect, we have lost access to the sutble energy channels and pathways of heart connection and have forgotten how to make space for the soul, how to really hear, and deeply listen.

Years ago, my soul got through to me in a dream. It literally showed me how much pain was being held deep within and that it had timely needs. This dream changed my life forever. In this dream, I made a commitment to myself to make space for, tend to, and heal my own soul. I had no idea the power of what I was doing in this dream or truly what it meant at the time, but it turned out to be a medicine dream, a powerful promise to myself, and a turning point in my life.

The soul of this dream came to life two years later. It manifested as a tidal wave of desire that awoke me from my current path of disconnected living. It swept away the path I was on and placed me on an entirely new life path, almost instantly. This force of feeling stirred the serpent lying dormant at the base of my spine, awakening sleeping energy. Desire, longing, and creative power and energy were suddenly alive in my life in a way I had never known. My spirituality was suddenly alive in a way I had never known. The inter-relatedness of both desire and spirituality awoke me to a new path and way of living, forever changing the foundation of my thinking and feeling.

This wave of awakening was clearing a path for my personal healing and making way for my truth to be lived and embodied. The initial clearing was painful in many ways; physically and emotionally. It was a transformational force that brought a swift ending to so much in my life. My heart arrived at an edge of everything I knew, or thought I knew. This edge was all there was before me and my heart and soul knew to leap. My soul knew how to let go. It was a leap of faith that plummeted me into the Unknown and depths of despair. I never knew the ache of longing or heart pain before I took this leap. And these words of wisdom came from the Cosmos to guide me, 'Letting go of who you think you are to become who you truly are'. These words lived on in my heart as a guide and reminder on this new venture before me.

The intense emotional distress I experienced triggered me on a genetic level. It awoke a dormant gene I didn't know I carried. As it awoke, it manifested in my body as Reactive Arthritis. My body quite literally stopped me in my tracks with arthritic inflammation, even in my eye, forcing me to be fully immersed in the literal darkness, as well as the darkest night of my soul. All of this pain, despair, and darkness soon became a womb for me. I knew I was transforming inside all of this and that my pain was my portal for healing. I knew I was growing in some way from all of this seemingly misery. And so I surrendered to it; to the darkness, and to the womb. It guided me to be present and listen like I had never before. I naturally began meditating and working with my breath to move and transform energy, and to find the space to listen deeply. Ceremony became a natural act for me. Breath became a powerful tool of healing for me. I became present with the wounds of my heart, mind, body, and soul. This was the space that was needed for my soul to begin to heal.

The arthritis inflaming was my ally and my adversary. It was a call from my body to come into a new and more intimate relationship with it, and to eventually cultviate the space and love needed to embody what was awakening in me. It slowed me down tremendously. I began listening to my body's wisdom as it guided me into self-healing, food as medicine, and clean eating. I learned to focus my mind with the help of Mother Earth, who helped me remember my Earth-Body.

When I was living in Chicago, I often sat with trees that lined the densely populated neighborhood block in the back of my house. I would sit lotus, with my back up against the tree, and breathe. I know many people would walk by and look curiously. I would notice them, but my practice was always to bring my focus back to my connection with Earth, Tree, and Breath. I was learning focus as a medicine and tool for my personal tumultuous transition in life, including physical pain. It became my saving grace. It helped move energy, and gave me a sense of connection, inner peace, and grounding. It felt good. I didn't care how odd meditating with trees in the middle of a city might have looked. It was bringing a sense of calm to a busy city, as well as to me. At that time, my work trips began to be less about drinks with clients and co-workers and more about my connection and time with the earth and myself. My reality was shifting quickly.

Being in relationship with my darkness made way for the discovery of my natural gifts and abilities lying dormant inside of me. It gave way to the space that was needed to cultivate my renewed connection with the Earth, my physical body, and my soul. It woke up the wisdom within me.

Darkness has been a very important teacher on my path. Darkness has become a healing and sacred space for me and I have come to know its true nature as a womb for soul expansion, transformation, and discovery. Darkness as the Unknown teaches me how to see in it and that it is ok to be in it, and be held by it. and that it is ok to not know and not be in control. It has taught me how to deeply listen to the soul and make space for all that is vulnerable. It has taught me about the imbalance of energies in humanity and the world through this obsession with Light, which keeps us from embracing so much of who we truly are. We have demonized the dark and become addicted seekers of light. We cling to the surface and close the door to the growth that comes from knowing our own darkness. We have forgotten that we are as much dark as we are light, and that our darkness is as true as our light. When we open the door to our darkness and allow ourselves to be present with what lies within, we will experience it's equivocal power to light and importance in our life. I have learned that darkness is not just pain and suffering, but that it is a womb for creation and becoming. Darkness has shown me that She is the soil of Mother Earth; a place of seed and re-birth of what we have died to and buried. She is the space between the space, always around and within us. Darkness is where starlight births.

The compassionate and balancing powers of Nature, have shown me, from the very start, that this is a journey of moving my Center from head and into heart. Their gentle and powerful presence and wisdom has guided every step of this return to center and balance. From the first moment of discovering the medicine of sitting with trees to the moment Grandmother and Grandfather sacred plant teachers called to the Amazon jungle of Peru.

These plant teachers and this ancient land have helped me to move through what seemed like impassible walls of fear and initiated me into my soul connection with Earth. They showed me my spirituality on Earth, as well as opened me up to the other realms around me and within me, in love and not fear. Over the years I have come to know these sacred plant teachers as my master teachers in my personal spiritual walk. Their transformational medicine works with me on an energetic and spiritual level. Their spirit flows through all of my work.

Santa MariaJuana is another important plant ally and teacher on my path. This Ancient One has the power to shift energy, emotion, and perspective immediately. The energetics of Her sacred medicine opens channels of creativity, self love, and clears dense energy. A Goddess in the plant spirit realm and a powerful ally in heart opening and transforming stuck energy.

These master plant teachers have shown me and taught me the need for restoring ceremony in life. Ceremony and ritual enrich living and create a pace that is naturally rhythmic and healthy. Many sacred plants have lost their sacredness in the collective consciousness because we have lost our connection to the sacredness and ceremony around our engagement with them, i.e. tobacco, cannabis, and cacao. These sacred plants become ill-used and their medicine and power become muted.

Doing sacred ceremonial work with plant spirit teachers brings to light exactly what needs to be seen to help move through stuck and dense energy. They are a guide into letting go and letting love, and always a guide to Heart Center.

Through this journey of healing, I have developed a personal and direct relationship with the Elements; Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Ether/Akasha. The Elements have taught me how to be in personal relationship with each of them through my body and my being and how to work with them in healing. Their teachings are always evolving, unfolding, and never-ending. Through these unique relationships the Cornerstones of Becoming were born; intelligent subtle essences of the sacred elements; Earth-Body, Breath, Self-Love, Flow, and Sacred Space. They are the anchors of how I live, work, and heal.

Fire teaches me about inflammation (of the body and mind and heart), as an epidemic of our time. Fire has taught me how to recognize the inflammation, engage with it, and how to make space for transformation that comes. Fire has shown me how we, as a collective, have become accustomed to fast paced living. Whether we live in the calm of open spaces or in the chaos of the city, it is the mind that runs away with life. The inflammations of the mind have encircled us within bubbles of illusion, separating us from our heart and from our Elemental Truth. Fire teaches me that it is the medicine of the Darkness that can bring healing to all inflammation. It is cooling and calming and restorative.

From a true place of center, alignment, and reconnection, we can begin to extinguish the inflammations of the body and mind. Through cultivating a spiritual connection with our elemental fire, the sacred fire deep in our heart can once again be our guide. Awakening this inner sacred fire is igniting a new way of living that is once again conscious, balanced, and in flow with our Elemental Truth.

Through this personal journey and quest, I dedicated myself to my Whole Self and to allowing my heart wisdom to guide me. It has guided me to the development and empowerment of my senses and sensitivities. I now use my gifts to be of service to the restoration of balance in all ways (mental/emotional/physical/spiritual), to helping others heal and to realize their self-healing abilities, to helping others through their journey of transition in the darkness, to remember how to listen to and allow their own heart wisdom to guide, and to be empowered in their personal truth, all through the portal of self love.

"Starlight births in the darkness." Shanna Rae~Ven