How many times have you started and then stopped calling yourself a healer?

Early this morning just before I awoke, I had been dreaming. I don't recall the dream, but as I started drifting back to wakefulness I heard someone say, "You have healite traits". Curious what that means and if healite is even a word, I looked it up and discovered that it is an LED light therapy for healing, regeneration, and cellular recovery. I often find myself marinading in self-doubt, but yesterday, I asked for reassurance that I'm on the right path. I would love to hear any of your insights if you have any. Thank you 🙏🏼💛

This is something I’ve given lots of thought to, and I see the times in my life where this was true. And in talking with students over the years I’ve come to see these are universal protection patterns that our amazing minds and bodies put in place to keep us safe. These posts during this time are introducing you to the new body of work that has come to me using the shaman's journey and sitting in the silence to hear what spirit is asking of me. I share this with all of you because I know some of you are ready for the healing and transformation that going deep will make available to you. So with that said...I want to tell you something that I do not think you’ve heard often enough. The way you learned to move through the world — carefully, quietly, watching before you speak, feeling before you trust, protecting before you open — kept you alive. Not metaphorically. Literally. I mean that. Most healing conversations start with the wound. With what happened to you. With the shame that was placed on you before you had any say in whether to carry it. And that conversation is real and it matters. But I want to start somewhere different today. I want to start with the intelligence that rose up inside you in response to what happened. Because when the wound arrived — when the shame was laid on you, when you were told who to be and who not to be, when the message came that your true self was too much or not enough — you didn't simply fall apart. Something in you adapted. Something in you got strategic. Something in you built a protection system fast enough and sophisticated enough to keep your real self intact underneath everything that was pressing against it. That is not a small thing. That is remarkable. Think about the version of you that built the guardian. How young they were. How much they were managing. How little they had been given in terms of tools, foundation, language, or support. And in the middle of all of that — they built something that worked. Something that said: if I cannot show all of who I am safely, then I will protect who I am until it is safe.

I want to ask you something and I want you to answer it in your body, not your head. Right now — in this moment — where are you holding? Not what are you thinking. Not what are you worried about. Where in your physical body right now is there tension. Tightness. A place that never fully lets go. For most people it is one of a few places. The belly. That low-grade knot that has been there so long you stopped noticing it. The thing you assume is just how your body feels. The chest. That guardedness around your heart that knows — without being told — when to close. When to protect. When to make itself smaller so it doesn't get hit. The shoulders. Lifted, braced, permanently prepared. Like you are always expecting something to land. The jaw. The throat. The places where things were swallowed instead of spoken. Most healing conversations tell you this tension is the problem. That you need to release it, soften it, breathe through it. And the release work matters. That is real. But before you can release something, you need to understand what it has been doing for you. Because that tension is not random. It is not your nervous system misfiring. It is not evidence that you are broken or that something went wrong with you. That tension is your guardian doing its job. Think about what that tension actually does when it activates. It pulls you back before you go too far. It tightens when the conversation gets too exposed. It raises the alert before you say the thing that might get you hurt. It keeps the door to the deeper self locked — because at some point in your history, that deeper self got hurt when the door was open. Your body learned. Bodies always learn. And what yours learned is that certain kinds of openness have a cost. So it built a system to protect that openness. A guardian that lives in the physical tissue of who you are. I think about the empaths and the healers in this community. You feel everything, all the time, with a depth most people around you cannot comprehend. And when you were young, or when the people around you were not safe, or when the world made it clear that your sensitivity was too much — your body built an entire protective structure around that feeling.

A very important part of our work and taking care of ourselves is making sure you have the proper boundaries in place. The simplest way of practicing and using your power of boundary setting is yes or no. Is this for me? yes. Is this for me? no I'm about to end the second week of being in an environment with a lot of well-trained people, healers with years of experience -including myself - and every now and again you come up against some soft spots or hard spots and I've been practicing boundary setting to take care of my well-being and the well-being of people around me. The strong point of boundary setting is that it really is all about communication. And communication means being honest with yourself first. Know what you need. Say what you need. Ask for what you need, and that will point you in the right direction for setting your boundaries as strongly as possible. How are you practicing setting your boundaries? Where is your weakness in setting your boundaries? What kind of support do you need in learning about setting boundaries and the practice of setting boundaries? Ask for what you need