I was born psychic, but it was in the early 2000's that my shamanic training began (using drumming to travel in non-ordinary reality and work with Guides).

Shamanic training also began my entry into cyclical time vs linear time, the knowledge that we are All Our Relations, and the healing from hierarchical systems to the notion that we are all equal, including equal with our Guides.

My first shamanic journey and soul retrieval training began with a shamanic practitioner of Cherokee and Irish descent.

Soon after, I met Maria Yraceburu, 13th generation diiyin of her Quero Apache lineage who grew up on the reservation learning at the knee of her grandfather. This is where my human training has been ever since. I am considered an EarthPriest in the Yraceburu EarthWisdom system.

It is of note, however, that on the eve of my 27th birthday a Peregrin falcon crashed through my bedroom window, left a hole in the glass in the shape of a snow angel, and my personal calling began.

I buried the bird in the mountains, started receiving messages, later had a session with a shamanic practitioner that lifted the veil and opened my sight. In that moment I saw and heard all of my Guides so clearly that hey trained me directly for years.

It was only later, when I read books about what shamanic practitioners were to do - or not to do - that I fully realized how solid that way of training was and continues to be. Turns out, my Guides were right all along. ;)

I was raised Episcopalian as my step-father was, with a Catholic mother. When I left for college I did not find a new church. Human issues in the church I grew up in, along with my parents divorcing once again, destabilized the church for me at that time.

Back in the early 2000's when I had my shamanic awakening I did not know about Christian mystics. I was taught that only the Priest could directly interpret God. As such, when I saw the golden light in church as a child, or had what I now know were mystical experiences, I did not know what I was experiencing or how to frame it.

As it turns out, modern Christian mystics also focus on direct, personal experiences of the divine, often hearing messages and receiving visions, like shamanic non-ordinary reality experiences.

Later, when I joined the Center for Spiritual Living based on the New Thought teachings of Ernest Holmes, I experienced similar things. I was receiving my own messages and visions and thought perhaps this did not fit in with the teachings. It was not until years later that I discovered Ernest Holmes himself received psychic visions and messages. His accounts of these experiences were taken out of the official Center for Spiritual Living texts to make his work more accessible after he died.

It was only when I met Maria Yraceburu, my EarthWisdom teacher, did receiving messages become normalized for me. She told me that if children on the reservation don't hear voices by a certain age they worry about them. This was the reverse from what I had been taught and was a huge relief for me. I was finally able to talk to someone about what I was experiencing, get help with context and application, and integrate it without shame or fear.

Today, Christian mysticism is on the rise.

So, too, are other forms of spiritual message receiving and teachings such as psychics and astrology.

A 2025 survey showed 87% of younger adults surveyed engage in, or are open to, practices like energy work, breathwork, and shamanic practices to improve mental health and find meaning.

It may be that as intuitions and outward structures fail, the call to get help from inner guidance, Spirit Guides, God, Jesus, Angels, and Self, are on the rise.

I use the boundary protocols I have been taught in EarthWisdom and what one might call shamanic practices to access non-ordinary reality, but I believe we receive help from Highest Good in all the ways we can receive it.

And in the ways we resonate with and understand.

The term "shaman" was originally used for spiritual leaders among Siberian, Ural-Altaic, and Tungusic peoples, though it was later applied to similar figures worldwide.

There is ongoing debate about how can or should be called a shaman. Currently, many people agree that "shaman" applies to someone born directly into the culture that trained them in the art of non-ordinary reality, or those whom a shaman from that culture gives the title.

For those who grew up in modern cultures who are called to the practice, the term "shamanic practitioner" is more widely accepted.

In that case, I would be called a shamanic practitioner.