This tran­script has been edit­ed for clar­i­ty. There may be dif­fer­ences between the audio and this tran­script.

John: 0:00
Hel­lo, Diane. How are you doing today?

Diane: 0:03
I’m doing great. I’m real­ly hap­py to be here. So

John: 0:06
Well, great

Diane: 0:07
to Yeah. It’s great to see you and talk with you and this is a top­ic that’s of of real inter­est for me. So I’m I’m real­ly excit­ed to have this con­ver­sa­tion.

John: 0:18
Okay. So where I wan­na go, is is I want to know about three things: hors­es, psy­chol­o­gy, and Shaman­ism. What is the com­mon thread there?

Diane: 0:32
A com­mon thread would be in the ser­vice of help­ing peo­ple, help­ing peo­ple in the way that they need to be helped in the moment that they arrive in the pas­ture or in my office or on my Zoom meet­ing. And the so the real­ly the com­mon thread is we make sense of what’s going on and how do we unrav­el or recon­nect with parts of our­selves or beings that can help sup­port us and the hors­es help with that. I I tru­ly believe that hors­es are here as mas­ter teach­ers to help us be bet­ter ver­sions of our­selves.

John: 1:10
Alright. When you’re younger, were you in the hors­es?

Diane: 1:13
When I was young, they saved my life. Real­ly. They saved my life on a num­ber of of peri­ods of my life when things were very dif­fi­cult in my whole And the first spir­it being that ever came to me before I even knew that was a thing, was a horse. And I dis­tinct­ly remem­bered, is there a car­pool­ing back from swim team with a dot in the coun­try, so it’s long dri­ve. And I would look out the win­dow and I’d see this horse. There was a spir­it of horse run­ning along­side the car dump­ing the fence. And had a bri­dle and a sad­dle horn. And I remem­ber think­ing, well, that horse should­n’t have a bri­dle and a sad­dle horn. It should just free and I would try to remove the bridal and sad­dle and it would reap­pear. And I would remove it and I reap­pear and it would took years lat­er when I start­ed to study a shaman­ism and under­stood inter­ac­tive spir­it beings. That was a spir­it horse and It was an invi­ta­tion to come be with the horse, come ride the horse. And, any­way, so a horse was the first help­ing spir­it that ever came to me. And then there were the fac­tu­al phys­i­cal real hors­es and ordi­nary real­i­ty. When things were dif­fi­cult in my home as a child, I would just go out and be in the pas­ture with the horse just stand­ing there with them or walk­ing with them through the pas­ture.

John: 2:37
Mhmm. Can you share just a lit­tle bit more how you’re expe­ri­enc­ing your life at that ear­ly age?

Diane: 2:42
Yeah. Youngest of five. Chil­dren. And and my moth­er was over­whelmed, and my father worked. And I think it’s also Asperg­er’s, so he was not avail­able. Emo­tion­al­ly. So a lot of I very much went inward and tried to look for safe and so nature was my safe­ty place. Inside the home, I felt uncom­fort­able or made fun of her. Crit­i­cized judg­ment. So going out and being in nature was where I felt safe and being with the hors­es, or my cat, or my dog, was where I felt safe. And so for me, years lat­er, when I encoun­tered Shaman­ism, it that was a nat­ur­al fit because it’s a very nature based prac­tice?

John: 3:29
The hors­es, did they have a sense of the per­son­al dis­tress that you’re expe­ri­enc­ing?

Diane: 3:36
I assumed so I was a child. I don’t think I I don’t I know I did­n’t pay any atten­tion to that. I just knew I felt bet­ter when I was with the horse. And that fol­lowed all the way through to high school and I was real­ly depressed. Like, I was sui­ci­dal in high school because and a girl that I knew said, oh, I have a friend who has a horse that needs to be rid­den. So I would just every­day after school go ride this horse, bare back, out into the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment. And, yeah, I looked back on that. Like, I was so depressed I think half the time I was cry­ing while rid­ing the horse. So I know the horse felt what I was feel­ing because they’re high­ly tele­path­ic. They absolute­ly know what we’re feel­ing. And yet the horse was will­ing. These hors­es are will­ing. They would they’re free to come and go and they stayed right there with me. So I have to believe they were offer­ing them­selves as in ser­vice and as help and as sup­port.

John: 4:35
And like your horse spir­it.

Diane: 4:37
Yeah. Exact­ly. Yeah. Exact­ly.

John: 4:40
What made you go into psy­chol­o­gy?

Diane: 4:43
Yeah. So that’s an inter­est­ing sto­ry about that. Because when I was an under­grad, I was at a Chris­t­ian school and I want­ed noth­ing to do with psy­chol­o­gy. I did­n’t inter­est me at all. I stud­ied cul­ture and pathol­o­gy, and that was fas­ci­nat­ing. So I was study­ing peo­ple with curios­i­ty. That’s the dis­tinc­tion I feel between psy­chol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy is The Anthro­polo­gie was curi­ous. How are these peo­ple liv­ing? Oh, that tribe over there, how do they do things? And I unloved that. And I and we stud­ied Shaman­ism, not from a we’re gonna become Shaman­ic, but rather just from the curios­i­ty of, oh, there’s all these dif­fer­ent indige­nous ways of inter­act­ing with the world from that spir­it based, nature based way. It was years lat­er that to go into grad­u­ate school, I just need­ed to find a way to help peo­ple, so I need­ed a pro­fes­sion­al degree. And so becom­ing a ther­a­pist was kind of a nat­ur­al fit for me after I’d been a wilder­ness guide tak­ing trou­bled kids out on these wilder­ness tracks and real­ly not know­ing how to coun­sel, but I knew how to take them out and enjoy you know, nature. So when I stud­ied psy­chol­o­gy, yeah, there was a sharp con­trast between Now, we’re not curi­ous about peo­ple. We see them as there’s some­thing wrong with them that we need to fix and we’re gonna come up with these are the rea­sons that this is what we need to do. But it got me to where I need­ed to be with a license. Like, the pat on the back say­ing, now you can go help peo­ple.

John: 6:19
There’s two tracks in psy­chol­o­gy. Is it one’s clin­i­cal and the oth­er

Diane: 6:23
is Yeah. There’s one called coun­sel­ing psy­chol­o­gy that they use in the uni­ver­si­ties, coun­sel­ing cen­ters, that is all more strength based. But the clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists, I did­n’t know the dif­fer­ence I But there I was with clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy, which is all about diag­nos­ing you and find­ing out what’s wrong with you. I find myself dis­tanc­ing from that way of doing things and see­ing peo­ple.

John: 6:52
How did the how were you drawn to Shaman­ism? What was the there’s an ini­tial intro­duc­tion. How did that take place?

Diane: 6:59
Yeah. That that was one of those lit­tle windy twisty things that hap­pens in life where one thing leads to the next to the next. So it’s also very I find kind of a cool sto­ry for me. For as I look back, I I was ear­ly on as a psy­chol­o­gist and just hap­pened to be going to vis­it a fam­i­ly mem­ber who I had trig­gered me to the fam­i­ly mem­ber just was one of those harsh crit­i­cal peo­ple in my life and I was ner­vous all the way there. And my part­ner had been going to a a ther­a­pist who does ener­gy psy­chol­o­gy and he says, well, let’s just try this lit­tle ener­gy psy­chol­o­gy col­o­gy thing that my ther­a­pist showed me. And and so it was a lit­tle tap­ping tap­ping on acu­pres­sure points. And you say it was a lit­tle mantra Even though I’m real­ly ner­vous about say in this fam­i­ly mem­ber, I love and accept myself any­way. And I’m think­ing this is ridicu­lous. I like, how is this gonna help? This per­son­’s law­ful to me, how is this but We get there, say the night, we’re on the way home the next day. I’m like, I think that fam­i­ly mem­ber is much, much nicer. And my part­ners know no change, but I per­ceived it dif­fer­ent­ly. There was some shift in me. So I got real­ly intrigued. Maybe there’s some­thing to this. So I start­ed study­ing ener­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, took the class­es, through Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­pre­hen­sive Ener­gy Psy­chol­o­gy, ASU, so took their class­es, and then went to their con­fer­ence and at the con­fer­ence. I’m sit­ting in these work­shops with these licensed men­tal health prac­ti­tion­ers pro­fes­sion­als, and they’re say­ing there’s sev­er­al of them said, and I’m a Shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­er. And I’m like, what? Is that even pos­si­ble? Like, how do you what? Because I’m think­ing Shaman­ism back in my under­grad was the indige­nous peo­ples of the world and it was like this whole way of life and hear those

John: 8:53
Of course.

Diane: 8:53
Per­son who’s yes. Liv­ing in the city and was licensed pro­fes­sion­al, but I look up to I’m a Shi­mon­ic prac­ti­tion­er too. So I got real­ly inter­est­ed. And at that same con­fer­ence, I’m in a psy­chic, Then I asked her, can you learn psy­chic skills? Or is this some­thing you’re born with? And she says, you can learn. And I have a school to teach peo­ple. And so, of course, since I got home, I signed up for her class. And that was in med­ical intu­ition, which is real­ly devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty to per­ceive the ener­gy world and for med­ical insti­tu­tions specif­i­cal­ly about how the ener­gy world is hav­ing an effect on the body, phys­i­cal body. But Mhmm. The the skills of per­ceiv­ing that, past life, ori­gins, child­hood ori­gins to the phys­i­cal. And then I don’t even remem­ber oh, I do remem­ber. So at that con­fer­ence, I got super excit­ed about the ener­gy heal­ing thing. And so I got online and I’m just I ordered I don’t know how many books. And one of them was Michael Harn­er’s Capen Cos­mos. And in that book, he just just he he tells a lot of the sto­ries, which is I I love sto­ries. I learn a lot from sto­ries. I’m read­ing this book. I’m like, oh, this is fas­ci­nat­ing. This is inter­est­ing. So of course, that I got on and that I need to take a class in Shaman­ism. And there you go. Then it was that class led to the two week inten­sive that led to the three year pro­gram that led to all the dif­fer­ent week­end work­shops that just and then I just stayed with it and then learn­ing from sender Inger­man and she Wes­sel­man and then start a study with Bet­sy Bergstrom and she’s cur­rent­ly my teacher’s spell after all these years and It’s just fun. Mhmm.

John: 10:49
How many years were you in as a psy­chol­o­gist when this took place?

Diane: 10:54
Let’s see. About five years? I think what hap­pened in the five years was that I real­ized the lim­i­ta­tions of the top ther­a­py. You real­ly can’t talk some­body out of their emo­tions. You can’t talk them out of their expe­ri­ence. And some­times talk­ing about things real­ly stirs you up a lit­tle more. You feel worse. A lot of peo­ple would feel worse at the end of a ses­sion instead of bet­ter. So even in those five years, I was already look­ing into alter­na­tive meth­ods like somat­ic based ther­a­pies. Mhmm. Snag expe­ri­enc­ing bio ener­get­ics. And I had a ther­a­pist who is a bio ener­get­ics ther­a­pist and on my per­son­al devel­op­ment. It was already going to retreats where they did psy­chodra­ma, san­i­ti­za­tion, art ther­a­py, and a lot of body based ther­a­pies that we’re help­ing and help­ing way more than just talk­ing about things. So I was ready for the mes­sage when it came to me. But there real­ly is a thing called ener­gy psy­chol­o­gy. There real­ly is a thing you can get trained in Shaman­ic heal­ing and inte­grates. That it real­ly it end­ed up real­ly appeal­ing to me.

John: 12:09
What I found from a schemat­ic per­spec­tive is that peo­ple with indeed grief expe­ri­ence soul frag­men­ta­tion con­tributes to a loss of their own ener­gy or how do you as a ther­a­pist before you got into Shaman­ism? Would you have Notice that the per­son had a loss of ener­gy.

Diane: 12:27
Yeah, grief. From a pure­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, my train­ing and how to help peo­ple with grief was very min­i­mal. I almost feel like there’s an avoid­ance of it because it can be so heavy and it can be so dif­fi­cult to over­come. And Mhmm. I I don’t know if this is kind of your ques­tion, but this is where my mind is tak­ing me is from the Shaman­ic per­spec­tive, when I encounter peo­ple with deep grease, I almost always am see­ing ances­tral pat­tern. Of so many of our ances­tors that just had to car­ry on when there was a loss or a trau­ma, a dif­fi­cult thing that they just had to car­ry on and they did­n’t or did­n’t know how or did­n’t have time or the ener­gy. So we’re car­ry­ing all of our ances­tors grief as well, then our own lived expe­ri­ence, say, for exam­ple, my par­ents each, lost a par­ent when they were young. Mhmm. And nobody helped them with that grief. So then when I had expe­ri­ences that were, you know, dev­as­tat­ing or sad, they could­n’t help me. So the grief is so deep. So then if you’re just psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing of the client sit­ting in front of me and the tools are like, well, get them talk­ing about it and have them share some expe­ri­ences. Like, that opens the field, but it’s mas­sive. And with­out Mhmm. An ener­getic way and a spir­i­tu­al Shaman­ic way of help­ing peo­ple relieve the heav­ier bur­den of the ances­tral? It’s just heavy.

John: 14:12
Did you have any push­back from your col­leagues who were just strict­ly psy­chol­o­gists?

Diane: 14:18
And then now in the ener­gy world and in the Shaman­ic world for over ten years and not very many of my col­leagues know because I just don’t I just don’t feel like Mhmm. I wan­na get into it with them or if I per­ceive that they might be opposed to it or judg­men­tal of it. I just don’t both­er telling them. And then I find dif­fer­ent lan­guage when they say, how would you work with this kind of per­son? I use very gen­er­al terms. Most peo­ple are okay with the idea of ener­gy. So I’ll just use ener­gy. Oh, there’s some ener­gy that maybe they inher­it­ed. Oh, okay. We’re good with that. But if I say, your grand­fa­ther is still with you, they’re not good with that, so I don’t say it.

John: 15:02
Now that you’re expe­ri­enced, trau­mat­ic, heal­er, or so called, how would you clas­si­fy the two roles com­ing togeth­er? That might be help­ful for me.

Diane: 15:11
Oh, I would say that I’m in licensed clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy and I do a lot of ener­gy heal­ing along with that. And then recent­ly, I’ve actu­al­ly had to split and have a sep­a­rate busi­ness that is my ener­gy heal­ing busi­ness. And then with some peo­ple, I might say that I am a Shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­er. But with most peo­ple, I’ll just say ener­gy heal­ing.

John: 15:36
What reac­tion do you get from a first time client? If they come into see­ing you as a psy­chol­o­gist, you roll them over into what when you assess them, you real­ize there there’s a lot more work I can do if I put my Shaman­ic hat on. Is that like an approach that you would take?

Diane: 15:55
Yeah. That’s I I do feel into would they be open to me talk­ing about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty or ener­gy. And if I get a yes, then I intro­duce it in a way that’s appro­pri­ate for them. Mhmm. So hav­ing gone to the Both my under­grad and my grad­u­ate school were in Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ties and my grad­u­ate school. We actu­al­ly had class­es in how to inte­grate their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. So actu­al prac­tice and lots of con­ver­sa­tion in assess­ing a per­son­’s spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and bring­ing that in as a resource. Or for some peo­ple who have been harmed or had neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences in their reli­gion, then how to help them heal from that and find a pos­i­tive kind of form of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty if they’re open to that. But it’s real­ly all about sens­ing into where’s the client? Where’s their com­fort lev­el? And what lan­guage can I use? And I did I’ve made a few mis­takes over the years where keep­ing my lan­guage very gen­er­al. Well, it looks like there might be some ener­gy that does­n’t belong. Would that make sense to you that you might have absorbed some­thing from a par­ent or a fam­i­ly remem­ber that we wan­na let go of and peo­ple are usu­al­ly good with that. And that might go on for a while. And then with one client, I actu­al­ly end up using the word spir­it helpers and, oh, that was it. They were done. It was such trig­ger­ing word. From their reli­gious back­ground that was there’s evil spir­its. And so just that word was trig­ger­ing. And I find that’s hap­pened just a cou­ple times where just a cer­tain word or a cer­tain label is too trig­ger­ing. So I think you def­i­nite­ly have to sense them to, like, where are they at? Where’s their com­fort?

John: 17:40
What about skep­ti­cism about your clients? Are most peo­ple agree­able or curi­ous?

Diane: 17:45
Most peo­ple are agree­able and curi­ous. Yeah. It’s a rare per­son who comes for help. Who is that closed? So there’s plen­ty of closed peo­ple, plen­ty of skep­ti­cal peo­ple, but they’re not gen­er­al­ly the peo­ple who come for help. Does that make sense? There’s some­thing in the I need help process that is say­ing I’m at my end and some­thing out­side of myself might be help­ful. And I’ve also recent­ly got­ten much, much bet­ter If I get an inquiry, hey, can you help me? I need a ther­a­pist that of doing a lit­tle div­ina­tion jour­ney to see Is this per­son com­pat­i­ble with the way I work? Will this be a good expe­ri­ence for myself and this poten­tial client? And I some­times get to know that they would­n’t be open. And then if I try to work with some­body who’s not open, to these real­ly beau­ti­ful meth­ods that I have found to be so help­ful, it’s not a good fit. I’m gonna be frus­trat­ed. They’re they’re not gonna I’m a good ther­a­pist even if I don’t do ener­gy work, but my frus­tra­tion is gonna get in the way. So I just say, hey, I’m not the best ther­a­pist for you and I try some­body else.

John: 19:03
Yeah, peo­ple real­ly do need to want to be healed. What about cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion? If you get peo­ple curi­ous about that, that you don’t look like your first nations in the hear the word shaman or those kind of dis­cus­sions?

Diane: 19:18
Yeah. And that’s a it’s such a great dis­cus­sion and it’s out there amongst the men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als who are also Shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­ers. And many peo­ple no longer use the word shaman because it is a cul­tur­al spe­cif­ic word com­ing from the Tun­gus tribe in Siberia. Mhmm. So they’ll call them­selves ani­mus prac­ti­tion­ers, which is a more gen­er­al anthro­po­log­i­cal term. So that would be one way of going about it. The cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion is an atti­tude. It’s a mind­set. So if I go study with some indige­nous peo­ple and then I just take those and I claim them as my or if they per­ceive me as, hey, you’re a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that group of peo­ple long ago or is con­tin­u­ing to hap­pen that have destroyed our way of life, tak­en our lands, and now you’re gonna come do it again. That’s a that’s an atti­tude that I’m com­ing in there and tak­ing. But if I’m invit­ed to study with a group and they per­ceive me as some­body that will be respect­ful in acknowl­edg­ing that this is where I learned, and these are the elders of the tribe. That goes a long way towards min­i­miz­ing that cul­tur­al prepa­ra­tion part of it. But the sec­ond part of it real­ly is that I find myself drawn towards Shaman­ic prac­tices that are of my peo­ple. So Celtic, where my moth­er’s fam­i­ly came from for for­ev­er is the Celtic druidic way, and I find this all drawn to that, and it it is my peo­ple. These are my I’m not appro­pri­at­ing. This is where my peo­ple come from. And from my father’s side, the Ger­man­ic Norse. So I’ve been study­ing the Norse way of doing things, Ukrain­ian. And then I also have past lives where I was in the isis got isis from Egypt. Many pest lives there. So as I study Egypt­ian, that feels com­pat­i­ble and I can feel good about that because I have asso­ci­a­tions. Me, this per­son or the soul, has these asso­ci­a­tions. Yeah.

John: 21:30
Can you speak to to some exam­ples of how peo­ple have changed or had moved for­ward from their trou­bles?

Diane: 21:39
Yeah. So one one exam­ple that cus­tomize is a woman who lost her daugh­ter as an adult or they thir­ty years old in a for­eign coun­try, and there’s some mys­te­ri­ous, nev­er real­ly found out why and how and all the sto­ry. So three years lat­er, she comes to me and just this this grief and anguish and so many ques­tions. And if I were just a psy­chol­o­gist, I would have real­ly approached it from tell me all about it and what have you done so far? Is there any­thing that helps and do more of that? There’s some basic things like self care. Which when the body is healthy, then you can tol­er­ate the feel­ings more. But from a Shaman­ic or ener­gy per­spec­tive, if I could tune into her daugh­ter and actu­al­ly facil­i­tate a con­ver­sa­tion. And so we did that, checked in, how’s her daugh­ter doing? What’s going on? What Is there some­thing that she wants my client to know about that expe­ri­ence of her death or or does she want her moth­er to be stuck in the grief? Would she like her moth­er to to fig­ure a way to resolve it? So the client invit­ed her hus­band as well and and so we facil­i­tat­ed a cou­ple con­ver­sa­tions with her daugh­ter. And it ends up help­ing real­ly relieve some of the what felt stuck. The stuck­ness of the ques­tion­ing and the grief. Like, you know, most peo­ple when they lose lose a child, that that should­n’t have hap­pened. When that’s a which feels like it should­n’t. This is Mhmm. Unfore­seen and dev­as­tat­ing.

John: 23:16
I can’t imag­ine what they would go through with that when putting myself get her shoes. What was her reac­tion when you sug­gest­ed that?

Diane: 23:23
I knew she was open to her because she said she’d spoke to a medi­um. Which in this case, the medi­um who works specif­i­cal­ly to have con­ver­sa­tions with those who’ve passed them. So I knew she was open to that sort of thing. And so her reac­tion was like, yes, please. If you can talk to my talk, it would be great. Yeah.

John: 23:45
Do you have any oth­er trans­form mis­sion sto­ries that you can share?

Diane: 23:49
Yeah. But kind of anoth­er I mean, I have black and lots. But one in par­tic­u­lar comes to mind is this client came to me. She’s a young woman, some­where in her thir­ties. And

John: 24:00
Mhmm.

Diane: 24:01
But she had some mys­te­ri­ous phys­i­cal ail­ments that doc­tors med­ical peo­ple can real­ly find a good ori­gin for a rea­son for and has some depres­sion and some anx­i­ety. So these are gen­er­al­ly things that peo­ple come to ther­a­py before. And I per­ceived that she was open to more ener­gy. So we were just we were doing basic ener­gy kinds of things. Visu­al­ized being under a water­fall of light and that kind of washed away some of the anx­i­ety or Bay is your ner­vous sys­tem. And these are effec­tive. But when we were doing them, I could per­ceive that her grand­moth­er was with her. And I threw out the idea of, hey, do you ever feel like there’s some­body with him and or that there’s some oth­er ener­gy or pres­ence with you? Is it pos­si­ble that your grand­moth­er might have just not moved on? I don’t know. It’s inter­est­ing because My mom was preg­nant with me when my grand­moth­er died. Oh, that’s real­ly inter­est­ing. So as I’m check­ing in with the spir­it of her grand­ma, I think her grand­ma’s, yeah, I stayed. I need­ed to stay and help. And so I said, well, what if we had a con­ver­sa­tion with her and she said, well, my mom would want to be here for this. So she invit­ed her mom, so we did a ses­sion. And where we real­ly talked with grand­ma and let her know, and they said things, the mom said things to grand­ma that real­ly she did­n’t get to say? Because grand­ma had died more of a sud­den­ly kind of thing, but grand­ma was able to let them know. I knew you need­ed help. You were preg­nant. And I knew you need­ed help, so I want­ed to stay and help. And then at that point, some­times the spir­it does­n’t know how to move on if it becomes time. Because now this daugh­ter was in her thir­ties and mom did­n’t need help rais­ing the child is in adults. So there was this real­ly beau­ti­ful say­ing thank you so much and it might be great for you now to go to your rest and go and take care of some things that you need take care of as a soul and so that I’m proud of that is both the peo­ple who are soul in their bod­ies, the daugh­ter and the moth­er. Felt so much relief and that they felt so much lighter and the phys­i­cal symp­toms began to remit.

John: 26:23
Now that you’ve been a psy­chol­o­gist and a a a shaman, how has your own life changed?

Diane: 26:31
Yeah, tremen­dous­ly. It when I think about I feel like every­thing that I’ve pur­suit, every work­shop I’ve tak­en, every train­ing I’ve pur­sued, every teacher that I’ve learned from has been for my own self first. And it’s very much a Bud­dhist con­cept of as we heal, it makes it eas­i­er for oth­ers around us to heal. So I’m doing all of this for my own self and then I have on the side gun. Oh, this would be help­ful for my clients too. So I still meet with my men­tor. Doris Samuel­son. She’s a she’s on a prac­ti­tion­er up in the Seat­tle area and a col­league of Bet­sy Berk­strom, who’s still my teacher. So I was meet­ing with Bet­sy Bergstrom once a week for a good long time to do per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion work, deep pos­ses­sion, per­son­al unrav­el­ing, ener­gy clear­ing, ances­tral heal­ing, all of that. And every time I go through a per­son­al ses­sion for myself, I am now more able to help oth­er clients that are suf­fer­ing in in sim­i­lar ways. So it just is it’s is it’s the best pos­si­ble sce­nario, I get healed, and then I can help oth­ers heal in the same way.

John: 27:46
For your col­leagues who are unaware what would you say to to them should Shaman­ism come up? Why would you to han­dle that express­ing what you’ve done and how you merged your prac­tice with the two and sug­gest that it might be some­thing for them or would you?

Diane: 28:06
Yeah. It’s Yeah. No, that’s a great ques­tion. The uni­verse keeps bring­ing me over the last few years keeps bring­ing me ther­a­pists like that who are ready and open. To expand­ing their prac­tice into these realms Mhmm. Into the non ordi­nary realms. And to them, I just go right into I’m still very free to tell them, like, how much fun I’m hav­ing and how how excit­ing it is and how help­ful these prac­tices are And I have, like, I have a con­sul­ta­tion group right now where I have two there’s two oth­er ther­a­pists that we get togeth­er and we talk about how we blend our ther­a­py with I’m the only one who’s a Shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­er. The oth­er two are more just ener­gy psy­chol­o­gy. So we talk about it. I have a few clients who are ther­a­pists, and I’m intro­duc­ing them to these prac­tices via their own per­son­al growth and trans­for­ma­tion. And in that way, it’s just easy because I just I just it it’s I have come to such a com­fort lev­el, but I just know these work And I’ve read the research, which there’s tons of it, there’s tons of these real­ly smart research y peo­ple who have proven that this stuff works and that it’s real. There’s a hun­dred and fifty years of research in the sci phe­nom­e­non. And then to the Clar­ivoy­ans, Clar­i­vau­di­ence, and remote view­ing these kind of things, speak with a dear­ly depart­ed So I feel very com­fort­able because I haven’t read the research and I keep look­ing at the new research. If I come across though. Let like, your sce­nario of him at a par­ty, and he’s a ther­a­pist, and I don’t come out and say, oh, you know, I do this cool stuff. But let’s say that maybe some­body brings up Shaman­ism or ener­gy heal­ing. I what I could I don’t know that I’ve done this, but this is what I would like to be able to do and that would be to say it’s so much fun. And it’s so much eas­i­er. I’m help­ing my clients in such an eas­i­er way because as soon as you invite in benev­o­lent, angel­ic beings, com­pas­sion, help­ing spir­its, the ances­tral heal­ing spir­it for the client, every­thing gets eas­i­er. There’s just a light­en­ing and soft­en­ing and smooth­ing out of every­thing. Thing and then open­ing for the client to start see­ing more of the truth of what’s going on. So that’s gonna be my new way of approach­ing it when I go to a par­ty and I’m asked that ques­tion.

John: 30:40
Yeah. I could­n’t think of a descrip­tion. So what do you think the future of psy­chol­o­gy is, do you think that they it will even­tu­al­ly morph into more of a ener­gy, schmat­ic, or feel­ing?

Diane: 30:54
Yeah. There’s absolute­ly a move­ment both in the med­ical pro­fes­sion towards inte­grat­ing, let’s say, east­ern tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine or AYAve­da into our West­ern med­ical mod­el. So there’s already a lot of that, but there’s also the hard­en­ing of the side that wants to just stay with the pure­ly mate­r­i­al. That’s in the med­ical, but then in the psy­cho­log­i­cal, same thing seems to be hap­pen­ing that there’s so much more open­ing for many men­tal health prac­ti­tion­ers. To go towards alter­na­tive, ener­getic, spir­i­tu­al kinds of things, which is real­ly beau­ti­ful. And I so I think that’s gonna hap­pen more and more and there’s a hard­en­ing up the, I don’t know, oth­er side, but they feel like they’re on the oth­er side. I don’t see them on the oth­er side, but that’s how they they look at us with such skep­ti­cism. The pres­i­dent, I don’t know if he’s the cur­rent pres­i­dent a cou­ple of years ago, pres­i­dent of Amer­i­can psy­cho­log­i­cal asso­ci­a­tion, came out with those ener­gy psy­chol­o­gy peo­ple need to lose their licens­es, and it’s my job to to strip their licens­es from them because they’re doing voodoo or what­ev­er. That’s not the word to use, but it was that sen­ti­ment. They’re out­side their scope of prac­tice or they’re doing uneth­i­cal things. And so I do feel like there’s that kind of divi­sion. For any licensed pro­fes­sion­al, it’s if you wan­na keep your license, that you have to go about it in ways that you are eth­i­cal, that you that you have informed con­sent, that you’re describ­ing to the client, this is what you might expect. These are the lim­i­ta­tions of what we’re doing here real­ly mak­ing sure that they are agree­able to it, that they know what’s hap­pen­ing, and that they’re agree­able to it. And, you know, what I’m hope­ful for is that peo­ple who are coura­geous like myself that will just con­tin­ue to do what your soul is safe is the right thing for you. Not be in the fear of, oh, no. I’ll lose my license or oh, no. My fam­i­ly mem­bers think I’m in the all cult and satan­ic and deemer I actu­al­ly had a fam­i­ly mem­ber say that I’m some­where mess­ing with the dev­il, which is inter­est­ing.

John: 33:18
I think the idea of the clas­si­cal approach to men­tal health, the psy­chol­o­gists, and the soci­ol­o­gist, the psy­chother­a­pists, I do like the idea that there’s struc­ture in a sense of work­ing with clients while hav­ing a scope of prac­tice. That there’s a set of ethics to sup­port a prac­ti­tion­er in the client?

Diane: 33:40
Let’s say you just you come from the you come to the Shaman­ic Prac­ti­tion­ing or ener­gy heal­ing just direct­ly that way. And there’s not that much train­ing in how to do it eth­i­cal­ly, how to do the informed con­sent, issues of mon­ey, issues of real­ly under­stand­ing what’s the client expec­ta­tion and edu­cat­ing them, because a lot of peo­ple when they’re des­per­ate and they’re going just to a Shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­er, let’s say, they’re des­per­ate for relief, and they may look to that per­son as res­cue me and not real­ize that there’s things they also have to do. Towards their own heal­ing Mhmm. And if the fash­ion like prac­ti­tion­er isn’t care­ful, they can get into and if they get into trou­ble, that’s not quite the right word. But where clients is real­ly angry or dis­ap­point­ed, where spent a lot of mon­ey and did­n’t get relief. And some of that is This is com­ing from now the clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy. There are peo­ple that tru­ly do have neu­ro­log­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ty 30s, schiz­o­phre­nia, or bipo­lar, autism, or phys­i­cal issues like what we find is they’re dis­cov­er­ing that the micro­bio­me, when that is total­ly destroyed and off, it cre­ates bipo­lar like symp­toms. And peo­ple appear very crazy. And then they can feel like they’re demon pos­sessed, then they go to a Shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­er, and and if the Shaman­ic attri­tion does­n’t ask the right ques­tions about med­ical health, then they could treat the this over­shad­ow­ing aspect, but real­ly miss­ing out on this per­son needs a lot of med­ical atten­tion too. And they need a lot of self care too.

John: 35:28
How do you receive your enu­mer­a­tion for your ser­vices? And I’m just think­ing of, Patri­cia, who’s tied to insur­ance com­pa­nies that accept her kind of prac­tice. I’m not talk­ing our trau­mat­ic prac­tice, but just a psy­chother­a­py. And and, of course, their scope of prac­tice from the insur­ance stand­point is that they’re not gonna pay for some­one for com­ing into che­man­i­ca ther­a­py. So what have you found the be the best approach? You’re work­ing with the foot on each side?

Diane: 35:59
Best approach I’ve come to, and this is I’ve con­sult­ed with there’s a woman in Mitch Mur­phy that that could be in the the refer­ral Yeah. List that She’s a doc­tor in jurispru­dence, so she’s a lawyer and she’s a doc­tor in ener­gy med­i­cine and she offers that part of her busi­ness is to help peo­ple with this kind of thing that if myself and oth­ers, there are cer­tain clients that if you’re with an insur­ance pan­el, you have to do the empir­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed treat­ment, cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, that kind of thing. And they won’t pay for and they get pret­ty upset if they found out that you were doing ener­gy heal­ing, you know. And then for I don’t take insur­ance. I don’t have that shoe because I stopped tak­ing insur­ance because I had that issue. So now it’s just cash pay. I could do what­ev­er I want, so to speak. But you still have to oper­ate with­in your scope of prac­tice. Mean­ing, I can’t just go take a week­end work­shop in Shaman­ism and start doing Shaman­ic prac­tice with the clients that’s not eth­i­cal. But I did my due dili­gence. I did my years of train­ing, and then I’m offer­ing it. But I also find that I’m I’ve decid­ed that I’m actu­al­ly split­ting my busi­ness, so I have a psy­chother­a­py busi­ness with cer­tain clients, and then I have a Shaman­ic prac­tice or ener­gy heal­ing prac­tice that’s sep­a­rate. And espe­cial­ly because after the pan­dem­ic, it real­ly opened our abil­i­ty to use Zoom and peo­ple are more com­fort­able using Zoom instead of com­ing in per­son. So I have clients in oth­er states that I’m not licensed in those states, so I can­not do psy­chother­a­py legal­ly and eth­i­cal­ly. So I can only do ener­gy heal­ing, Shaman­ic prac­tice there, or peo­ple call spir­i­tu­al coach­ing in in with clients from the oth­er state. So that’s kind of one way to to nav­i­gate that is doing two dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es sep­a­rate clients.

John: 37:51
Well, well, That sounds like a good place to end up before I start get­ting billed.

Diane: 37:57
Oh, I

John: 37:59
wan­na thank you so much. Okay. And I learned actu­al­ly, there was a few things that I learned at the ULC where it gets ampli­fied in the after the edit­ing and that but there was a few things there that I was gonna ask you, do you do Shaman­ic work with clients ani­mals?

Diane: 38:15
Not done it with clients ani­mals. I I do ener­gy heal­ing on my own ani­mals, and I have done ani­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. A lit­tle bit with client san­dals, but I don’t feel like they wan­na build for that because I’m not and not yet to the lev­el that I would like to be at in order to adver­tise myself as a ani­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tor or ani­mal a sheal­er for for their ani­mals. But I love work­ing with ani­mals, obvi­ous­ly. And they’ll just soak up the heal­ing. Yeah.

John: 38:48
I love plants. And and for me, the com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them is my feel­ing and def­i­nite­ly Yeah. Thoughts, plat­forms. And I was won­der­ing, would that be sim­i­lar to ani­mals? I’ve nev­er worked with ani­mals. That’s why I’m I’m just kin­da curi­ous as to how you approach your own.

Diane: 39:05
Yeah. You know, it’s I find it for myself, I find it eas­i­er to com­mu­ni­cate with ani­mals than with the plants because with the plants, I do just get more gen­er­al sense of feel­ing Are they thirsty? Are they too hot? But ani­mals, they’ll have a whole con­ver­sa­tion. They’re just talk­ing. They’ve been around humans enough that they’re just like, they’ll just go in to what’s going on with them and what they want and what they don’t like and they all have their own indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties. They most of it some ani­mals have been trau­ma­tized. I found that they don’t wan­na talk because they don’t trust. But it’s fun. Yeah. Our ani­mals love us so much, and and I’ve found over the years doing this work. That I will often encounter an ani­mal still in their client syn­er­gy field, that the ani­mal, its body, died, it want­ed to say, but could­n’t but spir­it stays in order to con­tin­ue to com­fort. The human, they’re just the sun and the ani­mals, they just love us so much. They’re will­ing to do that.

John: 40:07
Mhmm.

Diane: 40:08
This is fine. Yeah. This is a great con­ver­sa­tion. I’m so glad that you invit­ed me. It’s just won­der­ful. Chat with you.