Shamanic Healing: Lead With Your Heart | 054 - It Has to Be Me

Episode Transcript
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Tess Masters (00:01):
Oh, Julie, I am so excited to relax and get heart centered with you. So before we do that, I want to ask you about this. It has to be me moment when you studied psychology and then you went into shamanic healing. So what was the moment when you decided to switch gears.

Julie Hannon (00:23):
I was it was funny. I actually, I actually saw, I never told you this story. I actually saw I had my chart done when I was 40 for my 40th birthday. I'd never had any astrology done, and in the chart she said, you're going to go back to school. And I laughed. I said, No, no way. I said, I love school. I would go my whole life. I love going to school, but that's so not happening. My kids are, whatever they were, four and seven. I'm not doing that. And that was in February and in August, later that year, I decided to leave my corporate job because so many people around me were getting sick, and it was kind of this place of I have to be with my kids. I have to be with my I have this one chance. My nanny and all the universe corroborated to support me in doing that. My nanny resigned. I The thought of hiring another nanny was like over the top for me, even though I hired 1000s of people in corporate at that time. And

what was your job at that time? Because you'd studied psychology. I

have, yeah, I had several degrees in psychology, when, after I went to graduate school, I didn't have two pennies to run together. So I came back and got an HR consulting job, and then I went into biotech. HR. I was in biotech and human resources, so and I loved, loved, loved biotech, because I always wanted to go to med school. And so it was like I got to go to med school. I was terrified of organic chemistry and and my father and my high school best friend's father were both doctors, and they said, Oh, don't go to med school. You can't really practice medicine the way that we used to be able to. And so I, so I chickened out. I was pre med undergrad, and then I didn't do it, but I part of my seeing, getting my chart done was to see, like, what's going on here, because I still wished I had gone to med school when I was 40 all those years later. So you

had some regrets about that.

I did. I had regrets. And then I left my corporate job, also because people were I had been trying to find out what was next in all these different ways, even interviewing for other jobs that had a little more life balance than my startup biotech, and I, I could not find a path out. So I jumped, I took a leap of faith, actually, and it was just, it was like there were two leaps of faith that got to my it has to be me story. There was that one that like, I must leave, and it was part of me felt like, or I'm gonna die, because lots of people were getting sick around me, and I had very bad adrenal fatigue. We all know what that is now, but there wasn't a lot of information about that now then. And I had very bad adrenal fatigue, and people around me were getting all sorts of female diagnosis of breast cancer and other things and and so I took the sleep of faith, but because I'd been in HR, I had a golden parachute, so I had a little bit of a respite to recover from this, like corporate burnout. And into that space, someone handed me a book about shamanism and before and my children, as I mentioned earlier, were four and seven, and I had was spending an hour a day with them. So that was like, that was not what I wanted, and I went to the place of being curious about what was next without knowing what was next. So I literally, I had no job. I had this financial parachute. I had no nanny. I had I knew I had to support my family because I was doing that. And about three months after I left my job, somebody gave me the book about shamanism. And then about three months after that, I was going stir crazy being an at home, full time mom, and I went to a workshop with the guy who wrote that book. And then what was the book? You have to tell us the book. Now, the book was called shaman, healer, sage, yeah, and my someday book will be, I think, Shaman, Mother Crone, something like that. I'll hold you

to writing that book. Yeah, I love what you're what you were saying about being curious about what's next without knowing what's next. Yes,

well, that's part of the thing. The gift that I had of working with all these working in HR, right? Like I worked with top executive coaches in Boston, they were part of my team, my corporate team, and I'm like, help. I don't know what to do next. So, you know, fancy leadership tests, coaching, going on interviews. There was actually a job at Harvard University that I interviewed for that I was kind of excited about, but didn't get, which ended up being great, but I it was just that knowing inside my body, and I think partially because I was so stressed physically. Troy and adrenally, I felt like I didn't really have a choice. And actually, the last week I was employed there, so I tried to I resigned in March. They kept asking me to stay. My last day was May 31 because then my nanny resigned later, but they'd asked me to stay for this and stay for that, and why don't you just do this one more project before you go and it's like I've resigned, like I'm not. I need to leave. And the last week I was there, they called me into the VPS office and said somebody, somebody I had hired, actually had just resigned also to get a different job. And she had my dream job at the company, and she said, so it's yours. You can have it. It's your you know, it's the job you've been wanting for this last year, because I was, like a very, like an SVP, right? So, like, I had all these, like, they could move me around, and I would do all these different projects and initiation, initiate, initiate, initiative, not initiations. Now I do initiatives initiations. Then I did let initiate. So anyway, I I just couldn't believe that, like the universe was saying to me. Now I use the word the universe was saying, but it's like, Are you kidding? Like you're offering me this job four days before my last day, I can't I said, I can't take it. They said, No, you should sleep on it. I said, No, I can't take it. I can't do it. I've been resigning for four months, and I, I will never get this summer back from with my kids ever. And so I will call you in the fall if I, if I need you know, like, if that's what I would need to do, but I, I can't do it. I need to, I need to spend the summer with my kids. So

you are really listening to it does not have to be me, no and really making these heart centered decisions, yeah, about what was right for you, I want to ask you what that looked like in a practical way, being curious about what's next without knowing what was next, so that we can grab some of This from you, because I think this is something that we all struggle with. I know that I certainly do like when you said that, it just pierced my heart. I went, Yeah, whoa. You can do both, yeah. What did that look like for you on a practical level? How did you explore your curiosity about what's next without feeding the terror of not knowing what was next.

Well, I was 40 years old, so I'd been in human resources since I graduated college and and I entered the job market at a time when there were a lot of layoffs that hadn't been I actually started to think I was like the Grim Reaper, because I, like when I arrived, I worked at, I worked at the Bank of Boston, first International Bank of Boston, which was, like 200 years old when I started working there. And when I arrived, we did had the first ever layoffs in 200 years, and I was in charge of them. And so I, I did that for a lot of my career. Like they would fly me to places to fire somebody who'd worked for the company for like 30 years, and I did coaching programs to help people in Career Transitions after that they were laid off. So I knew from experience that people always end up better off. Like I had a lot of practice on the giving end of the Out you go. And I knew every with every part of me, that it was always a good thing. So that was one thing. So I would say a little bit was practice, right? Practice taking a leap of faith, and then, and then, know that you get caught. Part

of it was the little everything is happening for you, and

everything is happening for you, even the things that don't look like it at that moment.

Yeah. So you had a lot of faith. I

had a lot of faith. And actually that's something that I've been really curious about now as I teach in my own in my own private school. So I went on to teach for the Harvard University of energy medicine after I left my job. So it was, I got to work at Harvard anyway, so it turned out, but I, but I have come to understand that not everybody has faith, and I've had faith since I was a little person, like, I don't remember not having faith. So it's a funny even people that I think it only makes sense to me, like, in a intellectual way that they would have faith, and they're not sure, when I ask them about it, like, how do you get through that thing that you're doing without faith?

So you don't even remember where that came from and that you had it since you're a little girl, yep. What is that faith look like for you? Is it? Is it that you're very clear about what's yours to hold and what somebody else's to hold? Is it that you're very clear about what you're capable of doing and what you want what? What does that feel like for you, like as a little girl, as opposed to now,

I think as a little girl. It felt like nature was my friend, and I could ask for things from nature and have them. Wasn't. It wasn't about things. It was actually more about I trusted the natural world and I didn't. I grew up, my I was raised, I should say I was raised Catholic. I did not believe in a punishing God from the time I was small, that never made sense to me. And eventually I left the church because it was like, I'm sorry. I can't, I can't. God doesn't punish people, but just just doesn't, doesn't align in my belief system, if God, you know. So so there was a little bit of we were, you know, we would say bedtime prayers when I was growing up. So it was like faith was in my house, not the way I had it, because I would say we lived by the ocean, and I had to walk home from town, from school, you know, the long walk and and as you get closer to the ocean, it gets windier, you know, because you live in Melbourne, so it was always cooler. I would be walking home from school thing, I'm going to swim when I get home, and then it'll be cold. So I would sing to the trees and make up songs and talk to the trees and ask them to not to, like, keep me out of the wind or and I would literally watch, like a cartoon, the leaves would fall down in front of me. And it would be quiet, like I could see them moving. They would fall down. I know it sounds pretty out there and far fetched as I'm saying it out loud. I've never told somebody this story, no. And then what I'm hearing

is just you were really tapped into energy, yeah. Way to say it, yeah.

And then I and then I would think that, I would think that I was making it up. So I would turn around and look behind me, and they would start blowing again. So it was kind of like walking in the eye. It wasn't a hurricane, you know, it was just wind. But, you know, it was like walking in the middle of this, like the island of the trees, talking to me, and I would say, I love you, like in the songs, I love you. Thank you. I'm so grateful. Could you please do this? And then I would tell my parents, and they'd say, No, that's so cute. That's not real.

So when you got this book about shamanism, yeah, and there was something in you that went, yeah, it it was, Did it feel almost like you were returning to this thing that you always knew inside of you was, was you?

Yeah, and I had done a little bit before I had children, and like 1010, or so years before this moment, I hadn't studied with some Native American Shaman. I'd done some sweat lodges vision quest, you know, like, so I had dabbled a little bit, but then I got married, and I got and I have this very big job. I was the employee number 140 at a company that we grew to 2500 in less than eight years. And I was the first HR person hired there. And the last two years of my job that I that one that I just mentioned that I left, I was in charge of layoffs sort of seasonally, so they brought me back from my maternity leave with my second kid early to help people leave the company, restructure, reshape, etc. So I'm an expert in that. And when I got that book, it felt like the book is like a combination sort of applied practices and journal entries and personal story and the I think the first page of it, I bet I have it right there. I do. I think the first page of it is a journal entry, like the opening thing. And it could have been my journal. It was, it was, it was sort of not that I had gone to Peru and for 30 years and studied with the shaman. It just felt so resonant with me.

So you really leaned into that Yep, and you went and studied yep with all of these incredible people, including the author of that book. So what was the next? It has to be me. Where you went from studying to going. This is my life, my life's work. Now,

it actually took a little bit longer I knew I had to after I went to that introductory weekend in November that I mentioned I knew he talked about the school at a lunch break, the author of the book, I didn't even know there was a school. And I'm like, Oh, I have to go to that school. I I'm not a shaman. I'm not going to be a healer. That's not my path. But I must go to that school and and I came home and told my husband, and he said, That's funny, honey. How are you guys? Okay, it's and it's, um, you know, it was $10,000 and, like, two days later, one of my colleagues called me and said, Hey, there's this piece of work, doing some change management training and going out and doing blah, blah, blah, and I don't want to do it. Do you want to do it? It. It's about $10,000 I'm like,

Yeah, I'll do that. Oh, wow. And

then I joined the school, and I still went. And then you could go as, like, the personal, just for you, just for tests, not tests, the become a shaman school, just the regular, like, heal yourself, patient, heal thyself. So I was gonna, I did the personal part. And then I'm like, oh, and then you could go, you went for the first half of the week and or the or the whole week, and the second half of the week was about the shamanic training part, and I did the first half of the first week, and I'm like, Oh no, no, I have to do the whole thing, still not thinking I was going to do a be a practitioner. And

what was it in you that was going, No, no, no, no, no, that's not the path. I'm not going to be a healer. I'm not going to be a practitioner. What was it in you that was speaking to you? Fear loudly about that, about the

I think, I think fear and and also, you know, now I would say, in other lifetimes, I've been killed for being a witch or a medicine woman, right? You know, but, but it was really, also it wasn't logical. The people who when I was going to the school, it was really a very big, big school, big classes and all that. And a lot of the people in the in the school were doctors or acupuncturists or massage therapists, or they knew what Reiki was, which I had no idea what that was, or they, like, they had healing practices. And I was an HR person, you know, like, I was a corporate executive,

a bit of, like, imposter syndrome,

not an imposter, but just like, that's not my path. I like work with executives and leaders, and I train leaders, and I have and even when I left my job, a friend of mine and I both left at the same time, and we and we've had a little meeting said, are we sure that we're not losing our minds because we're leaving at the peak of our earning potential? Are we sure that we're not going crazy? So I wasn't sure that I wasn't crazy, like I knew I had to go to the school, but I didn't, I didn't know that I was going to change my whole life, and

just thinking about what you were sharing about your parents, when you would talk about how you were talking to the leaves and singing to the trees and nature, and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Did some of that programming in your family of going in the traditional path Your father was a doctor. This is how we practice. This is the rules of our family, just like all families, right? Yes, yeah, did that play a large part in you feeding that narrative of, no, that's not the path. That's not my path. I'm a nature person. This is my identity, well,

and also the path of you get an education in a real school, and a good school, you know, like, you know, I went to college and they had and you went to Columbia, really reputable, right? Incredible school. And when I went, that was for graduate school, and when I went to undergraduate, and my uncle, my dad's brother, was helping me, he said, You should just go to a state school, because, you know, you're going to get a graduate degree. I'm like, How do you know that? He's like, you're a hand you're Hannon, you're going to get a graduate degree. And I was like, Oh, so it's very much about education. And you know, three of six kids were Doctor nurses, you know, medical people. So of my in my dad's family. So my mother was a lawyer and went back to when she went back to school full time, when we when we were, when I was little, she got her law degree.

So very traditional container that you had been living in. Okay, so what was the it has to be me, where you gave yourself permission to step into this other container, yeah,

so it was straddling for for first, it was straddling both worlds, right? So now I'm in school to study energy medicine, energy healing, and I, because I have this other background of college and education, I'm a very good student, and I do all my homework and I followed the rules, and I started seeing miracles with my homework, right? So every class, you have to see 10 people practice on 10 different people, and you have to do this practice and then the next practice and layer them. And people were getting better and having life changing experiences from a few visits with the with me, who was just learning. So it was like, Huh? And when I went back, I think I mentioned this story to you another time, this little piece. So I went to the first half of the first week, and then I wanted to make up, to catch up, so I could be with my classmates the whole time. So I went to another state. Went to Wisconsin, actually, to take the second half of that first training and flew through Chicago, which is where my family's from, and my mom came and met me at the airport to have lunch because I had a big layover. And she's like, wow, what's going on with you? You look so good. And I said, Mom, I found my med school. I'm not going. I don't want to go to med school anymore. So it was that place of like watching it happen and thinking, Well, I still don't really know if I'm going to be a practitioner of this, but it really does work. And I have wanted to be like a doctor, so to speak. I've wanted to help people be well and have joy and have health my whole life, like I always knew that, since I was a little kid. So so it felt like I found my medicine, and that was the and then, and then, as I came to the end of school, and I was sort of like starting my web page. And you know, you're, you are like the to me, one of the masters of tech and getting all this beautiful stuff, and I know you have a big team, but very

Unknown (20:43):
kind, right? But I'll take it from you. Thank you, yeah,

but I, but you know, was not, it's not that long that we've all been good at this. And so I was sort of figuring out my web page and and my kid got sick with Lyme disease, and he hadn't grown in a year or gained any weight in a year, and he was six, so not growing or gaining any weight is not a good thing. And and he got better through with me doing work on him, and he became my project. And for a long time, the first few years, my project, my my practice, was helping people parents with kids with Lyme, and helping people with Lyme get better from Lyme because there was an Lyme literate doctors around the Boston area would send people to me and say, the only people who ever get better from Lyme are people who see a shaman, and there's one over there, so go see her. Oh,

so being able to heal your son and all of these other people's sons and daughters? Yeah. Was that real? That was the sort of the portal, for want of a better expression of you really claiming your identity as a legitimate healer.

Yeah. And the other thing, I'm so glad you asked that question, Tess, because the other part of it was when you step onto the shamanic path, you make one agreement, and it's a reciprocal agreement. And the agreement is that you make in in this realm of working with energy and matter, is that you when you call spirit, spirit answers 100% of the time. So that's the one part, and the reciprocal part is, when Spirit calls you, you answer 100% of the time. And as a human, you can negotiate and say, Okay, I know that I have to be on test this podcast, but can we wait for a month or, you know, like, Could we do it? This is the like, the opportunity of a lifetime, but I just need a few more weeks or another minute to get myself together so you can negotiate with spirit. I'm making you Goddess at this moment, and but you, but you have to answer 100% of the time. So the other thing that was happening was that before I graduated from the school, they asked me to start teaching as faculty. So and I was had made this agreement with spirit. And for me, that was like, spirits calling me to do this thing that I don't know, that I don't even know. Like, I don't really know if I want to do it, but I have to say yes. So it was like, also that was happening at the same time. Of, like, this is something that you know inside you and around me, my classmates were like, how did you get that? Like, we want that you don't even want it. Why are you getting it? So it was a little bit of, it was a little bit of like, I'd it was like, I knew I had to step out in order to step in order to get the next thing. I stepped out of my job like I couldn't. I had tried for two years to get the next thing in my job as an HR person, and I couldn't find it. And then I stepped out and got that book, and then, and then I actually did consult an HR for six years after I left my full time gig so I could, you know, grow a practice and figure out what what I was really doing and support my family. And and then I

in transition, yeah, yeah. So I want to ask you about this really big focus of your work that I find so beautiful and incredible, which is this practice of heart focused listening that you teach so beautifully. So can you share with us your perspective about why it is so important to be doing this? Yeah,

I'm going to take a breath in my heart and tell and I'll tell you answer from my heart. We live in a world that is so intensely mind focused. My the teacher of my school used to say where or his mentor actually used to say to him, we're over schooled and under educated. And it's like we don't, we don't ask people, What does their heart want? What's their heart. Longing. What's your soul's longing? We say, What do you think? Right? And even when you say, what do you feel? People don't go close their eyes and go into their body and ask their body, what does your body feel? Test like? I mean, you would do that and you ask, I've heard you ask that question, what does your body want? What's your body's intuition? But there's not a connection to this place that is our curriculum, our guide, our North Star, our soul. You know, I think Gary Zuko was the first person who said, seed of the soul is in your heart, but in the shamanic world that actually that's where the seed of who you are is, the seed like we plant in a garden, is right behind your heart center, and it's and you have to be there to be here. And until you can clear your mind in this lineage that I studied, you clear your mind so that you can access the wisdom of nature. You take a seed in your heart, and then when those two things have happened, then you act, then you move down in and out into the world. But first you have to, you have to let go of like I always say, move your mind to your heart. Take a seat in your heart. Because another one of my teachers says, your mind will always lead you to a bad neighborhood. So why would you follow it? We have all these patterns of, you know, you said it so well, the programming in your family, in my family,

yeah, we all have that. I mean, you've been inside of my health programs, right? Yeah. I say our now, right? Because we all take ownership of them in that community where it we talk a lot about this, about the narratives and the programming that happens in every family, in every family, to families. And you know that old adage of your family knows how to press your buttons because they installed them. We we then have to give ourselves permission to be listening to our hearts, as you say, and staying present with that yes and so, you know, often we are either past focused or or, you know, wanting a redo, so to Speak, and not being present or looking at being future focused. Yeah. So can you share with us some of the strategies that you use in your practice with your community to help us get there, to help us connect with that place that you're talking about, so we can be listening to that. Yes.

So one of the I'm just going to take a second to ask myself if I should say this. So part of the medicine, if there is medicine, a wisdom of the Wisdom Teachings is that this place of really access to really access your heart, you want to move out of your body, mind and so much of what we're taught now, when I went to graduate school, actually, I wrote my thesis on spiritual development in adults and and my advisor said there's no such thing at that time, I was like, Okay, well, I'm, that's what I'm going to write about. So we're going to, I'm going to convince you that's, that's the thing so, but now we know there's a mind body connection. You talk about it, we all talk about, there's no like doubting about that. And what I'm saying is that energy informs matter, and that between energy and mind, body is soul, and the seat of your soul, remember, I said, is in your heart. So the way we can quiet our mind and access our heart is is twofold. There's the to the tool that I've shared with you inside your community about heart focused breathing that you mentioned and bringing your attention to your heart and bringing gratitude there. And the other is through ceremony. And ceremony can be a gratitude practice or which maximizes the ability to receive that guidance from spirit, from faith, from having faith. So when you open your heart, then you start to realize that we're connected. So I'm sitting here on the East Coast, near Boston. You're sitting in Australia. We might as well be sitting in the same room. We know our connection so deeply, and it transcends the technology that brings us together. Yes. So. And as I say it, getting goosebumps all over my whole self, and that place of knowing that that comes from our heart connection and the heart's clarity of, you know, it's this, it's almost the same kinds of sensations of people, even in the programming of whatever experience. Experience you've had in your life up until this moment. You know when to cross the street, because you see somebody coming. Some part of you is like, Oh no, I need to cross the street now, even if you never saw that person, some part of your the animal of you says out to please, oh, just, just don't make eye contact. Look down, turn right, drop your phone and be busy whatever. And those places are those intuitions are the knowingness in our heart that we have been trained to override by school and the and the program that is fit in. Do it like everybody else. Conform. Don't stand too out too much. Yeah,

what's coming up for me as I'm listening to you is what you're describing to me sounds like intuition. And so how would you differentiate those two terms between intuition and heart focused listening

in in my world, in one of the access places to your intuition is your heart, okay, so if you get my what they call them opt ins, if you get my opt in, it's setting a heart focused intention. My current opt in on my website. If you

Unknown (31:24):
want to put a link to that,

I would, I would love to. It's, it's a guided heart practice to Let your heart speak to you about what's the intention you want. So we're recording this on a couple within 2436 hours of the new moon, which is a time with when I host ceremonies for people to set their intentions. Because historic, historically, that's not the right word. The moon. Energy wants you, supports you in setting an intention energetically at the new moon, time when it's dark, think of like, you know, you plant seeds in the dark, you go into the womb, you like, go in, and that's when you plant like in that dark is where the magic comes. So you listen to your heart, to set a heart focused intention. And your heart is the is the doorway to your intuition, one of the doorways.

Okay, so it's one of the doorways. Okay, I love, I love. I love that I've got that clear in my in my mind, in my heart now. So how do you lead people through setting a heart focused intention? Can you lead us through that? Sure,

like the three minute version. We should do a three minute version. Yeah, let's do it. So we're sitting together, Tess and I on video when we record this. So I'm going to, I know she's wearing glasses, so I'm going to ask her to take her glasses off, and I'm going to ask all the listeners who wearing glasses, because I want you to close your eyes and don't do it if you're driving you remember. And the reason I ask you to take your glasses off is because it already changes your perspective of not looking so even if you don't need glasses to see like I wear glasses sometimes for the blue light, if I take them off, my already have sent a signal that I'm not using my eyes. I'm looking differently so and then I invite people to close their eyes, if that's available to them, and move their attention inward and their vision down. And some people like with their eyes closed, can sort of cast their glance down the end of their nose if it's not available. You to close your eyes. And I don't want you to do this if you're driving either. Then soften your gaze and blur your vision a little bit, looking down, sort of open your eyes a little bit if it feels like I can't close my eyes. That's not safe. So then, as you're looking down and in and starting to notice your heart. First, I want you to notice your breath. Just notice it. It's almost impossible to not change it as soon as I say, put your attention on it. But do your best. And then imagine on your next comfortable inhale, whenever that is, that you could breathe in through the crown of your head. So you inhale through the top of your head, and you inhale, inhale, inhale, draw the energy down and exhale through your heart. And then do it again. And if it's easy for you to breathe in through the crown of your head and exhale through your mouth, this time, do that inhale through your nose. But your attention is on the top of your head, and you're moving your mind to your heart. And then imagine that you're exhaling through your heart. And do that one more time on your own rhythm, inhale, mind, exhale, heart, mind to heart. And then if you're having any trouble keeping your attention on your heart, or even if you're not, maybe lay your hands on your heart, and this is your heart center. So I say your heart. And sometimes people put their hand over on their left side like they're saying the Pledge of Allegiance in America, but there's no heart over there. Your heart is just just behind the bottom of your sternum, sits right on top of your diaphragm. It's a smidge. The left for most people of center, but lay your hands there right on the center, and now all your attention is there, and you breathe in and out of your heart. Imagine with your attention on your heart, that you can feel the connection to your heart and that this is the center of you.

(35:29):
And sometimes, as I do this, as I get really centered in my heart, I can start to feel the like gentle rhythm of my heart. Sometimes it feels like my heart gets bigger almost, or like there's a pounding or, Oh, hello heart, until you could say hello, heart, and then I want you to bring up a wave of gratitude. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, heart. And fill that space that's in your heart center, maybe under your hands, if they're piled up there on your heart, fill that space with gratitude. I'm grateful for this moment. I'm grateful for this connection. I'm grateful for this moment to breathe and remember my heart, to feel this connection to my heart. Maybe you're grateful for the dog that wags their tail when you come in, or a loved one, or flowers or warm air on your face. Grateful and then, with this tremendous feeling of gratitude and all your attention and your breath moving in and out of your heart, ask your heart for the clarity of an intention right now, for this new moon, what do you want to in this out of time place. What's your intention for this day, for this practice? What are you grateful for? What do you want more of? And whatever I said, as soon as I said, What's your intention, it came right up there for most people. And as soon as we start to think, what's what's my intention? Blah, blah, blah, then take a breath through your top of your head again, exhale through your heart, and just put all your attention on the next inhale into your heart, and ask your heart one more time, anything else I need to know about this intention.

(37:20):
And then, because we're with tests, you can keep that heart center, keep one hand there, move the other hand just beneath your rib cage, sort of just beneath your diaphragm, on your tummy, your stomach, literally, your gut. Ask your gut, what's the gut feeling about this message from your heart, if you were to expand it and get a little more clarity from your gut about how this will nourish you, this intention, this intuition, how will it nourish you right now? And then, we trust our gut too, and it comes so quick. That's the other thing about these messages. They come so quick. They're like a flash of lightning or camera flash. They're so quick. And we dismiss them because we are not practiced sometimes, and then come back to present. And sometimes I have people just sort of literally blow the intention into the palms of their hands, like they're filling it with water. So they blow it in, and then bring it back into your body, so you like, give it to your hands as a gift, as a present in the world. And then you draw it back into your heart, so you can really feel it and receive it, receive that intention, and receive it in your belly too. So you just like, oh yeah, this is yummy. I love this. It's so yummy. I want to remember it only took six breaths to get there.

Oh, thank you. I love that. It only took six breaths to get here. And how does your what does your gut say about what your heart is indeed, yeah, it they're. They just became so connected, yeah,

well, and they are because you, because that was your what else would you say about it? I don't want to cut you off there.

No, not at all. Just well, when, when you just allow your heart to speak to you and then your gut to speak to you, it's just interesting how quickly the mind wants to intervene and tell you that it's wrong, or tell you that you're not allowed to be feeling that, or you know, or something like, my mind wanted to interject, but because the heart and the gut were aligned, were bedfellows, or were allies, or whatever words we want to use, my mind wasn't as powerful in that moment, so I was able to just go, no, no, this. Is right. This is absolutely what's right. Yeah. So listener, I would love to hear what that experience was like for you, because it was, it was it was really strong for me. So thank you for that. So another thing that I love about your teaching is that not only do you teach people to be connected within themselves, but also to be constantly connecting with the world, with nature, with community, with others. You were speaking about this earlier, about how you knew that inherently as a child, and then you returned to really putting that into your moment to moment practice. So what's something that we can be doing to tune in to community, to greater energy to other, to everything, is that the right way to say it? Yeah,

you know, it's so funny. It's changed so much. I think that's I started to say this earlier. And part of the thing that's challenging for me right now, even in my teachings, is that we've become
enamored, I guess is a good word, enamored with the data. Diet, so much information we can get so we can learn. You know, like I am a learning junkie. I said that earlier, I love school. I would study forever. I just think it's so fabulous, and I'm so curious and and yet we need to listen to our hearts and and I love I've listened to several of your podcasts, and I love some of the things that are coming forward with research now, and even some of the teachers that I study with who are publishing the science of I call it magic. They call it miracles, or medicine, or like all the things that happen to you when you breathe in and out of your heart, like the your hormones change your health changes your you know, you actually produce happy hormones that are antidepressants. Like, there's they've studied all these things, and yet these practices are thou like 30,000 years old. So why did I say about the data diet? Because you asked about community. And I you know when COVID happened, when the pandemic happened. I started leading, offering free meditations every day live. I did it actually six days a week at the beginning, took Sunday off for myself, and then I flipped it and did Sundays for everybody for like, four and a half years or something. And I now I do drop in occasionally and do them, because it's so important to connect to love with each other. And so we did gratitude today, because Gratitude is the ultimate state, state of receiving. But part of my work in the world is like, connect to love and nature and your connection to Source, whatever that is. And some people find it in in nature. They like, you know, when somebody I remember a man who was a truck driver who came to study with me because he was having these crazy experiences with a friend of his, and he didn't know how to make any sense of them. And he walked into class the first time and he said, I'm not a tree hugger, and I just want you to know I'm not hugging any trees. I said, That's great. That's so great. And by the end, and so the first time, I told him to go out and talk to a tree in that first class that he should go out and get a message from a tree. He said, I told you. I said, Oh, I know. But you've been talking about how much you love the birch trees, so why don't you just go stand, pick one that's your favorite and go stand next to it and just note, look at it, notice whatever you notice about it. And by the end, there was a four weekend series over a year. The last weekend of that series, was at a different location, and he called me and he said, I feel really bad that I'm not going to see my tree. Do you think it's okay if I go by your house before class and give my tree a hug?

(44:16):
So we all live on Earth? I'm at least for now, at the time of this at the time of this recording, listeners were all living on Earth, and so whether you own the or steward the prop, however you wherever you live on Earth, there's a patch of dirt somewhere nearby. Go stand on it. That's one way of connecting. And then invite a connection through your feet, which route into this earth, to a friend of yours or a non friend of yours, to ask for a message of what, what you're grateful for, or to send them a wave of love, because you're thinking of them through the earth. So, so we're all connected. You know, in. It, yeah, yeah. And

we, we get evidence of this all the time, yeah, you know, where you think of somebody and they're thinking of you across the world at the same time, and you both pick up the phone to speak to each other and go, I was just about to call you. I was just thinking about you, you know. And we, we often dismiss it as tree hugging, fruit, loop, Crystal fruit, fruit, whatever. I don't know whatever term people use, right, right, but, but the the reality of what you're talking about is alive every day. I mean, I certainly experience that on a daily basis,

right? And the more you practice or say yes to it, the more you'll experience it Yes. So that's what we want to say to the listeners, is like, there's a great prayer. I think it's Annie Lamott. She wrote a book called help. Thanks. Wow. Best prayer you'll ever have. I don't know if that's the subtitle, but the title is, help. Thanks. Wow. So you say to spirit or nature or the universe, help and and for whatever you need or want, you just say, like a sincere prayer, help, which could be as much as just saying Help, or it could be like more literal, help me with this blah, blah. And then you say thank you, as if you've already received it. And then when you receive whatever guidance comes. You say, wow, wow. And so that that's kind of my it has to be me moment, like I knew I had to leave that job, and I asked for help, and I said, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And even the day that they offer me the job, I'm like, Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I must be doing something right, but I gotta get out of here. And then I spent most of the next 10 years going, Wow, I can't believe this is my life. Wow. How did this happen? Wow, I travel the world to teach shaman school, really, like I lead trips in Peru for hundreds of people pit, really, Hello.

Wow. I love it. So one of the things that you and I have spoken about before is clearing the pathway so we can be future informed, rather than past driven. Yeah. So how do we what are some ways that we can clear the pathway?

Well, one of this is something that I still so you mentioned that I have a lot of degrees in psychology before, when I was sort of thinking I was going to med school, I was going to be a psychiatrist, because I wanted to help all the teens, because I got dumped by the roadside by my parents, practically speaking. I loved my parents. They did a really great job, but I so I don't want to diss them from their grave, but they but what I was going to say in psychology model, our past leads to an inevitable future, or our past, even some of the conversations we've had here, like the programming of our parents is what makes us who we are, and in a way, it does on and we are in the program of our life until we say, no more programming. No, no, I that's a program, and it's a familiar program, but it doesn't get me the I'm done creating that life. I want to create a new life. So some of the so clearing the pathway. You know, I have this great, roomy quote on my website. It says, your job, my job is not to seek for love. My job is to seek for all the obstacles you have built against it. So it's like how you discover those places where you've put walls or barriers or built a moat around your castle, and you say, Okay, well, you can be in the castle with that great big moat, and it's very safe in there. Or we can start by putting the bridge down over the moat, and like, try coming out and seeing what's outside the castle, and then eventually you don't even need to live in the castle. Or the castle becomes this magical place that's connected to everything, and you can open up all the doors and windows and let everything come in to meet you there. So in that practical how we clear it? We clear it through ceremony. We clear it through guided practice. I work in the if you're working with me privately, I work in the energy body to clear I don't have my phone. I turned it off and put it away, but I would wave my phone on the video to you and say, you know, when was the last time your operating system updated on your phone. And you know, people have various answers, so it does that every day, or at least every once a week or and then I say, well, when was the last time you updated your own personal operating system for your body? People are like, Oh, I don't know. Gee, gee whiz. I don't know, but we have this software that informs. Hardware and some of it, you know very well that good sleep is so important that's because your energy body clears itself naturally if you have good sleep and update. And another way we enter update is by going out consciously and consciously connecting nature, not just shoveling and getting the dog out, like, oh my god, take the dog out in the winter. It's like consciously going out and being with nature and allowing that to connect. In some practices, ancient practices, you get up at sunrise and look at the sun as it comes over the horizon. And that's the key to health and longevity, is getting the download from the sun every day at sunrise as it crests the horizon where you live. So there's practical applied energy healing, right? That's part of what I do, and teach and mentor and shepherd and stand on mountain tops and chat about and part of it is like these other things. If, as you said, Let's go out in nature, put your feet on the ground. You know. Now there's now they sell things called earthing, but really, all you need to Earth is take your shoes off and stand on the dirt and and it doesn't have to be fancy dirt. It can just be dirt. Get off the asphalt.

Yeah, and walk on the beach. Walk on the beach. Just connect with the actual Earth. It's so, yeah, I always just feel so much better doing that. That's a that's absolutely a non negotiable thing for me every day. But yeah, yeah, it's it's so powerful. And then, of course, as you know, the food that we

Unknown (51:28):
eat is so the food that we eat,

clearing out the veils that threaten to mute our ability to feel and see and be right, right? Another thing you and I were talking about recently was the difference between doing and being Yes, and that's another thing that you're very, very good at shepherding in. Yes, yeah,

yeah. So, so our mutual friend, Mia, um, I've I've taught in her program also, and she does planning, and she always says making notes to your future self. And I say doing this work with your heart focused breathing and doing your energetic work, and clearing your energy body, and all these things are making notes to your future being. So you know when I when I don't know why the pandemic keeps coming up, but I guess maybe because I met you during that time, which was such a gift for me, it made me not go crazy. I I was prepared for that moment like I'd already been teaching on Zoom for that school for a few years, with big groups. I had a long, long time I'd started meditating when in my 20s, you know, like I went to a transformational workshop when I was a teenager, you know, like I had been preparing for that and even leading trips in Peru, there were things I had to do in my life that I absolutely hated, one of which was leading hikes. I was I would cry when it was my turn to take the hike, when I worked for the Mountain Club, I would like, literally sob while I was packing my backpack, and like I want to, and then I go, and then I go and lead the hike, and I'd come back, and I'd be a better person, happy as a clam. And then, and all those things contributed to this woman who was able to step into a role. Even being an HR executive and a leadership trainer allowed me to be step into the role as teaching for the Harvard University of energy medicine. So, so important that it's like, and that's now I'm going to circle full round when I come back to curiosity, where we started, a little bit that place of, like, when my world starts going right, I think, oh, what's going to happen now? Because if it's not going effortlessly, so I'm getting prepared for something, I'm learning something, my curriculum is being upgraded. Like, I'm getting, like, there's a bug in my program. I need to work it out so that I'm prepared for something else that's coming next that's way better than I can imagine. So our future self is calling us forward. What's happening now is preparing us for that, and our imagination is the only thing that limits us to what's possible.

Oh, gosh, what you're saying just resonates with me so deeply that every experience prepares us for the coming experiences, the next experiences. And you know, when we look back, I mean, that whole thing of hindsight is 2020,

Unknown (54:35):
it also clearly when you're

looking back, but when you're in the weeds of it, it's like, why is this happening? Oh, my God, I can't believe this is so awful, or whatever it is. Yeah, and you know what I'm hearing from you throughout our entire conversation is trusting and being present and listening with your being. Yeah, yeah, and having faith that it is happening for you, and having that curiosity about what's coming next without having to know what's coming next me, that is my big takeaway from our conversation. That is just like piercing my heart in the most beautiful way, or massaging my heart. I don't know what the words are for what I'm feeling right now, but, yeah, it's, it's so, so so beautiful. Tell me about the it has to be me starting your weekly sacred circle on Thursdays at noon Eastern.

You know, I was thinking about that. I think maybe in prep for the conversation, I was thinking, what is I'm so it started with the pandemic. Some people have been asking me, because I, you know, as I mentioned, I taught all over the world, people and asking me to teach online for years. And I said, No, I like teaching in person. I don't want to do that. And and then, and then I had a 50 person event that was planned for the weekend of lockdown, and it was global, people coming from all over the world to go to this thing, and I pivoted it and we did it online, and like, 100 people came because it was the weekend of lockdown, and everyone's like, what, what are we going to do for two weeks when we are locked up, I'll go to Julie's thing. Um, so that was it's that was its nemesis. But you mentioned about community, and it is so important. And I think this is one of the things that you've done intentionally or and beautifully, or by accident, or all of the above with the community of your of the 60 day reset. You know the community now supports each other, in addition to all the support you've made for us and that coming together of community around something that is soulful and connecting and intentionally connecting to our hearts and sacred space every week is this gathering place that I call sacred circle on Thursdays. So it's it's a place to dedicate to practicing, connecting to your intuition, because if you want to grow that you have to practice. And you know, we have, we have these. I love Jill Bolte Taylor, you know, with her two sides of the well, we all have two sides of the brain, but her story of my Stroke of Insight. And we go to school in in America anyway. Can't speak for Australia, but we go to school on the left side of our brain, which is all about the logic and the thinking and the yes bud and and its whole job is to doubt and to look for danger. But we don't spend equal time, most of us training. The other part, which is about magic and interconnection of all things and processing a million things at once, and knowing that if I leave my job, somebody's going to catch me, and it's going to be better, yeah, than I can imagine. And that's equal, equal part. And so this place of circle is this place of getting to practice equal part of the magic of like, oh my gosh, I was thinking about that, and then the whole circle was designed just for me, for my thing that I'm working on.

Like, really, how did you know that that's we needed totally

and to your point, we get better at what we practice. We get better when we practice. Yeah, and, you know, I think that's you says that practice makes progress. I

do. I do say that. Thank you. Yeah, I It's, uh, gosh, you know, we, yeah, we, we. Habits are just things we've done a lot, and so, yeah, our

mind is, and that's like the other thing, our mind has a habit that is not, that is from school or from old programs that don't work anymore, or, yeah, you know, all sorts of places of like, oh, there's a different way then you have to practice, because you can't get better at the different way if you don't practice. And

a better way for the the me of today. Yeah, you know, years ago may be outdated and may not be serving the way that your heart wants to move through the world today. Yeah? Like, oh gosh, I could talk to you about this all day long. I always close every episode with the same question, which is, which is so perfect for you within the context of this focused listening, but for somebody who has a dream in their heart, which is everybody and doesn't feel like they have what it takes to Make it happen, what would you say to them? Hmm,

it's I have like three different voices. I have my impetuous little girl says, Do it anyway. Do it anyway. Go, go, go, just go, do it. And then I have this other part that says, Get curious about why not? I. And love the part that says no, just give her a big hug, or him a big hug and say, Oh, I hear your No, so I say yes to your no. And as soon as you say yes to the No, then you usually get a yes. So that's the second one. The third one is what I know for sure, which is that when you come to the edge of all you have known, you will be given one of two things, ground on which to stand, or wings to fly. So you know, we gotcha and and if your heart's telling you to go, you know the old, old, old story of Jonah and the whale you're gonna go, and you can be swallowed by a whale and be still, end up where you're gonna go, or you could just fly, take a leap of faith. Yeah,

Tess Masters (01:00:59):
amazing. My heart is full, and I feel like a plant that's been watered. Oh, yay. Oh, thank you for this beautiful conversation. Oh,

Julie Hannon (01:01:08):
thank you for having with me. Tess, it's always such a pleasure. I just love, love. Love the space, spaces that we go together so fun. You.

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Shamanic Healing: Lead With Your Heart | 054

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Shamanic Healing: Lead With Your Heart | 054