EP 257 257 Transformative Healing with Master Shaman and Healer Michelle Hawk

In this captivating episode of the "Stuck In My Mind Podcast," host Wize El Jefe delves into the world of transformative healing with the highly respected guest, Michelle Hawk, a master shaman, healer, and spiritual mentor. Michelle takes the audience on a journey through her extensive experience spanning over 15 years, offering deep insights into the powerful realms of shamanism, alchemy, and energy healing. She shares the inception story of her own podcast, "Shaman Sister Sessions," created with her best friend Katherine Byrd. This initiative, which began during the tumultuous period of the 2016 U.S. election, aims to provide listeners with the mystical and spiritual resources Michelle wished she had during her early explorations in spirituality.

Throughout the episode, Michelle and Wize engage in an enlightening discussion about the significance of distinguishing personal energy from the collective. With eloquence, Michelle compares this skill to a farmer recognizing his own sheep among outsiders, highlighting the importance of cultivating a keen sense of one's energy body. She further illustrates how staying grounded is crucial, sharing methods such as spending time in nature to maintain presence and balance. The conversation unfolds with personal anecdotes, including a poignant moment Michelle experienced involving a stag, serving as a reminder of how nature can powerfully ground and connect us.

Adding an interactive dynamic to the episode, Wize shares the vibrancy of live podcasts by addressing a listener's question about discerning personal energy, and recounts his positive experience of reconnecting with nature during a drive. Michelle echoes this sentiment, noting the richness of outdoor experiences in nurturing a grounded state of being. Both speakers advocate the grounding benefits of simple natural engagements like fishing or touching the earth, even as the seasons change.

Michelle introduces the audience to her comprehensive offerings, including her "foundations of energetic mastery," 1-on-1 mentorship, and a 200-hour alchemy certification course set to begin in 2025. Through these avenues, she invites spiritual seekers and practitioners to deepen their understanding and capabilities. Michelle also provides a complimentary alchemy guide on her website, michellehawk.com, to support listeners in their transformative journeys.

The episode dives deeper into Michelle’s journey, recounting her early introduction to shamanism as a teenager and her subsequent academic experiences where she bridged biology with spiritual practices. By acknowledging the challenges of integrating science and spirituality, she beautifully highlights the pursuit of universal truths in both domains. Additionally, she explains her approach to untapped intuitive potential, and the importance of being a clear channel for intuitive work across the visible and invisible realms.

Listeners are offered a candid look at Michelle’s approach to spiritual mentorship, emphasizing the necessity for experienced guidance in navigating complex and unseen terrains. Her analogy of a "spiritual Sherpa" underscores the role of a mentor in safe navigation through spiritual challenges. Throughout, Michelle seamlessly ties her narratives to the empowering potential of alchemy in personal and collective healing, advocating it as a process that elevates consciousness, emotional health, and societal structures.

The episode draws to a close with expressions of gratitude and a shared hope between Michelle and Wize that the discussion will resonate with listeners on their personal paths. Wize's belief in the podcast’s subject matter reaffirms the significance of addressing skeptics' views. The warm exchange ends with mutual appreciation, and the episode concludes with shoutouts, encouraging audience engagement and emphasizing the show's commitment to exploring transformative spiritual topics. As a whole, this episode provides a

Episode Transcript

(00:42):
Welcome to another episode of Stuck in My Mind podcast. I am your host,
w I z e, and and my next guest
with over 15 years of experience
is an alchemist, a shaman, a master healer, and a
spiritual mentor. Welcome to the show,
Michelle Hawk. Hello. Hi. Thank you so much. I'm

(01:05):
really happy to be here. Oh, the pleasure is mine. I love having these these
conversations, especially when it comes to holistic healing and stuff like
that. These these are some of my favorite episodes. So how are you today?
You know, I'm great. And and it's interesting. Like, we're, you
know, we're recording November 12th. I'm not sure when people are gonna see this, but
it's a try. Well, it's they're gonna see it starting today. Oh, great.

(01:27):
Okay. Amazing. Okay. So everyone's on the the same timing page. Yes. You know,
so we're in an an interesting crucible right now in
the US, and there's a lot of emotion going on. There's a lot
of energy moving around. And Yes. And I feel really
activated in my my warriorship, my conviction,
my, you know, how I how I'm here to serve.

(01:50):
And so I'm feeling really lit up about that right now, and that's what I'm
bringing to our talk today. Awesome. Awesome. So so how
did how did your journey into Islamism begin at at such a
young age, and and what drew you to it? Yeah. You know,
so that was 2003 that I pretty much literally stumbled
into my first shamanic workshop. I was always a magical kiddo

(02:12):
as I think really all kiddos are. And, you know, a lot of
people go through this process of, you know, through
school. Hey. Sit still. Be quiet. Don't touch that.
Animals don't talk. Trees don't talk. What are you talking about? I think that that
gets trained out of a lot of people. And I,
thankfully, I I have a very supportive family of origin

(02:34):
who always encouraged me and supported me. And
I found this shamanic journey workshop when I was 15 years old,
again, in 2003. Now you can just Google shaman near me, so
it's certainly a lot easier now for better or for worse. But I
came across this class, and I attended the class. I was the
only young person there. Everybody else was a grown up,

(02:57):
and it gave me this vocabulary for everything that I already
felt to be true about the world, that everything is alive, everything is
connected through this universal life force, and that it is
possible, not only possible, but it is a good thing for us
to drop into that connection to collaborate with aliveness,
to celebrate and connect with all of our Gaian relations.

(03:20):
So it felt like coming home to me. It it just
made so much sense. So I continued my shamanic studies
through high school and university. It was a really interesting
time being in the science department at my university earning my degree in
biology while also studying shamanism and energy healing and mediumship.
That was a a fun reckoning in

(03:42):
my in my inner, my inner selves.
And now being in practice for more than 20 years, I
I work with shamanism and alchemy primarily, and I train practitioners,
and I also support people who are going through big life initiations and transformations
and want support from shamanism and alchemy in that.
Okay. Mhmm. Can can you explain what

(04:05):
alchemy means to you and how it plays a role in in healing?
Absolutely. Yeah. I see the word alchemy thrown a lot, particularly
within the neo spiritual and personal development communities, and people
tend to use it as a synonym for transformation. And that's
kind of true, but not not quite right.
It also usually is thrown around as a buzzword of meaning

(04:28):
something that's vaguely mysterious and expensive. I don't know if you've seen that
before, but it's, it is kind of
those things, but not really. And in pop culture, we tend to
recognize alchemy as the process of transforming lead into
gold. And while that is not technically inaccurate, it is a
woefully inadequate understanding of what alchemy actually is, which

(04:51):
is the transmutation of any base material into its
most actualized elevated form. And I say any base
material, so this includes our own consciousness, our emotional health
and well-being, our nervous systems, our homes, our
relationships, our lives, our societal structures and systems,
and moving them through this process of alchemy that is a very

(05:13):
logical, very sensical process of how transformation actually
works to bring these base materials into their
most elevated actualized sense, essentially the gold of their essence
and of their being. Okay. Awesome.
Yeah. What what what are some of the biggest misconceptions people
have about shamanism and and alchemy? Okay.

(05:36):
Well, shamanism, there there are certainly a lot of misconceptions about that.
Again, particularly living in North America, you
know, we have a population of indigenous
people here from many different tribes, and people assume that the
word shaman is only referring to,
indigenous people of North America in in their spiritual tradition, and that's not

(05:58):
true. So shamanism is an umbrella term used
to describe the earth based spiritual practice and and the
spiritist practices of indigenous people all over the world. There are
also shamanic practices that come from Mongolia, Siberia,
the Celtic shamanism, Norse shamanism, you know,
from the indigenous peoples of Australia and certainly all over

(06:22):
Africa. There are many different very rich shamanic
traditions. And I am initiated into
primarily my lineage that I hold. It comes from what is now Hungary,
and I've also studied in Celtic shamanism. And then I have studied and
practiced with both North American and South American indigenous
teachers as well. So shamanism, again, I use that term

(06:44):
and I get flack for it from people who think it means only
Native American people. It doesn't. And so
there's that misconception. But, again, primarily,
it's it's earth based spiritual practice of connecting with the
spirit realm. And really at since it is
ubiquitous to indigenous people all all over the earth, you know, we

(07:06):
are all citizens of earth, and I think doing it in the right way is
really vital vital to our spiritual
experience and also to our embodied experience of coming home to ourselves,
coming home to earth, and being in right relation, being in good relation
with the land we live on and with the the nonhuman
beings of this earth. I think it's vitally important.

(07:28):
So that's that's shamanism. Big misconceptions right there. And,
and again, I I view it as very valuable and very helpful and
fundamentally necessary for our healing and well-being collectively
as a species and as a planet. Alchemy,
again, misconceptions about it is is that it's it's only the
lead to gold thing. It's so much more than that. Also misconception that

(07:51):
you can just plug it in as a synonym for transformation. It's so much more
than that. It's a whole mystery school tradition. It's it's very
ancient wisdom spiritual technology that guides us through the
process of transformation, which I see honestly as as the
single most valuable tool I have in my toolkit for supporting people who are going
through really hard stuff because or or on the

(08:12):
precipice of going through really hard stuff because we've all been in I'm sure,
Wiese, you can relate. We've all been in situations where,
gosh, I know this thing in my life isn't right, and I'm so afraid
to do something different. I I feel scared. I don't know what's gonna happen.
I'm afraid of losing my home, my partner, my job,
whatever that might be. I don't know what's on the other side of that, and

(08:35):
so then we don't even step into making those changes. And then we
end up stuck in a situation that we're tolerating or that isn't really that
great because we just don't know how transformation works and we don't
know what to do. So alchemy is the road map for
that that gives us the tools to be able to say, you know what? I
know how transformation works. It might be scary, but I know I'm gonna be

(08:57):
okay because I have this map that tells me
what's going on energetically so I don't feel lost, I don't feel alone, and
it gives us tools and practices to do to engage with transformation in a
really empowered and confident way instead of feeling like we're dragged behind the car
that somebody else is driving. Okay. Alright.
So so how do you help people awaken and and sort of

(09:19):
master their their their intuitive gifts?
People, when they find me, they have usually already gone through some
aspect of spiritual awakening. So maybe they have,
had a healing crisis or they, like me, were a magical
kiddo where it never really got turned off or they've, you know, had some
some sort of awakening experience. And by the time they have found

(09:42):
me, they have also usually started some aspect
of study. Maybe they've taken some meditation courses. They have,
you know, done some training in bodywork or, you
know, or they might also be a therapist. I I have people find me who
are in, either Western Medical Practice, physicians, assistants, therapists,
social workers, some aspect of caregiving, care providing. And they

(10:05):
find me because they are
seeing that a lot of spiritual training and education and mentorship
out there try it's basically just formulaic stuff.
And not that that's necessarily bad, but anything formulaic can
only get you so far. So you can you know, anybody can go take a,
like, 6 weeks meditation course. And, okay, at the end of the

(10:27):
6 week meditation course, you might have some valuable tools, but that isn't
actually going to be helpful to your personal journey of
healing and awakening and transformation. So people usually find me after they've
been through some of the basics, and they're looking around saying, okay. I took all
the courses. Now what? And then I help people with
really deeply understanding their specific

(10:49):
gifts. And since I have over 20 years of training and
and practice, I have a ton of modalities in my toolkit. I'm able
to support people in a very individualized unique approach to
their specific healing journey to help them develop the spiritual
skills and refine their spiritual gifts to anchor
into their unique expression of medicine in the world, whether it's

(11:11):
for themselves in their own healing journey or whether they're translating that into
some kind of external service either as healing work or
as, some kind of caregiving capacity.
Okay. What what was one of the most transformative experiences
you've had in your journey as a healer?
One of the most transformative experiences I've had in my journey as a healer.

(11:35):
You know, I've had a lot, which is why I'm here specializing in
transformation, I think, because I've been through it enough times
that I started to recognize the patterns of, oh, wow. This this is
what this means. Oh, wow. This is alchemy. You know, I think
the some of the most transformational stuff
that that really rocks my world in in a very

(11:57):
meaningful way, was at the beginning of
my journey when I was a
teenager and I was in university and then going through
these really profound initiations where I was
training, you know, I was in the science department. I was earning my degree in
biology. I was doing my undergrad research in hummingbird foraging behavior, writing

(12:19):
academic papers, and also studying
shamanism and energy medicine. And for me, it was a
really interesting time of being in a
situation where I felt really disconnected from a lot of my peers because I wasn't
around anybody I could talk to. And and, again, this is very different
now. Now if, you know, a spiritual community, you can go join a Facebook

(12:41):
group. You can, you know, listen to this podcast, for example. It's a lot
easier to find our people now. Mhmm. Or go to Burning Man,
whatever the case may be. But back at the time,
I felt really alone. And that was both
a a blessing and a challenge because the obvious challenge
was I didn't have anyone to talk to really, aside from

(13:03):
people that I met in my healing courses, but also I was
a very young person. A lot of the people were older than me. It was
just I I didn't find my people. But the blessing of that
was that I really got to be very, very present
with these initiations and got to not take anything
for granted about what was what was true or not.

(13:24):
As I was deepening into my spiritual practice and
also in the science department, I I fell in love with both.
And for me, science and spirituality are 2 different systems of
investigating the same universal truths, the same cosmic truths, and they
they belong together. And that's one of the reasons I love alchemy so much is
because it is both a science and a spiritual practice. And, you know,

(13:47):
having been immersed in both worlds for so long, I see the dogma in
both. I see the dogma in both spiritual practice and in science. And I see
I see their limitations. And I also see the gifts that they have to
offer. So for me, transformational experiences are are
just being forced to be present with
myself and be alone with myself and and

(14:08):
really deeply anchoring into my convictions, my beliefs,
and my spiritual practice, and and how I see that translating into the world
through my service as a practical mystic, as a
practical energetic person and wisdom teacher.
I want nothing more than the spiritual practices that I
hold for myself and for other people to be immediately

(14:30):
applicable in my life and in the world. Because if we cannot
translate our spiritual practice off our meditation cushion, like, if those
principles don't apply in your life, they're not worth your time.
Okay. Mhmm.
Sorry. Hold on. How does

(14:50):
being a a a naturally gifted psychic and intuitive
influence your work? I think
everybody is intuitive. And,
again, we go through generally, people go through a lot of conditioning that trains
us out of our empathy and our intuition. Yeah. And,
and to our detriment, really. And I think that,

(15:14):
you know, I I happen to be very practiced at it because I
I leaned in. So I I should say it. Yes. I'm naturally gifted, but so
is everybody. I'm just, you know, have done it over and over again. You
know, and I think that it has
really supported me in my work because
there's so much in working with healing energy and working with spiritual

(15:36):
forces where we need to have a really finely tuned intuition.
And as a healer, part of what we're doing is we are
working with with the seen realms and the unseen realms.
And being able to attune and work with and invite
in these powerful spiritual forces is essential in working with
shamanic practice, energy healing practice, alchemy. All of them are mediumship

(15:59):
based practices. That that is one of the underlying principles of all
of these these mystery schools is they are necessarily plugged
into the spiritual frequencies. And so
then when we when we have a lot of trauma, when we
have a lot of stuff on top of conditioning and
layers and dysregulation, nervous system dysregulation,

(16:21):
other people's ideas, who we think we're supposed to be, quotes,
that ends up creating a lot of gunk in our field that makes it very
hard to sort through and access our underlying intuition. So as
we cultivate our intuition, it's really it's not a matter of the
messages aren't there or the the spiritual beings aren't there. They're they are there.
They're always there. But can we hear them? How skilled are we at

(16:44):
listening? Understanding, actually receiving those messages, and then
interpreting them in a way that makes sense. And that's really what intuition
is. It's just getting better at listening, getting better at receiving the
information that is already available to us about our own
health, our well-being, our spiritual nudges from our guides.
And then for those of us who are working in support of other people, receiving

(17:06):
intuition on their behalf and having and being sure that it's a really clear
message. Being an intuitive and and accessing
our own psychic power necessitates that we are very
clear channels. Because if we're not a clear channel, then we cannot trust
that the information that we're receiving and then interpreting is actually coming through a
clear filter. Is that I'm sorry. Is that why children are

(17:29):
are kinda more they're much more clearer channel than us
because of the fact that they haven't been tainted and they haven't been
programmed and they haven't had all these misconceptions
put on them? I I think, generally, yes. You know, children are
very intuitive, very sensitive, and that's
largely the reason why. They come in clear. We

(17:51):
we come in clear, and then it's usually gunk piled
on top that gets in the way. And so then there's this
process of degunkifying of how we actually come into
into our intuition. It's not that it's not there. It's just that you need to
clear the channel so that you can access it. Yeah.
Yeah. Mhmm. So what what practices or rituals do you recommend for

(18:13):
someone new to the healing arts? New
to the healing arts. Generally so I have a, a
system that I take most of my clients through, even the ones who are,
who are not new, who have been around for a while. And and I find
that when I lead my clients through these
practices, I call it, like, the ener foundations of energetic mastery,

(18:35):
even the experienced ones say, wow. I've never done that in that way before, or
here's this new layer that I never really thought about that made a huge difference
for me. So the foundations of energetic mastery, and I take
most of my clients through this, this is something I've developed over the years
of, helping people anchor into awareness and
consciousness practices to be able to sense,

(18:56):
feel, project, and direct energy. So this is like going to the gym for your
energy body. Say, for example, as a a professional athlete, you
know, let's say, like, I don't know, a tennis player.
Right? They, they still need to do all the
foundation conditioning, strength, and flexibility. And any
athlete like a a gymnast also doing conditioning, underlying foundation

(19:18):
of strength and flexibility. But then once they have this underlying foundation,
then they do other exercises that are specific to their sport to enable
them to be really, like, capable and dexterous
according to their sport. But that underlying
foundation of strength and conditioning and flexibility is gonna be
the same. So in our energy body, we do these

(19:40):
conditioning practices to train our acuity
to then apply according to our, quote,
sport of how we're using our energy and attention. So the
consciousness practices really help us, again, cultivate that conditioning
that then we can use according to whatever practices we're doing.
So that's the beginning and then working with clearing energy, how to

(20:04):
again, the de gunkifying. Right? Whether it's our own energy,
old stuff, hidden trapped emotion, tension, stagnation,
but then also other people's energies, societal conditioning,
entity attachments, whatever the case may be. So clearing and releasing
that, grounding and anchoring into ourselves, our bodies,
present time awareness into earth, resourcing ourselves, nourishing

(20:27):
and cultivation to increase our capacity,
hold more energy, and then creating a protective field. And so the
that's your 30 second rundown on the the foundations of
energetic mastery, but, obviously, I I take a long time bringing my
clients through that. Okay. Mhmm.

(20:47):
How how can someone begin to discover and
kind of learn how to start mastering their their
abilities? That's a good
question. Usually, honestly, people already
have little glimmers of an idea of what that actually might be.
And I think that when when

(21:09):
people come to me, often people come to me
wanting to know what the end is already. And this is a
universal temptation. I've been there myself over and over repeatedly.
And I have found that,
there's this interesting balance between the area
where people tend to have a lot of resistance ends up being a really

(21:32):
juicy area for them to lean into and ends up being part of the
medicine that they often end up offering because it's
the hardest one knowledge. And it's, you
know, it's like we get to become an expert in the thing that we
most need. And, and I think about my
own relationship to transformation, you know, we've we've briefly touched upon

(21:54):
alchemy a couple times in this conversation already. I can really
distinctly see in my life, like, pre alchemy,
post alchemy, like, how I was relating to healing and transformation
because it made such a profound difference for me in my
life. And I look at my some of my own medicine, my
own resistance was really around change and how I engage

(22:17):
with change and and felt, you know, afraid and resistant and push it
away and tried to control it and grip it very tightly. And
so that was some of the biggest medicine that I needed to learn. And now
going through the process of alchemy and and going to my study and practice of
alchemy, now I have that tool in my toolkit, and it is
hard won wisdom, yo. It is, like, it is in there. So I look

(22:38):
at as people are looking at mastering their gifts and wanting to
anchor into their gifts, it's really it's very much
a process of, of understanding
the initiations that you have been through already and working through
the initiations yet to come and coming into really,
like, a a conscious I'll say a conscious working relationship with

(23:02):
your medicine, that is a big growth area that I see for a
lot of people where people have these innate
abilities or innate understandings, but they can't they don't
necessarily have it anchored into their conscious awareness. It's not in their
mastery yet. So I bring people through both through my
1 on 1 mentorship and then also through alchemy. I I have a 200

(23:24):
hour alchemy certification course that I've developed and teach, and
it's a year long apprenticeship deep dive into the mysteries, and it's all
about working with these principles of transformation and applying them in ourselves,
our lives, and in the world. And so I bring people through these
really deep initiations that are all about consciously
anchoring into their own mastery and developing fluency

(23:47):
and dexterity with their innate raw
connection. And I think that that's a lot of it there because, again, it's
like you're already magical. Like, if you hear listening, you're already a magic
person. You're already connected. You're already, you
you have this in you, but it might be just raw right
now. You you need to sand it out a little bit. You need to refine.

(24:10):
You need to develop skills. You need to, you know, just like a baby
learns how to walk. Like, they it it just takes time and
strengthening and support. And you're gonna fall down a few
times, and we always do. But having somebody in your corner to help
guide you, give you practices to learn to, again, increase your
strength, increase your capacity, help you ask

(24:32):
the right questions. That's a really good one too because sometimes people get really
frustrated when they feel stuck. They feel lost. They don't know what to do, where
to go. And then you have somebody in your corners who's been there already.
Like, I've been here over 20 years doing this, so I I ask the right
questions I'm like, hey. Have you tried this? Let's look at this
way. Here we go. Here's a practice for that, and then,

(24:53):
developing your skill. But
many people many people were
are uncomfortable with change. That's so that's kind of why they
stay stuck in the same place is because they're
they're afraid. They're they're afraid of the change that might happen.
Yeah.

(25:17):
Can can okay.
Okay. Wait. What is the significance of mentorship in your
work, and and how do you approach guiding others?
Mhmm. I am so grateful to
have had the mentors in my life and in my practice that I have
had. And I see my my shaman mentor

(25:40):
that I have been working with for a very long time who initiated me into
the shamanic lineage that I hold. I met her in 2009,
and she has been a very consistent force in my life. So I
see having had the mentors that I've had,
it has made all the difference in the world. And,
just before you asked me about mentorship, you said people feel fear and

(26:02):
resistance to transformation. And I would say, you know, a lot of people through
spiritual initiation, it's it can be very
intimidating. It can be very scary. And,
whether or not you ever plan on offering this
as a practice, whether you're not you're like, oh, I wanna go practice
energy healing in the world or whatever the case may be.

(26:25):
It can be very, very intimidating
because, you know, we're working with these very powerful unseen forces,
and we're working with our own deep dark stuff. We're working with our trauma.
We're working with our healing. We might be working with past life influences. We might
be working with, an unwelcome or unpleasant
spiritual forces, entity attachments, psychic attacks,

(26:47):
all sorts of things. And I say that not to scare anybody. I
say that not as any, like and no fear mongering here. Just
a very realistic view of there are forces
that are much more pleasant to work with and there are forces that are very
unpleasant to work with. They both exist in the world.
And the way and and yet, you know, here we are. We humans exist

(27:10):
in the world where, you know, we know that there are plants that are
safe to eat and plants that are not safe to eat. And there's a certain
degree of common sense when you're out in the forest, Same as, you know, there
are places that are generally a little more comfortable and safe to go and
places that are less safe to go. Like, you know, if you're
gonna climb a mountain, like, you you should probably know what you're doing.

(27:32):
And so there's a, a degree of common
sense in that and a degree of having guidance. So,
like, if you're gonna go foraging in the forest, take somebody with you who knows
what the mushrooms are. If you're going to go climb a mountain,
do the the necessary training and the conditioning to make sure that you're gonna be
safe and take a guide with you. And the same is true in our own

(27:54):
spiritual realm of having a guide with you, having a spiritual Sherpa
to help you, carry your bags and and show you which path
to take and and help you ask the right questions in of yourself
and and give you the practices is going to make your life a
lot easier. And it doesn't mean that you can't do it without a guide. It
just might take you a lot longer, and you might eat some kind of poisonous

(28:16):
mushrooms on the way and maybe puke your guts out, so to speak. Right?
But, but here with, with these
unseen realms, there are dangers there. It's not that it's
it it's not all only light and love. It is also,
you know, just as there is light, there's also shadow. So it's just a good
idea to have some common sense to stay safe, know what you're doing, know what

(28:39):
you're working with, and what you're inviting in, and then tools and techniques
to help you avoid those things, and then tools and techniques of what to
do if you do end up encountering an unwelcome entity attachment, for
example. Having a mentor in your corner makes all the difference.
Yeah. And I think I think in, any field that you're in, you
you should definitely have a mentor and have someone you can,

(29:02):
talk to and and and because they've they've been through where
you wanna they've been through the experiences you're gonna start you're
gonna face eventually. Mhmm. So it's it it's always good to
really really have someone you can really, speak
to and and have them help you through your journey. Absolutely.
Yeah. You you you talked about,

(29:26):
integrating various healing modalities into into
your into your healing ex into your holistic experience
for your clients. How
how how do you formulate what you're gonna use for certain clients?
I generally you know, so my my list of modalities that I'm

(29:47):
trained in and initiated into is super long. It's like page 2.
Imagine. So, you know, I I am a
multi lineage practitioner, and I think as, you know, we
we're living in an increasingly globalized
world in terms of, multi lineage
humans coming with their ancestors coming from multiple places and speaking multiple

(30:09):
languages and having connections with community all over the world. It is
becoming more and more common for spiritual practitioners to also hold
multiple lineages and modalities of practice. And,
as and that, you know, there's
a consideration of how to do that well when we're working with wisdom
traditions and not to be,

(30:31):
like what's the word I wanna say? Not to be
distorting or diluting the the potency of wisdom
traditions, but to be appreciating and understanding and making sure that they're working
harmoniously with each other. So, when I work with my
clients, I'm drawing upon a whole holistic suite of
tools. My primary lineages that I do hold and the primary

(30:53):
modalities I work with are shamanism. As I mentioned, I've been doing and practicing
that for over 20 years and a lot of study, very deep study, and
alchemy, which, I've been working with since
2015 or 2016. And, of course, within that, there's
also energy healing and mediumship. But, really,
it's, those are are the main tools that I'm

(31:15):
anchoring into. And Alchemy as, you know, I've I've
kinda been talking around it a lot so far here.
So as you're tuning in, if you've if you're not quite so familiar with Alchemy,
if you wanna learn more about Alchemy, I'll just tell you now. You can probably
this will be in the show notes too. You can go download a
free guide to the 7 stages of Alchemy from my website, and that'll give you

(31:37):
a little bit more of that road map to the process of transformation like I
was talking about. And it helps you, it outlines
the 7 stages of Alchemy. It tells people where where
you probably are, where you might be stuck. So if you are
listening and you're like, oh my gosh. That's me. I am been so afraid to
make this big life jump, or I really want to, but I'm not sure how,

(31:59):
Or I started to make the leap, and now I'm stuck and things are going
sideways. Like, go download that guide. Come on. And it gives
tools and practices as well for for helping to move
to the next stage and move through this process. So then when somebody is coming
to me and they're in a healing journey, you know, I'm I'm pulling from these
different mystery schools. So I'll identify, okay, where are you in this in the

(32:21):
cycle of alchemy? What what part of the transformational cycle are you
in right now? Everybody is somewhere on that map. And
then according to that, offering particular tools and practices
and exercises to support them in moving through that
process. Also opening up the
the the toolkit of energy healing. So okay. Do you have

(32:44):
stuff that needs to be cleared out of your field? Are there energetic misalignments
that need to be addressed? Working with, with all the
levels of healing. So working working in the body realm, working in the heart
mind realm, working in the spiritual realm, past life realm, soul retrieval. You know,
it's there it's really different for everybody, but
usually, it's anchored into okay. Let's work with the alchemy

(33:06):
stuff. Again, I I teach a a year line course for that, so I also
support people who want to study and learn that. But
working with alchemical principle as well as shamanic
sensibility and energy healing. Okay.
Have you have you ever encountered some somewhere you've you've been somewhere

(33:28):
and and someone's energy is just, like, kinda
screaming at you? Like, you're like, the other dude just walk in
somewhere and you're like, okay. I have to say something to this
person. Has that ever happened to you? Oh. I
usually don't say things to people uninvited.
Yes. Yeah. So I, but, yes, I have been in

(33:50):
the the situation of being somewhere and people's
energy are screaming at me, much less so now. I I
actually learned how to turn down the volume on that because I decided
in my own my own self, I was like, you know what? I don't really
wanna be screamed at so much. So now, but earlier in my
journey, yeah, I it was really hard to go grocery shopping. I would be

(34:11):
out in the world and and have, you know, peep getting
reads on all the people around me, and it was very overwhelming. So
I, out of, like, personal
necessity, I learned how to regulate that more effectively. And
now I I am I'm much less
shouted at. Now I experience it much more as a,

(34:34):
you know, a background awareness that I can turn up the volume on if I
want to, but most of the time I leave it down. I also have a,
my agreement with my spirit team is that if they
want me to help somebody, they need to bring that person in through the
door of my business. That's the agreement that I have.
So I ask I ask spirit team, and I we have

(34:56):
made this this declaration several times of, if you want
me to help someone, please show them my podcast, show them
one of these interviews, get them on my newsletter, somehow guide them to
me in a professional capacity so that I can devote my
time to them in the best possible way and offer them a consultation, take them
into my mentorship, take them into my alchemy course so that I can do

(35:19):
that in a way that is in alignment with my own values, my own time,
my energy, my boundaries, and and feels really good to me.
So I can give them the best effort that I have to offer, the best
attention, the best advice. And it's in a way that's very
respectful of my time and my energy and not just taking up all my
personal time and energy, like helping people at the grocery store. Yeah.

(35:42):
That being said, sometimes, you know, people do show up through other means. You know?
So, of course, my friends, my loved ones, my family definitely get a little
bit of that attention from me when they need it. And, and
then, of course, you know, I often end up in that position with people at
the dog park too. And there's something about the dog park where you end up
just, like, cracking open and then people are crying in the

(36:04):
field, and it's like, okay. We we get to go into healer mode here
too. Awesome. Yeah.
Oh, that's a question. I just kinda lost it. But,
oh, I did. Hold on. And it wasn't something it wasn't a regular
question. It's it was just something oh, man. I lost it, though. It probably come

(36:25):
back, though. Okay. Oh, you okay. Now I know what I was gonna
ask you. Mhmm. You you mentioned your podcast. Yeah.
What made you wanna start your podcast? Being that I love doing my
podcast, I and I it interests me to know what got
got you started on your podcasting journey. Absolutely. Yeah. My

(36:46):
podcast is called Shaman Sister Sessions. So if you
are interested in more conversations about
mysticism, spirituality, energy healing, all things related to that,
you can y'all can go hop over there and check it out.
I began that with my cohost, my best friend and cohost,
Katherine Byrd, in 2016,

(37:08):
right before, yeah, right before what I'm calling now
disaster election 1.0. And so here we are 8 years
later where and, I mean, y'all, regardless of your political beliefs,
I am a liberal believing in human rights and environmental
protection. I'll just be very clear about that right now. We don't have to get
more political than that. But, at the at the

(37:29):
time, it was, you know,
she and I, my my best friend and I, we have awesome
conversations all the time where we're asking really great questions
about, like, hey. Here's the thing that I'm noticing in my
practice. What are you noticing? And and she's also a a shamanic practitioner
and a very skilled healer as well. So we were having these

(37:52):
awesome conversations. We were collaborating on,
offering events and some healing work and and doing really cool stuff
together. And it was actually her idea. She said, hey. Do you wanna do a
podcast? I think that'd be fun. I was like, yeah. Sure. That sounds great.
And, and so it was mostly just saying yes to
more great conversations with my best friend, which is the best

(38:14):
possible thing. Yeah. But but it evolves
also of, like, I I really love
getting to have conversations like this. I really love getting to,
to be the resource of information that I wish I
had had at various times in my life. And I know that there are
a lot of people out there who are asking questions like we're talking about right

(38:37):
now of, gosh, I feel overwhelmed by psychic information. What
do I do with that? Or I feel like I wanna make these transformations in
my life. How? How where do I start? And Well, somebody
out there actually has a question. Tony, who's who's
a who's a a loyal, listener and
follower, he's shout out, Tony. What's going on, Tony?

(38:59):
He wants to know, Michelle, if I may, do you pick up on others' energies
as you've as if you do do know what it is yours
and what it is the collective? Yes.
So that is a really great question. And, remember back to
the foundations of energetic mastery that I mentioned previously.
One of the the earliest

(39:23):
what's the word I wanna say? One of the the most important early
skills that I help my clients cultivate is being able to tell the difference
between what is your energy and what is not your energy. And that
people pretty universally have that question of how well, how do I know? How do
I tell? And, again, like we talked about the gunk on
top of all of our layers of intuition, that is one of the the

(39:47):
the first and most important things that we learn how to sort through of
just being able to tell the difference of, like, oh, I'm feeling this
this yucky feeling. Is that does that belong to me or did I
pick that up from someone else? Is is that, you know, from
my, you know, my mom who's going through a tough time or from
somebody at the grocery store or that collective trauma and pain that I'm

(40:09):
feeling. And, the the
how we tell that that was part of the question. Right? Like, do you pick
that up and how do we tell Yeah. Was that the question? Okay. How we
tell the difference? Well, it the there's not really a short answer,
but we learn how to tell the difference by attuning, by
strengthening our acuity of our energy body and our sensing and feeling.

(40:30):
I talked about sensing, feeling, projecting, directing energy as kind of these fundamental
skills. So that would be a learning to sense and
feel your own energy body, your own frequency.
And then from there, cultivating that discernment to be
able to tell the difference. Now, again, I know that's that's kind of a half
answer, not answer. And, but I would say the

(40:52):
the the answer would be imagine if you have a farmer who has sheep
and, like, some stranger walks on the farm, they're not gonna be able to tell
the sheep apart. They'll look kinda the same, but the farmer can tell the difference.
The farmer knows because the farmer's been staring at the sheep for how however many
years. Right? And so the same is true of our own energy
body. When you practice and you develop again these

(41:14):
skills that that I do teach people how to do,
you develop that acuity and that subtle perception to be able to
discern the difference of, okay, this is consistent with my own
energy body. I I can tell that this does belong to me. It's uncomfortable,
but it does belong to me, and so I'm gonna sit with it like that.
Or, no, this doesn't belong to me. I picked this up from somebody else,

(41:37):
so I'm going to clear it out of my body and my energy field and
release it. And then if I feel that that's appropriate and welcome, then
I can offer some healing to that aspect of the collective or to that
person's energy and offer a prayer for their well-being. But it
really comes down to practice and subtle perception and and
cultivating your acuity in that realm.

(41:58):
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Great question. Thank you. Do we have more questions?
No. That's that's it. He's that's the only question he had. But that's that's one
of the reasons I kind of shifted, plus the
fact that I was tired of editing my shows. I shifted more to to
live shows. It's because you never know someone out there might be listening and
they and have a a a very interesting question like Tony did.

(42:20):
So Yeah. That's why I enjoy doing the live aspect
of the show because now the audience becomes part of the show.
I love it. It's great. You know what? You asked He
he asked about grounding. Oh, great. Okay. I, I was gonna say you asked
about my podcast, and in the early days, we always used to record live, and
that would be the thing that we did. And then we got, we got out

(42:43):
of that schedule, I think, just because it came it became hard to do it
consistently at that time. Mhmm. But, yeah, I do miss that. I like the
questions piece. Okay, Tony. What you got? He wants to know about grounding.
K. What about it? Tony?
What's the what what is it, Tony? So if you get if you could,

(43:03):
kind of, yeah. What is grounding? How does it work? Why is it important? I
I can Well, let's I guess, yeah, let's let's do it that way. What what
is grounding? Awesome. Yeah. What is grounding? Why is why is it
important, and how does it work? So grounding is a very common
term that people throw around in in the healing
space. You know, everybody knows what it feels like to feel

(43:25):
ungrounded, so we usually start a definition there. If if we're ungrounded,
you know, we feel disconnected from our body. You might be going through like a
dissociation response. You might have your attention really
scattered, disconnection from earth, disconnection
from, you know, present moment and connection.

(43:45):
So grounding then is, I define grounding
as we're really anchored and present in 3 different
things. Our body, our own body, you're actually inhabiting your
bioform, present and connected with the earth
rooted into our planet,
Gaia and mother. And then the 3rd piece that happens

(44:06):
by virtue of the first two is anchored in the here and now
because the present is where we have power. The present is where we are able
to work with energy, work with our consciousness,
but it has to come from the connection of the first two. So some methods
of grounding, I saw you ask about there. You we've generally,
we become ungrounded when we're staring at our screens all

(44:29):
the time. We're, you know, having a lot of external
influences if we spend all our time inside, not
going outdoors, paying attention to everything outside of us.
Right? So we can look at, okay, well, the the
causes indicate the cure, so to speak. So the the
methods for getting grounding, there are many, many methods for getting

(44:50):
grounded. But my simplest answer is go outside
and touch the earth. Feel the ground.
Feel your body, whether I mean, you know, if you're in the northern hemisphere,
it's getting cold. Right? So may now might not be the best time to be
outside barefoot, but, like, go put your hands on the
trees or, you know, even if you're living in a city, like, there

(45:12):
is a patch of dirt somewhere you can go touch. I'm certain of it. Or
go find, you know, a plant going going through the sidewalk. Right?
No. It's I I kinda feel it because, I'm a city boy. I was born
and raised in New York City, but now I live in the in the Pocono
Mountains. I live in the mountains, and and and just and just the other
day, I had a doctor's appointment, and and I kind of, was down

(45:33):
and everything. But but on the drive home,
just just driving and and and looking at the the leaves
change and and the transformation that was around me going around going
around Mhmm. It was a great it was, like,
I spoke to my wife, and I said, I just had a great drive. Like,
I had I had, an amazing drive because it was as

(45:55):
I just just stood in, drove, and enjoyed the scenery and
enjoyed all the transformation and transformation and everything that was going on
around me, and I was just present in that moment. And that to
me was so magical and special. And I told her, I was like, yeah. She's
like, you okay? I said, yeah. I just had a a magnif I just had
this great experience. It was like one of those drives where you just

(46:18):
I I just was just enjoying me. I was
just enjoying the time and and and just
enjoying the moment. Yeah. That's a
perfect example. I mean, it sounds like you felt really present and connected in
that. Yeah. It was just it was just a wonderful experience. Like I said, I
had just came came from doctors, and I was kinda down. And

(46:41):
then it's just I just started driving, and and like I said, I live in
the mountains and and and just now, it's times the trees, the
leaves are falling, and there's red and orange and all these
wonderful colors. And Nice. Like I said, it was just, it was,
a great experience. It was something I really enjoyed. That's beautiful.

(47:01):
You know what? I'm glad you brought that up because nature I mean, you know,
grounding, being in connection with
nature is one of the simplest and easiest and
fastest ways that we can actually just come home to
ourselves, come home to being present. And we live in a world
where we're spending a lot of time on screens. We're spending a lot of time

(47:23):
with external influences. And, you know,
it's it I had this very cool experience yesterday, actually. I
was in and I mean, this I sent out an article to my list about
it today because it was such a cool and very auspicious experience. It was
a very powerful spiritual message. But I was sitting at my computer at my desk,
and my desk faces a window. I also I live in the mountains in in

(47:45):
the forest, in the Pacific Northwest just outside of
Portland. And I, you know, because I
live in the forest, there's deer around pretty consistently that are usually
on the periphery of the forest. And I have a dog, so they don't come
too close to the house. And they're usually it's like dawn and dusk.
But I was sitting there writing an email about invite

(48:07):
invoking warrior guides and invoking our our warrior
consciousness to be warriors of love and and forces of peace and and
well-being and and health and, protection for all beings.
And right as I start to to write out, I'm typing out an
invocation for people to call in their warrior guides and warrior
consciousness. A big stag walked right in front

(48:29):
of my office window with his big rocket antlers and everything.
And I was, like, just, like, like, almost
jaw dropping a little bit and, like, craning my neck to watch him. And he
just strolled right in front of the window, and he was, like, munching
on some bushes and just kinda meandered off.
And it it was so lovely. It

(48:51):
was very, very powerful. And and I had that
experience of just, like, boom, dropping right into
myself, right into my body, and to and, like, right now, I just feel that
I feel so happy. I feel really peaceful and present
just from remembering that. Yeah. And it was,
again, like, I see deer here around pretty regularly, but not right next

(49:14):
to the house, not in the middle of the afternoon. He was right there
as a, at a very auspicious time given the
message that I was writing and what I was talking about. So I I I
wrote a long email about that today and why that was really important. But,
but but similar, it's it's really it connects us
so immediately with our own primal nature, with our bodies, with the

(49:36):
earth. So, again, the simplest tool there's there are many
tools that I have for grounding and methods for grounding, but the simplest one is
go outside and touch the earth. Well, he mentions
that, he spends a lot of time fishing, and and he puts his feet
in the grass every chance he gets. Right. But it's just getting
colder now. Right. Yeah. And he and he wants to he

(49:59):
wants to thank you so much for sharing your time, and yes, Michelle, much love
and abundance and resources to you as well as to me. Thank you,
Tony. Same to you. Much respect to you, brother. I greatly appreciate
you sharing and and and asking questions.
Thank you, and you're welcome. Happy you're here and that this resonated with
you. Yeah. But, this has been a wonderful show.

(50:21):
I've had a great time. Time flies when you're having such great
conversation. But now it's come to the time where, you get the solo
screen, and and you get to plug away, let let people know where they can
find you, website, everything. Awesome. Thank you.
Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm really, really happy to share
this with you. I hope you found this helpful. As I mentioned,

(50:43):
I offer various tools of healing and
mentorship work. So if you are a practitioner who wants
to expand into your spiritual skill development and support your
practice, Or if you're not a practitioner, but you're a magic person, spiritual
seeker, and you want some help, whether it's through your own healing,
your transformation, or going through a big period of

(51:04):
change in your life and you would like my help with that, then you can
find me through my website, michellehawk.com. That's michelle
with 2 l's and hawk like the bird.com. Like I
said, you can go download that free guide to the 7 stages of
alchemy from my website that'll walk you through the road map to
transformation and give you some tools and practices to help you get

(51:26):
unstuck from where you might be stuck or resistant or afraid
of entering into that process of transformation and my best recommendations for
how to help you in that cycle. If you're interested in that 200
hour alchemy certification training course, you can also find that on my
website. I am now taking applications for the 2025
cohort. So the the next year of students

(51:48):
are are already rolling in. So if that calls to you, then please reach out
to me. And, again, if this resonates with you, send me an email.
I'd love to hear from you. I hope you enjoy this and find something valuable
for your journey where you're at right now.
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. This has, been, like I said, been a great
show. But don't leave just yet. Now let me close out the

(52:10):
show, and we we chat a little bit before after
off screen, but, thank you so much for being such a great guest. This
has, been a wonderful conversation. I've had a great time. Thank you, Wise.
I I so appreciate you inviting me be to be here. I'm really happy that
we had a chance to chat and hope this is helpful to your people. Oh,
yes. Yes. I I love these like I said, I love these conversations, especially

(52:31):
in in this room because, so many
people are skeptical about it. And me, personally, I'm I I'm a I'm a
believer. I I truly am because I've had experiences in
life that that have opened my eyes to this. So to me, this is
important to have these conversations and to show people like, hey. This
isn't this isn't hogwash. This isn't this is true. This is

(52:54):
some real stuff that you need to start listening to and then
and being able to to present it and have it
out there and and give a platform to, like, to yourself and everything
is very important. Absolutely. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for doing
your work and giving this a voice and making this accessible to people who
need it. Thank you. Thank you for being such a great such a great

(53:16):
guest. I will definitely love to have you back on. I I love having
people back on that I have great conversations on great conversations with.
So, again, the door is always open. Oh, thank you so much. I
and there's there's so much more we can talk about wise. We got this. Yeah.
Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. But, again, let me just call out a show,
and, I'll be we'll talk a little bit off there. Mhmm.

(53:38):
Alright, everybody. Another great show is in the
is in the books. Shout out Tony to Tony for
stopping by and making this a really great show. I love it when when,
the audience interacts and and ask questions and shares. It's
very important that, that we really get these messages out there,
and and I'm very grateful for everybody who tunes in. If you catch the

(54:01):
live, wonderful. If you catch the replay, that's even
better. Please subscribe. Hit the notification bell.
As always, shout out to my RealWise fam, Papi j, Brandy j. Love
you guys. Shout out to the boss lady. Love you and appreciate all you do
for me. Big shout out to everybody who tunes
in, Tony, Corrado, every all the all my regulars that

(54:24):
tune in. Greatly appreciate you guys. And as always, a big, big shout
out to all the essential workers out there. God bless y'all. Be safe. You
know how your boy does it. Peace

(54:46):
out.