Pathways for Personal Healing
Walking the Personal Path of Awakening
One of the ways I support my community is through personal mentorship that provides aid in moving through some of life’s important, yet often neglected, maturation tasks and simple human rites of passage.
When we stop to take an honest look at where we are on our journey, only then can we identify, clarify, and call upon the support we need to steady our next steps. I’m not talking about expecting anyone else to do it for you but you don’t have to carry it all on your own. There is support in the visible and less visible realms alike. As you begin to remember, it becomes clear that the path of awakening is not just about accessing expansive states of being; it’s about growing out of old skins and taking responsibility for the areas where we’ve long been missing the mark. Our work together is a call to embodied wisdom that can be witnessed as trustworthy by those who walk by your side.
In the Celtic tradition, there is a restorative magic in the soul friendship that bears witness to the wholeness of a human being. An anam cara relationship provides space for that which is bound in shame to breath freely once more. There are times when gentle moonlight is the right remedy for finding the entry to new passages, and there are times when the blazing sun is in just the right measure to sweat off all that’s no longer ours to carry. As a soul friend, it is my welcome task to behold your magnificence alongside your suffering as I receive the gift of being your companion along the path.
In addition to individualized sessions, you can engage with me through the sweat lodge, Andean wisdom teachings, traditional earth offerings (despacho), and plant dieta. If there is one thing I’ve learned along the way, it’s that personal work cannot be done in a vacuum. There is nothing like the shared awareness of community when it comes to shining an honest light on our areas of growth. So, let’s come together to sing, build fire, share food, pray and learn new ways of relating beyond our deeply engrained habits and childhood reactivities.
Pathways for Personal Awakening
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Trauma Renegotiation
At the beginning of the path (and at deeper layers of initiation), we come face-to-face with the wounds of separation. Here, through deep compassion, and somatic experiencing, we re-write our relationship to the past, and reclaim the power to be present with all of Life.
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Strengthening the Self
As we continue to commit to the process of awakening, we begin to shore up the places we lose ourselves in collective concensus, ancestral patterns, intimate relationships and personal patterns of avoidance or dissociation. We reclaim the power to stay with ourselves and our legacies.
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Anam Cara
As we walk the pathways of awakening, we need deep spiritual companionship. Coming together, again and again, to explore and honor and deepen our experience of life, challenge, victory and. surrender, through the lens of indigenous wisdom, subtle body maps, and mystical states, supports the path.
Expanded Offerings
Some of the more specific, role oriented initiatory pathways like that of becoming a healer or community leader can be arduous and require long-term commitment. One does not earn a blackbelt by showing up to a weekend retreat. The minimum requirement for the apprenticeships I’ve begun are four years. This goes for the trades as well as spiritual pursuits.
At the Sun Dance, old-timers will half-jokingly say, “Great, now that you’ve finished your first four years, you can do four more in each direction. There are 7-directions you know”.
It’s obvious that most of the voices calling out from the spiritual market place these days have not actually followed through with the kinds of dedicated practice it takes to step into the robes there so eager to try on.
Sacred initiations like the vision quest and Sun Dance catalyze the necessary psycho-spiritual development to carry the responsibilities inherent in the roles one assumes through the completion of such potent transformational experiences.
I do not expect every person I work with to take up a long-term initiatory path, but I do make sure that pathway is available to those who feel the call. Being a direct link to study with the indigenous elders who have helped me to remember my place in the web of life is one of the greatest honors I hold. Many of my offerings serve as entry points to greater study for those who wish to deepen their path beyond what I am able to offer at this time.
I’ve been fortunate to work with Richy for over six months now. I began sessions one year after my plant medicine experiences, which I needed help to integrate. While there had been many positive changes in my health, I’d also been struggling with aspects of my psyche that I was unable to fully access. I continued to suffer from anxiety and repressed emotions, which was hindering my progress. But with Richy’s compassion and experience, I was able to become more aware of my patterns; most importantly, I’m learning to be present with the uncomfortable emotions and sensations in the body. His training in Dr Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry system and the traditions of Andean wisdom helped me to see through what was blocking me. The improvements to my health have also continued and have been remarkable. Richy is a wise and compassionate healer, and I highly recommend him for anyone working on successfully integrating their medicine experiences.
-Tinu Sinha, Film Producer
