Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everybody has like an inner shaman. We all have a part of us that can access those multidimensional parts of like non ordinary reality that are very much a part of our life. But they don't get acknowledged, they don't get engaged with as much as this world 3d right here, right now that we see and we live with every day.
You.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Welcome to supernormalize, the podcast where we challenge the conventional, break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ, as we explore less uncharted realms of existence and unravel the mysteries of life. Experience. My treasured listeners, if you have a life story or healing modality or unique knowledge that you'd love to share, reach out to me at supernormalized. That's supernormalized with a z at proton me. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual as what it really is. Completely normal. Today on supernormalized, I have the pleasure of speaking with Hannah Spanky. She's a remarkable individual who embarked on a transformative journey from the world of sex work to becoming a beacon of healing and empowerment. She brightly faced her inner struggles and emerged as a resilient, somatic healer, relationship expert, and coach and tantra teacher, dedicated to guiding others towards self discovery and wholeness. And this was a really good interview. I really, really enjoyed it. And the depth of understanding that Hannah carries at her age through all of her experiences. Obviously, she had an amazing choice of life paths and she chose one that it's huge. It's going to be really good for her, I'm certain of it. And what she's doing is amazing work. I'm sure you'll enjoy this episode. I did very much welcome to supernormalized Hannah Spank. Is that the right way to say your name?
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Spanky.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Spanky. Okay, so welcome to supernormalized Hannah Spanky. So, Hannah, you've had quite a lot of change happen in your life from rather intense life experiences and some would say also severely traumatic events. Can you explain and help people to understand what happened to you? I mean, you had an experience in the adult world of sex work and that shaped your journey in life.
How did getting into that and getting out of that actually change you and what happened to you?
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Such a broad question. Let's start.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah, sure.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: I've discussed this so many times that I feel every time my answer to this gets a little bit more, like, esoteric and expanded. So the highest answer, really, for me right now is that this is something that I came here to experience, to learn from in very specific ways, so that I can teach this specific medicine, so that I could unlock that medicine within myself through those challenges. That's really my highest level perspective. But speaking in a little bit more of a micro scale, I was raised by a single dad. Mostly my parents separated when I was about five. My mom was not really in the picture, and there was a lot of addiction issues for her. And then for my dad, very emotionally unavailable, limited in his toolkit and capacity to deal with two daughters. And so through my upbringing from five ish up to teenage years, when I stepped into that adult world, in hindsight, hindsight being 2020, of course, I didn't have this understanding then, but looking back, I can see how certain needs that I needed to have met, that everybody needs to have met developmentally, when we're in that very young age and we're really being shaped, it's like the blueprint for how we're going to operate as an adult is being formed. My blueprint was very.
There were particular holes in it, particular limitations in it that allowed me to be available for stepping into that industry, for stepping into that kind of work. Things like being spanked as a kid, as an example, which, spoiler alert, I'm completely against and I don't support in any form because of my personal experience where I wasn't sexually abused. It wasn't like somebody just came home drunk, blazing, hitting me for, quote, unquote, no reason. And so it was established in my childhood as, like, a form of legitimate punishment. And through that, it kind of created a sort of gaslighting experience where one part of me thought, okay, this is a natural consequence that I deserved. And the other part of me learned how to tolerate somebody physically crossing my physical boundaries that I never really was able to assert or identify. So just a lot of things that led me to being. Not having the boundaries needed. Not being able to fully recognize when I was being harmed allowed me to step into that industry. And then stepping out of it was quite a different change. But I want to pause there and let you respond to that first part.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's interesting. So, basically, the lack that you felt in your life is what you sought out in other areas of life to feel more fulfilled, for sure.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: And the parts that mirrored different traumas I had experienced as a kid, like allowing somebody to access my body in ways that I wasn't actually okay with in exchange for money that wasn't that far off from being spanked, for example, allowing something enduring, something for a short ish amount of time physically, that was a means to an end. And so, yes, definitely seeking out unmet needs to be met, but also kind of perpetuating those unmet needs. Just in an adult version, it sounds.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Sort of like almost as an adult version, that would have been, like, not to deride the SNM community, but it sounds like it could be that sort of edge.
Right.
And then how did you fall out of the adult industry?
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, so there was one main giant catalyst. It was a huge loss that I experienced in my life a number of years ago, and that really, grief is sobering. And so it was something that kind of forced me at that time to see things in a new light that I just didn't have access to up until that level of kind of breakdown for me. And so a lot of my conflict that I had experienced in my inner conflict, as well as conflict in romantic relationships that I experienced around the work that I was choosing to do at that time, being in that industry, as you can imagine, that was conflictual, conflicting with my monogamous lifestyle.
So a lot of relationship conflict was really like the theme, like the splinter that just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse over the years. I kept choosing partners that would not approve of what I was doing, because on the deepest level, I did not approve of what I was doing, but I didn't know it yet.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: And so it was this perpetuating pain again and again and again of feeling rejected, feeling disapproved of feeling not worthy, et cetera. And then I experienced this giant loss, grief that shook my whole life. And somehow that allowed me to really see why all of these boyfriends of the past and the current boyfriend I was with at that time, why they saw my choices the way they did, and why I couldn't see it that way until that moment. And then I was able to see how much self harm I was actually choosing and how disempowering my life was in how I was making money, how I was using my body in that part of my life, at least, that I was not willing or able to see up until that point. So seeing that it was something that really couldn't be unseen. And then that started my healing journey to be able to get out of the industry, which was definitely not an overnight switch.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: So that was like a seed of change that grew in you over time.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Yes. It just broke the illusion that I was living in. And then from there, I was able to start kind of picking up all the pieces.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: So can you share how your personal healing journey has influenced your approach to helping others heal from trauma and embrace their authenticity in life?
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really great question. And the immediate, very specific answer that comes to mind I'm finding kind of interesting is that because I went through what I went through, and because obviously I know that experience so intimately, because I lived it the whole time, so through my own embodiment of the trauma that I played out for so many years, as well as the embodiment of the healing that I chose after that, I can really empathize and completely understand why people make the bad decisions that they do, why they're making the decisions that are making them unhappy, why they're choosing to be in the bad relationships, why they're saying yes to everything when they really want to be saying no, et cetera. And it could be in severe forms of living from trauma or very subtle things. But I feel like I have an eagle vision to be able to see at the root of what's driving somebody to live the way that they're living. And with that deep, intrinsic understanding of what's driving someone, I am able to really help them become aware of it in a way that's going to work. You can't just tell someone about themselves and have it land.
They have to be receptive. So I feel very good at being able to see the roots very quickly of what's going on, help them see those same roots in a way they can get on board with, and then start their healing journey from that root place, which is where mine started as well. So, yeah, I think because of my own experience, I'm able to really have no issue sort of traversing those underworld topics, taboo type things, stuff that people don't celebrate in their lives, I'm able to really help them unpack it in a way that doesn't have any shame or judgment tied to it, as well as not leave any blind spots on the table when it comes to the healing journey, because I can see how deep those programs run. And you have to really be vigilant about taking responsibility for everywhere that they're showing up.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Would you say that what you're doing, then, is like, your experiences have given you a framework that allow you to touch on an understanding of how people get to where they are and why they're in that structure that they've built, and in doing so, allow it to liberate them from that structure?
[00:12:35] Speaker A: Absolutely, yes, 100%.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: And would you say that pretty much all of the reasons why people get caught in these frameworks of misunderstanding of themselves is that they're actually just looking for love.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think that other than maybe an atheist worldview, I think most other worldviews outside of that can get on board with the idea that there's a part of us that is eternal. However, you view that there's a part of us that's separate from our physical body that will die and end completely someday. There's a part of us that goes on, and I think that that spirit, soul, life force, essence, God, consciousness, whatever you want to think that part of us is coming from and always will be returning to that complete and total unity with life. And so I think when we're in this human world, that soul part of us is always still looking for that unity, that feeling of being really connected to everything.
And when we have a bunch of trauma and a lack of tools to navigate the human world, well, we will seek out that feeling of that total connection in a number of ways. That may not be the best, because we're doing the best with what we have. But I think at the end of the day, everybody on a soul level is seeking that feeling of wholeness.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Makes me ask then, is such trauma then, like a scar upon our soul that actually skews our vision of the world and then makes us seek out a relief from that trauma?
[00:14:17] Speaker A: 100%. I'm glad you said that, because I literally say that sometimes I talk about it as, like, energetic scar tissue, something that it inhibits the function of how it's supposed to be. It makes it behave a little differently, and so it creates walls from the inside out, energetically, that keep us, quote unquote, safe in certain situations, but it also keeps us kind of trapped in ourselves and without that contact with life that we all really want and where we come from, anyways.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
So people are doing the best that they can with the knowledge that they have, but that scar just allows them only a certain wavelength of understanding that they can work within. And because of that, they keep on reinforcing the scar until they get that scar. Liberated by your work now.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: You work also with tantra as well, and it's tibetan buddhist tantra. Can you talk around that?
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Yes. So I'm a tantra teacher. I will start by saying that I think it's important to speak to what I'm talking about when I say tantra, because tantra, I've learned, means a million different things to different people. A lot of assumptions, for sure. So I basically categorize tantra into two categories. Classical tantra, which is, like, lineage based tantra.
Enlightened, master to student, passed down, passed down an unbroken lineage that can be traced to some origin point. And then the other category is like neotantra, which is maybe not rooted in a tradition, but it's still under that category of tantra, and it's over there. I do not practice neotantra. I practice classical tantra. If you can't tell by the bias in my voice.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: What are you saying about neotantra when you say that?
[00:16:04] Speaker A: So I think that there's value in everything. I think there's value to be extracted from everything. But it reminds me of people who are hardcore about animal products getting really upset about almond milk or something being called milk. They're like, it's not milk. Like neotantra. That's how I feel. I'm like, it's not tantra.
It's something, but that's not what I'm going to talk about.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: What I study is in the classical tantra umbrella, and there are a few different, I mean, a number of different main categories where you can find different lineages of tantra. Hindu tantras, tibetan tantras, african tantras. There's different regions where they kind of, like, created their own version of things, and it really grew from there. So there's a lot of similarities between most classical tantras, all probably, but there are some key differences. And so the tibetan buddhist tantra that I practice and teach specifically is a lineage based tantra. It can be traced back to the lineage itself about 1200 years, and then the origins of tantra in that area of the world can be traced all the way back to prehistoric, like, 15,000 to 17,000 years ago, when people practiced animism, just living in connection with everything, acknowledging spirit in all things around. And so there's a very elemental, shamanic root to this lineage that I practice. So one of the main differences between tibetan and hindu tantras is Hindu is probably more popularized in the west, is the Chakra system. So with the tibetan buddhist tantra that I practice, it's a five element chakra system instead of the seven chakras most people are more familiar with.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: So instead of, like, root, sacral, solar, plexus, on and on, it's fire, earth, space, air, water.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: So it's a little bit different in that way. Same idea we're working with the energy body. It's just a different structure. But that was really what drew me to it. The deep roots to the elementals, like, just the very fundamental building blocks of life that really drew me to this lineage. I assume I came here to be drawn to this lineage because I've been drawn to it many lifetimes before, I trust. So this was just my remembrance this time around. And tantra. The Sanskrit word tantra directly translates to weave. It means to weave. And tantra in this lineage that I study means to weave light and sound with form. And so what that means is, in the actual practices of the tradition, the light is the visualization, the color, the elemental that you're visuAlizing. That's the light piEce. Sound is the ChaNtiNg. So there's like a chanting root syllable that goes with each element.
Ram, lam, whatever, a chant word. And then the form is the fact that you're doing the practice in your actual body.
The Tibetan Buddhist lineages acknowledge that the body is God. The body is BuDDHA. It is the vessel that contains Your Life essence, your soul. And so naturally, your body contains all wisdom, power, knowledge needed to attain enlightenment and realize your purpose, however you want to view it in this lifetime. That's one of the distinct beliefs with the tibetan tradition, separate from Hinduism.
And so, yeah, it's essentially that weaving light and sound of form is essentially like a pathway to ascending and evolving consciousness at a cellular level, working with the energy body that is treated in this tradition as, like, superior, not as in better than, but first above the physical body, acknowledging that all things we experience as illness or wellness will exist in our energy first, before it manifests in the. So I use tantra, and I teach tantra in a lot of ways, but ultimately as a pathway to healing. And as far as you want to take that, I don't want to say pathway to enlightenment, because I don't think that's everybody's path this time around. I don't think everybody's here to reach illumination and never come back. I don't think that's it.
I think that healing feels more right for me to say, and why I think it's so effective and why I like to use tantra as healing, as a pathway to healing, is because the essence of it is weaving everything together. The essence of it is integration, and integration of all things is the antidote to the illusion of separation that causes so much pain and suffering for us in this realm.
There's my answer.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: That's a great answer.
Very bold answer.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Thank you.
Yes.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: How did you start studying tantra?
Where did that come to you? I mean, obviously, did you actually start a new tantra and then went, wait a minute, what's this? This is not the real tantra.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: A little bit, actually kind of part of why I say that this has been written in the stars. Like, this whole path of mine was always going to be this way. I can find seeds as time goes on, more and more seeds when I look back, of where all of these things connect as young as I can remember. And so I remember being, like, ten years old, twelve years old, googling things like, what is sex? What is a sex therapist, what is lesbian? Just things that I had no idea about at the time. But there was some sort of natural instinctual curiosity, and then that continued over those teenage years, looking into it here and there of, like, sex therapy. What is that about? Or something. There was something that was very alluring to me about human relationships and particularly the sexual aspect of it. And so somewhere in that chunk of years, probably before I turned 18 ever, I signed up for some emailing list of some tantra school. No clue what I was doing, didn't remember anything about it. And then years later, this was all at that time of what I consider to be my spiritual awakening. A lot of loss, a lot of breakdown, a lot of stuff. Being kind of demystified all at once. I just happened to notice an email that I had been religiously deleting for years and years and years. Never opened one of them. And then I saw this thing, I opened it, and it was like, enrolling for the next two and a half year, teacher training, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what's this? And it just led me to an interview with the school. And, yeah, it was something that, in hindsight, I look back and I did not understand what I was signing up for at the time. But it's like, on a soul level, I was being pulled forward with it, even though I had so many questions in my head. And so that was my introduction to Tantra. And I very quickly was my first instructor in that program. I very quickly learned the difference between neotantra and classical tantras because this was a school rooted in those tibetan buddhist teachings. And I had bought a few other books, and I was like, oh, what about this thing? What about this thing? And the teacher was very adamant, like, that is not the same. That is not what we're talking about.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: I know. I know. It's about it.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Yes.
The first year of my journey, there was really very personal. It was just about really using the practices for my own self healing, a lot of discovery in my own body and deepening that mind body connection, that soul body connection. And then the two years following that was really all about becoming a practitioner of that, which also, at the same time, it's essentially a graduate program I completed at the same time the degree or certification in clinical sexology. And so I do have a very western approved, more clinical sexology approach to some things, but it's all very rooted in that eastern ancient wisdom, tibetan tantra.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Right. So that was actually a tibetan tantra school.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: It was, yes. Well, yes. So that's a different story.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Long story short, it's a cult that on another high soul level kind of perspective, I say this with very much certainty. I had been affiliated with that group, that group, that entity of a parasitic kind of a control group for many, many lifetimes. And this was the lifetime that I needed to break those karmic ties. And I did by going through this and then having the whole awakening like, oh, this is a fucking cult. I should never be affiliated with this again. A lot of manipulation, a lot of power struggle, a lot of that kind of stuff going on there.
But it was my necessary initiation into the roots of the lineage, which the school is built on top of. But they are not the lineage itself.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: So the school had lost its way a little bit in some ways. And, yeah, that can happen.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: And I think that all things, sex, religion, everything finds distortion somewhere.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Absolutely.
If you take the christian view, it's like the devil can get into everything.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: So in what ways do you integrate practical and esoteric teachings to guide individuals toward wholeness and empowerment in their relationships and lives?
[00:26:07] Speaker A: I really do it in a very mechanical kind of back and forth way of like, left foot, right foot, like, you have to put 1ft next to move forward or else you just go in a circle. And so I try to be very cognizant of like, okay, I've been saying a bunch of intangible, theoretical feeling, esoteric soul things for a while, and I see the person's eyes kind of glazing over. And now I need to make that make sense for their practical life right now and how they can apply that tomorrow and then bringing it back to, but why you're going to do that is because at the end of the day, the bigger picture. And then back and forth and back and forth. So that people, I think it's very important for us to have lucidity around the fact that we are two things at once. We are a boundless, limitless soul fragment of creation, and we are also a human in form, in a world full of limitation. And so just simply living as that totally free, cosmic kind of perspective, you can't do that here you go sit on a mountain somewhere for 50 years.
You can't do that here.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Well, you can, but it doesn't make for a life.
You came here to experience other things.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Too, exactly like it ends up being limiting to try to do that in this form. And then also on the other extreme, when you're just living the humanness only of things and you're disconnected from that more bigger picture, faith kind of piece, however that makes sense for you, then it's very easy to get buried in how hard this is. And so I like to really help people create their own connection to that widest picture for themselves. That there's so much value in everything that they do and that they are and that they bring and that they've been through, et cetera. And that it's a drop in the bucket and that it's super, super important and it's a drop in the bucket. And just really keeping them centered on that perspective that I personally think is necessary to be happy. We have to have a purpose bigger than ourselves, but we also have to be grounded in this life.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: It sounds like what you do as a part of your work is to take their experiences as they are right now and evolve from that point and validate them to say, basically, what you're doing is okay as it is. But you could do better.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. I say this a lot.
What I've found to be really, I'm really good at and what I love to do the most with people is turn their pain into purpose. Because I truly fully believe that there is value in everything. I think I've already said that twice. There's value in everything.
And in this world of duality where it's black and white, it's left or right, hot, cold. The only difference between. And this is very simplified, of course, but this is how I teach it. The only difference between your pain being of value and purposeful, and your pain just simply being pain is your decision, is your empowered choice to either make something of it, to use it as fuel, or to use it as something to stop, to see that as your obstacle and your finish line for your effort this time around, your spirit, the get up and go kind ofness.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: So you've mentioned as a part of your work, you use shamanism as a part of that story too. I mean, you mentioned animism before, and I'm like, yes, animism.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: So shamanism, how does that play into your work and the experience that people have of you?
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yes, I love this question and I love talking about it because it feels like something that's very much been in the background for a long time, but just more recently, I would say within the last year, six months especially. I really feel like I have more language to describe what I'm doing.
I've made it make more sense for myself. So I will say, like the disclaimer, I definitely would never call myself a shaman at all or even consider that. And maybe there's exceptions, I don't know. This is probably an underdeveloped concept, but I don't personally hold a whole lot of respect for people who live in the regular westernized world and then at some point call themselves a shaman because of whatever, some trading or something. I really treat shamanism and the idea of being a shaman as separate things. And I just want to say that clearly because I think that gets confused very quickly. People are like, oh, she said something about shamanism. Yeah, she's a shaman. And it's like, no, let's not repeat that. Because these lineages are very sacred. And I have a lot of reverence and honor for those very old, ancient traditions. And I think that the people born into those lineages have reincarnated for the purpose of being the shaman. I don't think it's something you just decide to go to school for. It's not a trade. So that's my disclaimer on it. But for me, the way that I like to use shamanism is acknowledging that everybody has an inner shaman. We all have a part of us that can access those multidimensional parts of non ordinary reality that are very much a part of our life. But they don't get acknowledged, they don't get engaged with as much as this world 3d right here, right now that we see and we live with every day. But if you were to be guided into some sort of deeper state, some sort of shifted state of consciousness through a drum journey or rattles or whatever, some sort of breath work, something where you're allowing yourself to go deeper into those deeper parts of your own reality. I don't think it ever doesn't exist. I think we just easily forget about it. So I like to use that aspect of shamanism, or shamanism as an aspect of spirituality to help people connect to those deeper and more unexplored aspects of themselves and of their whole entire support teams. Maybe they need a journey to the lower realm to meet their dolphin animal guide. And that's going to give them the clarity they need. So I'm totally on board with all of that, and I personally work with some particular power animals and totems. Eagle, for sure, is the number one thing for me personally. And then when I'm working with people, I often work with the spirit of crow as an energetic medicine to help people move things through them as they're releasing.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I study and practice a bit of shamanic work myself, and I'd be going to the different realms to get messages. I mean, some of the things you get you don't expect and you're like, well, what the hell does that mean? And then it actually plays out in, oh my God, that's what that means. And it's really clear.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Totally.
When I was in the very beginning of my journey, I really took like a fire hose approach to healing. I did every single thing I could find all at once, and one of them was this few month long inner child soul retrieval journey with the.
That. So that was years ago. And then last year in December, so just a couple of months ago, I did a shamanism retreat, like trading in Costa Rica for a week. And one of the processes that we self guided ourselves through, but it was facilitated, was a soul retrieval. And I was convinced, like you, like, it's oftentimes surprising, I was convinced that I wasn't going to find anything because I'm like, I did my soul retrieval. I completed my process.
What fragment has happened in the last three years, four years, who knows?
So the very first thing I did when I went in, and I felt like I was in my journey, I asked for an age. I was like, how old is this? And it was like the year before. It was an age that was very recent. And so it was super surprising to me, but I totally surrendered to it in that moment. And it was, I would say, maybe the biggest soul retrieval, healing, restoration kind of experience that I've had thus far. And it was something that I mentally thought was never going to happen. So I really like shamanism for that reason, because it allows us to surrender the mind in a way that you just can't even imagine.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, it can be surprising what comes through and also very life changing, too.
Can you elaborate on the role of sovereignty, truth, intimacy and empowerment in your approach to guiding individuals towards self discovery and authenticity?
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yes. So is there any one of those words that feels most interesting to you?
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Well, I like the idea of sovereignty, first of all, and then how that plays out, because that sort of like overarches everything.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. I like this question a lot. So, sovereignty, I think that this really ties into what I said a few minutes ago about that.
How I actually work with people is with a very back and forthness, so that they can stay connected to the bigger picture of everything. It's like they need to be connected to the highest perspective, 10,000 foot overview, while also not losing sight of how that applies to them in their real life, as well as staying connected to that higher perspective as well as using it.
That process can only really be executed, in my opinion, from a place of sovereignty. Because if you are not functioning from a place of sovereignty, which just to define that to me, would be in any sort of dependency or entanglement with a person or a thing or something that is painful for you to see yourself as separate from.
If there's any sort of concept of separation that hurts you to accept, it hurts to feel like you're really on this journey alone.
I might get a little rambly here, but it's like two things are true at once.
We are absolutely, eternally connected, period. Everybody and everything.
The web of creation is a web. It's not islands. It's like it's all together all the time. And in order to really live that out in this world, we have to completely accept our aloneness at the same time.
Because if you're trying to move forward on your own healing journey, and you for some reason can't, with air quotes, can't do that because of your mom or because of your boyfriend, or because of your animals or whatever, something that holds you back from your own journey forward, like tying it back to that interconnectedness, it ultimately holds everybody and everything back. And so it's like there's this trickiness where we have to be able to play out sovereignty in the human world, which is painful sometimes because it feels like separation, while remembering that in doing so, it's for the greater good. It's because we're all connected. And in this limited, short experience we're having right now, we have to be willing to go forward alone in order to carry that out on the collective scale.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Wow.
Because when I hear that, yeah, that might blow my mind, I'm like, actually, it throws you back into, like, obviously, because we're connected to everything and we are divine beings seeking realization, then we're ultimate responsibility.
We have the ultimate responsibility to ourselves and to all life, eternally and infinitely. To evolve.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Yes. Which sometimes is very hard to do when things feel personal, when your wife doesn't want you to go on that soul searching retreat or whatever, that might be the thing that makes your impact in the world, those choice moments, it's like you choose your highest soul's timeline or a different timeline that maybe caters more to your human.
And I don't think any is necessarily better or worse. I think one of them is more evolution's ascension driven, and one is more here and now driven like that.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
What challenges have you faced in merging the spiritual shamanic realms with practical teachings to facilitate holistic healing for yourself and your clients?
[00:39:59] Speaker A: So this question, actually, I've run into this in a very personal, internal way. It's shown up for me as a bit of impostor syndrome kind of thing for me to just move through personally, coming from that past where rooted in trauma, where my whole entire sense of value and worthiness and literal money, like my livelihood was coming from me, leading with what people could judge me on in a second.
My sexuality, my physical attraction, like the flirtation, charisma, whatever, could come out in the first 10 seconds. That's what I was relying on for so much, for so long. And so as I started healing, I realized very quickly, which was, I don't know how I decided to keep going, honestly, because I saw it from the beginning how much of an undertaking that would be to fully separate my sense of worthiness and value from my physical identities that I had relied on for so long. And so I did that, and I've done that very successfully, I would say, where my sense of resourceness is very much internal and intangible, so it feels sustainable. It's not something that's dependent or tied to anything that's really going to change over time, like my face or whatever. And so at times I have noticed internally feeling like, shy or hesitant, or slightly insecure about how a particular client is viewing me because I might want to go to a certain depth with them, or might want to say something that's totally esoteric and out of this world sounding for most people. But I have held myself back in certain ways or times before because I'm assuming that they're expecting something other than that from me based on how they're seeing me physically. So I have limited my own spiritual depth and the communication of that at times in the past because of a fear that it wouldn't be received based on how someone was judging me. All of that was coming from me judging me, of course, at the root of it. And so, as I've released more and more and more of that, I feel really good about that now, where it doesn't matter if you're the most stereotypical hippie person that looks like you're going to know exactly what I'm talking about, or if you're the most stereotypical, opposite end of the spectrum, finance Wall street banker, and you look like you are someone I probably slept with for money ten years ago. It doesn't matter where someone's at on that spectrum. None of that phases me anymore. I'm able to be completely authentic in my expression, even if they might be judging me on my appearance.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Brilliant. Brilliant.
Can you offer any success stories of working with clients, but obviously make it anonymized?
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah, plenty. Any specific type of win you want to hear about?
[00:43:19] Speaker B: No. What you think would really rock the world of everyone and just go, wow, this is amazing work.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Okay, I guess I could just rattle off a few, because there's a few that have been on my mind the last couple of days. So one of my clients, he is 60 years old, never been married, never had a very productive dating life. He has Asperger's, but he's very smart, very kind, very sweet, but just has had a lot of struggles with not being able to connect in the ways that he's wanted to. And after 40 years of adulthood, consciously struggling with that and feeling really defeated. We've been working together for three weeks, and he had his very first successful date about an hour ago. Wow, there's that one. That was a very fresh one.
A number of men, all 50 plus, who have struggled with different levels, different intensities of erectile dysfunction, all of the run of the mill approaches, different medications, urologist type stuff that has just never fully worked or not worked to the way that they hoped and been able with me, have been able to completely restore sexual function as well as enhance it past the point of what they felt like they were going to get back without medication, just with physical, mental, spiritual approach, using the tantra approach.
So a lot of sexual healing wins. Like that sexual trauma stuff with women, especially where maybe they've been shut down or never had an orgasm with a partner before or things like that. I can't tell you how many times I've worked with women and they're in their very first time ever learning about their entire anatomy. Like, never even knowing what things were called or how things worked. So a lot of liberation for the women that I've worked with in those realms. And then, yeah, I can keep going.
Just lots of relationship repairs, lots of empowerment for people in different ways.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Brilliant. Brilliant. Now, you've described your work as being holistic. What does holistic mean to you?
How do you explain that.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Holistic means.
Yes, holistic means, I'll tell you exactly how I explain it to my clients, actually, because I've dialed that in struggle for a while, I'm like, how do I say what I do?
Holistic, to me, means it doesn't leave anything out.
Holistic means mind, body, spirit, sex, and anything else that comes to mind that you would describe a layer of yourself with. It includes all of that. Because at the end of the day, you are all of those things. And if you are working on healing one part of that, then that one part might get better, but you're still functioning as a whole entire organism with that organized things all working together. And so if you strengthen your physical, but your mindset sucks, your mindset is the glass ceiling. If you start working on your mindset and your emotional healing, and you're going to the gym and doing all these things, this is the one I see most people do. They do everything other than the sexual piece, and then that becomes the most shadowy, taboo part of their life. Even more so as a consequence, naturally, because they feel so much improvement in a to Y. But then that Z category is left untouched, and it creates a bigger gap, a bigger sense of dissonance, which that's one of my least favorite experiences personally. And one of my least favorite things to see as a healer is someone really move the needle forward in one way, but not always. And then that gap that's created, it's like, oh, shit. Now my progress is actually making me feel worse because I can see how far the other pieces are.
It creates a contrast that doesn't feel good. And I don't want to see anyone become crippled or limited by that kind of an approach that is not holistic. Because then we start to get an ego and an attachment to the parts of us that feel good. And then the parts of us that don't, that are like kind of the dead weight baggage, get more and more and more neglected, and that fragmentedness gets bigger. And so I think that the holistic focus is so integral to any change being sustainable.
And what I tell my clients is my goal with everyone that I ever work with is for their desires that we discussed in the very beginning, that we're going to work on together, for their desires to become the natural byproduct of who they are, period.
Because if the desires that they say they want, that we're able to work on, are only achievable when they are consciously efforting something, like a certain strategy, or a certain mindset, or a certain practice of some sort, whatever. And then there's still that vulnerable space and time when they fall back into their autopilot that will, at some point or another, sabotage those desires. That's a gap that I'm not willing to risk, that has to be closed. Your autopilot needs to be able to sustain the life you want, or else eventually the life you want is not sustainable.
So I'm sober, I don't drink alcohol. I quit drinking about three and a half years ago. And when I was really starting that journey, I heard this somewhere, I don't remember where, but someone was talking about how your willpower versus your environment, your environment will always win at the end of the day. And so it's like you could be sitting in a bar trying to not drink, and as long as you're thinking, I'm not drinking, I'm not drinking, I'm not drinking, you could endure it, probably. You could go for an event, you could whatever, and not drink easily enough. But if you lived in the bar, like, if you started to spend every single waking second in the bar, at some point, it wouldn't feel so easy because the environment is working against you. You're only working against the environment as much as you can be conscious of it. So, same exact thing. We all have an internal environment that our reality mirrors. And so if your internal environment is not upgraded to the point where it mirrors the world you want to live in, then any strategy or tactic you use to create that world will be popped at some point by that autopilot. Eventually. That environment inside of you is always going to be working, even when your mind is not. So that was very long winded. I don't know if that was.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: No, that made a lot of sense to me. I'm just mulling it over in my head and I translate that to the CJ version of, you help people to realize that congruence brings them more into accord with their universal self.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Helping people realize the importance of that.
[00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
And to also recognize by not living their pure authenticity, that they're sort of still sort of not walking the full path of themselves. And what could possibly be.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Yes, it's like every hallway in the light could be on except for one, and that's a sore thumb. You're going to notice it at some point. You're going to need something in that corner that you're not going to be able to see. Like all the lights need to be turned on. And it's a journey, it's a process. I think everyone naturally approaches that differently. We're all on our own unique path, but ultimately, we all came here to learn the same lessons, in essence and completely, which to me means all parts included.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: Have you seen that discord in a path of somebody lead them into extreme health issues?
[00:51:58] Speaker A: What do you mean?
[00:51:59] Speaker B: Like illness and basically an awful life.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: Have I seen clients?
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Have you seen that with clients? Where do you have clients come to you that have extreme health issues and everything, and then you delving into their story, you actually help them realize that that's discord?
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And I have an example of that, actually. That has been pretty miraculous feeling.
So one client of mine, we've been working together for about almost four years now, and he's just a successor all the way across the board. When he first came to me, in his own words, he was undatable. And he would say that loud and clear, he was undatable. He was the kind of stereotypical guy sending five text messages before getting a response and then being like, are you there? Just like, no awareness of how to do that, how to navigate it, how to connect, actually. It was just very head through the wall kind of thing. And so now fast forward, he's literally handpicking. He couldn't pay for a date then, and now he's literally hand picking dates and turning women down left and right that are not on his level or at his caliber. So he's completely transformed. And one of the ways that he has seen that change show up is in his eyes and his hearing. So he was born with something called Usher syndrome, which is a genetic disease that causes deterioration of your hearing and your vision in a particular way. And if you talk to any doctor asks about Usher syndrome, it's basically like a guarantee that that person ends up blind and deaf by the end of their life. It could happen very fast. It could take their whole life. It just depends on that person, their lifestyle, whatever. But with this client of mine, his vision, the vision that he has left the periphery is what starts to deteriorate first. And so the tunnel vision is what's left. He had, I want to say, 20% or 25% like that, something like that of vision four years ago, and now his vision is actually improved. It was like 28% or something of his range of vision. So not only has it stopped deteriorating, both his hearing and his eyes, but it's actually started to improve, to restore itself. And I 100% trust and write that off to the holistic approach that we've taken, because everything in him has been addressed. And naturally, his body, his physical body is reorganizing to align with that sense of know, that sense of wellness that has been attained on every other level. So it's been really cool.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: That would have been great to.
So, Hannah, how can people find you and get in contact with you and connect with you? I mean, do you do work online or is it all in person?
[00:55:10] Speaker A: So it's mostly online. I do offer some very select in person work, different body work type of sessions, tantric healing sessions, but those are typically for private clients only. They're very intimate, full day experiences. So mostly all online. And the best place to find me would be social media. For right now, my website's being completely overhauled and rebuilt right now. So Instagram would be the number one place at Hannah Spanky. H-A-N-N-A-H-S-P-A-N-K-E. Same username on any social media. Pretty much TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and I would suggest for everyone, because there's no reason not to, if you have any interest in anything that I've said, if you follow me on Instagram, if you find me there, to click the link in my bio and sign up for my free master class. So what I decided to do for 2024 is every month of the year of this year, at the fourth Sunday of each month, I'm putting on a free master class on a different topic, and it's completely free to attend. You just simply sign up, you put in your email once and then you'll automatically be on the list. So you'll get the zoom link to join every single master class for free for the rest of the year. So you can pick and choose the ones that are of interest to you. And then if you cannot attend live, I would still suggest signing up because if you ever want to grab a replay, you can grab the replay for $20 through the email list. I send it out the next day and it's $44 if you buy it without signing up for it.
Yeah, this last month was on breakups and just very high level understanding of separation and relationship, and I think it was super powerful. And I'll be announcing March's master class in the next couple of days.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: Wow, it sounds like you should be doing your own podcast too.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: I think I do have one. You do?
Yes. It's been very just passion projecty. I started it a couple of years ago and I've only recorded like ten or twelve episodes whenever I want to, sort of moments. But that's something that I also intend to become more regular throughout this year.
[00:57:16] Speaker B: Oh, excellent. Well, I look forward to that coming out as well. So I'll definitely subscribe to that, and I'm going to jump onto your Instagram and subscribe to that too. That sounds cool. Thank you so much.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: Oh, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt.
The podcast is called fuck yourself happy, so you can find that on any platform.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: I love that. That's so confrontational and also it's got a twist to it. That's great.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: So that's a good place to go deeper if you want more long form kind of content.
[00:57:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Excellent.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:57:49] Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time, Hannah. This has been an absolute pleasure, and I've really enjoyed the depth of your understanding of the processes of life and how the reaching towards authenticity can come with scars, but it can actually be released. That's really, really cool.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: Excellent.
To be honest, I actually forgot what Hannah did, and I quickly read up and composed some questions before this podcast, and so I was really, really surprised. But we actually did connect over the stories of shamanism and stuff at first, and I thought, that's great. So when we got into it and Hannah described her understanding of tibetan buddhist tantra and shamanism, it was exactly on point for me and my understanding of the world and then weaving that into assisting people through understanding trauma and getting through trauma. Amazing. What a great interview. Thank you so much to Hannah for coming on again, and if you've enjoyed today's show and you'd like to share it to somebody, please do. I'd really love that to happen. And if you could possibly get onto your podcast app and just give us five stars, that helps other people to find us. So thank you so much for listening and bye for now.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: Didn't but.
