Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: To say, we know the resistance is real, we know society's conditioning is dense. And as you go through that training, it like opens up your higher centers and the world becomes a completely different place.
And I decided a long time ago not to leave anyone feeling alone in that process.
[00:01:06] 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. 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 supernormalize, we're celebrating my 100th show. And yeah, I'm very happy to do a live, semi live. It's pre recorded, but it's live with a person in the studio. And today I have back Heather Layton. She's my shaman friend. That actually was on earlier in, I think episode 14 or 15. I should have looked that up before I talked about this. But anyway, if you go back, you can read, you can listen to that one and enjoy that as well. But she's coming back to talk about her experiences of going to Mongolia and meeting with lots of shamans at a shamanic festival and learning how to ride and shoot arrows horseback. And that sounds wild. So if that's something that actually interests you and, you know, I'm sure you'll enjoy the show. I certainly did.
So welcome to supernormalized Heather Layton, my shaman friend who has been on crazy world tours.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: And having lots of wild experiences and release this deck.
Stork, your shadow. Oracle deck.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: It's a story. You're gonna love it.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome. So what's happened?
There's so many things that happened.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: I know. I'm trying to think about when we did this last. It was last year.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Last year, actually. Probably closer to about this time almost.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: I actually think I may have been creating that deck at the time, but just in the naive beginning.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, right. So it was still a dream.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Or I was under this preconceived idea that it would be easy.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Because everyone makes it look so easy.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Well, I sort of thought, how hard can it be? I've learned my graphic art just on my own at home, thinking I'm going to have to use my own graphic art abilities for content. Anyway. So I thought, oh, why not? Yeah, I'll just do a little oracle deck. How hard could it be?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Ten minutes?
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
So it was a bit of a journey. Do you want to hear about it?
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, go on, please.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: I was talking to my friend at the time, and she was creating a tarot deck, which, as you know, is a lot of cards. And I thought, oh, I was only learning tarot at the time. I have no expertise in it. So I said, well, I'd kind of like to do an oracle deck as a companion for my students so that they could get to know the animal spirits. So when something shows up at the window or in the lower world, they can kind of have a reference point.
And I really love shadow work because it's all well and good to get an eagle and think I'm a leader. How fun. But what I was seeing in all my work with my students was that the shadow was not addressed, and that's what I was having to hack a lot.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Oh, so that's the name storky shot of this is.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Discovering all your points that you like to not talk.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: What a great idea.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
And it would just be that sort of hacking of the awareness around what your animals mean, particularly your birth totem.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So. And everyone was a bit perplexed when they got their birth totem anyway, so I sort of thought, well, let's look at the great qualities and let's look at the things that you might be blindsided by so that we can address that in the beginning.
So I thought, cool idea, let's go for it. And the graphics came through pretty quickly, to be honest. It was sort of like knocked that out in a few months and went, okay, where do we go from here? I sat on that for a few months, and then I did all the writing, which was the part I wanted to do anyway.
That would be my passion. Graphic art is sort of like a hobby on the side.
And as the writing came through, I noticed that there was quite a density to it. And because of the way that I work, I definitely wanted to have action steps for every card. So it wasn't this pull a card, feel better about yourself, put it away, and not really do anything about it.
Because I'm fairly new to divination cards, really. And a few decks that I picked up over the years, I sort of thought, it's got nothing in it for me.
It was just reassuring, and I didn't want reassuring? Yes, I want to tell me what I'm doing wrong, or tell me what I can't see or provide an answer that sparks thought so they can really understand it. So I wanted that depth.
So the writing for the 45 cards came through in a couple of months, and I sort of sat on it. And technically I thought, well, the bones of it are done, but the more I worked on it, the more I descended into this very difficult place.
I went through ego death after ego death, and in hindsight, I now realize that I was going through the shadow of every card.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's bound to happen, right?
How else can you express them?
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Exactly. And I remember saying to my guides, you know, care for what you wish for, but I said, I just want it to be of high integrity. I want it to be good medicine for the world. And they said, well, great. Off you go down into the depths of your own shadow work so that when you provide it for other people, you know exactly what the medicine is.
So I descended into this very deep place, not knowing where I was, just thinking that it was the most frustrating, creative project I've ever done.
And then editing was not my jam, but I decided to do it anyway.
And then there was the question of, do I self publish or do I send it into a publishing company? I didn't know anything about it, really, but I have a good friend of mine who's done many decks, and I took it to her and she looked through it and she said, you know, it's really beautiful for your first one. And she gave me a few pointers, like numbering the cards. And I thought, yeah, right, brilliant. And she told me things that I probably should have asked her before, like using templates so that you don't have to manually change each card. So I numbered them one by one and manually changed them all over again.
The editing was too much for me, so I ended up outsourcing that, and then I sent it into rockpool, which took an incredible amount of effort for some reason, just to put, you know, like, one file and send it in. I don't know why, but everything was frustratingly slow with the process. And they said, no, we don't have room for that title. And that was the only feedback I got.
And in true stubborn fashion, I went, stuff it. I'm doing it on my own.
So I self published, not knowing what that even meant. But I ended up in Hong Kong, and I thought, well, maybe this is where I'm meant to be.
And I started looking up printers and things, and I found these people on WhatsApp, and they said, yeah, come in for a meeting. We'll see what we can do.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: So it takes me five different cab drivers in the rain, and I'm incredibly upset on this day. It's like all forces were against me to even get to the printer. I spent $50 in the cab to get out to a printer in this random building in the suburbs that I shouldn't be in.
And the reason I knew I was in the right place, because they have this huge, big dog that's like a mix between a chow chow and a husky with its tongue permanently hanging out its mouth. And I went, I know I meant to be here.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: What dog?
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Yep. And even its owners were scared of the dog. And it said, oh, be careful. Don't touch the dog.
Very mean. Very mean dog.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Not as friendly towards you, probably.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Probably more shadow aspects for me to look at.
And I was completely unprepared for the meeting. I had no idea what the answers were. They said, how big do you want you cars? I said, I don't know. How big do you think they are? How do you want the box? I'm not really sure. It's like, why did you come here? Why don't you just do this on WhatsApp? I said, I don't know. I just wanted a meeting. It was important to me. And he goes, go home. We do it on WhatsApp, no problem.
And then it took very, two very expensive samples and many headaches later to finally put them to print, of which I had to order 300 decks. And turns out I haven't put my name on them or any kind of marketing material. And there's still mistakes all the way through them. And it was this incredibly arduous journey that taught me so much and deeply involved in the shadow and just showed me all of my impatience, all of my ignorance, all of my stubbornness. And by the time they rocked up on my door, six boxes full, I left them there for days. I was so pissed off. I was just like, I'm not even gonna look at you. I couldn't even feel a sense of accomplishment for so long because it was such a deep journey, and I really was in this portal for twelve months that it sort of looked like depression, but it was really just digging out all of it.
So.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Sounds like a whole birthing process.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Wow.
So I will never naively go into such things ever again.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: But you learned. That's the main thing.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Are you proud of them now, though?
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm onto my second one.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Cool.
It might take forever, but that's okay.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: That's cool. Yeah, that's excellent. And do you want to show some of the cards to people and maybe might be interested if they're watching on YouTube?
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. So there's a tiny little book, of course, with an explanation of each card and action steps. Like I said, I was very particular about the feel of them and how they shuffled in the hands and we did the gold binding.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: So 45 different cards. I'll hold a few up. So number one was wolf.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: That's cool.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I wanted them to have a sort of transcending nature. There's a bit of geometry and numerology in there, but there's a clue on each card about what it's really about, so that it is fairly gritty.
And with those action steps, they're not. Some of them are fairly demanding. So if you get a card, you put in the action and it might take a while for it to come through.
So that's what I wanted them to be, not just keep on pulling a card and being reassured and it not meaning anything.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: So very cool.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Quite a process indeed.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Excellent. Excellent.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: And you've been to China?
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Mongolia.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Mongolia.
Tell us about that. What happened?
[00:13:05] Speaker A: So I was deep in this, right, making the cards, and I was being called somewhere, and I knew that I needed a vision quest. It's this distinct feeling that we have as shamanic practitioners and those on a shematic path.
It's almost this deep craving to be so isolated and so connected that you're trying to find the biggest cave you could possibly crawl into and you don't want to come out until you're a new version of yourself.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: And I was researching many different ways to do this over the entire year, but I just thought, it'll come to me when I know it's right. And Mongolia kept on showing up. I was just drawn to the vastness of space and nature. And obviously, obviously I could find shamans over there because there was a part of me looking for a teacher and a master as well, someone I could learn the next chapter with. So I found a tour guide that would do both, put me in touch with shamans and take me out to horse archery.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: How do you find tour guides like that?
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Exactly?
A lot of hours on the Internet and I was sort of just researching around. But it's the place where you do two of these things I was very interested in, and horse archery had grabbed my attention a year before because I saw it at a TEDx talk live. This woman talked about her horse archery career, and I just thought fascinating.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: So he did me up a package and I said, I'm going. I said to my partner, I'm going. I'm gonna go for five weeks. I really need a deep immersion in another culture. I can feel it, and I'm just going to let it play out.
So it's a bit of a long trip to get there, but once you pass through Hong Kong, it's really only about 4 hours in.
So I got off the plane, I think early evening.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Where is this?
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Ulumbata, the capital. So the airport's just this tiny little building in the middle of nowhere.
And I've done a lot of travel. I'm very happy traveling, very comfortable. I've been to some interesting places, but I have never been anywhere like this.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: What struck you the most about it?
[00:15:36] Speaker A: I get in the taxi and I'm driving into the city, which is only about half an hour drive. And I had never seen terrain like that before in my life.
There was just rolling hills, no grass, nothing there. It looked like Mars.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: And I'm this really excited tourist just taking videos out the window, and the culture shock sets in and I thinking, what am I doing? I am way out of my league here.
And the language, the few sentences that I've heard were, I can't even describe the sounds, and I couldn't read the language at all. And I thought, what am I doing?
Okay. So I got to my hotel. I said, just fall asleep. You'll wake up. Everything will be better. I ended up calling a friend the next day, just going, you'll never guess where I am.
And I'm in too deep. She said, oh, you'll be right. You're a good traveller. You'll find your feet.
And I did. And I was on tour the next, I think, two days after.
But Ulaanbaatar is this capital city with everything that you could think of. Starbucks, hungry jacks, museums, everything you need. Yeah. Massively westernized. 15 minutes out of the city, there's just nothing but yurts and goats everywhere you can see. And I thought, this place is just fascinating.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: I had no hope with the language, but it was easy enough to get around. And from the first moment on tour, I was only on tour for eight days.
A shaman came with us in the car and his helper.
20 minutes outside the city, the full drive breaks down. And I thought, this is it. This is going to be a really interesting time because I'd put this intention of vision quest on and that I wanted to learn things and find masters and do all the things. It started as soon as I got in that car.
And the shaman, from the back seat, I didn't know he spoke English, reached over and said, so our adventure begins. And I was like, what?
[00:17:46] Speaker B: That's what you're picking, right?
[00:17:50] Speaker A: I was like, oh, my God, you speak English. I have so many questions. So we're on the side of the highway waiting for a lift. Some strange things happened with the fall drive that the tour guide can't understand.
And I'm just asking him question after question after question after question about shamanism, about what he thinks, about white people practicing this, about how he speaks to his guides, what he does. I was just insatiable. And he answered all my questions over many days.
And then it was horse archery and ceremonies on a hill and the Gobi desert, staying with nomads and just feeling completely, completely small in such a vast country with such rich culture and a very painful history as well.
So after the tour, I was satisfied, saturated, completely worn out, and I was begging for the westernised city.
But there were things I wanted to achieve.
And I knew instantly that I was going to take my students back one day.
And I kept on working with that shaman in whatever capacity he could hold me in. And he took me to do ceremonies and answered my questions. And I ended up with another chance meeting with a Durkan shaman, which is from the north. That was the daughter of a famous shaman up there.
All very interesting conversations and the way that they do divination and the way that it's in their culture.
The very interesting thing was they welcomed me with open arms without any scrutiny. They said, what are you doing here? And I said, well, I practice shamanism and this is the place to be. And they said, oh, australian shaman, you come with us. Yeah, you're one of us. We do business, we do whatever. You help me, I help you. And I was like, wow, you don't even want to check my credentials or, like, call out cultural appropriation or talk about my hair. None of that. You just want to accept me. And I was blown away.
And turns out I found out that there was this festival on the first of its kind right near the city, a few weeks from that moment.
And it was, sorry, I just have to do this. Yeah, go to.
And the festival was to celebrate shamanism.
And I went, how did this happen? This is so incredible. So I had to hire a translator, a driver to get there. But there was 350 registered shamans at this festival, all dressed up, some from France, Canada, Mongolia, all over the place.
And I was there just crying.
I can't believe this is such a celebration.
And I just.
I just felt like I'd found something. I'd found a place, a celebration where I felt empowered and included to be there. And I'm just hanging out in the. So every single person I met that could speak a bit of English or everyone that the translator put me in touch with was just so excited and wanted to meet my students and wanted to collaborate. And I just thought, this is incredible. So it all lined up and I just. I remember thinking, oh, I wish I could make this dream come true.
But I was so deeply touched and nourished by all of it. And the shamans had a lot of work for me to do. Things they wanted me to do, to make, to create, was like, I'll do it.
Then I came home via Hong Kong with the printers ready to go, and I thought, what a magical trip.
And I came back with this idea that I didn't have before, which is shamans helping shamans.
Right. We all have to band together. It is not an easy pathway at all. And there's high levels of scrutiny and judgment and a lot of people feeling cast out, even over there, because shamanism went underground. It's been buried. And most Mongolians have been converted to Buddhism.
Yeah. So they say over there that if there's a problem you can't fix, they are very spiritual. There's a problem you can't fix.
Let's say you have a spiritual problem. You're most likely to go to the buddhist monks and they'll tell you to pray and sweep your house out and do all those things.
But if you can't solve the problem by that or with a doctor in the dead of the night, they still go to the shamans because they are the most powerful.
[00:22:36] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: And I think even the non believers will go and they still believe in curses and karma and. Yeah.
So that was really interesting to me. And their problems are obviously different, but the methods are the same.
So they're really interested about livestock. That's their only livelihood. So you go to a shaman if your goats are getting sick or if your horses have run away or if your family are unwell.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Practical lifestyle.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: And I said, well, over in our country, we were more concerned about mental health crises and lack of purpose and depression and anxiety, and they kind of went, really? But it's the same process. You pray to the mountain, you pray to your ancestors, you make the offerings and it will come back to you. I thought, how simple the levels that we go to, or the lengths that we go to to pay the therapist and figure out our problems and complicate things. But are we actually making offerings, talking to our guides, helping each other out, doing good deeds? It's very simple medicine.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: But it sounds like that there could be, like a problem with right relation that's happened over time. And what the shamans are all pointing towards is, let's get back there because that's what is normal.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And really over there, they're activists as well. They plant trees, they campaign against the government.
They serve humanity and nature together.
So that was incredible. And actually, this Saturday I'm off again to take a group of advanced students on their vision quest.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah, nice. Yeah. So the festival's on again. I've got a small group, same tour guide. We're not going into the desert this time. But horse archery, shamanism, ceremonies, I gotta.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Keep more up with the order.
Would have been cool.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Hopefully I can make it a thing every year.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: That's excellent.
So tell us about your horse archery. How'd that go?
[00:24:48] Speaker A: It was so interesting.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: I mean, I've ridden a horse like a dozen times in my life. I don't know how to ride. I can just hold on. So maybe good balance. Yeah. Maybe just courage. I don't know. And I've been getting into archery, just playing around with it anyway.
And honestly, I didn't have much hope that I would be doing any good at it. But there's this ranch close to the city, and I was the only one there because I was on a private tour. So I'm surrounded by Mongolians, and there's a family there, and they've got all these horses and their company trains, like acrobat horse people for the circus.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: So they can do flips on the saddle and ride next to the horse and all sorts of crazy things. And my teacher was excellent. He's a lovely man, very charismatic.
And he had me shooting on horseback at the target in two days.
He was ruthless, very funny, and very limited English. It was just shoot, shoot. Good, good, bad.
Maybe something else.
But there was connection, right?
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: And it was just like, on the horse, go, okay, on the horse not holding, go. Okay, on the horse with the bow, go. I'm just like, I shouldn't be doing this, but it's a, it's an excellent way to do it. No insurance forms, no helmet, no crazy rules. Yeah, it was just mongolian style.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Just go for it. Yeah, that's cool.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it was awesome. And then I couldn't walk for a whole week.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: Well, those sit bones for horses.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Yep. So this time it's my students turn on the horses.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: That'll be excellent. You still got. You're going to jump onto.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'll just have to let them know that I haven't found a trainer. And my dreams to become a horse archer weren't really pursued. But I loved the space and I loved the family, and I was impressed by how far he got me.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: You know, and it's funny, when someone doesn't speak your language or it's from a different culture, there's no room to complain or make excuses because you won't be able to understand you anyway.
He just knows when I'm scared and petrified, he's like, good, huh? Good. Heart beating? Yes. I'm like, yes, I'm terrified you're gonna kill me.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: I suppose that's the best way to learn, really. Just forced into it, really.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Loved it.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah. In the deep end and taught how to swim. And all you have to do is just swim.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Shoved on a horse, off you go.
Yeah. Loved it.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: So is there any other highlights of your tour that you'd like to mention?
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Oh, so many.
I found just being on mongolian land was an incredible experience.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: You found a resonance.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Massive amounts of resonance. It took me a while to put it all together, but the idea was that there's still so many active shamans on that land, and they're all making offerings just to keep the spirits happy. To the water spirits, the mountain spirits, the air spirits, the land spirits, they're upset.
It doesn't matter. It was this deep relationship for them.
And even my mentor said, you know, we'll do a ceremony for that mountain, and we'll do it many times, because one day we might need to climb the mountain and do a ceremony on the mountain, and I need to know that we're friends. And this is how I make friends, just like a business relationship. You go out to lunch. The more you go out to lunch and discuss ideas, the more the bond forms.
And in comparison, I feel over here we can get into such a more entitled place with land. It's just more like, I want to buy that this is mine and why isn't it working for me?
So I tell you, I came back to this mountain and I made so many offerings, and I started a deep relationship with her, knowing that my life would change from there on in. And it did. Slowly, slowly, things started to lift and what the cards had put me through, came into this beautiful idea of service and making offerings and understanding a different style of relationship with my guides.
They use very old language, they beg spirits, they apologize, and they talked about concepts like, you know, if your grandfather killed someone, then your karma says that you need to make offerings to that mountain for the rest of your life because of what he did, and maybe he did it in the same area.
So that spirit has been very unhappy for so long.
And I thought, I wonder what australian person would actually do that for their entire lives?
And this brought in this huge idea around ancestral curses and what's taken or inherited down the lines and how we can work with it and how that manifests in people and maybe a missing link to why we get so displaced or sick, or maybe that mental health crisis aspect has a deeper meaning as well.
And I started bringing all of my students and just more people together, saying, this path is hard, and we need to be in it together. We need to support each other because it's isolating and it's spent years underground. So that was really empowering, too.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Again, it all comes back to that right relation, doesn't it, really?
It's basically healing the connection between the human spirit and every other spirit.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And I didn't really know that there was one mountain spirit or primary spirit. Called them. They call it the mountain lord, but they don't have a great word there.
If you make the mountain lord happy, then everything should be happy. In your house.
You can pick one tree on your landers, the primary tree that talks to all the other nature spirits and all the other trees on your land. So this deep idea around land clearing and setting things right with the land came through as well. And that showed up in my work, doing a lot of land clearings and a lot of contract work with the land and honoring mountains and making a lot of offerings just to set things in a respectful place, and it's done wonders, really.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Did you have any insight into the tornado disaster that happened up here? Did you get any messages? Yeah. What'd you get?
We were just puzzled. We were like, oh.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: So it seemed.
I mean, this mountain up here has got very strong energetics that we know.
The stories are that it was used by the indigenous for sacred things, but they didn't really live up here. So we're trying to make a suburban life out of somewhere that was used for high intense energies.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, it's sacred word.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's like, for the Mongolians, we're living on the top of the mountain. And with never made offerings, we've never asked for permission and all this sort of stuff. So the energetics up here are strong anyway.
But it seemed she was very selective with that storm.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Very. It was amazing, wasn't it? Like, yeah, some houses were taken out completely and then the one next to them weren't touched.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
So some people needed to change, some people needed to leave and some people couldn't stay.
It was very clear.
And the ones that needed to change, it's really tough love, isn't it?
The very thing that makes you feel safe and secure is now leaking and damaged.
For some people near us, it was almost like an initiation. They'd recently just moved, half their house was gone. For other friends, it was a really call to changing the structure structures of their life. Some people fled from the trauma, some houses were completely wiped out. And then a lot of the people that I know that do make offerings, do energetic work, do spiritual work, completely untouched.
And one friend said to me, yeah, well, no wonder I've got Quan yin on the roof.
And then my partner was out without talking to someone and he said, oh, our house was totally fine. And he friend said, of course, you live with the shaman.
And I thought, thank you. All the offerings have obviously paid off and those protection mechanisms and working with the land and working with the neighbours and making sure that we're staying in a compassionate place always and helping people out.
And I'm not saying that people that got wiped out don't do that, but it seemed to be that those that had ownership of their energetics seemed to be left alone and almost untouched. But maybe she was wiping out ill intention or egoic constructs or greed. But remodeling of the land happens all the time. Big storms are here to create change and we were in the way of that. But it's interesting that all the tallow woods came down. They were the trees that really cracked. So if we looked at the properties of tallow wood, I haven't been able to find heaps of, like, folklore, medicinal information.
But if you look at the properties of tallow wood and how much those trees almost snapped in half, it would be like their lessons are now integrating in a different way. So they've been holding tall, protecting us through all sorts of energetics, and then they may come down. The whole landscape's remodeled, so we might get different influences, different spirits, different rebuilding, different people.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a wild Christmas.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: It was.
But I kind of liked how it.
It played with our idea of what those holidays mean, that she got everyone. Well, not everyone, but she got people in a place with their families altogether, which I thought was very interesting. And some people were off mountain with their family.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah, some people left straight away.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: And the bonds that happened, well, certainly around us, the bonds intensified and we became very close to people on our street and our neighbors parents were staying in our house. And we're all looking after each other and we all had to look after each other. And it was a very beautiful experience in that way. And then I heard about many people at war with each other and I thought, well, those true feelings or true intentions were seen very quickly. And then I know a couple of very spiritual people that left a couple of months before and their houses were taken out.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, very interesting that that came through, but it shook us all up.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was like, in the end, I actually think was a good experience. You know, at the time I was like, yeah, difficult, but they're good challenges. You know, what we saw with it was that people became friendly in a different sort of way. And that was really lovely.
Yeah, we were lucky.
But also a couple of shamans in the house.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: A couple of shamans in the house. Energetic work going on, goodwill service.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: I can't help it.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: That's right, yeah.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Yes, it was good.
Yeah. So what's your sleeve for this year? What else is happening?
[00:37:10] Speaker A: So we are still doing lots of training courses.
So we've just done a big gathering out at ocean view at a beautiful retreat out there that we're going to keep working with. So the guy on the land at worlds away retreat has done a beautiful job of land regeneration.
He's held that land for 20 years. He's planted about 8000 trees.
He's trying to bring nature back, the birds, the snakes, everything. And I think he's doing a really wonderful job. So when I found him, I was looking for the right energetics and as you can imagine, a whole bunch of shamans on site. We do some weird things. So I have to clear it with people.
So anything from do you mind if we drum? Do you mind if we. That's weird for some, yes, for some, that is very challenging for them to accept. Yeah. It brings up like the opposite side of Christianity for them. So we're doing the devil's work sometimes when we're drumming. So finding venues can be hard, particularly when we have strong intentions.
Because we do come in, we do clearings for them because we like to understand the energetics of the land so we know what we're working with. Because as we hold the group in the container and we increase the spiritual resonance of the entire property, things get attracted. So we have to hold down the protection mechanisms and hold the intention very strongly. And usually I need to know what's happening underneath. So I slowly worked with this guy and said, like, do you mind if we make offerings? It kind of was throwing alcohol in the bushes with herbs and things and like, lighting things on fire and smudging. But this is, this is the idea and I'm happy to clear for you and work on it and work with your intentions of bringing the wildlife back and having good people here and working within your boundaries. And he loved it. He thought it was great. And I said, we'll pay ownership to the indigenous spirits and the original custodians. And that's very important for us. He was like, ah, brilliant.
So it's our third event out there now, and we're going to keep on working with that land. It's absolutely stunning.
And you look at all the glass house mountains and they just play out this backdrop story the entire time.
So we've done a big gathering out there, which is not only shamanic training, but big breath work journey and a sound healing and fully catered. And we're trying to get that semi immersed in nature idea.
They love it. Even though we get them up at sunrise one morning and take them down a treacherous journey to a cave and do a dismemberment journey in the cave with a dog.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome.
Oh, wow. You could take it to one more level and just blindfold them.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: We could, we could. I mean, it's usually raining and it's. That's cool early in the morning, but yeah, we'll do beginners training out there this year. Another gathering.
So those courses continue. The online community is growing, so we're really getting people through beginners, intermediate and advanced training.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Brilliant.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: And you can see the changes, but also the deep spiritual awakenings, which can be messy, but we're just trying to hold the support because still I see the biggest problem is isolation.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Everyone thinks they're going through something that's specific to them, but we all go through specific things.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: So, yeah.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: And the changes are real. It's like it can sever your relationships, it can make you question your job and your stability and your security. And we really want to provide that container for them to say, we know the resistance is real. We know society's conditioning is dense. And as you go through that training, it opens up your higher centers and the world becomes a completely different place.
And I decided a long time ago not to leave anyone feeling alone in that process.
So we've got over 130 members in our online community now, pod leaders and coaches on site. So that's advanced students that know what they're about to go through and can just not hold their hand, but show them that the road is safe and fulfilling and purposeful. And no matter what happens, we're there, no matter how long that takes. I mean, sometimes I can get calls five years later, just like I didn't get it, but now I do.
And my guides are saying this, and it's all worked out. And I said, great, because they're often the ones that are falling apart in the beginning because the falseness of the world shows up and the lies and the deception and all those things you thought your life was going to be about have to break away.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: All the masks we put on and.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: You know, your whole nervous system has to remodel and your brain starts upgrading and your body becomes more. Well. But of course, this looks like health crises and, you know, depression and panic attacks and things at times as it first starts to open up. But we hope to provide that support along the way. So it's a work in progress.
And as I said, some of the advanced students get the opportunity to go to Mongolia now, which is a beautiful opportunity that rounds off their training in a nice way.
It's like in this place, you are a shaman and you're celebrated there. And this is worldwide, this idea.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: That's very cool. Very opening as well, and grounding at the same time.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: Yeah, the land does most of the work.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Wow. I love those big open spaces and I love to go there.
So how can people find you when you're working?
[00:43:12] Speaker A: So we are very much online.
I've just put a bit of time and effort into our YouTube channel, which is just the Ankara Academy. So lots of readings, lots of free content on there, lots of podcast episodes, lots of things going on there.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Through the website, you can find everything that we're doing. So the Ankara academy.com, plus Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: I'll go to your site and grab all those.
I'll put those in the show notes.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, there's everything there from free membership in the online community, free content online, all the way up to paid memberships at different tiers. And then I still do one on one mentorships. And it's a twelve month journey. You'll go all the way through your training with 24/7 support.
I'm action based. So whatever the problem is, we'll action it. We'll keep on moving forward through.
So that's something for people that really want that one on one space. The ones that are really ready.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: Yeah. When they call me up and say, I know I'm here for a big purpose, I said, great, are you ready?
Let's do this.
So plenty of stuff online.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Excellent. Excellent. Well, I'll point everyone to you and yeah, hopefully you find some more stuff. Students as well. Yeah. But all power to you and all your students that are actually getting out there and doing this stuff, because that's what the world needs.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. For sure. So heaps of love to the students too. It takes a lot of courage.
[00:44:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for being my 100th show.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: Oh, how exciting.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Yeah, very cool. Very cool.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: Congratulations.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you. I feel good. I feel good about it and I feel like people are actually enjoying it and.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Yeah, excellent.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: Growing from it, too.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Yay.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Good job. Say goodbye to listeners.
Well, that was an excellent show. I'm sure you enjoyed that as much as I did. And yeah, Hela's doing leaps and bounds in the world of shamanism, it seems. And I'm proud to know her. She's such a powerful lady, and the thing that she's doing is going to be resonating through time, helping the planet, helping people heal.
If that's something that appeals to you, then maybe you should get in contact with her and the details about that in the show notes. Now, if you've enjoyed today's show, please also like and subscribe and also share this one show to a friend. And that way more people get to hear these stories and expand their vision and understanding of the world.
I hope you've enjoyed today's show as much as I have. And if you have, yeah. Please also give me five stars on your favorite podcast app that you're on right now. If you're on a podcast, if you're on YouTube, like and subscribe, as I said before, but maybe flick it to a friend, that'd be really cool too.
So before I go on rambling, I just want to say thank you for listening. And until next episode, bye for now.
