FAQ

can you say more about spirit?

I sure can!  (laughter)

everything at the dreaming otter is based on direct work with healing energies and spirit helpers, and the ideas that everything is alive, has sentience, wants to communicate, and seeks balance in its own way.

healing wants to happen.

learning how to work with spirit guides +  being able to engage the mystery directly are two powerful ways to engage the living web of life in a good way, and live a beautiful human life.

we work in the unseen realms, which are another kind of reality as valid as the one you’re experiencing now.  in the worlds beyond what our five senses can perceive, we can communicate directly with goddesses and gods, elemental beings and nature devas, ascended healing masters, mystical or archetypal beings, bright and well ancestors, animal beings, or personal guides – the list is pretty endless.

each of our experiences of the love that animates all things is perfect.  the numinous, the source, the mystery, god, goddess, spirit, love – whatever word works for you – kindly wears different faces so we can access love and healing and peace directly, wherever we are on our path.

it is love wearing many different forms that performs healing on your behalf in unseen reality – it’s my joy and honor to hold the space for you in 3D while strong healing with spirit and energy happens.

my particular way of working with helping spirits and healing energies is twofold:  I’m an intuitive and a channel, so I’m receiving guidance directly from compassionate helping spirits, who perform the actual healing work for you, when I’m holding space.

when you receive healings like soul retrieval, cord healing, power restoration, psychopomp, divination, etc, I’ll use the rhythmic beat of a drum to help me drop more deeply into connection with my spirit guides in the unseen worlds, where my helpers can show me the healing they’re offering on your behalf.   that’s a fun part of a session, as you get to hear the steady, healing drumbeat, which is healing in and of itself.

this topic is vast.

essentially, spirit is in all things, we can communicate with it, and remember how to return to love in our own individuated ways, as the deep mystery experiences itself through us.  everything here is rooted in love.  working directly with spirit is a joy and a grace.

healing wants to happen.

I love this work, and have dedicated my life to it because working with spirit guides and the many faces of love is amazing, mystical, powerful, relieving, and effective.  I really, really invite you to our self-paced course on shamanic journeying for healers so you can start learning how to talk to your spirit guides directly, if you have any interest in doing so.

it’s a beautiful path.

if you have any questions, please reach out and let me know.  I’m here!

of all the questions, this is maybe my favorite.  and the most tender.

YES.

being able to connect with unseen reality is part of our human heritage.

no matter where you come from, who you are, what your gifts are, what you do or don’t believe, who your ancestors were, what spiritual tradition (or absence of) you grew up in, what your lived experiences have been, you can absolutely connect directly with the world beyond our five human waking senses.

YES.

the way that works best for me personally is through listening to rhythmic drumming that helps my brain enter a light trance so I can go connect with my friends, well ancestors, teachers, and helpers in the unseen realms.

if you wish to learn how to journey with a rhythmic drumbeat and have direct experiences with your spirits, you can learn that in our free course in about a half hour.  happy journeying!

that said, there are lots of ways to connect with the divine.

beyond journeying into the unseen with a drumbeat, we engage many pathways to work with the spirits and healing energies here at the dreaming otter – like communing in nature, working with our dreams, journaling, walking labyrinths, channeling, taking guided journeys, creating personal retreats and unique ceremonies, and formal contemplation.

what works for me may not work for you, and vice versa.  so we play with a lot of different approaches here.

so, CAN you connect with your helpers and the magical, wonderful world of the unseen?

YES.

a note about connecting:

spirit will connect with you in the way that works for you. 

here are a few samples of ways spirit might ‘try to deliver a message’ from my own lived experience, and yours will be different:

• through a spirit my ancestral lineage has worked with in the british isles for generations: river otter (my ancestors call otters ‘the sleek ones’)
• in a dream where I talk with einstein or an ancient goddess or a glowing magic orb of light, and receive a message so strong I remember it on waking, and take action
• while receiving reiki and a flash of inspiration ‘comes to me’ and I know in my breath, blood, and bone I now have the answer and insight I’ve been praying for.
• in a ceremony, where a strong and unusual omen is delivered, like a deer slowly walking up to me while building a mandala of flowers as I offer prayers for inner peace

if you’re old enough, like me, to remember old-school, physical radios (yup), you remember that you could turn a radio dial and choose from tons of different radio stations.

working with the spirits is like tuning into the radio stations that have music you’re called to.  maybe in this lifetime, you’re only open to hearing country or rap or pop or opera, so spirit will speak to you on that ‘radio station’ and deliver the message there so you can hear it.  similarly, maybe it works best for you to journey, dream, receive messages in nature, or through guided visualizations, and so on.

this is the tender part:

you may have been taught, somewhere along the way, that you are not powerful, loved, or worthy of care from loving humans or loving spirit helpers.  blessings if so.

in fact, you are able to connect with spirit and the unseen and healing energy – in the way that works for you.  unequivocally, without doubt.

YES.

you do not have to be ‘special’ or ‘gifted with magical powers’ or ‘part of a certain lineage’ or ‘have had gifts from a young age.’ (I mean, that’s cool, but all humans can work in the unseen worlds)

you.  can.  simply.  learn.  to.  connect.

in the way that works for you.

ha!  I feel passionately about this – can you tell?  (grin)

if you wish to receive them, I offer blessings of hope and healing, that lead you to connecting with your concept of goddess/god/source/love/the mystery/nature/helping spirits/elementals/well ancestors/spirit teachers/whatever language feels right for you.

may you feel held in this world, and remember your power and grace.

love,
anna

hi lovely folks!

this is a list of ‘healings you might learn or receive here’…

and it is…and isn’t…helpful.

that’s because I can rattle off lists of healing modalities the whole day long, and although that might sound fancy, it may not actually help you if you’re in a healing process.

that said, you might be shopping around for a teacher or mentor, and healing forms like ‘lightarian’ or ‘dynamind’ or ‘work with the goddesses’ are part of your search.  okey dokey.

with that in mind, here’s a list of *some* things we might get up to in healing sessions and encounters at the dreaming otter, and a little nugget of info about each one:

• activations (these are channeled specifically for you)
• akashic healing (look at spirit contracts at work, heal them)
• ancestral work (work with bright and well ones for ease)
• ceremony (change the shape of creation, use your power)
• channeling (learn how, channel your own guides safely)
• cord healing (no ‘cord cutting’ here, heal cords with compassion)
• crystal grids (work with bones of the earth to anchor power)
• dowsing (use pendulums to actually change and move energy)
• dynamind technique (like EFT on steroids, fast, effective shift)
• elemental work (friendships with land, air, water, fire spirits and devas)
• extraction (remove energy that doesn’t belong and causes difficulty)
• goddess work (neopagan maiden/mother/crone archetypes + goddesses specifically aligned to you)
• guide retrieval (ascended healing masters, goddesses/gods, animal or human guides, ancient + contemporary teachers)
• labyrinth healing (death and rebirth in the mystery of the labyrinth)
• living altar creation (altars are not just for ‘worship,’ they move power around, too)
• magical council (facilitated journey with several ‘honored guests’ to help you with a specific topic)
• medicine keys (like a ‘spiritual app’ that launches for specific support, great to reset patterns)
• metatronia energy® (channeled healing with metatron energies)
• oracle healing (divination spreads, oracle journeys and archetype channeling)
• past life regression (explore and heal links from other lifetimes)
• perfect health blueprints (retrieve the spirit of healthy organs and body systems)
• personal retreat creation (work with spirit, create intentional retreat, come home to you)
• power restoration (bring back lost power, chi, dreams, essence)
• reiki (karuna®) (work with avalokiteshvara + quan yin, 8 contemporary reiki symbols)
• reiki (komyo) (yamaguchi lineage of reiki healing)
• reiki (lightarian®)  (accelerated spiritual healing)
• reiki (usui) (takata lineage of reiki healing)
• sacred art (shamanic art is not ‘representative of power’, it IS power)
• sacred storytelling (special crafting of your own healing story + special witnessing)
• shamanic divination (asking the spirits about situations and outcomes)
• soul retrieval (bringing home lost power after trauma, coming home to you)
• spiritual contract work (releasing and rewriting contracts that dictate experience)
• talisman creation (create a power object for a specific purpose, petition for help)
• tarot (working with archetypal forces for healing through lens of tarot)
• unburdening/unwinding (offering troubles to the spirits, unwinding burdening energy)

…and sometimes, new healing technology that helping spirits bring through just for you.

again, this is a list of ‘lots of healing tools you can learn or receive here.’

it may or may not help you in your discernment.

either way, it was fun to create for you…and even more fun to work with, celebrate, and experience.

if some of these healing tools perk up your ears, we can work together in healing sessions where you can receive them or learn how to offer them for others.

questions?  please email me.  I’d love to hear from you.

love,
anna

if you’re a human on planet earth, most likely you’ve experienced some kind of pain, loss, hardship, illness, disappointment, trauma, or overwhelm.

that might sound broad or like ‘one size fits all’ but we all experience pain and challenge in a human life.

blessings, blessings.

in older times, we’d have someone skilled around who would say, after any of those tough experiences, ‘are you okay?  is all of you here after that hard thing?’

and, if you needed a helping hand, that medicine person or gifted one would perform a soul retrieval for you.  in general, we’ve lost that today.

‘soul retrieval’ means that we work with the spirits to literally retrieve a part of your spirit that either (unconsciously) took off or got misplaced during the hard time.  good coping mechanism, sure, and not so great after the hard thing is done.

‘soul loss’ leaves us diminished.

by ‘diminished,’ I mean you might, if you’ve got a little or a lot of soul loss going on (listen to your heart, it knows), you might feel stuck, lost, unable to make decisions, lacking joy or purpose, depressed, sick, like bad or hard things happen around or to you all the time, addicted, or like you’re walking around feeling numb.  (big.  heart.  hug).

things can of course be more complex than that, but those are some good basic ‘time for a soul retrieval’ hallmarks.

essentially we need all of our spirit here to have a good life, and do what we came here to. 

we need to be as intact as possible.

so, we do a soul retrieval to start, and begin bringing you back home to you.  most of us human-shaped creatures need lots of soul retrieval in our times,  that’s okay.  we’ll start somewhere, soul retrievals can have a ‘domino effect’ and set others in motion spontaneously, and that’s fun when it happens.

soul retrieval is potent.

we can work together in sessions and explore soul retrieval for you, or we can train you in how to facilitate soul retrievals, which requires strong and reliable friendships with your spirit helpers.

in every soul retrieval – whether you receive one or hold space – there will be sacred storytelling, intervention from the spirits, gifts, new helpers, teachings, integration, ceremonies, and then watching the work ripple out in beautiful ways.

things will change.  more light comes in.

soul retrieval feels amazing, and like coming home.  if you’re reading here, and you notice a sacred tear and don’t consciously know why, or your heart is nudging or keening or jumping up and down with ‘yes yes!  I need THAT!’

you’ll know.

it’s safe to trust your own heart.

if this feels like something you need to learn how to do, or receive, you can email me and we’ll find a good path forward for you.  blessings!

love,
anna

the basic premise of ‘energy extraction’ is this:

energy that doesn’t belong affects your ‘spiritual immune system’ (yes, you have one of those) and that can compromise you.

things that can compromise your spiritual immune might be:

• a rough thing happens, an altercation, illness, life event that’s painful and hard, an initiation
• you have an encounter with someone and they throw some not-so-great energy (hopefully unconsciously) at you
• you stumble into something energetically tricky or above your pay grade to clear yourself
• you’ve been praying strongly with your worry, over and over, and a thought form or energy field has formed as a result

welp…you might end up with an ‘energetic intrusion.’

which is exactly what that sounds like.

you can think of extraction forms of healing like this: if you’ve got a huge splinter in your physical body, it’s going to be hard for your body to heal.

the ‘splinter’ doesn’t belong, and it lets things in that don’t belong either.

stretching that metaphor into the unseen energetic realm, rough times ensue if you’ve got energy aboard that isn’t yours – that can look like depression, ‘bad luck,’ self-doubt, lack of flow, or thoughts coming back to a situation over and over that keep you feeling ‘stuck,’ lost, or hopeless.

been there.  big hug.

when helping spirits perform energetic extraction, they’re literally removing energy that doesn’t belong that’s causing you harm.

it’s simple in one way, and from a practitioner side things gets really groovy.  without knowing what’s going on for you, I can’t paint you specifics, but this might do for now:

if you suspect you have energy that isn’t yours with you that’s causing nonsense in your life, you’ll know.

you can trust that.

we can incorporate extraction into a healing session or mentoring if it’s needed for you, or teach you how to facilitate clearings yourself.

and!  this is important!

we do not ask the healing spirits to perform extraction and send you on your merry way.  nope!

nature abhors a vacuum.  so it’s important to note that with every extraction type of work we do, it’s vital to ‘fill in’ as well.

that means we fill any freshly-healed places with love, blessings, light, power, strength, and declarations of ease, flow, and grace.  every.  time.

extraction feels relieving.  as well it should.  if you’ve had a big ragged splinter sticking out of your physical body, compromising you and causing pain for a long time, it feels good to get the darn thing out.  and slather on some healing salve.

this is a short precis about extraction and filling in – it’s a really fascinating, complex topic, and it’s important to know about.  essentially, you learned about physical hygiene when you were little, energy hygiene maybe not so much.

both affect you, and you can learn and receive ways to help yourself out, so energy flows better in your body, life, and body of work.

if this calls you, and you wish to receive extraction in sessions or learn how to facilitate this yourself, you can email me and we’ll chat about it.

here’s to your intactness, your wellness, and your energy being your own.

I see you healthy (energetically and physically) and strong.

love,
anna

I hear a lot of folks interchange ‘ritual’ and ‘ceremony.’

for me and the dreaming otter, they’re actually two really different things.

ritual is something you do again and again in the same way to achieve a desired result (yoga to invite union of mind/body/spirit, reiki to invite relaxation/miracle healing, qi gong to invite inner balance and free-flowing qi, meditation or single-pointed focus to still the mind, and so on).

ceremony is different.

ceremony changes the shape of creation.

with ceremony, we look at what is dissonant or what is yearning to come into form (okay, it’s more complex than that, but these are short paragraphs, grin).

we ask the spirits, after doing any needed healing work, ‘how can I invite you into my life to help change this energy/pattern/trajectory/dream with a ceremony?’  and the spirits give us what you might think of as ‘ceremony recipes.’

there’s no need to borrow or imitate someone else’s ceremony, because the spirits know what you need, and share it with you directly.

that’s sacred, relieving, and lovely.

in a ceremony – that changes the shape of creation – you ‘put yourself out.’  literally.

you might find yourself out on a mountaintop, building art from flower petals, singing into the wind, burning objects representative of old pain, making big sacred art, walking labyrinths, stargazing, howling at the moon, writing your life history and offering it in a creative way to all that is, blowing and popping bubbles that represent old thought forms, binding and then freeing a beloved stuffie from childhood to feel your own liberation…there are as many shapes to ceremony as there are faces of love.

in a ceremony, you work with your intention, preparation, materials, and magic.

you remember your power, and you use it in a good way.

in sessions, we work with spirit, perform needed healings, you then create your ceremony with your helpers, you go perform it.  THIS IS HUGE, and changes energy in your world…and then you walk away.  you let go of your attachment.  you sent the prayer up.  you did your work. now, you receive.  you let it go, whatever ‘it’ is.  of course keep doing your spiritual work, but ceremony is an invitation to effort, invite, and then trust.

spirit handles the rest.

a note about ceremony: we’re not ‘recycling other people’s ceremonies.’  there is simply no need to do that.

this is because our helping spirits will offer ceremonies directly to you, and you work directly with them on the details.  the specifics and how you meet the work is between you and spirit.

that’s beautiful.

ceremony is extraordinary – sometimes gentle and soft, sometimes powerful and incendiary, sometimes humorous and cheeky.  always, ceremony is unexpected, and filled with kind magic.

everyone can learn to create unique ceremonies and perform them.  if this delights or excites you, or you think you’d like to learn more, please email me and we’ll see what we can get up to.

in the meantime, I wish you grace, ease, peace and flow in the shape of your world as it is today.

love,
anna

the topic of cultural appropriation is tender, complex, and important.

there’s a massive transpersonal energetic field around this, and I honor the complicated feelings that can arise.

blessings, blessings.

how we honor tradition and culture needs talking about, especially if you hold healing spaces that draw from cultural lineages near or far from your own.

I’m certainly no expert on this topic, and do not claim to be.

I do my best to hold respectful space, because modern spiritual practice can be rife with appropriation, and what we can talk about, we can heal.  there are a lot of reasons folks appropriate specific spiritual practices – most of them tender – ranging from having no idea appropriation is even happening, to feeling that helpful tools are needed in our troubled times. even in those two brief examples, there’s ample room for curiosity, education, and discernment.

below, some ideas that may be of service to you in your exploration.

some folks may disagree with these ideas, maybe a little or a lot.

that’s okay.

no matter who you are, you are part of one (or many) biological, ancestral, and cultural lineages that span back millennia, filled with rich heritage, tradition and identity. if you’re lucky, practices and concepts have been handed to you in an intricate and deeply sacred framework defined by your ancestors that goes back thousands of generations. perhaps, in a spiritual and cultural lineage you are part of and love deeply, your blood ancestors were persecuted, hunted, harmed, killed, and disenfranchised, and what is most holy to you is now being nibbled at, appropriated, or monetized by the very folks who – knowingly or unknowingly – caused so much harm. blessings, blessings.

you might experience yourself as a big melting pot of different biological, cultural, and ancestral heritages. maybe you grew up lacking a sense of lineage or tradition at all, or found yourself in one that didn’t fit you or felt unsafe. maybe you’ve been on a quest for spiritual practice in a life totally devoid of it, and discovered in your travels a tradition or practice that moves you deeply, with potential to tend and mend, and you’ve included that personally or professionally with the highest of intentions. perhaps it’s new for you to consider that working with traditions or cultures outside your biolineage can carry a lot of charge and complexity. blessings, blessings.

you might instead believe that all pathways are love, we’re a big human family, pandora (and the internet) have let the spiritual cat out of the spiritual bag, all paths are valid, earth is in crisis, all hands on deck, act in love, and do as you will. you could feel it’s okay to practice in a cultural lineage outside of your biological one because someone granted you ‘permission’ to practice, teach, or tend. maybe you believe past lives transcend this one, and come complete with remembered lineage wisdom. maybe, for you, it’s only ever okay to engage a spiritual or cultural tradition you claim sole uninterrupted bloodline in, without exception. blessings, blessings.

maybe this whole topic terrifies you and makes you want to hide, taps outrage within and you wish to take up arms, or ignites a desire in your heart to learn in a respectful, curious way.

8 billion perspectives, and counting.

blessings, blessings.

there are lots of strong questions to ask about cultural appropriation. here are a few:

• are you personally or financially benefiting from a specific culture’s traditions? are you claiming them? are you profiting from them?
• can you connect directly with the ‘source’ of traditions you practice or teach, and how important is that to you?
• are you defending a culture or tradition you are not biologically part of? how does that define, burden, or liberate you? what energy are you holding during this emotional labor?
• professionally, are you making a living based on a cultural practice that works and you love, from outside your biolineage? if so, what does that question open up for you?
• are you honoring a specific people whose tradition you might be working in? if so, how are you doing that? what is that like for you?
• do you have strong relationship with the spirits (in whatever lineage/tradition/worldview/framework/etc)? do you know your truth, and who you are?
• if you discover you have transgressed in your explorations – even in a well-meaning way – can you sit in that discomfort and the seat of humility as you learn?
• can you approach with kindness and curiosity a topic at worst drenched in bloodshed and sorrow, and at best held in high evolutionary light?
• what is yours to tend here?

I can’t answer these questions for you.

but, they’re important to ask, in service to moving with curiosity in a stance of appreciation – rather than appropriation – of cultural practices.

I’ve had my own experiences around cultural appropriation, as do most folks who work with spirit, ceremony, and healing.

when the topic arose for me, although it felt painful and scary, I did my personal work, discovered my truth, and my body of work reflects it to the best of my current ability.

it’s been a journey, learning about this topic. I don’t know everything. I am still learning.

this is complicated territory. some of what I write here may piss you off mightily. some of it may bring healing, or open doors.

I do not have your answers.

here is what is true for me:

• I know who I am. so do the spirits. I have found a current-level of peace around this topic. my understanding is ever-evolving, and I honor you finding yours.
• I have done my own work to tend personal and professional energies around this, and I continue to educate myself with compassion, and respect.
• we practice direct revelation with the spirits + healing energies here. we ask the spirits how to help healing happen, and they teach us. each person’s experience is their own.

blessings, blessings.

when you take this to your spirits, nature, your dreams, contemplation, the labyrinth, your heart, your body – whatever way works for you – what is your truth?

cultural appropriation is a vast topic – there’s a lot of deeply valid hurt, and (literally) billions of ideas, feelings, opinions, reactions, yearnings, and tangled energy.

I honor all of it.

however you approach this topic, it is available to you to ask your spirits to respectfully and energetically tend you after conscious time engaging and educating yourself, so you can navigate in as clean a way as possible. this may be of service.

may you be held with kindness and spaciousness as you explore, and find your own truth.

may you feel loved, safe, heard, honored, and at peace.

love,
anna

blessings, blessings on all of the loving folks who make up our global reiki family.

how wondrous, that reiki can be passed from person to person, in a lineage we can honor and appreciate.

here are my reiki lineages, as they’ve been shared with me:

USUI REIKI: mikao usui, chujiro hayashi, hawayo takata, barbara lincoln mccullough, judy-carol stewart, libby barnett, joann pun, anna dorian

KOMYO REIKI: mikao usui, chujiro hayashi, chiyoko yamaguchi, inamoto hyakuten, anna dorian

KARUNA REIKI®: mikao usui, chujiro hayashi, hawayo takata, phyllis furumoto, pat jack, cherie a presuhn, william lee rand, laurelle gaia, anna dorian

LIGHTARIAN REIKI®1& 2: ascended master buddha, jeannine jelm, anna dorian

LIGHTARIAN REIKI®3-6: ascended master buddha, jeannine jelm, havi mandell, allison dahlhaus, maitri kala, jaguar amaru wiraquocha, malia okin, anna dorian

kind blessings and thanks to folks who hold the light of reiki.

reverence to everyone who has worked directly with the spirits and healing energies with love + kindness through all the ages for all the humans, to help tend and mend what welcomes healing planetside.

firstly, as I’m speaking to a FAQ about ‘what’s your shamanic lineage,’ I honor that the word ‘shamanic’ can be problematic in our times and means a lot of things to different folks.  when I say ‘shamanic’ I mean ‘the contemporary art of connecting directly with unseen helping spirits’ or ‘the ability to walk and see the interconnectedness between the worlds.’

I do not claim to be a shaman, and I do not claim any of the teachings my teachers have generously shared with me.  I identify as a shamanic and energy healing practitioner + teacher who helps folks learn to talk to the spirits, and have direct experiences with them and healing energies.

I honor the paths of direct revelation, and lovingkindness.

here are some pathways that the spirits have opened for me:

LIVED EXPERIENCE: I’ve had many near-death experiences, saw helping spirits during those initiations, and they comforted me frequently as a child in intense situations – the veil has always felt thin for me.  as an adult, my ‘shamanic path’ started with a spontaneous visionary experience, that would later make sense when the word ‘shamanism’ arrived in my awareness.  that was a lot of adventures ago!  (twinkle)

HUMAN TEACHERS & COLLEAGUES: in the beginning, I studied with sandra ingerman, took many of her in-person workshops, and went on to complete her 2-year teacher training (hi sandy!  thank you.).  other human teachers (for trainings, workshops, and immersions) have included francis rico, nan moss, david corbin, daniel foor, nicki scully, and serge kahili king.

SPIRIT: these days I learn mostly from my friends in the spirit world.  you can read about how river otter and I met in this lifetime here, and how some of my ancestors have worked with otters (‘the sleek ones’) for ages.   there are many helping spirits I’m honored to call friends from my decades of spiritual practice – as you and I adventure together, I may share about them when the moment feels right.

my love and gratitude to helpers in seen and unseen realms for their gifts of time, energy, and love that make our world a more beautiful and harmonious place.

love,
anna

q: do you do in-person sessions?

a: I offer all of my work remotely.  if you’re in the US, we’ll connect via phone, and we’ll use zoom audio if we work together internationally.

this allows us to work together from anywhere on planet earth without the limit of physical location.  you can show up for session in your pajamas with a cup of tea and a snuggy quilt (hello, empaths, introverts, sensitives, and starseeds), and you don’t need to travel immediately after receiving healing (gods, that’s relieving).  being snug at home allows you to rest deeply after session, and enjoy smooth integration.

working via audio also allows you to go deep without worrying about ‘how you look’ or ‘how you’re showing up’ in our often-performative modern culture.  I find for most sensitives that’s actually a hindrance to healing – and we’re all different, and you know what works for you.  really, the energy is with us no matter how we connect, and our helping spirits are leading the way.  note: a big part of my work is about slowing down, and living in a gentle way – we’ve got enough intensity and screen time going on.  ergo audio – less for our nervous systems to deal with, more spaciousness to relax and heal.  ahhhh.

q: do you offer sessions in the evenings?

a: every once in a blue moon…maybe.  (twinkle)  if this is your only, only option, please email and we’ll see what we might call into form together.

q: do you offer sessions on weekends?

a: I do not offer sessions on weekends, although there are occasional group circles on weekend dates.

thank you for asking!

I’m going to offer ideas in two ways at the same time:

for you if you’re asking for yourself, and for healers if you’re thinking about this for your practice.

I totally, completely get needing healing work and not having funds for it.  my own experience with that felt really painful – there was a long time when I knew I needed a ton of help, and I felt really frustrated and hurt that all healing seemed so expensive.  my journey around not having a lot of money and needing a lot of healing often felt really lonely and hard.

I totally, completely get being a healer, running a show where one wears about ninety different hats and is stretched in a mind-numbing array of directions and wanting to help the whole world because we are all precious and worthy of love and help.  I learned the (really) hard, hard way to protect my vital life force, and accept that as a human woman, I can literally only do so much.

every healing journey is unique, often complex, requires tending, we all deserve care, healers will toast themselves if they overgive, and in our times healing is needed everywhere.

gah!

how to thread this needle?

I used to try by running low-cost clinics, volunteering reiki teaching to unhoused youth, mentoring a lot in an unpaid way, and offering need-based scholarships to the absolute extent of my capacity.  I burned out.  I will not do that again.

I see colleagues navigating this in a lot of ways – some feel that having folks ‘apply for scholarship’ further pathologizes situations that require scholarship in the first place, some house a lot of prerecorded work and ‘evergreen models’ where they can easily gift you a class or offer deep discounts without drawing on finite energy reserves, some have an annual ‘time budget’ for scholarship and sliding scale, and track accordingly.

if you’re a healer, point being, there are lots of ways to navigate this.  we can certainly set up session or mentoring time to explore this one-on-one together if you wish.

if you’re needing a helping hand right now, please know that most healers really, really think about this, and we do our best.  we care.

back to the dreaming otter, and this FAQ:

I want to say yes to every inquiry about scholarship and sliding scale.  because I offer very small group classes and individual sessions, I cannot.

so, I go case by case these days.  I’m a human, just like you are.  if I’m in an initiation and at capacity, I’m probably not able to offer sliding scale, and I’m sorry if that’s disappointing.  if things are going more easily for me and there are several premium clients aboard, I’m happy to offer sliding scale as I can, while taking good care of myself.

the best way we’ll know is by…actually talking about it.  I may not have time to do lots of email back and forth – that isn’t because I don’t care, but it’s because I only have so much actual time in a day.   I’ll do my best, if you’d like to do the big brave thing and say hi.

whatever has you asking – whether you’re needing care or offering it – blessings, blessings.

I encourage you to ask your helping spirits (literally, right now, out loud, and over and over) to help you around this topic.  and please email me – we’ll do what we can in our messy, tumultuous times to find a kind way forward for both of us.

big heart hug.

love,
anna

YES!  this is actually the way I prefer to work.

three sessions to begin if you’re a new client is wonderful.  we’ll meet each other in a deep way, do some big work, things will start changing for you.  and, depending on the journey you’re on, there might be complexity, lots to unravel, something big to heal, or a larger arc or project that benefits from strong, regular ‘practical and magical’ approaches (read: I’m a project manager of yore, and a deep detail geek.  I love big projects!)

sometimes healing takes time.  if that’s what’s needed for you, and we’re a good fit, we can do that.

that said, I don’t want people to work with me forever.  I want you to soar on your own, and a big focus of my work is putting tools into your hands so you receive what you need, ‘graduate me,’ and go on to live your marvelous life here planetside.  yes!

it’s a wonderful thing, to have a healer in your corner, who knows you well and walks with you through times of transition, change, endings, or beginnings with clear perspective and lots of effective tools.  ongoing work is an organic, dynamic, magical, mysterious adventure.

gosh, I’m passionate about the value of ongoing work.  miracles happen in long containers, often 6 months or so, because there is deep trust, resonance, rapport, familiarity, and significant patterns and nuances reveal themselves over time. 

I truly want to see strong alchemy happen for you.

ongoing work is a really, really good way to invite that into a human life.  if that feels interesting, or your heart or antennae perked up reading this, you can check out ‘the magical life’ here or email me and we can talk about it.  it’s a big adventure.  it should be.  how fun!  😉

happy healing!

love,
anna

okay, I’m just *pretending* this one is a frequently asked question.  (laughter)

I wish it was!

this is something a beloved commented on while I was creating this site for you – they invited me to share why all the nature images, why there is such strong emphasis on beauty woven through the site, when something a snodge more utilitarian might have been easier to create.  (grin)

indeed!  I sometimes spend up to an hour looking for juuuust the right image, with juuuuust the right lightcode in it.  each image is a transmission.

really,

it’s because…

healing can be beautiful. 

life can be beautiful.

that might sound pat.  it is not.

beauty is one of my 5 core values – I believe in embracing beauty with every breath, and it’s so core to me I often don’t think about it until someone like this beloved points it out.  if I can weave in celebration of natural beauty into the site, so that each page is a mini-world of healing for you, helps you slow down and appreciate, helps you find your breath, helps you remember how much glory there is in living – and healing – even amidst all the muck and challenge, then the site has done (well, part of, laughter) it’s job.  I mean, sharing information and a strong user experience is good, too.  (wink)

beauty is in everything we do here…

in caring for each other in community.  in working with the spirits.  in creating unique ceremonies where our breath and actions are living prayer.  in finding the bravery to let go of being right or hurt or stuck, and choosing a new way where light is possible and hope comes to tuck up cozily for tea.

beauty is a core part of the dreaming otter.  I hope you can feel it, and that wild, deep beauty dances with you all of your days.

love,
anna