About Animal Song Healing
Offering accessible shamanic healing, Circles, and workshops. Based in Orange County, California. My practice is dedicated to providing a safe and nurturing space for individuals to explore shamanic healing and teachings. I believe in the power of the natural world and the wisdom of the spirits to guide us on our healing journeys. Through workshops and circles, I aim to create a supportive community where everyone is welcome to learn and grow.
Education & Training
Shamanic Healing Training
I graduated Sandra Ingerman's final 1-year Advanced Shamanic Practitioner Training in September of 2024. After submitting 7 case studies, I was invited to her Practitioner's List. I have been studying online with Jonathan Horwitz and Zara Waldeback of the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies (SCSS) since June of 2020, and have flown to Sweden twice: first for their Spiritual Ecology course, and second for their and Healing course. I am going again in July of 2025 for their Soul Retrieval course.
Please note: Neither lineage recommends or uses plant medicines for psychedelic experiences. The emphasis is instead on a shift of consciousness through drumming, rattling, singing, and/or dancing.
Spiritual Counseling Training
Part of my training with Sandra Ingerman and the SCSS has been in telling healing stories. This was a vital part of my own healing, and has been instrumental for my clients as well. A shift in perspective when viewing a series of challenging events can make all the difference in the world. This is where Spiritual healing really excels, in my experience, and where modern medicine and psychiatry come up short. While Spirit work cannot, should not, and does not entirely replace western medicine, it is part of a whole healing experience. ​
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I also hold a Bachelor's degree in Education (2008), where I extensively studied different learning types, different disabilities and conditions, especially when teaching music. I also hold a Master's degree in Music Performance (2010). Music is the primary mode of shifting consciousness in shamanic practice and healing, so I am very grateful to carry this practical knowledge with me for my clients.
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I hold a Master's degree in the Science of Animal Behavior. I have trained extensively in the canine, feline, and equine minds, and this has supported my clients in fascinating ways: from providing in-depth Power Animal retrievals, to giving me a better understanding of a healing story from a Power Animal's point of view, to better embracing the signs in the Natural World around us. It also greatly impacts my Spirit work with animals.
Teacher Training
I have experience teaching music in a k-12 setting, as well as at the university level, and privately with children and adults up to 80 years young. I have been training animals (primarily dogs and horses) professionally since 2003.
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I have experience hosting local shamanic Circles since 2019. I began hosting or co-hosting occasional Zoom Circles with the SCSS' group, the International Shamanic Community (ISC), in 2021.
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COMING SOON
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I have been accepted to Sandra Ingerman's final 2-year Shamanic Teacher Training beginning in April of 2025, slated for completion in September of 2026. In this program, I will learn her way of teaching shamanic journeying, healing techniques, and more.​
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I pride myself on being a "forever student," and I am currently working toward sylvotherapy (the Japanese art of forest bathing) certification through the accredited organization, Alma Oasis.
Personal Story
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When I was diagnosed with a carcinoid tumor, requiring the surgical removal of the lower lobe of my lung, the only way I could face that terrifying healing process after everything else I'd been through was with the connection to my Spirits and the intimate guidance of a shamanic practitioner.
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Rather than see this health crisis as another reason Life seemed to hate me and want me dead, I saw it as an opportunity to embrace what my Spirit Teacher had said years in advance to prepare me for this exact moment, "Your power is your breath, your breath is your power." I didn't know that phrase would come in handy so directly when she said it at the time.
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I offered this tumor to the Earth as a sacrifice of anything blocking my breath, my life, and my power. It was a deep healing process, because I was able to shift the narrative of the experience into a healing story.
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If I hadn't had the support of my Spirits and the shamanic practitioner I was working with, I might have opted to not pursue treatment -- I didn't have enough personal power to go through something that severe on my own. No amount of medication or therapeutically talking about the situation was going to change that.
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This is why I call Spirit work part of a triad of Healing.
My Shamanic Philosophy
Shamanism is a spiritual healing modality based on the animistic belief that everything in existence has a soul -- a consciousness -- and is alive. So-called inanimate objects can come alive when you can meet their soul in the Spirit World.
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Some teachers say Non-ordinary Reality, some cultures call it The Dream Time, and others an alternate dimension or reality. Children are often taught to call it imagination. My Spirits have encouraged me to abandon the terms of others and to simply refer to the realm of Life, our physical, waking experience of the world, and the Spirit World, the one we can experience with our soul.
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The duality of both worlds is essential to living in harmony, both personally and interdependently with those around us. The triad of healing embraces body, mind, and soul. Western and Eastern traditions focus on the body-mind. Yet still, for many like myself, something is missing. My life coach suggested I go on a spiritual adventure, and that ultimately lead me to shamanism.
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Medicine Walks and Journeys are two ceremonies commonly used in shamanism to access the wisdom and help of the Spirits. Rather than think of this as a woowoo practice, full of inexplicable and unscientific subtle and miraculous beneficial effects, consider instead that science is catching up to this worldwide spiritual practice that has survived over 100,000 years. They say that scientific facts are proven true, because they will re-emerge with time even if the theories are lost. These are common beliefs and practices that have been developed by indigenous peoples with zero contact on entirely different continents. I believe that these spiritual facts are re-emerging for modern civilization, and science is actually the one to catch up.