This special blog entry focuses on Sarah Salter Kelly and her forthcoming retreat at Johnsons Landing Retreat Center, where she outlines what participants can expect during the event. The discussion also connects the retreat to her book, “Trauma as Medicine,” highlighting how she integrates the principles and teachings from her written work into the retreat experience. Additionally, Sarah shares her preferred energetic exercise, which she frequently revisits, and offers insights for individuals embarking on their healing journeys. She also provides guidance for those interested in creating a supportive environment for others’ healing processes.
Furthermore, the conversation delves into Sarah’s philosophy of living authentically and transparently for the benefit of others. Her commitment to openness not only enriches her own life but also serves as an inspiration for those around her. By sharing her experiences and insights, Sarah aims to foster a sense of community and support among individuals seeking healing. This blog post serves as an invitation to explore the transformative potential of both the retreat and her literary work, encouraging readers to engage with the healing journey in a meaningful way.
Sarah serves as a facilitator for our upcoming retreat, the “Ceremonial Apprenticeship Training”. Recently, I delved into her book titled “Trauma as Medicine” and found it to be a profound exploration of her personal journey following the tragic loss of her mother and her healing journey. The book is structured in a manner that allows readers to connect with their own traumas and engage with them energetically to facilitate release. Drawing from her Shamanic training rooted in Q’ero (Peruvian) Shamanism, Sarah presents concepts that resonate with me due to my own experiences with similar teachings. Her approach is accessible even to those who may not have prior exposure to this spiritual path, making it relatable and comprehensible.
Working with the practices outlined in Sarah’s book has initiated a transformative process for me as I begin to address specific traumatic events in my own life. I am eager to continue following the guidance she provides, as it offers a roadmap towards my own healing and growth. In preparation for the upcoming retreat, I am excited to connect with Sarah to discuss her book “Trauma as Medicine,” her upcoming “Ceremonial Apprenticeship Training”, and her own personal journey with healing. By bridging these three elements, I hope to deepen my understanding of her perspectives and share with those who may be interested in working with Sarah.
When you host retreats do you incorporate your teachings from your book? How? Is it different for each retreat?
Weather I’m teaching a Retreat that is focused on Shamanic teachings or a Retreat that may include Plant Medicine or if I’m teaching a Retreat for addressing trauma, I try to find language that offers a healthy conversion so that whoever the participants are, they’re able to understand what I am talking about. Making it applicable for their own day-to-day life. In my book ‘Trauma as Medicine,’ I am using the context of a Shamanic lens in much of what I speak to. I also ensure that the foundational structure of the Retreat is one that is of simple core spiritual truth for humans. That the average everyday person can pick it up and go – “I may not have felt the need to have a relationship with the four directions, however, having relationship with the land makes sense to me. I like to walk and I’m trying to figure out what the hell to do with this heavy thing that just doesn’t seem to go away.”
I used to have a medicine program going back to 2011 without plant medicine and those retreats would be more specific for people who wanted the trauma focus. Then I did a ‘Shaman’s Path’ two year program that was for people who wanted Shamanic training. And then it has moved into psychedelic medicine with Grandmother Psilocybin. As you get older you realize you really can’t do everything and you don’t want to. You begin asking “How do I want to invest my time?” There is more integrity in what we bring to the table.
I was recently hosting a workshop and for many people that might have been their first time exposed to any type of energy healing. It is about finding the language that helps each individual participant to feel empowered. It’s not about Shamanism. Shamanism is just a thing; an avenue in our relationship with Spirit.
At the center of all core spiritual teachings are some basic truths: of non-duality, of awareness, that to name the Tao it is no longer the Tao, that we can’t actually name the mystery but we need to be in relationship with the mystery. How do we have that relationship in a good way? How do we create a more authentic and genuine and rooted experience on this planet?
Is there a particular exercise from your book that you revisit the most? What have you found shifts your perception/creates internal change the most?
Yes, the Energy body exercises (exercise one and two) in my book. I use these for almost everything that I do. Sometimes we can make our connection with ourselves really complicated and have this idea that we have to study this and read that and there’s all of these extras that we put on our plate. I think that sometimes that comes from this ideology that it must be really challenging in order for it to be valid. The truth is if we are able to establish presence everything else shows up, so the energy body exercises are a really simple way to establish this presence.
We are contemplating and considering and becoming aware of the space we take up. What are we holding within the dynamic of that space? What belongs to us? What are you responsible for? What are our boundaries? Do we have boundaries? It keeps us from disassociating or being in our heads because all of a sudden there’s this practice of noticing and being in each part of our body and thus our being.
The energy body two helps us to establish vertical access between Heaven and Earth. If we are rooted between heaven and earth it is easier for us to bring ourselves into the world. If we’re not rooted between Heaven and Earth then it’s like we’re this energy bubble that is just fucking bouncing around all over the place with no context.
We need to establish a sense of context and certainly somebody who has a relationship with the four directions will bring it in deeper. Literally X marks the spot of where you are. You feel your connection through your energy body with the four directions, you’re breathing them in relationship, they’re not just in your head. They’re not something that you read from a book that belongs to a land that you have no relationship with. I would say these two practices are what is foundational to a spiritual practice because it cultivates presence.
What would you say to someone just beginning their healing journey with trauma?
Keep it simple is the first thing I would say as well as you can do this. Our world still gives us this idea that we need somebody else to make it better for us or that we need to be sensitive around others triggers. You can do this, keep it simple, go into one trigger at a time. That’s where we are holding the unresolved energy of trauma. Investigate it one piece at a time and establish a timeline. For example setting aside 15 minutes a couple times a week to sit with the trauma.
By doing this you’re giving yourself permission to go in to it but it also gives yourself permission to come out so that you’re not in it all the time. For someone who feels like the trauma is just so big, keeping it simple in the moment will be beneficial. Our heads tend to make it bigger and can cause more anxiety than is actually necessary.
This book was for my twenty year old self that would ask what the fuck do you do with murder? I encountered so many people that would say “You’re just kind of stuck with that for the rest of your life.” And I thought – I don’t think you’re right, I don’t think that’s true. Trauma has to be moved through. The charge has to be released.
What would you say to someone who is interested in holding that healing space for others. Your upcoming retreat is more geared towards that.
I would say to those stepping into the path of the Shaman or of a Medicine Person is that it is absolutely paramount that you have established a sense of trust in your own experience and relationship with Spirit. That you know how to follow through on that trust, allowing for your visions to inform how you engage with the world. Having the recognition that in choosing this path there are certain challenges that are inherent in this path. If we look back at the Wise Women or the Witches or those who have gone before – that there is a challenge in it.
It is making a conscious decision to see through the illusion that is offered through consensual reality and to hold fast to what is the presence of truth or stillness that is coming through. It is having the willingness to set down our egos, not getting caught in the chaos, and not choosing self-righteousness or divisiveness. We implore Spirit to teach us and to show us unity at the threshold of the vast chaos which is before us. How is this actually an opportunity for the human species to go deeper into a sense of interconnection rather than how is this the altar of separation?
Rooting those aware nesses deeply in relationship with the land because that is a Shamanic practice but also not attaching to that practice because those are just constructs that help us to formulate and navigate our relationship with this reality. We establish relationship when we honor the Spirit that is inherent within each of the directions, within the first ancestors of the stone people, and all those who have gone before us. Relationship with all that lives upon this land and all those that don’t including the Starlight ones.
Also recognizing that who we are is more than that. Being rooted enough in that practice that you are able to receive information through all of your senses in the way that the winds talk to you, the mountains, the water, the forests and that communication/ technology that is inherent in the wisdom of the land also informs how you show up. It is also your willingness to continue showing up with that information and share it with the world, a world that doesn’t want to receive it most of the time.
It is absolutely necessary to have a deep trust in yourself. To know that nothing can ever hurt who you are, ever. When we are in that deep trust, that deep communion with our Source, we know that we can navigate the dark and we can navigate any of the challenges that show up because we can’t be compromised. It is only our fear of harm, death, or of vulnerability, that then compromises the integrity of how we align with that light. And so there needs to be an absolute recognition that it is not real and a recognition to not get pulled into the chaos which is a configuration of the combination of the beliefs of fears that the human species hold.
How do you encourage an individual to come into a place of autonomy and integrity within their own being and to show them that they are able to establish what boundaries that they need to the fullest of their capacities. They are not victims. The core Shamanic practice takes us out of victimization because we recognize that everything that is showing up in our lives is simply a teaching that has come here to create medicine and find the gifts and expand our understanding of who we are which then leads to supporting humanity and all of the world.
That means even the hard things are an opportunity for expansion. It is important to be able to hold space for people who have an experience of possession or feeling overcome by darkness. It is also important to know that that experience has a cycle it moves through. If you are in a place of absolute Integrity with your own light and you can still see the light that is in the individual that you are supporting it helps them to evolve into the next potential level of wherever they are in their healing journey. If we get pulled into the drama of shadow that then amplifies the ego of the Shaman then there are unhealthy power dynamics which no longer align with source.
Do your own work. Always, never arrive. Continuously being in that place of awareness. We all have work that we need to be doing and that is essential in supporting other people on their journey. We learn things at the right time, at our own level in our own journeys. Long term, has the individual adjusted the patterning within themselves that holds the beliefs, values, and ideology which allowed for the manifestation of whatever the darkness was to begin with, so that they can then change the makeup of who they are? That is a really important piece so that the individual feels they’re not having another experience of something that has happened to them. They’re participating consciously in their experience of transformation.
We all hold darkness, it’s a part of being human. We can pick it up unintentionally. Establishing a sense of self is so important. Having a regular meditation practice is so important, so that we are able to observe and witness and recognize that the drama of the mind is not who we are.
Thank you for being so open about your story about your mom. What are your feelings on living so openly for others like that?
From an early age I would ask questions that I didn’t know were taboo or uncouth. I never understood why there was ever anything to hide from this early age. It became challenging as a woman and realizing all of these things that people hide because I never have! The truth is that nobody is actually ever hiding anything anyway. The energy of it shows up unconsciously in your body, as well as your energy body. It also is apparent with how you engage in the world. People around you can feel it and they can sense that there’s something uncomfortable. I have been conscious of energy from such a young age and freedom is my highest value, so the cost of pretending is way too high of a price for me to ever pay.
That is what really pushed me towards the healing journey with my moms death and in time that then led me into an intense and intimate ceremony with Peter Brighteyes, my moms murderer, and then a year later he showed up as my spirit guide. Initially it was “what the fuck this? this is crazy!” I also recognized I had asked for and prayed for freedom at all costs. Asking my guides to show me what I need to do to come into a place of equanimity and balance with myself and all my relations. And that I’m in and I’m listening and so that simply became a part of the deeper listening.
All of those offerings come from Spirit for all of us and it’s a matter of whether or not we are willing to accept them. It does mean that we have to get really vulnerable and it’s uncomfortable but the hard things include being vulnerable. It is quite easy to live as a hermit, alone on the land somewhere, just talking to the mystery all the time – there is a time and place for that – but when we bring our understanding of the mystery into the world and we start to share that with others we go through experiences that challenge us and that helps us to know ourselves. It helps us to let go of the idea that we need to adjust ourselves to suit others’ expectations of who they think we should be. That is where my vulnerability with my story has been paramount. It doesn’t mean that it’s not still uncomfortable, certainly there are times where it is, primarily with family of origin, there are still times where that is uncomfortable in my moms family.
A long time ago I spoke for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Victim Services. On one end I’m saying we choose everything including the hard things and on the other end I’m speaking to a group of people to the brutality of murder, rape, and colonization, and its finding the vocabulary and the words to cross that bridge in a good way. Without watering down my story, but also being honorable and respective of where each person is at in their healing journey. There is going to be times where someone may be offended and that’s okay, that is a part of what happens. Certainly if someone had said to me in the couple years after my mom had died that this will bring great teachings into your life, I would have punched them in the face! We are protective of our grief. It’s a part of the process of caring for it. What happens often is that people get protective and they just shove it away somewhere inside of themselves and they don’t actually do the work of tending to it. Two things are important, we have to do the human work of tending to our grief but then we have to do the spiritual work of investigating why I asked for this certain teaching in my life. It doesn’t mean for somebody who is raped that you were bad and you deserve to be raped, it means that there was some sort of teaching that came through the experience of being traumatized that can offer you up a strength in order for you to find your way forward. It’s tricky but from a spiritual vantage point I believe my mom chose to die, and the way she died, I believe that I chose to come here and learn these experiences and when I am speaking from a deeply Shamanic or spiritual vantage point you bet I go deeply into that.
I did a podcast with ‘Trauma Therapist,’ and he comes from a psychologist point of view where there is an honoring of peoples stories but there is still also too much catering to the wound, in my opinion. We keep on perpetuating this experience of separation. When I share my story in recognition that yes my mother was brutally raped and murdered, I’m not saying that women deserve to be raped or murdered, I’m saying violence seems to be apart of our human experience. It seems to me that it offers us an opportunity to learn things that we wouldn’t learn otherwise.
What if we made a decision to learn those things rather than shut down and go into an experience of defensiveness which further perpetuates conflict? If we are able to examine this in our own individual experience what then could we bring into our world or our societies or into our nations?
Can you speak about your upcoming retreat in September?
So this is the first time I have taught this retreat. It is the combination of years of experience and studying core Shamanism – particularly Andean Shamanism. I’ve worked with Nikki Scully for years and studied energy healing since I was a young teenager and I’ve studied my Celtic pagan ancestors that come from Scotland, Ireland, and England, Belarus, Germany, France, the list goes on. I have a lot of Celtic ancestry. Then combining those teachings with Grandmother Psilocybin.
I want to offer an opportunity for people who are interested in the energetic spiritual components of ceremony with psychedelic medicine. There are a lot of trainings that are speaking to the clinical therapeutic side and that has never been my lens. I’ve worked with psychedelics for over 32 years since I was a teenager. I have a really rooted understanding of how they can be effective in our own personal growth. We go into how to establish and formulate our relationship with Spirit and then how to hold space with prayer, song, and ceremony for those who are diving, whether it’s one on one or group facilitation. That is the main focus of the program. It is a one year program. We’re doing the first nine days at Johnsons Landing. The rest will be online, to make it easier for those people who are coming from out of the country or for the people who come here from other parts of Canada.
It is a rooted program for people who are interested in working as a medicine person. We will be creating a sacred medicine bundle with stones and other objects that helps to create what is the altar on which you establish your relationship and your own personal communion with Spirit. We will be learning how to facilitate and hold a circle, as a lot of the people coming are interested in group ceremony. I have done a lot of training in circle keeping and restorative justice that helps to mediate that for different groups of people.
And so what does that mean to be a circle keeper? What does it mean to be working in the energetic dynamics of our spiritual relationship with who we are and others and how do we ensure that we are curating a space that is helpful for those who are participating? What does that look like? How do we trust in that? All of those types of things that help to establish a sense of a healthy container for participants and to give the person who is participating in the program the initiations that are necessary to carry that forward. So I will be sharing some different Karpay and different initiations that have been shared with me through the years from my Peruvian teachers that gifts the participants a deeper access to their own lineage and their own capacity to show up and trust the skills that they have needed to do so.
I appreciate your bravery in sharing your story and allowing it to contribute to the healing of others. By guiding others on their own healing journey, you create a significant impact and I want to express my gratitude for your presence in that role.
If you’d like to read more about Sarah, her book, or her upcoming retreats visit:
What if our suffering holds the key to our personal and collective healing?” -Sarah Salter Kelly
