Finding My True Calling: Moving Away from Social Expectations Towards My Soul Path

WEBVTT
00:00:02.685 --> 00:00:05.793
Hi, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:00:05.793 --> 00:00:14.810
I'm Shannon and this is Starseed Evolution, bringing the wisdom and insight of the cosmos to you.
00:00:14.810 --> 00:00:17.289
I'm grateful that you're listening.
00:00:17.289 --> 00:00:30.175
I am often asked by my clients and students how I stepped into the healing arts as a career.
00:00:30.175 --> 00:00:45.530
For over 25 years I have been practicing as a licensed massage therapist, craniosacral therapist, reiki master teacher, spiritual director and meditation teacher.
00:00:45.530 --> 00:00:51.527
The one thing I can tell you is that it was not a direct path.
00:00:51.527 --> 00:01:00.947
One of my clients recently asked me what I would label myself as, since she felt like I wasn't just a massage therapist.
00:01:00.947 --> 00:01:11.605
I told her the closest defining phrase that I could come up with that encompasses all of it is intuitive healer.
00:01:11.605 --> 00:01:22.286
It turns out that when I was young and they would ask all of us children the question what do you want to be when you grow up?
00:01:22.286 --> 00:01:27.834
That particular job title was not on the list.
00:01:27.834 --> 00:01:31.986
Nor would I have known it even if it had been.
00:01:31.986 --> 00:01:53.771
My journey has been a winding one of unknown twists and turns, where I have stumbled many times into dark places, constantly blindly trying to feel my way through as I move forward on my path, which has become more clear the more I've stepped into it.
00:01:53.771 --> 00:01:59.224
So let's start at the beginning, at least, back to my college days.
00:02:00.025 --> 00:02:14.393
I attended the University of Arizona on an academic scholarship, moving from Yuma, arizona, where I was born, and coming out to Tucson, arizona, for the university experience.
00:02:14.393 --> 00:02:21.593
My major was education, with a minor in English and Spanish.
00:02:21.593 --> 00:02:27.812
My focus was on education in the high school tradition, teaching English.
00:02:27.812 --> 00:02:41.830
I was a writer at heart and loved reading and diving into characters and stories and seeing the beautiful way to connect to the human heart through these stories.
00:02:41.830 --> 00:02:47.760
It turns out, though, through these stories.
00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:54.514
It turns out, though, that actually teaching high school English isn't quite the same in person as it was for Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society.
00:02:55.420 --> 00:03:14.808
When I graduated from the U of A at the age of 23, before I knew all the defining things about myself, I was, and still am, and will always be, a sensitive, empathic, introverted person.
00:03:14.808 --> 00:03:20.641
After six months of teaching high school, I just couldn't do it anymore.
00:03:20.641 --> 00:03:23.985
I was miserable every day.
00:03:23.985 --> 00:03:34.222
I did not have the mind or fortitude to face that kind of teaching assignment.
00:03:34.222 --> 00:03:51.165
So I left the high school academic arena and over the next three years after that, I just worked at a local grocery store and did all the different types of jobs that you would learn there.
00:03:51.165 --> 00:04:05.793
And while I worked which allowed me to care for myself physically, mentally I began exploring on the side the things that I enjoyed about life.
00:04:06.914 --> 00:04:16.762
One of the things that I enjoyed was the physical therapy tradition, because I spent a lot of time growing up in physical therapy.
00:04:16.762 --> 00:04:27.622
I was a competitive gymnast and so I was always getting injured, and so it required me to spend a lot of time in physical therapy repairing my body.
00:04:27.622 --> 00:04:42.262
Because I knew how helpful physical therapy could be, I decided to start volunteering in this direction, just to discover if it's a direction I wanted to go in my own life, career-wise.
00:04:42.262 --> 00:04:49.583
As I volunteered in physical therapy, there became an aha moment inside my mind.
00:04:49.583 --> 00:05:03.153
Well, if I want to go in this direction, I probably need to get some more job-related experience in the medical field so that I could learn more of the medical terminology.
00:05:03.153 --> 00:05:09.141
Learn more of the medical terminology.
00:05:09.642 --> 00:05:17.562
Around that time, I found that there was a job at a radiology clinic for CAT scans and MRIs that was looking for a tech assistant where you could learn on the job.
00:05:17.562 --> 00:05:40.903
I was hired and worked there for two years and learned how to interview patients for two years and learned how to interview patients, order stock that the CAT scans and MRI techs needed, retrieving scans, meeting the radiologists that work there and just becoming associated with the medical field.
00:05:40.903 --> 00:06:09.122
The biggest thing that I learned during this job development and development of my inner self, learning about who I was and the direction I wanted to go was that, as much as I enjoyed working with the people I did, I wanted more contact with people rather than just the interviewing process of getting ready for a scan.
00:06:09.122 --> 00:06:13.449
I felt like I wanted a deeper contact with individuals.
00:06:13.449 --> 00:06:20.528
Part of it was knowing that I wanted to be more present for people on their journey as they needed it.
00:06:20.528 --> 00:06:51.492
Because, at the same time, I was also volunteering in physical therapy and enjoyed working with patients, I decided to apply too, got accepted and went to school to become a physical therapy assistant and, as that door opened up for me during the program, stepping more into the direction of knowing what I wanted to do or at least I thought this was the end game of things.
00:06:51.492 --> 00:07:00.603
Before I graduated for the program, I landed a job at a local physical therapy clinic where I started working full-time.
00:07:01.485 --> 00:07:11.129
One of the skills that I learned by being on the job as a physical therapy assistant was not so much about the career.
00:07:11.129 --> 00:07:33.341
It was more about me being able to become more professional, become more articulate, learning to sit with people and enjoy talking to them, being present for where they were on their path into healing, and the healing was more directed around the physical body.
00:07:33.341 --> 00:07:39.973
It was something that I knew too, because I had experienced it myself for many years.
00:07:39.973 --> 00:07:47.821
It myself for many years.
00:07:47.821 --> 00:08:06.870
I did notice that because I was quite shy, it was sometimes hard talking to people during their recovery and I wanted to become more confident or articulate when I spoke with people and to build that confidence, I decided to take a public speaking class at the local community college.
00:08:06.870 --> 00:08:15.317
This allowed me to practice speaking and building up my inner confidence to use my voice.
00:08:25.300 --> 00:08:44.434
As much as I enjoyed helping patients being a physical therapy assistant, I did realize that my role was limited to just doing exercises with patients and it was very monotonous over and over and it was hard for me to feel passionate about what I was doing, even if I could see people getting better.
00:08:44.434 --> 00:08:54.942
Just knowing that my role here was limited, I saw my brain getting bored and restless and knew I needed to expand.
00:08:54.942 --> 00:08:59.609
Now, as I talk about this part of my journey with you.
00:08:59.609 --> 00:09:06.884
Yeah, it sounds easy that I just came to a realization and knew that I easily needed to shift.
00:09:06.884 --> 00:09:24.073
But it wasn't, because part of understanding myself was change is very difficult for me and I've learned at this age, many years hence, to work with the feelings of change that come up for me.
00:09:24.073 --> 00:09:40.212
But at this time it was very trauma-inducing, knowing that I needed to make a change, not knowing how and trying to figure out what direction I was going or how I'd even make it come to life.
00:09:40.212 --> 00:09:50.273
So I did experience a lot of anxiety and panic, and that was another part of myself that I had to learn to work with going into counseling.
00:09:50.273 --> 00:10:01.802
So even though my soul self, my inner self, could feel I needed to make this change, my brain had trouble adapting to it.
00:10:01.802 --> 00:10:33.091
So it was sometimes an excruciating medical-based personal training for cardiac rehab patients and along with it what they offered was massage therapy.
00:10:33.091 --> 00:10:50.567
I became friends with one of the massage therapists that work there and as we became friends I began to see and experience what physical therapy was hands-on as a way of a healing modality.
00:10:50.567 --> 00:11:07.465
It did become an adjunct into physical therapy as an assistant, where sometimes I was taught and shown how to give specific 15-minute sessions and that was my introduction into massage therapy.
00:11:08.187 --> 00:11:27.761
My brain likes to try and organize and figure out paths, so at this point I began to compare the two possible paths that I could go in and looking at the pros and cons in and looking at the pros and cons.
00:11:27.761 --> 00:11:38.105
So one of the paths that became available was I could go into the field of physical therapy by going back to school to become a physical therapist and at that time it required a master's degree.
00:11:38.105 --> 00:11:44.054
Now if you look 20 years later it is a doctorate, but back then it was a master's degree.
00:11:44.054 --> 00:11:49.913
Although I did have a bachelor's, it was in English and education.
00:11:49.913 --> 00:12:03.270
So if I were to go down that path of getting the master's degree in physical therapy, I would have had to do two years of additional prerequisites of all the sciences.
00:12:03.270 --> 00:12:25.849
When I looked at the other path, which was getting training to become a massage therapist, I didn't have to complete any prerequisites because part of the training program that we had, which was a thousand-hour program, it went through all of the things that we needed in the classroom.
00:12:27.071 --> 00:12:46.254
As I looked at both of the paths, I did discover that massage therapy matched more the direction that felt not only easier for me to go into with a shorter amount of training, also that it would open doors that I didn't yet know about.
00:12:46.254 --> 00:13:07.475
The question then became for my mind which is what I was looking at was I always had gone, both in college and after college, towards things that were more practical, not necessarily that I would enjoy more, but that were more practical.
00:13:07.475 --> 00:13:39.880
In order to explore the massage therapy path, which in my mind, didn't seem as practical or useful as becoming a physical therapist, I decided to just explore by calling and scheduling a meeting with some massage school director and take a tour of the local school, which was called Desert Institute of the Healing Arts, which drew many students from around the country.
00:13:39.880 --> 00:13:50.633
After going on the interview, sitting down with myself and reviewing it, I made the decision that this is the road that I would like to go down.
00:13:50.633 --> 00:14:04.693
I received an acceptance letter from this school and they let me know that I could enroll right away, to begin in September, because I had gone into the interview during August.
00:14:05.394 --> 00:14:31.985
However, I knew inside myself that I needed to wait a year before enrolling, and the reason for this is because I didn't want to go into debt by attending school, I decided that I needed an additional part-time evening job that I could use to save all of that money that would help me pay for the schooling program.
00:14:31.985 --> 00:14:36.695
And in fact I did stumble upon a part-time night job.
00:14:36.695 --> 00:14:44.011
That was really easy to do, although it meant that I would have long days for a year.
00:14:44.011 --> 00:15:08.379
But the good thing was that it not only helped me pay for my massage therapy training, which is a one-year program, but when I was in the day program for massage therapy I was able to keep that night or evening job part-time so that I could still pay for all of my rent and food.
00:15:08.379 --> 00:15:21.039
And the sweet thing about it was when I got ready to enter into the massage therapy program a year later, my parents gifted me some additional funds.
00:15:21.039 --> 00:15:28.397
That also helped to put me through school as well, which I am grateful for Now.
00:15:28.437 --> 00:15:30.519
The program was a year long.
00:15:30.519 --> 00:15:34.546
During the day, full time, it was a thousand hour program.
00:15:34.546 --> 00:15:40.457
When I graduated I did become a licensed massage therapist.
00:15:40.457 --> 00:15:59.958
This licensing program opened a door not only in my heart but in my head that allowed me to step into a whole new world of healing and actually become a career path that could lead me deeper into my own spiritual path.
00:15:59.958 --> 00:16:15.572
And as I step through this door, through massage therapy and on this career path, that was just the beginning career path.
00:16:15.572 --> 00:16:16.453
That was just the beginning.
00:16:16.474 --> 00:16:24.931
Now, for the sake of our podcast, I'm going to wrap it up here and call this part one, and it was the first part of stepping into my career in the healing path.
00:16:24.931 --> 00:17:04.490
In part two, which will be coming up next, I'll explore and share with you how stepping into the massage therapy field then created this whole another universe for me that I'll share with you about the spiritual activation that took place inside of myself, stepping into Reiki and its healing presence in my life, and also all the different modalities that I became connected with, learned and experienced on my path, not only as a career, but also my own spiritual journey.
00:17:04.490 --> 00:17:12.501
I'm grateful that you joined me today and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.
00:17:12.501 --> 00:17:32.579
If you'd ever like to join me live, I teach spiritual classes and ceremonies on Insight Timer, which is a meditation app, I'll place the link in the show notes below and, if you'd like to check those out, the link will show you all the different classes that I have coming up.
00:17:32.579 --> 00:17:35.519
All of them are offered by donation.
00:17:36.830 --> 00:17:37.633
I'm Shannon.
00:17:37.633 --> 00:17:41.663
You've been listening to Starseed Evolution.
00:17:41.663 --> 00:17:46.013
I'm wishing you a beautiful day, namaste.