Healing: An Essential Profession
In 2020 - the year of the global COVID-19 pandemic - the term “essential” took on sweeping new meaning, particularly for small business owners. In California - where I lived and ran a healing arts studio - it was the word that dictated who could be open for business, and who was mandated closed.
At the time, our original studio was in a strip mall, sandwiched between two other businesses: one, a pharmacy that - despite an unassuming exterior - did a multi-million$ a year business peddling opiates and the other, a convenience store specializing in cigarettes, alcohol and Cheetos.
In 2020, both of those businesses were deemed Essential Services and remained open for business. Ours - a business that offered healing bodywork, meditation and yoga - was considered Not Essential, and mandated closed for over a year.
When I phoned our politicians and representatives in elected office why this was - to make it make sense - they explained that the public was stressed and needed their coping mechanisms. In other words - according to the government - cigarettes, alcohol, and numbing drugs were Essential.
My studio manager and I - here in this photo, standing in the doorway of our closed studio - regularly joked of the irony… A healing business shut down and bankrupted during a global health pandemic, while the tap on society’s most-toxic poisons - the very things most damaging to human health - stayed open, flowing stronger and more freely than ever. One day, we often exchanged, this would change and we would come to see as a society what is Truly Essential.
Five years later, that day is here.
Today we’re in a global disruption of another kind — sweeping political, social and economic change - along with the rise of artificial intelligence - will forever alter the way we live, work and heal. Every day my LinkedIn feed is full of people laid off their corporate jobs. Academics & researchers are no longer funded by their universities. Government workers have been swept away in the purge by Project 2025. Millions of us will lose our health insurance next year.
Again, we find ourselves asking: What is Essential? Who are we? What is important and vital for us to invest in, for ourselves and for each other?
When everything we have relied upon, trusted and took for granted gets ripped away, what is truly essential?
Like many of you, I have vacillated this year between deep despair, stubborn optimism, tender heartbreak, white-hot anger, and a very, very old knowing in my bones. I have at times wondered if I am doing the right thing? - am I doing enough? - should I do something more meaningful? - should I be fighting harder? But when I go to my mentors: my guide, the animals, the elements and the natural world… they remind me in their slow, quiet, unrushed way: that what we as humans must do - what each of us must do most - is HEAL.
All the numbing agents in the world can’t save us from what lies ahead — individually & collectively; ready or not, we are confronting the shadow of our species, and we are being summoned to heal, grow, develop a greater awareness and evolve, or perish.
I have been in the healing arts for thirty years, and as I close in on my 50th birthday I’m re-dedicating myself to the healing of our world in two ways — One, I wish to grow our Microdosing Community to serve as many people as possible around the world and bring natural medicines into people’s lives meaningfully, thoughtfully, accessibly, and with deep reverence to the Earth. And in doing so bring people together to learn, share, connect and nurture their bodies, minds and spirits through sharing, stories, reflection and embodied wisdom. Two, I wish to support, train, mentor & share the work of guides around the world to give them the skills, resources, platform, voice and confidence to be of service to the healing of our world outside of the medical-industrial complex and return to our ancient, natural, spiritual roots of earth medicine practice. To bring established guides together to support, share, resource, inspire, model and experiment with new frameworks, and protect & honor this beautiful practice.
To do this work today means swimming against strong currents - of censorship, suppression, big pharma’s endle$$ influence machine, cultural stigma, fear tropes, restrictions, gate-keeping, and powerful, resourced corporate and faceless forces. OUR power is in our individual voices - our humanity and heart, our sharing, diverse collaboration, mutual support, personal investment and intentionally contributing to the people, places and things that make our lives vibrant, healthy and progressive. Please know how meaningful it is when you share, tell a friend, write a review or testimonial, invest in a program, join as a member and participant, speak up as an advocate, stand up as a citizen-educator in the field and become a guide & support for others. Ultimately we decide with our taxes & dollars - our attention, our actions and energy - the world we wish to create and nurture.
Healing work is more Essential to our world than ever before… to foster wholeness, connection, empathy, and enoughness. To nurture appreciation, gratefulness, vitality and self-responsibility. To feel alive and expansive in our bodies, safe and free in our lives. To share with each other, educate and empower ourselves to be the leader - the authority - of our own lives. To develop and use our gifts to continuously, consciously move resources, to build, to create, to add meaning & beauty to our world. To feel so fulfilled in who we are that we have plenty left-over for others. To learn to love ourselves enough so that we may love another - protect each other - and honor life in all its beautiful, magical forms.
If you are drawn to the healing path - to heal yourself and support the healing of others - know there is a very old, very wise and inevitable force rising in the world to support you in remarkable ways. It’s a privilege to walk beside all of you, thank you for being here.
