I want to be careful about what I claim here. I am not going to tell you that I have proof of an afterlife, or that I can offer you evidence that would satisfy a sceptic across a table. What I can tell you is that something in that room asked to be attended to, and that attending to it changed me, and that forty years of returning to that threshold has taught me more about how to live than almost anything else I have studied, including the philosophy I have spent my life stud

Have you ever felt drawn to something ancient yet alive, something that whispers of deep connection and healing? That’s the essence of shamanism. It's a timeless path that invites us to explore the unseen, to heal, and to grow. Today, I want to share with you the principles of shamanic healing, a beautiful blend of tradition and modern insight that can open doors to profound transformation.

One autumn night, the old stone bridge over the Weir collapses. Nobody is hurt, but the town is cut in two. By morning, there are two accounts of what happened. The local paper, the Ashbourne Sentinel, reports that decades of council underinvestment in infrastructure finally caught up with a structure that engineers had flagged as failing eighteen months prior. A newer outlet, Weir Truth, reports that the bridge was brought down deliberately, as part of a redevelopment scheme

There is a version of you that is extremely competent. It wakes at a considered hour, follows a system, tracks its inputs and outputs, and moves through the world with a practised efficiency that others sometimes mistake for calm. It has opinions about sleep hygiene. It is never more than two days behind on email. It has learned, through considerable effort, to respond rather than react, to pause before speaking, to sit with discomfort before getting on with being a high-func

I grew up in a Christian household where we prayed for everybody. Friends, strangers, people who had wronged us, people who had never asked and would not have wanted our prayers if they had been asked. This was not considered an ethical problem. It was considered an expression of love. The logic was simple and, within its own framework, coherent: prayer is good, God is sovereign, and offering something good on someone's behalf requires no permission from the recipient. Intent

Many people carry invisible burdens passed down through generations. These burdens often come from difficult ancestors whose unresolved pain, trauma, or harmful patterns continue to affect their descendants. Healing lineage trauma means facing these shadows and working through the complex emotions and stories tied to our family history. This process, known as shadow ancestry work, helps us understand and transform the difficult legacies we inherit.

We like to think of ourselves as rational beings who arrive at beliefs by weighing evidence. That is a comforting story. And like most comforting stories, it is largely false. In practice, human beings are far more tribal than rational. We do not simply ask, What is true? We ask, usually without admitting it, Who is saying this? Whose side is this on? Will agreeing with this strengthen or weaken my standing? Belief is often less a matter of reason than of belonging.

As someone who regularly experiences things that don't fit conventional frameworks, such as non-local knowing, spirit encounters, precognitive information, altered states where the normal rules of reality seem suspended, I rely heavily on direct experience as a source of knowledge. But as someone trained in rigorous thinking, I also know that "I experienced it" is not a get out of epistemology free card. Direct experience can be misleading, misinterpreted, or simply wrong.

Have you ever felt the gentle embrace of a forest, the soothing rhythm of ocean waves, or the quiet wisdom of a mountain? I have, and each time, it reminds me of something profound: Nature holds a unique kind of medicine. It’s not just about physical health but a deep, soulful healing that reconnects us to ourselves and the world around us. Today, I want to share with you how we can tap into this incredible resource, exploring nature's healing benefits in ways that nurture bo

In shamanic journey, you are fully present. Not chemically altered, not surrendered to a substance's trajectory, but consciously travelling into non-ordinary reality while remaining the author of the journey. This distinction is not merely procedural. It is the difference between being taken somewhere and choosing to go.

Every day, we face challenges that can feel overwhelming or narrow our view of what’s possible. The Andean principle of Eagle medicine offers a powerful way to rise above these difficulties and see life from a wider perspective. This ancient wisdom encourages us to look beyond immediate concerns and understand the bigger picture, helping us make clearer decisions and find deeper meaning in our experiences.

A few years ago, I caught the smell of a particular hand cream in a shop and was, for a moment, entirely somewhere else. Not remembering somewhere else. Somewhere else. My grandmother's kitchen, a specific afternoon, the quality of the light, a feeling in my body that I had not had in decades and that arrived whole, instantly, before I had time to think the word memory at all. I was not recalling the past. I was, in some sense I could not account for, back inside it.

As a child, I told my mother a plane would crash. The next day it was on every news channel. Last year, driving with my husband, I told him to slow down because I could sense a car crash ahead. About five miles down the road, one happened in front of us. These were not dramatic revelations. They arrived quietly, as information, the way you might suddenly remember you left the oven on. No ceremony. No altered state. Just knowing before there was any conventional way to know.

In our fast-paced, technology-driven world, it’s easy to feel disconnected from the natural rhythms that once guided human life. Yet, there is a growing movement that invites us back to the earth, to the cycles of nature, and to a deeper understanding of ourselves through ancient wisdom. This movement is rooted in modern spiritual healing practices that draw from shamanic traditions, blending age-old rituals with contemporary insights.

We tend to treat truth as the highest intellectual virtue, as the fixed star around which rational thought orbits. But there is a quieter, more unsettling possibility: that coherence is doing most of the real work, and truth has been taking the credit.

I want to begin with something I have noticed that I cannot fully explain, and that I have never heard anyone explain satisfactorily either. Over the course of my practice, I have spent time with a great many older women, women in their seventies, eighties, some in their nineties, women without university degrees, without professional credentials, without any of the markers our culture values. And I have sat across from them in a state of awe at their intelligence.

Have you ever wondered how ancient shamanic practices, rooted deeply in tradition and spirituality, might connect with modern scientific understanding? I find this intersection fascinating. It’s like discovering a hidden bridge between two worlds: one of mysticism and one of empirical knowledge. Today, I want to take you on a journey through the science behind shamanic practices, blending warmth and curiosity with practical insights you can explore yourself.

I'm going to say something that will annoy people on both sides of the religion debate: the New Atheists and religious fundamentalists have more in common than either would like to admit. Not in their conclusions, obviously. One side believes God exists and scripture is literal truth. The other believes God doesn't exist and religion is dangerous nonsense. But in their epistemology and in their assumptions about how knowledge works and what counts as truth, they're making the

Here is a fact that most people encounter in undergraduate physics and immediately file away under 'weird quantum stuff that doesn't affect real life': an electron does not have a definite position until it interacts with something else. Not unknown, but undefined. It exists as a superposition of possibilities, a smear of potential, until a relationship is formed. At that point a value crystallises. Not because we looked. Because something else in the universe entered into re

Have you ever noticed how many spiritual traditions, old and new, draw inspiration from the natural world? It’s no coincidence. Nature is a living, breathing teacher. It shows us cycles of growth, decay, renewal, and balance. In modern spiritual practices, this connection is more than symbolic. It’s practical and healing.