Joshua Tree Campfire with special guest Abigail Kochunas

Abigail Kochunas is a trauma-informed reiki specialist, an artist and a published poet, and actor.  She describes herself as having gone from trauma "survivor to thriver." She understands the delicate nature and importance of both trauma recovery and spiritual awakening at a human scale - having the experience of that lived-in experience.

Jesse and I ask her about her gifts, the unique family she was raised in, and how she came to learn that she could talk with animals. Her story, her life, her journey? I hope they inspire YOU to dive headlong into your own beautiful life, dear listener.

AWAKEN. HEAL. EVOLVE. UPLIFT. All of Abigail's links: 

Website & Gallery

Etsy Shop

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USE Listener Discount Code: AIPOD — $25 off a session as a gift from Abigail

Review us on Yelp and Google

IG: @sacredhealing_art

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Fucking clankers. Fucking clankers.

SPEAKER_06 0:13

We usually just start talking and then Jen does the formal intro thing and then uh we roll from there.

SPEAKER_05 0:20

Because I'm kind of bossy. Yeah, exactly. I love that. Wait, Jen, what's your sign? I am a Sagittarius. Oh my god. I love Sagittarius.

SPEAKER_06 0:30

See, that this is that's where we that's where we'll start it right there.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

That's where we'll start it. Yeah. Wait, okay, Jesse, what's your sign?

SPEAKER_06 0:38

Um Libra.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Libra. I was gonna say Virgo, Libra. Okay, and Abigail, your turn.

SPEAKER_08 0:43

Oh, I I'm an Aries. So I'm really feeling the energy right now. Mars and Venus, also an Aries, but I get you guys are the two signs that I get along with the most.

SPEAKER_06 0:54

Oh, we'll see.

SPEAKER_08 0:56

That works out good. Oh yeah, well, because Libra and Aries are. I mean, I'm not an astrologer, but my dad is, so I grew up around it.

SPEAKER_04 1:04

Oh, how cool is that?

SPEAKER_08 1:06

I know so lucky. Okay, but we were also, at least to my friends, we were the weird family going out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Small conservative Ohio town.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Oh my gosh. But I bet you and Nickel, everybody thinks of your family now so fondly. Like, I wish our family had been more like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:28

Oh, when I tell people how I grew up, they're like, Wow, that's so cool. And I was like, it was not cool at the time, folks.

SPEAKER_06 1:34

Okay, it was just uh normal, like uh I'm a teenager family stuff, and uh everything's annoying.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, basically, yeah, we all, but you know, if you believe in it, and I I kind of I really have come to is that like we pick this journey for ourselves. That doesn't mean we don't have deep empathy for when we hit pitholes and awful things happen to us, but I do feel like I picked this family, and and definitely my family was absolutely not woo, and to this day. And now my one of my dads, I have two, but one crossed over. And one of his first messages to me was it's not your job to tell your mom you to teach your mom about this. You're gonna, I'm gonna do for her when she dies what you did for me when I and I didn't get it till I was dead. You know, I understand what you did because I made like a little karmic car wash for him, and you know, we had some serious trauma because um, you know, anyway, yeah, he I mean, who doesn't? There was some like abuse there and stuff, so it's like it was very complicated. But he goes, I'm gonna do the same thing for your mom. So don't waste your energy trying to like enlighten her, inform her, teach her. It's not your job. So I let that go. It felt like a gift to be able to let it go.

SPEAKER_08 2:54

That's actually your your your dad has given me messages now because really I have goosebumps all over. I've I have always felt for whatever reason that it's like my duty and my job to like show people the way, if that makes sense, which is also resonates super arrogant or no, it isn't arrogant, it's actually comes from the from the right place, which I I that's what I get from you.

SPEAKER_06 3:27

I don't think it, I don't think it's that arrogant at all, you know.

SPEAKER_08 3:29

Yeah, it's just it's just with my all my fiery energy. Sometimes I can get a little with it. No fire energy. I I hear you with that. They're like, let's take it down a notch, Abigail.

SPEAKER_06 3:41

And I'm like, no, we're gonna go sport earth. If the if the universe is setting you the messages, what are you supposed to do? You know what I mean? You're just supposed to not tell people, you know?

SPEAKER_02 3:50

You have to because you I don't know, I can't speak for everybody else's body or experience, but I get I feel so sick. Like I have this message I had to deliver, and we're I'm at this cat groomer, and I left and I was like, my stomach got worse and worse. I went, Are you fucking kidding me? I have to drive back there and give this message, and I don't even know who it's for and what it is. But it's like my guides were like, Yeah, you're gonna get so sick, you're gonna be puking all day. And I went, Oh, wow. So I dropped my cat back home who'd been grown groomed, and I drove back there, parked in the lot, and I went to the door and I went, I don't really want to go in. And then my stomach just clinched, and I went, okay, fine. And I went in and I said, I have a message to deliver. Is there somebody whose mom died of maybe a drug overdose? And she was like, Oh my god, how yeah, I do. Uh just a second. And then I had to deliver a message, and apparently it was the and I said, Your mom said she can't reach you, and you feel like you can't reach her since she died. And she goes, Yeah, how do you even know this? And I said, But she's everywhere. And if you want her to, she'll show up as ladybugs. And she goes, or the colors red and black. And she goes, You've got to be kidding me. This is the day that she overdosed. Like, this is the anniversary of it. And I was like you can't make this shit up. And I was just like, I as soon as I delivered the message, and she goes, Can I hug you? And I said, Absolutely. And we just held each other for a long time and we both balled our faces off. And um, and I said, Yeah, so I guess your mom said that she's gonna show up as ladybugs if you want her to, but if you want anything else, she can change and and show up as that. She goes, Oh my god, okay, thank you. And as soon as I delivered the message, my body felt great. And I was like, Okay, I guess I'm done for the day. Went home and took a little nap.

SPEAKER_04 5:47

You get like a gold star, like job well done.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

That would be really nice.

SPEAKER_06 5:52

Up in the clouds, you know, they're like, Yep, Jen did it. Look at that.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

She actually heard the message. She didn't have to puke her face off. She's she's doing the Lord's work, or you know, you don't believe in the Lord, whatever you believe in, you know, there's a lot of options for folks out there.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Oh my god, I feel like we just jumped to we jump cut into the episode, but I got to experience your Reiki, amazing gifts that you have. And I had my dog Cooper with me on the bed, and it was crazy because he had all this crazy energy, even though he's an old dog, and he just settled right into it, and it was just such a wonderful experience.

SPEAKER_06 6:34

Okay, those pictures you posted are gold, by the way. It's like your dog's like, yeah, like uh I'm all real, I feel it too.

unknown 6:43

He totally did.

SPEAKER_08 6:44

Oh my god. He was like zenned out, he was like monk mode.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

He's like, Yeah, he was um, but tell us about your journey and how you got to be in the place that you are.

SPEAKER_06 6:56

Do the intro, Jen. Do the intro.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Oh, Abigail is a trauma-informed Reiki specialist. She describes herself as having gone from trauma survivor to thriver. She understands the delicate nature and importance of both trauma recovery and spiritual awakening at a human scale, having the experience of that lived-in experience. She's an artist and she's based in Joshua Tree, California. I am so excited to have you here. I really am.

SPEAKER_05 7:26

Thank you. Well, that was a great intro.

SPEAKER_06 7:28

Um see why she does the intros?

SPEAKER_08 7:31

Yeah, I love it. You're really good. And you're always your energy is so vivacious and sparkly, and and you know, I'm like, yeah, I want to be around that.

SPEAKER_06 7:41

Yay! Oh it was between her and that guy that they got now to like do the the the prices right, you know.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

That's so I mean wait, who's doing the prices right now?

SPEAKER_06 7:52

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

I don't know what what happened to Bob Barker and what rock have I been living under the the who was hired? Who's the announcer guy? Remember Drew Carey? Is it Drew Carey that's doing it?

SPEAKER_08 8:02

No, I vote for Jen. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yeah, I love you guys.

SPEAKER_06 8:07

Okay, his name, you know what his name was? Rod Roddy. Uh no. Rod Roddy, I don't even remember that. He was the guy that was the announcer. He was the guy that went, he was the guy that went, Abigail, come on down. You know, he was that Oh, I do know that voice. I feel like he was wearing like a I mean, I did the worst impression ever, but yeah, but like, yeah, he was that guy.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

But we'll not make it about that. Let's make it about you, Abigail. Oh yes, you are amazing. So tell us about you and your journey and how you started getting in touch with your spiritual self. It sounds like from what we talked about prior to even like starting officially, like it came from your family, but your own, your own journey on this path.

SPEAKER_08 8:53

Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, I was raised in a very open home. I didn't know it at the time, but as I got older, my parents were like, yeah, we thought you should sort of rather than put you in a box, allow you to unfold into who you are. So we tried not to, what's the word I'm looking for? Like lean me in any push in any certain direction. So I got a pretty healthy um education very young about different religious and spiritual traditions of the world. I mean, my house was filled with artwork from Celtic Druids, pagans, Buddhism, you know, and the different sects of Buddhism, S-E-C-T-S people, not S-E-X. Um, the different sects.

SPEAKER_06 9:36

It's it's not that kind of show. I can never, yeah, it is that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

I mean, it may be explicit because there's the F word in our intro music, but no.

SPEAKER_06 9:43

It's not that kind of show.

SPEAKER_08 9:45

Oh, oh, I know. I can never say that word right. I don't, I don't know why.

SPEAKER_06 9:48

Oh, I fuck it up all the time.

SPEAKER_08 9:50

My tongue and my teeth don't coordinate there, but you know, from Tibetan Buddhism to Zen Buddhism, just all sorts of different artwork, a lot of Native American things as well. So I and you know, I grew up with I mean, look at okay, Jesse and I will definitely vibe with this. We grew up watching Hello, like the never ending story, which is basically if you watch it as an adult, a giant shamanic journey.

SPEAKER_06 10:14

Okay. I just watched never ending story again, like not even a month ago. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 10:20

And and and all, you know, I remember there was this movie, I don't even, I think it was called She-Ra or something. It was about this woman that was like a princess or a queen. She would ride zebra's bear back and she was like this hero figure. And I used to pretend that I was her. I would like gallop around my living room. Oh, was it like uh was it Sheena? She no maybe it was Sheena. Maybe it was Sheena.

SPEAKER_06 10:43

I don't know. We'll figure it out. I'll put it in the notes. We'll put it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_08 10:48

So that's so powerful. Yeah, it was a very, you know, aside from what was popular in media at that time, it was a very open, mystical experience growing up. We celebrated pagan holidays, the winter solstice was a big tradition in my whole household, um, as well as celebrating Christmas. I went to Unitarian churches, I went to a Baptist church with a friend once. I've been to Tibetan temples. I so I was exposed to a lot and I was always curious. And lo and behold, I didn't realize about me talking to animals until I was in Rachel White's spiritual coaching program. And after she was like, You have this thing with animals. And I was like, Really? Oh, I do like them. Yeah, you know, but she sort of like was like, you know, pointing to some, you know how they say we can't see the forest through the trees, if that's the ex the correct expression here. But I wasn't seeing what was obvious and right in front of me. And Rachel's like, hey, look at this direction. And then I looked back over my life. I looked at, you know, the books that were most influential to me were about animals.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_08 11:55

That that changed me, that still sit with me. I mean, I read the Trumpeter Swan in second grade, and it still is in my soul. I look at all these photos of me, and it's like, oh, there's me and a turtle. Well, there's me and a snake. Oh, there I am on a horse. I threw a temper tantrum at 11 that I needed to ride a horse or I was gonna die. Like I would, I would die of a broken heart. I was like threatening my parents, and they did put me in horse camp that summer.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

A pony camp. Well, I love that, and and even that part of your journey so far, even with the animals and to not have like noticed it. So many people out there take their innate talents for granted. They like blow past them, they're invisible to them somehow. It's like, oh yeah, everybody's good at that, or everybody loves animals, or everybody like can communicates with them. It's like, no, it's special about you. I think we get it programmed out of us quite.

SPEAKER_06 12:53

Is that what it is? I think we do. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_08 12:57

I sure it's in school and culture, society, you know, whatever it is. And especially now, there's so much, you know. I was talking with a friend the other day who who works in marketing and entertainment, and this friend was saying that, oh, we used to have, you know, seven seconds to capture people's attention. Now we have two seconds. What? Two seconds.

SPEAKER_06 13:21

Yeah, because of the video. Dopamine hits the scrolling, yeah, the scrolling, the doom scrolling.

SPEAKER_08 13:27

And that is not healthy, but that's it.

SPEAKER_06 13:30

Isn't we can maybe get to that, but um we can talk about that as much as you want to because I'll jump right up on that soapbox with you. Me too.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

And then we're gonna crush the soapbox because I'm gonna jump up there too.

SPEAKER_04 13:44

We're gonna, we're gonna, it's gonna break under our weight and exactly our cries.

SPEAKER_06 13:50

I can lift you up, Abigail, like a cheerleader, like the base cheerleader. Abigail, I loved your post the other day when you were like, hey, I got off of all social media except Substack, you know? And I was like, uh, yeah, that's what everybody's doing.

SPEAKER_08 14:03

Sound it's so so my profiles are still there, and yeah, maybe I'll go back at some point. I I can at least check to see if someone's messaged me from my computer, but I had to take the apps off the phone, the Facebook, the Instagram. I'm not on Twitter. I left that a long time ago. You have to have it, you know what I mean, for what you do, you know. I know, which is very frustrating. And I'm trying to figure out a way to not do that. But but even for I'm trying not to get back on it.

unknown 14:33

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 14:34

So well, and the thing with Facebook is I have a lot of extended family that's on there too. So that's also really a way from you know, and they're you know, 60s, 70s, 80s, they're not they're not doing Instagram, you know? They're not, I mean, but um what was I gonna say?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

You took it off your phone, you said.

SPEAKER_08 14:54

I took it off of my phone because I found that I would wake up in the morning just to like check. Oh whether it's the the healing work where my work as an artist, I was like, this is I gotta check out. We just but done bye. Yeah, it was over stimulation city, and I know that I'm sensitive, possibly, probably neurodivergent. Yeah, I think a lot of people. I wonder, I wonder about that too. Right. Even the reading I've been doing, I'm like, hmm, maybe I should look into like getting tested for some of these things just to give me a framework to figure out how I want to move forward. Because for me and why I do spiritual work, is I find that it provides a lot more answers that make sense to me. And I find that, you know, the field of psychology is limited, the field of medicine, or at least Western medicine, is limited. Nothing's really holistic in its view, which is why I lean more towards, you know, nurturing my own connection with the divine and practice focusing on my own energy work and sound and all of those things, because I'm very sensory-oriented and highly sensitive. So those are the things that make sense and give answers where I feel that those frameworks, traditional frameworks, sort of fail. It's the same with like entertainment, politics, technology. None of them really covers everything. They give you an answer, but it's not necessarily the answer, it might just be the answer that a product can be made, marketed, and sold, keep you on the consumption train.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Exactly. Well, and also I'm really like I have a psychology degree and a communications degree. And the communication. I and but that psychology degree, they villainized the ego. And the ego is what kind of kept us going. It doesn't mean the ego gets to be the driver of the car, it can sit in the backseat and speak in a nice tone of voice, you know, a pleasant tone of voice. It doesn't get to shout over the other ones. That's when you say, Hey, okay, thank you. I see you, I can hear you, but you're gonna wait your turn. Raise your hand, ego, in the backseat. And so there's so much that they don't teach you about you need all those parts of you, and they've all been working since you know, our ancestors, it's in our DNA strand, and they're keeping us alive. But how do we thrive? Well, you have a little bit more balance, and that really does come from being quiet, and that's the thing that connects to the technology and that dopamine and that doom scrolling is people don't know how to do nothing and be bored anymore. And that actually is the medicine I think we all need a lot more of.

SPEAKER_08 17:44

That's just yeah, that I mean, that's the guidance I've been getting. I mean, that's why I mean, I moved uh just over a year ago, I moved from Los Angeles after almost 20 years out to Joshua Tree. I knew I was supposed to move here. My guides were telling me to move here. I said, How am I gonna move here? They sort of made a miracle happen. And then I got here, and the pace of life is very different. And it's still, still I'm adjusting because I'll go into like productivity mode and it's like, slow it down. That's not how things kind of move out here. So I'm still, but they're always like getting it.

SPEAKER_06 18:17

How early do you how early do you show up places? The reason I'm asking is because when when I moved out of Los Angeles back to Texas, like I would, I was literally everywhere like an hour early because like I'm like, oh yeah, fuck, there's not traffic here. You know what I mean? Because my brain was like, uh, was like, okay, how long is it gonna take me? Building the time. How long is it gonna take me to get to the fucking valley? All right, I gotta, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 18:39

Yeah, you're like, how long is it gonna take me to go 10 miles? You're like, cool, 45 minutes. So let me exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 18:45

Yeah, so I was showing up everywhere like an hour early, you know, because it was I it it it takes a while for you to like readjust, you know.

SPEAKER_08 18:53

Oh my god, I wish that was me. I am perpetually, if it's social, if it's work related, I'm on time or you know, five to 10 minutes early. But if it's social, you know, it's not like a deadline for me. It's really hard for me to shift gears and just get my act together to get out the door. So I'm perpetually like 10 to 15 minutes late to any social gathering.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

So, did it take you a long time to get used to the pace of like the desert? And did were was there anything that you added to your day or to your rituals of the day that helped you to kind of get in sync with the desert pace of life?

SPEAKER_08 19:28

So, what's really helpful for me because I I live in a little homestead cabin that's renovated and it's on three and a half acres of land. So I'll take my yoga mat as long as it's nice out, out to one of the Joshua trees. I have a lot of Joshua trees on my land. I'm looking out at them right now out of the window, and I'll go do yoga and meditate and breathe underneath this tree that I also talk to. And I love that.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

I love people that talk to trees.

SPEAKER_08 19:55

That's literally me. Oh, they have names. Goose pumps. They the the boulders in the park. I connect with them. Um, and sometimes speak all my driveway is a dirt, I live on a dirt road too. So my driveway is a big dirt road, but there's a circle around the house. So I'll walk in a circle around the house. Sort of, you know how they have those um those uh spiral like walking paths. Yeah, like the labyrinth. Yes, the labyrinth. Thank you. So I'll just walk in a circle around my house, or I'll start to venture out into the yard and kind of just orient myself with what you know, what insects do I see, what birds do I hear, what plants am I seeing? I got all the apps to identify all these. So that I find really grounds me and slows down my most often, especially right now. I don't know if it's what's in the pla in the sky, you know, astrological stuff, but whoo, I'm having a real hard time slowing down. So that is what dials it back for me. So I'm still, you know, kind of getting accustomed to this slowing down and not feeling guilt for not working, even though I know because I've experienced since moving here, when I do slow down and I do take that space, when I do my shamanic journey meditations, it opens up so much.

SPEAKER_06 21:18

Exactly. That place is magical too. You know, I mean it's where you're at. There, there's that there's that's one of those places where there's it's different, you know. It's it's uh and it's it's a have you spent a lot of time out there, Jen?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Yeah, I've spent a little bit of time there. We did a lot of driving through it too as a kid.

SPEAKER_06 21:37

I remember the first time I drove to LA, didn't know where what the, you know, when I just moved out there, just didn't know anyone, didn't know what I was doing. You get into that, you get into that section of desert where she's talking about on the 10 and like you feel it. You're just uh you're like it, it's almost like I'm on another planet right now. I I I have literally like crossed some veil. And I'm I'm not in the the the the two states of desert that I just crossed through. This is different.

SPEAKER_08 22:07

I'm so glad you said that because there's actually when I so how I ended up moving here was I I think it's it started in 2018 or 2019. I don't remember. I decided on a whim, I'm like, I've never been to Joshua Tree. I'm gonna drive out there and go on a hike in the park on my birthday for my birthday, just spend some time alone in the park. And I had such a great time that I did it the next year, except I I decided instead of a day trip, I'd stay overnight. And then it just kept expanding and it became a tradition that I would do every year for my birthday, and I wouldn't want to come back because I would notice there's a particular, there's a specific spot on the freeway on the 10 where I would trap when I'm leaving LA, I would get to this spot and uh all of a sudden I would feel everything shift.

SPEAKER_06 22:52

And I'm like, oh yeah, it's real, you know, and and if you try to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it, they think you're nuts. They're like, Yeah, dude, it's just that it's just the desert. Yeah, you know, the Joshua trees and stuff. But it's like, no, it's that it's not the same.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

It there's not, there's like this beautiful contradiction where it's like you see that it's the desert, so it's sparse, it's dry, water means more, every bloom took you know, more it somehow. But so it's seems like it should be scarcity, but it's so abundant. You realize in one breath that everything is there and everything's in harmony and everything is perfect. I don't know, it's just this kind of weird, beautiful contradiction.

SPEAKER_08 23:42

I've always felt that way. I've always people look at the desert and they think death and scarcity, and and and I've always looked at it as a space of expansion and resilience and a reminder that it is it is innate in us to thrive and have vitality. Because if there are things out here, hundreds of species, you know, across plants and animals out here surviving, living, flourishing. I mean, right now we've got all this superbloom going on. Um, you're just like, wow, okay. So always reminds me, no matter what my environment is, because I did go through a period of pretty uh intense trauma when I was with an acting guru. It was very high control culty situation uh linked to Scientology. So so for me, it's always been a reminder of like despite your circumstances, you can, you know, thrive and come out of that, or just follow the rhythms and the cycles that nature already exhibits for us, and you'll be there.

SPEAKER_06 24:45

It's suspended animation, and then like everything comes alive and things get right, you know, everything, everything starts to bloom, you know. There that place is not scarce out there at all.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Abigail is a weird question, but um, was there a sense for you um a looking out at the desert that you had a remembering of parts of you or lifetimes that you had forgotten that you miss like a dear friend?

SPEAKER_08 25:12

Yes. So part of what would happen when I would come out to hike, uh, and not a weird question at all, is I I mean, I guess people today would call it a download, but I felt like I could actually hear myself. Wow. And since I started doing these trips just before COVID and the pandemic, it sort of coincided with this space of the world going silent in me being able to hear myself again and remember who I was, remember my childhood, remember those, because I had all but buried those uh, you know, spiritual aspects of myself. And, you know, I knew I was sensitive. I always knew I was sensitive. Um, but I didn't think much beyond it. And it wasn't until the combination of, you know, being out here on those hikes and and simultaneously, because I came once for my birthday, and then it turned into like multiple times a year. And so I was just like, how fast can I get to the desert? How soon? Because it was like an escape. Because I was remembering, and that coincided with COVID, which kind of you know removed me from the physical vicinity of the mentor that was abusive. And I I left. And so that is that simultaneous remembering coincided with a very rocky spiritual awakening. And it all just all these things merged together right time, right place. And I left the environment that was not conducive to me being who I was, and then I started going, wait a second, I forgot about all these parts of myself. And then everything else just came online, like the intuitive stuff, the psychic stuff, starting, you know, getting my my Reiki attunement, you know, working, starting to work with clients, creating my whole business. And before I did the Reiki, actually, is when I started, I started it with artwork. Because I I had a meditation, I was doing a meditation because I have all of this collection of crystals from my grandfather, um, antique crystals that he tumbled and polished himself. And he made jewelry with them, but I don't make jewelry. And I was like, what am I supposed to do with all these? Like, I have to do something with them. So I did a meditation and he like showed me an image in my meditation. I went, Oh my god, I'm supposed to make art. So that's how I started doing the paintings that fuse color therapy with crystals. I call it frequency shifting art. They're beautiful, you know.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Yeah, it's a functional healing art piece. They're beautiful, they work. They do just looking at them like looking at them online.

SPEAKER_06 27:45

Yeah, just looking at feature of them online. Yeah, you know, it's uh uh when I look at it, I'm just I'm like, not only is it so cool and the way that you do blend the colors and together, and with I really get the I get a whole chakra thing feeling, you know, that sort of thing going on with it. What a cool idea, you know, and uh how it came to you is also super cool. Yeah, that is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

And they they're your grandfather's um stones that he had and crystals and things.

SPEAKER_08 28:14

Yeah, and so that's it's also a limited supply. So now when I because I started with small, like 10 by 10, 12 by 12 pieces, I eventually moved to bigger pieces and I would then source crystals that I where I trusted the person I was getting them from. I started incorporating bigger crystals because they were bigger pieces, but I was still always include at least one of his crystals to honor him. So it was really, I guess, and part of my painting process, especially early on, was I'm not classically trained as uh a visual artist, but I am classically trained as a performing artist. So, you know, decades of voice, speech, movement, acting, all of that. But the the painting, although I did paint when I look back at childhood, my my first loves, the thing I did most first, writing and painting.

SPEAKER_02 29:06

Wow. So you've you've recaptured that.

SPEAKER_08 29:08

I have goosebumps all over my body. I've gone like full circle and then just kind of expanded out. So the the painting, how it works for me, and I sort of developed these workshops that I was teaching in LA before I moved here, where it was really about getting back into your body and connecting with your own innate intuition and wisdom. So that when you're painting, it's like, you know, my therapist actually calls it paint like paint how you feel. So I'm moving my hand. I'm sort of trusting, like, hey, spirit, help me out here, and trusting myself and going, how does the brush want to move? And what are these colors doing to make me feel? What's the healing intention here? And just sort of, you know, making it all work together. And it becomes this process that kind of transmuted a lot of trauma for me and helped me reclaim my sense of self, my power, but also really got me kick-started my clarity on my point of view as an artist, because that's a big thing in the in the acting entertainment world as an actor when you're doing work. What's your point of view? What's your point of view? What's your point of view? And you can't have a point of view unless you've had some life experience. And so the painting really ended up informing my acting and vice versa, and the spiritual work. Because to me, shamanism, you know, you go on a journey, you merge with your power animal. Actors do that every time they're merging with a character.

SPEAKER_06 30:33

Yeah, good point.

SPEAKER_08 30:34

I'm writing a piece about it for Substack, but it's not out, but I'm I'm working on it. Should turn that into a whole book. I agree. Yeah. What I did want to say, because this is you know appropriate for your podcast, the paintings, because I get a lot of those people reaching out on Instagram. It's like, hey, turn it into digital digital art. And I'm like, bro, it's 3D, it's never gonna be digital.

SPEAKER_06 30:55

Human made, yeah, you can't human made.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Hey, yeah, it cannot be that's the magic.

SPEAKER_06 31:05

Hey, Chad crypto, bro. It's not gonna be an NFT, you know?

SPEAKER_08 31:10

It isn't. So that's what they were trying to get me to do NFTs, and I was like, Do you even look at my work? Like it's the crystal is giving you energy when you're when it's exactly right.

SPEAKER_06 31:21

And people that were on that train, you know what I mean? And they were trying to turn anything into an NFT, they're just trying to cash out while people are just being dumbasses and like spending that much money, you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

It's kind of adjacent, but your grandfather was giving me a message, and so I feel like I need to say it. Otherwise, he's like, I won't make you feel sick, but he showed me this big terracotta, you know, the terracotta catch basin for a big terracotta pot, and in it are all these stones, and he said, just lay it out during, you know, a time that you're thinking of me, and I'll and I'll touch all those, and I'll still be a part of your artwork. So I don't know. I'm just delivering that, whatever. I don't know. I love that that resonates, but uh and a giant hawk just flew over. This seems to be the pattern with me. A giant hawk just flew over the house as that was happening. So wow.

SPEAKER_08 32:11

Well, hawks were one of the first things when I was kind of going through my spiritual awakening. Um, I was walking my dog and I we went off trail at this nature preserve, and I stumbled upon a dead hawk. And I was like, and and I mean it was it was inches from my feet. I had to like pull here hero, my dog. I had to pull her back because I didn't want her to get into it. And I was like, oh, and then later that day I saw another dead bird on the sidewalk, and I was like, okay, or I would stumble, I would find not one feather, not two feather, I'd find a hundred feathers. One time I found a whole dismembered raven wing.

SPEAKER_07 32:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_08 32:53

And this was all hollowed on my right side. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And all within that time frame, my dog was also attacked. I sprained my ankle and I got bit by a dog, and I got bit by a rattlesnake. Rattlesnake bite was my fault, by the way, folks. Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

So I had quite the initiation. So that was your initiation. So what how did you survive it? I don't know. It was during COVID.

SPEAKER_04 33:19

Oh my god, are you googling?

SPEAKER_08 33:21

What did we do about a rattlesnake? What are you? What are you doing, Jesse? What are you doing? I mean, I did drink I did make myself a lot of margaritas at that time. I am not, I'm not currently in the desert.

SPEAKER_06 33:31

We are a sort of medicine, but I am in I am in uh East Texas, which is basically like uh just think of like true detective of season one. That's exactly what it is. It's all like woods and swamp, and uh those things are everywhere, and that's like my number one. Like, uh I'm I'm always like, that's what's gonna kill me one day. They're gonna get me. I'm gonna be out around. They're gonna get me. Are you kidding me? I'm phobic like crazy.

SPEAKER_08 33:58

Oh my god, no idea. I had a pet snake growing up, so I didn't have a fear of snakes. So my dumb dumb head went to pick up this snake and move it because my friends were freaking out about it because I've I'm not afraid of a snake, not realizing that it was a baby rattlesnake, it didn't have its rattle yet. So, luckily, oh yeah, right on yeah, it was more of a surface wound, it didn't get deep enough into the bloodstream, so the the effects were like very minute, but I still had to go to the ER and get anti-venom. So that was not fun.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

You did? Oh my god, I feel like the uh, you know, your body probably was going. I the anti-venom might have had a bigger reaction to your body than the you know the bite itself.

SPEAKER_07 34:41

Who knows?

SPEAKER_08 34:42

Or my owning my my anxiety about getting the bites. They they make anti-venom from horses, actually.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

I didn't know that. Uh huh.

SPEAKER_08 34:52

What? Yeah, they make it from I believe if look, the uh don't quote me on this, folks. Okay. Oh, Chad doctor will. Okay, yeah, let's let's ask Jeff the Clanker or Claude or whoever. Let's ask them. But I believe they inject the horses with it, and then they take the blood so that it creates the antibodies and they separate the plasma. Wow. I could be totally off here, but you know, when I first moved out here, I went to a free desert survival skills presentation at the hospital.

SPEAKER_06 35:24

God, that's a smart thing to do. Yeah, I mean, that I are you kidding? I'd they'd be like, wait, didn't you come to this last week? I'm like, I'm back. I'm gonna take it again. My my writing partner and my roommate in in LA, he he had a his he he didn't come from a film background in school, his degree was in venom toxicology. Really? That's a whole degree, yeah. It was a whole thing. Like he used to fuck around with cobras and stuff, and like he was always like uh he got he was always like uh hey, can we get like a you know it was always some like fucking snake, you know? And I'd be like, Do you still want me to live here and pay off the rent? Because no, we we cannot, we cannot they always escape.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

You always maybe I've watched too many tropes, it's too many sitcom tropes, but they escape, right? Have you not seen snakes on a plane?

SPEAKER_02 36:19

You just hanging out, and then suddenly they're I should worry more about that because I'm in um you know Denver and it's desert, also, and I love to hike. And my husband's always like, You gotta be careful of snakes because it's getting warmer, so the snakes are out. And I'm like, Oh, ooh, snakes are out. You know, I'm so excited because I always see the coyotes and things, and I have these experiences, but I I don't like I I think that I hike too early in the day that they're not really out. Maybe they're sunbathing.

SPEAKER_06 36:46

Both of you two more way more hardcore than I am.

SPEAKER_08 36:49

Um yesterday, yesterday I came across a red racer. He was just floating across, he was just sunning himself on my dirt road. Hero couldn't have cared less. I was actually shocked, and then I tried to get closer and it took off, and they're called red racers because they move super fast.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

I was wondering if they had like a racing stripe, but no, it's move fast.

SPEAKER_08 37:10

They move fast and they're good to have around because they eat rattlesnakes.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

Yeah, that makes sense. We had a cat once in Seattle, of all places, it was just garter snakes, but she would like she would get moles and garter snakes, and she was blind and deaf. And I'm like, what the heck? We we ended up building a house that was a couple blocks down from that old house, and she wouldn't move out of the old house, and so we were not selling that house yet. So I would have to take the cat Starchy and move her to our house, the new house, feed her and say, Stay here, Starchy. And she would just like walk back to the house, like that was annoying. And then on Christmas Day, I went to go give her because I'd always give her her cans of food because she had hardly any teeth. And there was this dirty note from the neighbor, like, if you're gonna move, you should at least move your cat. I'm like, they have no idea how many times I've moved Starchy back over to the new house. She's been move every every day. Yeah. But then on Christmas morning, I went over there to give her her can and um she had laid out an entire family of robins. That was her Christmas gift to me. She killed like four robins, and they were all laid out in front of the garage door. And I'm like, oh my god, she was like a killing machine and she was blind and deaf.

SPEAKER_06 38:24

That was a song at four robins dead. I know.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like, Merry Christmas, I love you. Yeah, I know that was her Christmas. She was always her own spirit. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_06 38:39

Abigail, when did you when did you when did you go to when did you end up in LA? I want to know if we were out there at the same time.

SPEAKER_08 38:45

I was in LA uh 2007 to 2025. When were you when were you there?

SPEAKER_06 38:51

Just left.

SPEAKER_08 38:52

Okay, okay. Yeah. So you so you've been out for a long time then.

SPEAKER_06 38:56

Yeah, like 20 years. Yeah. I think I I wanted I think I left, which I I would still go back all the time, but I think I left, left in like uh 2006, something like that. Okay. Can't remember. I was out there uh like not quite 10 years, like eight years, something like that.

SPEAKER_08 39:12

Okay. It's a very different city now. Uh I mean, and it's from what I hear from friends that still live there, it's just kind of declining. I mean, it's interesting because I look at it as I grew up in a small steel mill town in in Ohio, southwest Ohio, right by Kentucky. And so it was largely blue-collar. A lot of my friends, their parents, their dads worked in the steel mill. And then sometime I want to say around high school, there was a merger, and the steel company was bought, I think, by Kawasaki, because it be went from ARMCO to AK steel. And there were all these strikes and like all sorts of stuff, and a lot of people lost their jobs. You know, the the you know, executive, like white collar, they kept their jobs, but a lot of the blue collar, those jobs no longer existed.

SPEAKER_06 40:01

Right.

SPEAKER_08 40:01

And I see a lot of parallels between what's happening in Hollywood because we have the writer strike and then the actor strike almost simultaneously with COVID or on the heels of COVID. And then we have the LA fires, and it's like, oh my god, we just cannot break.

SPEAKER_06 40:14

Yeah, it's it's it's it's really been uh and I haven't been out there since before COVID.

SPEAKER_08 40:19

It's it's the and I still have a lot of friends who work in the industry and stuff, and um, you know, they're they're telling me stuff that like I I it's hard for me even to believe because it's oh yeah, you know, I'm just like uh people that are established producers or showrunners, people that are executive level that are having to for you know, their houses are getting foreclosed on, or and so then you kind of look at it as sort of like how is the industry shifting? And it's all sort of there's a lot, everyone's like, Oh guys, verticals are in, verticals are in. And I'm like, Okay, let's like trash television.

SPEAKER_06 40:57

And they already tried that with the remember that thing that what was that thing called? The the first one they did, they got a lot of money behind that thing too. Oh, the to QB Quibi or something, something, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 41:10

They tried that like here's and and this kind of speaks to my my thesis that I dropped on Substack Notes the other day that you responded on.

SPEAKER_06 41:20

Which is how which is how Abigail and I like started talking and now we met exactly I was fired up and I literally don't know if I should reply to her or if we'll put the links to it in the show notes, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 41:35

Okay, I don't know where it was picking up.

SPEAKER_08 41:37

It was good, it was it's in my notes. It's not even it wasn't even a it's not even a post, it was in my notes, and then I went and put it on I went and put it on threads because I was like I was just so frustrated because you know there's always been this, it's always been this way art versus commerce. And I was really upset because I was looking at the quality of cinema, television. I've never I've always been drawn more to film than TV, and going, what happened? Like, we don't have a god, no one's making a godfather right now. No one's making a film, no one, no one's making if you think about these like you know, once upon a time in America, these epic films, gone with the wind, these things that you know it's a hundred-year industry that that is just sort of falling apart. And we're coming out with superhero movies and remakes. And that's that's and I'm like, okay, I got it. You guys have a bottom line, you want to make money. And I am, you know, I I have friends at varying levels of the industry, you know. I uh as an actor, um, you know, I have a little bit of credits on screen, a lot more credits in theater and a fuck ton more, pardon my language, uh training. So I I'm I'm kind of in this, um, I'm in the industry, but I'm also somewhat outside of it. But I'm watching interviews with very established, well-known quote unquote celebrity actors, writers, producers, directors. And I'm like, yeah, like oh, Schindler's list, where you know, these epic things of storytelling that transform us, that move us, that change us. The first thing I have seen in a long time that did that for me was Hamnet.

SPEAKER_06 43:21

And I hadn't seen that one yet, but yeah, I've I've heard nothing but good things.

SPEAKER_08 43:25

It was great. So, so my my thesis and Substack Notes, I was basically concerned that it seems we've moved more as an industry. What I see is it's moved more towards commerce than art, and we've lost the art because what's happening is we got to make the money. And so decisions are being made by people who aren't creative, don't have a creative point of view, and they're looking at a bottom line. And when you're looking at a bottom line and you're following viewer trends, you're not being a leader in the space. And the the if you're gonna be a leader in an industry, you should be setting trends, not Following them and they're going, okay, well, no one's going to movie theaters because it's COVID. So now we're going to go streams. Okay, well, now everybody's watching stuff on their phone. So we're going to do verticals. So they're catering to the behavior of the people and appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is yes, fine in the short term, is going to make a lot of money, but it's not healthy in terms of preserving our cultural.

SPEAKER_06 44:25

Yes, 100%. I could not agree more. It's very frustrating. It's frustrated me as someone who's loved film since I was born, but it says I saw the first movie, whatever, you know, whatever that was, you know, and just been fascinated with like the whole everything about it. You know, and and I was thinking about it last night kind of, and I was uh, because I knew we were gonna talk, I was like, you know, we lost like a whole generation of like film school kids, you know, which which is what I was, you know what I mean? And we lost with with COVID and all the you know, everything else, you know, we we kind of lost that generation. We weren't turning out those great movies like you're talking about, you know, like The Godfather, you know, the the the things that are will always be classics as far as cinema is concerned. Okay, we weren't creating things to pull pull people in, pull the kids in, and that the internet got them. Yeah, and now I think I'm afraid, I'm really afraid that um we don't have anybody who's trained to do what you're talking about anymore, right?

SPEAKER_08 45:32

Those those films, those epics that are probably all on AFI's top 100 that are, you know, it's a slower movement of storytelling, where you know, these movies now there's a lot more CGI, so it's less human to human. The cut the editing is really quick. And I even, in response to my thesis on that I posted on Threads, uh someone commented back, like, no, there's still good TV being made. And they mentioned the pit, you know, that had won some Emmys. And so I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna check this out, you know, because my first job on TV was on ER. So I was like, oh, this would be cool, you know. And it is a show that is still shooting in LA. Um, and so I've worked on a John Wills production, and he always there's always a lot of roles for actors. He's very, it's a very actor-friendly environment in terms of um the industry because they're always hiring co-stars and guest stars. So I was like, okay, let me watch this. And the writing is great and the acting is great, but I would notice my nervous system. So the style in which it's produced is still that like quick, always moving, which is documentary style, super fast.

SPEAKER_06 46:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 46:43

It's the nature of healthcare and working in an emergency room. So there is that reality. But I was like, okay, it's good. But where is this slower storytelling, like we saw in Hamnet? Where is more of that that get because it's it's it's the mirror of what's happening on a broader scope. Like you bring, you know, I'm full circling back to full circle back to slowing down and finding stillness. I totally don't know how to appreciate, cultivate, or respond to that stillness.

SPEAKER_06 47:17

That's I've gotten to where I I I I I almost won't attempt to watch anything. And I know this makes me sound like an old man, but I won't even attempt to to watch anything that's come out recently because it it it's everything you just said, it it's lit like shit. You know what I mean? It's it it most of the times it's shot like shit. But you know, it's it's like they're there's uh you know, they're they're doing, you know, they they do backgrounds like with uh in the volume or something instead of like uh uh there there's plenty of places you guys can go throw a setup, you know what I mean? It's like it's it's not it's not that hard and like it would look normal, and the background doesn't look all muddy and gone, and you know, it's just there's a whole thing going on, you know. All I do is like watch the Criterion channel now, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 48:06

I know that's what you were telling me. And I was like, Criterion has a channel, I need to find it.

SPEAKER_06 48:12

It's a bargain, too. It's only like 11 bucks a month or something. Wow, yeah, and they change, yeah, and they change stuff out every I've been sitting there like I'm I'm watching everything on there, or like uh, you know, I still have HBO Max or whatever they're calling it nowadays, and like I watch a lot of TCM and like classic uh TPM.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

Well, think about like I think I have I have daughters um that are um 27 and 22, and they um they definitely because my dad had a big influence on them. It was like, okay, Gary Riley, Grandpa Gary is coming into town, and he would always pull out his like the day the earth stood still. He'd bring he'd bring half of his suitcase was full of uh VCR, um, you know, DVD player player um cassettes that we could sit and watch together with Grandpa Gary. And those are some of their best memories, but also it's like I think about what you were saying at the top, Abigail, about the the person in the industry saying it's two seconds now that we give them this, you know, they've retrained the brain. I think we need to push that a bit because I think about all of the classics, even the silly, campy B reels that my dad would bring that were such good memories for all of us. And we would sit in cinema send them together and just the jokes we made. And but if you can't last for a few seconds, you can't get through to any of those movies on any of the classics list the best, the worst, and the in-between. And what that translates into is life. Like, we need to give each other more than that attention. Like, this is not we're robbing ourselves. Sometimes it's the long game, folks. Everything worth doing is a long game. Uh, I think about books, like, books are better than movies in 99% of the time, and it takes more time to ingest it, but you get so much more out of it, and it's you can gnash on it in between the times. Okay, I can't read the book, I don't have time for it now. But I'm thinking about the characters and the backstory, and now I'm thinking about the victimology and the this and that, whatever the things are. Like we're robbing ourselves of that experience, the human experience. I think that this two-second thing, that's more like robot clanker training than us as human beings. And it it scares me. Like everything worth doing. I could go through a laundry list of even the shitty, awful struggles that uh, you know, if somebody else was to look at it from the outside in the last six months my family's gone through, those actually are the memories. I was talking to my husband about it yesterday is like this year hasn't been a year of us going, I'm gonna start crying, us going on a big trip or anything. But the things that I remember so acutely from this year are these conversations I had with my adult kids across the kitchen table or across the dining room table that were like real, authentic, and in depth. And those are the moments that uh I'm gonna carry that to my grave. I was talking to him about. I'm like, there's like if I look back at this last year, some people would say it was an awful year, a traumatic year. It's like, God, it was an amazing year. We've never felt closer than ever to our grown kids and their partners. And that's the that's the good stuff, man. So I think that it relates our lack of having any attention span on other things. It's impacting our relationships with the people that matter, the animals that matter in our lives, the plants that matter.

SPEAKER_08 52:03

You took the you took the word, the the message directly out of my mouth because I was like, that's why I am so passionate about the work I do with animals and about the work I do with people. Because when you are sitting with someone in silence, because my my energy work sound sessions, I'm I'm normally silent unless I'm, you know, doing my singing for part of the sound healing. But it for me, it's more about giving that person the time and space they're forgetting to give themselves to open them up to receive their own insight and guidance. Because a lot of people, like especially when I do group stuff, they're like, So did you like get anything or like any messages for me? And I'm like, that's not how I work. I'm like, I'm literally just I'm opening the door for you. And I know that that's part of my work. And you can walk through the door or not walk through the door. I don't, my answers are not your answers. Yeah, you know what I mean? And it's beautiful. It's the same thing with animals because animals are so present and they are so sensitive to energy, and they have a much deeper understanding of life and death, and death not being such a scary, um, painful finality that we humans make it. Um, they have so much to teach us about that, about that connection and about slowing down and breathing. And, you know, I had a couple that I worked with maybe, maybe a couple months ago, and uh they reached one of the members of the couple reached out to me um and said, Hey, I've I have a question. Do you have time for a call? I'm like, sure, absolutely. And this person proceeded to ask me if I knew what a spiritual awakening was because they grew up in a very conservative type of life. Oh, so it was new to them, and and they were really scared, and their partner was not experiencing the same thing. And so I, you know, gave the best, uh, you know, sent them some resources to further research because I said, look, everyone makes it out like this work I do is woo-woo. But Reiki is you like there are literally jobs in Ohio, because I saw them on Indeed or whatever, of Reiki practitioners that they're hiring to work in hospitals and hospice care centers because of the benefits of it. I know, and I have had clients who are nurses that are Reiki attuned. So my whole thing is because I get a lot of newbies out here that book through Airbnb on top of like my remote clientele that's all over. And so I'm always very um careful in the way that I explain the work because I don't want them to get have a judgment on or be scared of it because it sounds woo or spiritual and be like, hey, no, this is like totally accessible and it helps mind, it helps body, it it and also spirit. And so that's sort of kind of what we were talking about at the beginning, like feeling like I have to show you the way. I sort of had to make peace and go, okay, my job is just to show up and open the door. That's my job. Yeah.

unknown 55:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 55:13

And then if they come back, it's to continue to sort of go, okay, well, here's the map, here's the next stop. You know, what are you getting out of this? So that's kind of the way I I look at my work now. And the same with animals, because every animal session I do is almost always has have something to do. Like any sort of animal that has a quote unquote behavioral issue, when I talk to them, the way they experience it, they don't experience a behavioral issue. They're either mirroring some emotional state of the owner. So it's just it's just very interesting.

SPEAKER_06 55:48

Yeah, can you get into that a little bit more? Because that's really interesting to me. And I think it would be interesting to a lot of people, you know, everybody out there, you know, has pets and love pets and of what you're actually like how does that, you know, how does that work? What are your experiences with that?

SPEAKER_08 56:05

Well, well, especially in rescue, because right now I I volunteer at um a no-kill shelter out here in the high desert, but I live up the road from the city kill shelter.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

Oh my gosh, that's heavy. Wow.

SPEAKER_08 56:18

I have been to far too many uh town council animal shelter committee meetings for that location, and the the city leadership just does not want to hear what the community has to say. And I came on, I came in the middle, like the the community, there was already a huge community out here that was upset about what was going on. There were very high euthanasia rates and dogs that were being underfed, and so many issues that um will not be solved by Reiki. However, what I have noticed is I've had the blessing and the chance to be present and offer Reiki to animals that are extremely that are labeled as human aggressive, as dog aggressive, that are highly stressed. Um, and sometimes it's it, well, not sometimes, it is more difficult to communicate with an animal in that state. So sometimes just offering the Reiki allows them to calm down enough that, you know, somebody from rescue can get a slip lead on, guide them out, and get them over to, you know, the the safe shelter where where they're gonna get adopted, cared for, rehabilitated. So that is one of the biggest things I've noticed. And really um the biggest thing is it's giving the animal autonomy. We culturally look at pets as property. I mean, that's how that's legally how it is in the law. So oftentimes, like you know, with behavioral issues, it it's you know, situational. Um, a lot of it does involve the human changing. Yeah, I think a lot of times, right?

SPEAKER_02 57:50

Most often, would you say?

SPEAKER_08 57:52

Oh, yeah, that's it's it's always a human issue, not an animal issue. Um, and not in a blaming or a negative way, but just understanding what kind of energy you're broadcasting and also um understanding the history of the animal. If an animal has been through it, like a lot of people, you know, rescue or adopt animals from from shelters, and those animals have trauma histories that may stay with them forever, regardless of any work that I do with them. But if it's they may also shift and may just need more time than normal, whatever normal is, to adjust to the new home. If you're dealing with a home where there's multiple pets, you all you have a hierarchy, you have breed-specific things that are going on as well. Uh, so you know, it really is sort of an individual case. So, what I do is I just make it my job to communicate what the animal is feeling and thinking and wants to express and how they see it, and then sort of offer them the opportunity to share and then go, okay, so and and part of what happens is I was having a conversation with a a friend about this who does psychic work, why she's doing sound healing. And I go, that's so interesting because how I started communicating with animals was doing when I was doing volunteer work with them, just doing Reiki. And so the animals really trained me. And I didn't start reading about it, reading about it or studying other teachers until it happened for me spontaneously. And I went, Oh, oh, this, oh, and and obviously also big shout out and big thank you always to Rachel, who was like, you know, I think this is a thing. Why don't you do a practice session on my dog?

SPEAKER_06 59:36

And I'm like, What? I think that's beautiful what you're doing because I do too. And it's something that I didn't even really know it was a thing. I think you know, but now that you that now that you you're talking about it and you're explaining it, I'm like, well, of course that should be a thing.

SPEAKER_08 59:53

You know, all animals communicate telepathically. That's their innate way of communicating. And it might be our innate way of communicating, but we just, like we said earlier, it gets programmed out of us. So part of it is is very much like cult deprogramming. You have to de-program yourself from the cultural beliefs around animals and what because sometimes they say wild things to me, and I have to go, like, okay, stop, just trust it, and it's there, and I'll share it with the owner. Like, I don't know how this is gonna go. Like recently I had to share something where the animal wanted to tell one of its humans that, like, I don't remember it word for word, but it was something like, you know, just like chill out a little bit, you know, whatever it was. And I said it and I was like, I don't know what this is. And the owner was like, Oh yeah, that tracks.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:40

And I was like, Okay, you're just delivering the message. Well, I was like, Don't shoot that.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:47

But yeah, that helps both of them though.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

Because then they're like, Well, you know what? Yeah. Well, you have to be like right. I I think that you know, people need to be responsible with their energies, and because our our animals around us are so much more sensitive and and they just like they absorb things, it's almost like charcoal that they absorb that stuff, and and we need to be really conscious of what we're putting out there. I have this cat that uh my daughter, who's a grad student, my younger daughter, she's a grad student. And so when she went off to college, um, she was like, you know, her cat is epileptic, and so it's dosing two times a day, and then there's like epileptic seizures that he goes through. And he's like Buddha. We call him Buddha, even though his name is Opal Storm. But when um even before my daughter went off to college, it was like, uh, it's it always was me that every 12 hours my alarm went off on my phone, and I had this dynamic and I had this epiphany of like, what am I doing? I'm poisoning him because I'm so bitter and mad. It's like it's a privilege that he trusts me with his care and that he trusts that I'm gonna show up with the right dosage every 12 hours to contain his seizures and his epilepsy, and it changed everything. And our relationship became this beautiful thing. And I'm like, gosh, I'm so sorry. I was like for years going, ah, it has to be me. I've got to be home, seven and seven, uh uh uh, you know, FML. And it's like, no, it it was a it, I it's an honor. And I can truly say every day I'm like, okay, Opal, it's me, it's that time, and you get a treat, but I've got to do the thing. And he's just like, I get it, I get it, Jen. Thank you. And we have this beautiful relationship, so that's the thing I would just push back to on human beings, is just they know like stuff that we're not even aware of, we're oblivious to because we're in scroll mode or whatever mode. They are picking up on. And so last night I had a um Sam the Sky Guy did my birth chart, and he didn't know, and I didn't know where it was gonna go. But there was this part where he was talking about my Saturn, my very first Saturn return. He goes, What happened on this day? And I said, Oh, I don't know what that date is. That doesn't mean anything to me. And Cooper was like crazy. It's like I told Jesse before we started recording, it's like he was on uppers. He was like running up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs, like hyped up, like, get this off of me. Almost like he had something on him he didn't want. And I realized now both my ears are ringing, so I'm confirmed about that. He knew before both of us knew what energy was going to come forward because it showed up in my chart for my first Saturn return. And I go, Oh, Sam, I know exactly what that was. And we talked about I go, I know, and I don't want to name the energy because it was so dark and those attachments were so dark and deep that literally my older daughter and I have had to keep doing like our own like magic to like make sure those things are banished forever and not, and so I didn't even want to name it, but Cooper knew it was gonna come up, that energy was gonna be kind of bubble up a bit, and he was already reacting to it. So I would just push to every single person listening, be really thoughtful and conscientious and responsible for your energies.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:26

Yeah, I always tell people, especially if it's like a behavioral issue, and I say, Well, if you're constantly frustrated, you're you're you know, if you're like, oh man, the dog's gonna do this again, and you see that in your mind, the dog is seeing that, and they think that's what you want them to see. You're exactly right. So they're just doing, and I mean, I've worked with all types of animals, um, but mostly I get dogs and cats, but I love working with horses. I love horses, but they they do, they, they see that. And the other thing is they often, what you were saying, they like Cooper was doing, is they interrupt. Yeah. So, and they are the mirrors because there is this parallel. Like you think about, you know, some of these animals that are traumatized and rescue, and they're at high cortisol, they're in that fight or flight. And you think about when humans are in fight or flight, right? So they very much become the mirrors to show us what are, like you just said, what are we not conscious of that's going on internally? Like Hero, one of her reasons for being here with me is for me to confront my own fear. And this has to do with a cat that I lost when I was five, which was sort of my initiation into death. And she's the reason that I started doing animal mediumship. And she sent me Hero. She told me this. So I was like, okay. And so I'm like, and I tried to avoid the mediumship. I was like, I don't want to talk to deceased animals, I don't want to deal. And they were like, Yeah, sorry. But they really they I think animals. Are some of our greatest teachers? We just have to learn how to listen. And so my goal is not necessarily, you know, because sometimes people ask questions and I'm like, well, I can't really do that for you, or I don't have that answer for you because that isn't really the way this works. And that that that does ping ping my need to please wound, you know, that old wound where I'm like, oh, I'm like, but that's that's not that's not how the dynamic is between, you know, animals are here to behave.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:30

We all have that thing you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not about we've all pretty recently gone through some sort of weird trauma, you know. I mean, we're you know, we're all kind of on the same page with all this stuff right now. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:45

But I did want to ask you something, Jennifer. You mentioned like the the that date and the thing with your daughter. Yeah. Um, and you can answer this or not, um, or edit it out later. Yeah. But you were talking about the dark energy and the attachments and having to do work to make sure. Were you able to remove your own? Because I was able to remove some of my uh attachments or entities or whatever you want to call it. And I was like, does anyone else do this?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:09

Or yeah, yeah. I mean, it took a lot of time, and um, you know, what was interesting to me is the forces that helped the they they were the most powerful were um shadow and light. And so it would be like a Baphomet and an Azrael Raziel kind of combination. And so um I'm sure there's people out there if they're very fundamentalist Christian or like Baphomet's the devil or whatever. It's like he comes with lessons and arsenal energy that I needed to be holding a boundary and to also be able to look backward and recognize that um, you know, um there's a sense of forgiveness of like not seeing it at the time um that this person came and was doing this black magic that was specifically targeted to us to kill us. And so um, you know, it was like there's a forgiveness there because I'm a very loving, trusting person. And um, it wasn't something it brought on to me or my eldest. And um, you know, we've had this kind of journey together where my eldest and I um will have parallel journeys and we won't realize it until we're decompressing and going, I gotta talk to you, let's go have lunch or let's go do a hike or whatever. And then we're like, whoa, that was very similar to what I just went through. And I think it's connected. So for me, I think that would what would make people uncomfortable, maybe if they hear it, is that I had to use darkness and light to um fully and completely be able and harness it within myself. It's like I'm not just a bright, shiny thing. I actually am a bunny rabbit with teeth. And so I can be really tough and strong. And I had to use all of that myself to to be done with it. Yeah. So, but it was interesting because when he was saying it on the charty, he gave me a specific date of the, you know, Saturn return. And I went, well, Nora was eight months old, and I love being a mom. I mean, there's nothing I love better in the world, that's why I'm everybody's mom, you know. Um, Mama Hopes is what a lot of people call me because that's oh, I love that who I am, right? But um, and so I went, Oh, nothing was wrong. And I went, Oh, actually, that's interesting. And I'd forgot that this person, um, you know, the family said, Can you have a place for this person to live for a period of time and kind of befriend them and help them to figure out Seattle since they're new to it and maybe places to live. And so we did, we dutifully like were this, and it was like that's when the black magic began because they were in the home and they were putting these things there. So I just have to tell you that like five years ago, when my younger daughter had um, you know, still uh both of my daughters have Josh's as their partners and uh they're their Josh, isn't that funny? So I like that. So great. It's so easy for us parents. But their Josh actually lived in that house because we were renting it out at the time, and we were like, if you want to be out and of your home during the lockdown and and working and things, because he was graduated from high school, and he was and he doesn't believe in any of this stuff. He was like, Oh, there's things like stomping around, like it's like a person stomping around, and then in the kitchen, I'll be in bed, nobody's in the house. I have I there's not even pots and pans and things, and there's pots and pans slamming around, slamming around like somebody's fighting and throwing things around. I'm like, Yeah, it exists there, and um it exists, yeah, it exists there, and so he said, I can't live here anymore. He said it, you know, I just can't live here anymore. And then we had a second person, again, a young man in college, and he doesn't, you know, really buy into this stuff. And he was just like, Whoa, there is like there's a ghost. Do you know that there's a ghost in your house? I'm like, Yeah, we know it's it's malevolent and it's like residual stuff, but um, but there it's connected to a human being and everything. So yeah, where my eldest worked with somebody in England who did a very deep like flushing out of that. And for me, it had to be me that did it alone. Cause I'm like, I think it was because I needed to be on this journey of going light and dark. There is no, there is no shadow part of myself that I don't want to harness because it's a superpower too, and I'm gonna stop hiding it. So yeah. So yeah, he saw it in my chart.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:41

It's like that was really it's it's really interesting and cool though that you were able to do that too, Abigail, because that I don't think that's very common or you don't hear about that.

SPEAKER_08 1:11:50

And and I was curious, and it's not a conversation you can have with people, and that's why I usually why why I mentioned earlier about many of these systems, medicine, psychology, psychiatry failing us because they don't have the full answer, is I had a lot of you know, quote unquote mental health struggles. That's one framework to look at it when I was a teenager, but it was on the tails of a lot of drug and alcohol abuse, which obviously opens your energy field up for things. And when um this was back in 2023, maybe I remember I was having these thoughts and I went, hold on, that's not me. Because they reminded me of I keep all my journals because I'm psychotic like that. Um reminded me of journal entries that I was doing. That's why we all get along.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:45

We all raised our hands.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:46

Um it reminded me of these journal entries I had from like, you know, my teenage years, and they were, you know, feelings of like, you know, of shadow, like hatred and and jealousy, and like, and I was like, where does that come from? You know, and I thought that then, like I felt guilty about having those feelings. And then when they started popping back up, I went, wait a second, this isn't me. And I was like, and and I had already started kind of um work like practicing shamanism, working with shamanism for myself. And I had done a few journeys, and you know, my my first guide was all like, it's time to confront the monsters under the bed. And I was like, Whoa, similar to Hero's purpose with me, it's all about confronting my fear and working with fear. And once I but, hey, wait, this isn't me. Then the disruption started happening where like I would get woken up in the middle of the night, like someone was, you know, putting a wet willy in my ear. And I was like, that's not okay. Like, don't touch me. And then I had to learn, I think part of it was just my awareness that sort of lifted, like it switched the energy. So it became unattached, but then it, I think it got upset. So it kept fucking with me. And I was like, no, no, no. And I just used all my tools that I had. And because I had, you know, done some soul retrievals through my shamanic work, it it, you know, it changed part of that. And my dad worked in mental health for many years. That's where he used his astrology. And I've also I listened to a really interesting, I'll try and find it and send it to you guys, really interesting YouTube interview between some, you know, uh uh gentleman who did mental health in prisons, and that's what my dad did, of people, and would talk about these strange entity type things that he would notice occurring when he would work with some of these clients that were murderers or had like schizophrenia or whatever. And that's why I'm like, I'm not saying poo-poo to mental health, and I'm not saying people shouldn't be medicated if that's what they feel they need, but I'm saying we shouldn't rely on that as the only answer because I think there's a lot of things that are linked to mental health that are beyond brain chemistry, that are energetic in nature, that things like soul retrievals or extractions are actually more appropriate, whether to be used in combination or not. I mean, I'm a huge proponent of combining modalities. I too. I've been in therapy for the last five years, but I was also getting acupuncture, sound healing, doing self-reiki, um, crystal healing, flower essences. I actually had, I told Rachel White this, I had a spontaneous soul retrieval during an EMDR session after a like a week or two after I started taking her flower essence, reclaim yourself. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:41

Shout out Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:15:47

And my parents gave me flower essences as a kid. So I was already familiar. Like I was like, oh yeah, Bach remedies, like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:54

Yeah, I'll do that. And then here it did this. But you know, I for me, I can only speak from my own experience. I feel like part of it that I'm just finally working through. I mean, it took me to what 56 to figure this out, but it's like there was a part of me that also identified as I would grow the cords to to kind of keep that connection, that attachment. Because I was like, I was a victim. How dared they? Uh uh uh, this is my story. And now it just feels like it's like I'm talking about a book I wrote, uh storyline there, because I'm so unattached to it. It's like I don't feed off that anymore, and I don't, you know, so it really was a boundary, but I noticed that some of the modalities I use, it was like I always made a joke because I don't know, somewhere in a mission in California, we bought a thing of holy water on that dark desert highway, cool wind in your hair.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:55

Um and I would and so I would go on the warm smell of of what is it? Colito, yeah, okay, rising up in the air. But I would try to sprinkle it on Cooper and he'd run away.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:09

And I'm like, Are you gonna sizzle? Are you gonna sizzle? And I always called it that. It was always a funny joke between us, but there were certain modalities as I was like doing the cleansing, clearing, cutting all the cords and just like getting rid of that energy once and for all. And also, um, is I would go, I don't want the energy away and get that modality away from me. And that's when I realized, oh no, I actually that's the one I need the most. So then I go into that medicine, and that's the thing that was most impactful. But then the last thing that I did that I thought was so powerful, and so I do this often now is I use amnesia. It, you know, it's the beautiful thing about turning 50, is you become kind of amnesia. Yes, I use amnesia in my spell casting now. So I have this disco ball that I create around me and these energies that want to find, if they ever want to find me again, if they touch it, first of all, either they are like intoxicated by their own countenance, their own um what, their own reflection in this beautiful disco ball, and they're like, uh. So they are like distracted. And if they touch it, then they're and they have amnesia. So they forget what they were even going after, that I was even a target. So this has become my medicine now with what I do. Love that. I want to learn how to do that. Well, you just did. So you just picture, you just picture like uh, you know, any protect any protective bubble that you hear about whether it's at the beginning of a meditation or Reiki, and a lot of people say it's a white light, or you feel it pouring into the crown of your head and through your body. Well, you can also then create the bubble. And then outside of the bubble, I create this like disco ball with all these little mirrored pieces. And then outside of the disco ball, then I create this like extra shell that it's like gooey shell that they touch it and it gives that entity amnesia. They forget the target. So that's oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:14

I actually I'm like a big old nerd with numbers, like I'm obsessed with numbers. Like five has always been my lucky number. So it was that's my lucky number two. That's hilarious. Okay, I've really moved into loving six because it's all about harmony. So now what I do is I actually create a honeycomb of light.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:31

Oh, I love this. Have you ever looked up Andrew Goff, G-O-U-G-H? He has this um whole blog post about the medicine of bees and honeycombs, and it is amazing. And it goes with the number six because I love the number six and lately also. Six was stigmatized, right? I remember the first time 666 showed up for me, and I went, oh gosh, that's bad. And then it's like that's actually great.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:58

I know it's perfect harmony. Well, because I I worked with someone um to to work on my PTSD uh in 2024. Amazing, amazing person. His name is Nacho Aramani, it's the Aramani method, and he created this method that is essentially similar to bilateral stimulation, but your body is doing the movement and you're using your voice as well. And what I found is it really returns some of those skills for me in terms of like um sound having color and some of those things, but also bringing everything into focus and harmony and balance. And so when one day after we finished a session, he because he was he's in Topanga, uh, California, he had his doors open because he lives like in a beautiful forest. And this bee comes flying, this bee comes flying in, and I just hold my hand out and I'm looking at the bee and I tell it telepathically, like, just come say hello. And it lands right on my hand. And he and I are like so I have a whole thing with bees now too.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:05

It's beautiful. Oh my gosh. Well, do you use honey as medicine? I don't know. I do.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:12

I I have well, I have it in my coffee every morning. Yeah. But um, there's a lot of bees that are out here that I always try to leave water for. And and uh since that time, there's been a few more instances where they come and they land on me, and I'm like, oh, okay, you're here to tell me something special, you know. On my birthday this year, I went hiking in the park and I got out of my car, and these bees just like swarmed me. And I was like, I'm I'm not wearing any perfume. I don't I'm not I don't even have the color on, and I'm like, what's happening?

SPEAKER_06 1:21:42

And it's because you're that sweet.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:45

You I know my grandma would say you're so sweet.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:51

Okay, I have one more, I know we're running kind of late. So before you let us know, um, every listener, where we can find you and get in touch with you and see your art, I had one more really weird question that popped up for me. Do you dream differently now that you live in the desert?

SPEAKER_08 1:22:09

I don't know. I I guess I would say the answer is yes and no. Yeah. I've definitely now you could be thinking about it though. Yeah, I've definitely had dreams here that I have not had before. But I also have um I I so okay, two decades ago when I was in college, I lived in Italy for a summer to study abroad. Uh and it was life-changing. I've definitely had a past life there. It was a brief amount of time spent, but it felt like forever. And the second I put my foot on the ground there, I went, I'm home. And I have no Italian blood. I mean, it I'm, you know, Scandinavian and and Germanic Celtic. That's that's my my bloodline on both sides. So I was like, I don't know what's going on here, but like I've been here and I felt so at home. And over the last, I don't know, eight years, eight to ten years, I consistently have dreams about Italy. So those still come. Those still come. But I have had some new dreams where I'm like, what in the world?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:13

You have, I mean, we talked about it. You're a writer too. So you have a dream journal, right? Do you do that separately from your actual your other journal? So, oh my god, I have so many journals, it's bad. Um there's that is you're talking to the right people, it's a good addiction. You're like a whole stack of them right there. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:31

You're like, okay, well, this is for my morning pages that I rip up and throw away. And this is for my angels, this is for my special, and this is like my psychic signs and synchronicities, this is my creative ideas. Like it's exhausting. So I actually voice memo my dreams.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:46

It's like now I take this thing with me every time I leave the house. It's a field book for yeah, so it's just audio. I'm trying to write stuff down instead of fuck with my phone all the time.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:57

Well, once somebody look, this is embarrassing, but I learned from my writing teacher a few months ago that you can transcribe your voice memos. And I was like, what? Yeah, you actually can. How many years have I been leaving myself voice memos? And I did not know you could transcribe them, copy and paste them into your notes app and turn them into a Substack article.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:17

Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Well, speaking of Substack, so tell everybody listening where they can find you.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:25

The best place to find me is Substack and my website. My website, my website is sacredhealingartla.com. And that's where you can book a session for yourself, your animal. You can buy artwork, you can, there's a link to my Etsy shop in case you want to buy some of the apothecary aromatherapy that I have there. Uh, there's guided meditations, and then my substack is where I sort of share more. So it's poetry, it's artwork, it's thoughts on the current state of humanity and it can be a rant. It can be a rant, or or as I call them, ramble dambles.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:03

Congratulations on uh your poetry book. Can you publish, by the way?

SPEAKER_08 1:25:08

So so it's a a poem, it's some artwork and a poem, a couple of poems of mine that I submitted to an arts and literary journal, and they are gonna publish it, I think like next month or something. So I'm I'm pretty sure, yeah, I'm I'm excited about that. I'm officially a published poet. Um, but Substack, yes, it's this awakened life, and I think the URL is just my name, AbigailCachunis.com. I'm not spelling it for y'all. They'll put it in the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:33

I'll put in links in the show notes.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:35

We'll find it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:37

Well, we love you, and we are so glad you took time out to sit with us for a bit.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:43

Yeah, I know we went long today, but uh we just when I saw that live with you and Rachel, I was like, these two are a fucking party, and I want to be part of this party.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:53

That's what everybody tells us.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:56

We're just gonna be we're just like we're just having fun doing this.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:00

Just trying to be normal, you know, or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:02

Just trying to be a bright spot right now. Yeah, and I think that's what we need, and it's real.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:07

Like, I think people should stop defaulting to the top 10 whatever influencers, podcasts, books, movies. Like, step outside what you're being fed and start exploring these pockets of people who are full of wisdom and experience that aren't necessarily whitewashed into sound bites.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:27

Fucking clinkers, fucking clinkers, fucking clinkers, fucking clankers.