Starseed Evolution Podcast: Finding My True Calling – Part 1

Hi,

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I'm Shannon,

And this is Star Seed Evolution,

Bringing the wisdom and insight of the cosmos to you.

I'm grateful that you're listening.

I am often asked by my clients and students how I stepped into the healing arts as a career.

For over 25 years,

I have been practicing as a licensed massage therapist,

Craniosacral therapist,

Reiki master teacher,

Spiritual director,

And meditation teacher.

The one thing I can tell you is that it was not a direct path.

One of my clients recently asked me what I would label myself as,

Since she felt like I wasn't just a massage therapist.

I told her the closest defining phrase that I could come up with that encompasses all of it is intuitive healer.

It turns out that when I was young,

And they would ask all of us children the question,

What do you want to be when you grow up?

That particular job title was not on the list,

Nor would I have known it even if it had been.

My journey has been a winding one of unknown twists and turns,

Where I have stumbled many times into dark places constantly,

Blindly trying to feel my way through as I move forward on my path,

Which has become more clear the more I've stepped into it.

So let's start at the beginning,

At least back to my college days.

I attended the University of Arizona on an academic scholarship,

Moving from Yuma,

Arizona where I was born,

And coming out to Tucson,

Arizona for the university experience.

My major was education with a minor in English and Spanish.

My focus was on education in the high school tradition,

Teaching English.

I was a writer at heart,

And loved reading and diving into characters and stories,

And seeing the beautiful way to connect to the human heart through these stories.

It turns out though,

That actually teaching high school English isn't quite the same in person as it was for Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society.

When I graduated from the U of A at the age of 23,

Before I knew all the defining things about myself,

I was,

And still am,

And will always be,

A sensitive,

Empathic,

Introverted person.

After six months of teaching high school,

I just couldn't do it anymore.

I was miserable every day.

I did not have the mind or fortitude to face that kind of teaching assignment.

So I left the high school academic arena,

And over the next three years after that,

I just worked at a local grocery store,

And did all the different types of jobs that you would learn there.

And while I worked,

Which allowed me to care for myself,

Physically,

Mentally,

I began exploring on the side,

The things that I enjoyed about life.

One of the things that I enjoyed was the physical therapy tradition,

Because I spent a lot of time growing up in physical therapy.

I was a competitive gymnast,

And so I was always getting injured.

And so it required me to spend a lot of time in physical therapy,

Repairing my body.

Because I knew how helpful physical therapy could be,

I decided to start volunteering in this direction,

Just to discover if it's a direction I wanted to go in my own life,

Career wise.

As I volunteered in physical therapy,

There became an aha moment inside my mind.

Well,

If I want to go in this direction,

I probably need to get some more job related experience in the medical field,

So that I could learn more of the medical terminology.

Around that time,

I found that there was a job at a radiology clinic for CAT scans and MRIs,

That was looking for a tech assistant,

Where you could learn on the job.

I was hired and worked there for two years,

And learned how to interview patients,

Order stock that the CAT scans and MRI techs needed,

Retrieving scans,

Meeting the radiologists that work there,

And just becoming associated with the medical field.

The biggest thing that I learned during this job development,

And development of my inner self,

Learning about who I was,

And the direction I wanted to go,

Was that as much as I enjoyed working with the people I did,

I wanted more contact with people,

Rather than just the interviewing process of getting ready for a scan.

I felt like I wanted a deeper contact with individuals.

Part of it was knowing that I wanted to be more present for people on their journey as they needed it.

Because at the same time,

I was also volunteering in physical therapy,

And enjoyed working with patients,

I decided to apply to,

Got accepted and went to school to become a physical therapy assistant.

And as that door opened up for me during the program,

Stepping more into the direction of knowing what I wanted to do,

Or at least I thought this was the end game of things.

Before I graduated for the program,

I landed a job at a local physical therapy clinic,

Where I started working full time.

One of the skills that I learned by being on the job as a physical therapy assistant was not so much about the career,

It was more about me being able to become more professional,

Become more articulate,

Learning to sit with people and enjoy talking to them,

Being present for where they were on their path into healing.

And the healing was more directed around the physical body.

It was something that I knew,

Too,

Because I had experienced it myself for many years.

I did notice that because I was quite shy,

It was sometimes hard talking to people during their recovery.

And I wanted to become more confident or articulate when I spoke with people.

And to build that confidence,

I decided to take a public speaking class at the local community college.

This allowed me to practice speaking and building up my inner confidence to use my voice.

Over the next two years,

As much as I enjoyed helping patients,

Being a physical therapy assistant,

I did realize that my role was limited to just doing exercises with patients.

And it was very monotonous over and over.

And it was hard for me to feel passionate about what I was doing.

Even if I could see people getting better,

Just knowing that my role here was limited,

I saw my brain getting bored and restless and knew I needed to expand.

Now,

As I talk about this part of my journey with you,

Yeah,

It sounds easy that I just came to a realization and knew that I easily needed to shift.

But it wasn't because part of understanding myself was change is very difficult for me.

And I've learned at this age,

Many years hence,

To work with the feelings of change that come up for me.

But at this time,

It was very trauma inducing,

Knowing that I needed to make a change,

Not knowing how and trying to figure out what direction I was going,

Or how I'd even make it come to life.

So I did experience a lot of anxiety and panic.

And that was another part of myself that I had to learn to work with going into counseling.

So even though my soul self,

My inner self,

Could feel I needed to make this change,

My brain had trouble adapting to it.

So it was sometimes an excruciating experience to try and figure out how to make this happen.

Now,

The interesting thing was that as I was working as a physical therapy assistant,

Our clinic was inside an affiliate business that offered medical based personal training for cardiac rehab patients.

And along with it,

What they offered was massage therapy.

I became friends with one of the massage therapists that work there.

And as we became friends,

I began to see and experience what physical therapy was hands on as a way of a healing modality.

It did become an adjunct into physical therapy as an assistant where sometimes I was taught and shown how to give specific 15 minute sessions.

And that was my introduction into massage therapy.

My brain likes to try and organize and figure out paths.

So at this point,

I began to compare the two possible paths that I could go in and looking at the pros and cons.

So one of the paths that became available was I could go into the field of physical therapy by going back to school to become a physical therapist.

And at that time,

It required a master's degree.

Now,

If you look 20 years later,

It is a doctorate,

But back then it was a master's degree.

Although I did have a bachelor's,

It was in English and education.

So if I were to go down that path of getting the master's degree in physical therapy,

I would have had to do two years of additional prerequisites of all the sciences.

When I looked at the other path,

Which was getting training to become a massage therapist,

I didn't have to complete any prerequisites because part of the training program that we had,

Which was a thousand hour program,

It went through all of the things that we needed in the classroom.

As I looked at both of the paths,

I did discover that massage therapy matched more the direction that felt not only easier for me to go into with a shorter amount of training,

Also that it would open doors that I didn't yet know about.

The question then became,

For my mind,

Which is what I was looking at,

Was I always had gone,

Both in college and after college,

Towards things that were more practical.

Not necessarily that I would enjoy more,

But that were more practical.

In order to explore the massage therapy path,

Which in my mind didn't seem as practical or useful as becoming a physical therapist,

I decided to just explore it by calling and scheduling a meeting with some massage school director and take a tour of the local school,

Which was called Desert Institute of the Healing Arts,

Which drew me in.

The Desert Institute of the Healing Arts was a school that I knew many students from around the country.

After going on the interview,

Sitting down with myself and reviewing it,

I made the decision that this is the road that I would like to go down.

I received an acceptance letter from this school,

And they let me know that I could enroll right away to begin in September,

Because I had gone into the interview during August.

However,

I knew inside myself that I needed to wait a year before enrolling,

And the reason for this is because I didn't want to go into debt by attending school.

I decided that I needed an additional part-time evening job that I could use to save all of that money that would help me pay for the schooling program,

And in fact,

I did stumble upon a part-time night job that was really easy to do,

Although it meant that I would have long days for a year.

But the good thing was that it not only helped me pay for my massage therapy training,

Which is a one-year program,

But when I was in the day program for massage therapy,

I was able to keep that night or evening job part-time so that I could still pay for all of my rent and food.

And the sweet thing about it was when I got ready to enter into the massage therapy program a year later,

My parents gifted me some additional funds that also helped to put me through school as well,

Which I am grateful for.

Now,

The program was a year long during the day,

Full-time,

It was a thousand hour program.

When I graduated,

I did become a licensed massage therapist.

This licensing program opened a door,

Not only in my heart,

But in my head,

That allowed me to step into a whole new world of healing and actually become a career path that could lead me deeper into my own spiritual path.

And as I stepped through this door,

Through massage therapy,

And on this career path,

That was just the beginning.

Now,

For the sake of our podcast,

I'm going to wrap it up here and call this part one.

And it was the first part of stepping into my career in the healing path.

In part two,

Which will be coming up next,

I'll explore and share with you how stepping into the massage therapy field then created this whole nother universe for me that I'll share with you about the spiritual activation that took place inside of myself,

Stepping into Reiki and its healing presence in my life,

And also all the different modalities that I became connected with,

Learned,

And experienced on my path,

Not only as a career,

But also my own spiritual journey.

I'm grateful that you joined me today,

And I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.

I'm Shannon,

You've been listening to Star Seed Evolution.

I'm wishing you a beautiful day.

Namaste.