About
Hi, I’m Sheila I'm an ASTROLOGER and SPIRITUAL COACH focused on SELF-ACTUALIZATION
I am a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), we are about 20% of the population. Sensitivity means our conscious mind can perceive outer stimuli at a heightened level, we often feel very comfortable with animals and children.
When trying to find professional help, we first need to establish trust. I’ll offer my story in different parts. My spiritual life, my work life as an organizer and teacher and my family/emotional life. My hope is to assuage any fears that come up when people are seeking outside direction or help. Perhaps it will give you a clue to my own process of self-actualization. As Dane Rudyar said, “A spiritual life is a life in constant process of self-actualization.”
Spiritual Life
Meditation has always been a refuge. I always felt a very ordinary connection to the invisible. By ordinary, I mean that I always felt it to be something normal to my nature. In a confused way, I feel peace, love and connection that usually we associate with divine. More than calm, I feel joy inside of me when I can find the refuge.
For a long time, this part of my life didn’t really make sense to me, my family or to the outside world.
Meditation is a practice. I was taught in Catholic school that God was outside of me. I stopped calling the calm, wonder and joy inside of my quiet mind God. I didn’t have a name for it. It was a mystery.
I formally learned Transcendental Meditation (TM) at an ashram in San Francisco that focused on the reading, writing and singing in Sanscrit. You may wonder why I wouldT choose the difficult study of Sanscrit? It was free.
I regularly participated in that TM practice from 2003-2018. When I’m in San Francisco I always come back to Sri Brahmananda Ashram to chant during their Homa Fire Ceremony. I found what the guru said to be true, “Sanscrit is the washing machine of the mind.” Fire is a good word for my personal experience of spirit. Naturally, I gravitated to Fire Ceremony.
Sanscrit epistemology is an oral tradition with spirit embodying the ordinary actions and objects. We chanted books like Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita (or just The Gita), the Devi Godess Sutras, the Mahabarata and many more. I’m not always calm. Things happened to me and my loved ones beyond my control and I felt real despair and anger. I would show up, uninvited (no one is invited 😉 to the ashram and chant. No matter how terrible I felt when I walked in, I felt lighter after two hours of chanting Sanscrit, aka washing machine.
I feel lucky that chanting for two hours in Sanscrit is a joy for me. It was lucky in the tedium of meditation during the Tippee Meetings with The Native American Church because I needed those meetings. Before the ashram I somehow became addicted to cocaine and IPA beer. You’ll find out why in the family section. Peyote helps the body with its addiction, specifically cocaine and alcohol. It took about a year of regular weekend ceremony.
In the Tippee we had to sit on our knees for 14-17 hours. Yes. We sat in a circle on the edge of the Tippee, sang, and watched the huge fire in the middle. The Fire Keepers would move and shape the fire and coals to different animals during the night and morning. It was extraordinary. My personal experience, beyond the aching of my knees, was in a word, ecstacy. Who needs cocaine? 😉
From this time when I was 22, when I wasn’t at work or school, I danced in traditional spiritual dance groups. I was an Aztec dancer with Macuil Xochitl in her Grupo Xitlalli (meaning flower) and I performed under an Ifa Priestess Valerie Watson in her Afro-Haitian group named Alafia (meaning joy).
I also practiced yoga and became a certified teacher through my ashram. I always felt that the easiest way to spirit was through the body. This is why I teach Somatics, Yoga and encourage dance. The body is always in the present moment.
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to travel and take spiritual pilgrimages. I spent a lot of time alone. I did a lot of reading. I enjoy books on spirituality like poetry. I don’t read them in order, front to back. I read, put down, read again and consider how the ideas and practices resonate with how I experience spirit. Usually I get a lot out of it.
Books on Spirituality, a personal journey of one woman looking for help from the ages: I read when I was 19 or 20 from The Tao and The Secret of the Golden Flower. Then I read Rumi and other Sufi poets. Then I read Black Elk Speaks, Jeronimo, Sherman Alexie and many, many Native American writers. Then I read poets and novelists from Latin America and Mexico. Then I read and chanted the Upanishads, Vedas and Sankhya Yoga. Then I read Pima Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh and parts of the Tripitakas. I read about Ifa, Voodoon, Candumble and Santeria. Then Rudolf Steiner and Theosophy. I read about Zorastrianism, Celtic mysticism, the Stoics, Nors mythology, Maya, Toltec and Aztec language and mythology. I continue to read Western Tropical Astrology, Chinese Medicine and Meridian points, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Lucid Dreaming books, Western Psychology, Mexican Shamanism and human anatomy.
I’m studying human anatomy because in our modern age we go to the gym instead of an ashram, tippee or church. And I think there’s wisdom in it. We go to the gym, we get a release. We feel it. It’s real. Spirituality has been used to manipulate people for thousands of years. I get it.
Somehow we are all connected. We live on one planet, under one sky. We are all connected to the sun, moon, space and stars. We all suffer under gravity and experience the passage of time together.
I believe many of us feel a deeper connection. We just don’t know how to express it and what it means in a modern context. I believe there are as many ways to practice and express it as there are languages in the world.
I once spent three months on a native spiritual run. Spiritual running is a tradition many tribes practice in the Americas. I was invited as I was an Aztec dancer. I ran through forest, city, suburb and desert. The smell of pine trees drying in the sun, the sunset in the summer desert sky, the focus I needed to continue running, the feeling I had between myself and the land, the fire at the end of the night.. these things happened, but what can I say that words could describe how I felt? Perhaps it was the many hours running alone in the desert that affected my soul so profoundly. I forgot there was ever such a thing as loneliness.
I began my day in ceremony and ended my day in ceremony. Tribes gave me their prayers for clean water and sovereignty and asked me to run with their feathers. Eagle, owl, hawk, vulture, condor, phaesant, rooster, crow and many more we carried with us. During this run, nearly everyday someone argued over “The Way” to practice.
Is there one way to feeling ignited? Is there only one way to inspiration? Is there one way to ecstacy? Do any more wars need to be fought in the name of spirit?
I value what helps people. We all have different experiences and hurts. Honoring our diversity takes courage. It makes the world a more interesting place to live.
Work Life
Family Life
My mom died of breast cancer when I was 18 and I took refuge in hiking, biking and binge drinking. When my dad died at age 22 I started therapy and native american ceremonies. My father was Tex Mex. I needed help sobering up so I became an Aztec Dancer and was invited to the Native American Church. It was fashionable at that time to go to Peyote meetings so there were many and I could go every weekend. I was also addicted to cocaine as a by-product of my alcoholism. I didn’t drink coffee, so I needed some way to get to work! Joking aside, the long 14 to 17 hour ceremonies and 4 to 6 hours of dancing brought forward my deep appreciation for meditation. This was also the time I began to organize and work on campaigns for minimum wage relief, immigration and health reform and funding for education.
After I buried my father at age 22, I decided I wanted to go to Mexico. This was a watershed moment, my parents died and I was officially an adult. Campaign work is seasonal. I found that I liked learning about the law, contracts and training people.
My sister became ill with schizophrenia when my parents had cancer. I needed to be able to help her, get myself through school, and somehow remain sober. I continued to practice physical and mental exercises to keep myself sane. Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, native ceremony, Danza Azteca, sweat lodges and keeping sacred space in some part of my own home. Another turning point hit when my sister committed suicide in 2017. I realized I needed to dive deeper into my self-care practices. I dove into my own subconscious with Toltec dreaming techniques and Neuro Linguistic Programming. In those swampy waters, I saw that this place was very familiar to me. It was how I graduated with Honors from UC Berkeley. I used my subconscious when I learned other languages on my travels. I used it when I meditated. I used it when I danced or practiced yoga, allowing my body to move without my conscious mind. I used my subconscious when I visited my sister in the hospital for the violently insane. The term refers to the violence they commit on themselves. At this moment, when my sister liberated herself, I, too, liberated myself. I went from being a student to a teacher. I became first a reader of cards and astrology, then a lucid dreaming guide, now finally a coach. I’m a coach and teacher because I teach what cures me. I need to practice with my lungs in breathwork, with my mind in guided meditation and with my body in focused isometrics and stretching. My work is an ofrenda. It’s an offering, a service I provide to the world. I try to make it as accessible as I can while still being able to sustain myself and my company.
Any kind of movement is an important aspect of joy and self-actualization. Our will and fascia allow us to move. Organize the fascia, our connective tissue, and we train our energy.
My work is about the a clear connection between fascia and the energetic body. Yoga is a direct and wonderful way to reinvigorate our energy body. As a teacher, we only have to guide our students to focus on repairing our energy, fascia and vitality!
We have to feel safe in our environment and our own body to revitalize our energy, have good boundaries with interior emotional stability in order to create prosperity and balance.
It’s easy in such a fast-paced world to not have a wonderful, inspiring experience. Inspiration and curiosity are part of our human condition. Say, yes!
About Creating contracts
Healing Contracts Focused on
Self Care
In my political work I did a lot of coaching as part of managing and training the team. I gave public talks and trainings and interestingly, I used my intuition.
Making agreements with yourself is part of self management and self care. Intuition plays a big role in the kind of agreements we make.
Managing people or oneself isn’t easy. We don’t receive training for self care.
Our hearts are extraordinary motivators. Authenticity is powerful.
What is self coaching? We actively care, have clear boundaries, and remember people’s challenges and gifts.
How can we manage ourselves, and perhaps children, dependents or teams, and create healthy contracts?
The answer is complex yet simple, you actively care, have clear boundaries, and remember people’s challenges and gifts.
We must use Emotional Intelligence in building contracts for self care. We also need EI to deal with our inner tyrants and heal our ancestral patterns.
This pic is from my last campaign in 2018. We creating legislation to control candy-flavored tobacco product sales in California. We won!
I’m certified with the CCTA in London and the Association for Integrative Psychology in the U.S. I’m Yoga Alliance certified Yoga Teacher. I’m a certified Neuro Linguistic Programming coach. I graduated Cum Laude from University of California at Berkeley.
I’ve noticed a coach and practitioner of dealing with our Petty Tyrants that the more mental activity we have, the greater the voices of our Petty Tyrants. If you feel that you have great potential or do amazing work, yet success evades you, a workshop in dealing with Petty Tyrants might be just the piece you are missing.
I’ve had great success with clients and in my own life with this practice. The breathwork will cultivate space, peace, stability to give you practical techniques to get you connected. The physical movement will help you move and release emotions and revitalize you. Facilitating your own wholeness is the best gift you can give yourself.
A new path may be right around the corner.