The Stoked Life:

def. A Life that is lived with enthusiasm and courage.

This is a 5 part pre-recorded course on how to approach life the way traditional Shamanic peoples would. The course was originally done with live participants. They have given their permission to share these recordings with you. So you will “virtually” share the experience with this intimate group. I introduce you into this way of viewing the world and the many technologies that make it such a delightful and magical way to live.

I have recently moved from being a practicing physician to working as a coach, healer, and writer full time. My first book What the Walrus Knows went to #1 on Amazon in it’s category the day that it launched officially and I published a second book a year later! Many people have said to me:

“It all seemed to just fall into place so quickly and easily for you?”

…. and it really did. But, the key is is that it was not me acting alone.

When you become connected up to the unlimited source of Nature and begin to work with it and come into right relationship with it – it is as if things do seem to happen quite magically. I share many concepts with you and give you practical tools with which you can begin to apply to your own life.

To live The STOKED Life, I believe its extremely helpful…
…to rekindle your relationship to yourself and to the world.

You do this by learning the principles of how the Shaman views the world, practicing Shamanic Journeying, learning how to tap into hidden knowledge to discover the answers to seek, discovering the power of dream sharing and dream scouting.

To take your life to the level of EPIC you must look at things on the mythic level.

P.S. I like to have a really fun time doing whatever I do so I guarantee you will find this course to be a lot of fun as well as a life-changing adventure should you chose to JUMP ON BOARD!

The investment is just $69.00

Namaste and enjoy the class!
Let your life become STOKED:)
~Sarah

(AFTER)

Sometimes home no longer FEELS GOOD.    We start to get an inkling that things need to shift.  Paying attention to those subtle new desires is good.  Your home is truly a metaphor of your life and as you shift your home-  so shifts your life:)   I started having that feeling in February.  Things felt heavy and cluttered.   It was time for things to change.  I was longing for less formality and for more creativity that was child like and free.  It’s my belief that every  single object in your home has a spirit.  I carefully went through and weeded things out that no longer felt beautiful or useful to me anymore.  I sold a few things and blessed the rest and released them to Goodwill where they will hopefully find somebody who needs and adores them.  We took down the curtain rods to let the light stream in.  We “Tom Sawyer whitewashed” the walls.  I added in some artwork from my kids, and  some fun spring branches that we covered in watercolor butterflies we made.  Now it feels more like where we are headed–towards a life that is beautiful, simple, personal and full of light.  What changes are you yearning for and how could you easily shift your surroundings to reflect that new spark that wants to be ignited?  Let me know what changes you made and how they made you FEEL?  ~Sarah

(BEFORE)

A FEEL GOOD invitation: to consider that you can have your cake AND eat it too:). I used to spend a lot of time in a large doomed place in my brain called the land of “it’s impossible”.  In that space I would lament the many things that I could not have.  Sometimes it was stuff like “I can’t be a pathologist AND a life coach!” or “I cannot have 4 kids, work all the time AND have a great marriage”  or “I can’t have enough money to live on and do work I love”.  Thinking and believing  these things truly FELT TERRIBLE.  They were poison for my FEEL GOOD. Each time would think them, I would go to the very darkest place and feel horrible and hopelesss.  And my life would reflect back to me what I had been thinking.  My clients come to me with similar thoughts  but ones that are unique to them.  We all have them…..

What is yours?  I can’t have _________ and ____________, that would be impossible!

What I have learned is that when we flip those upside down some pretty funny stuff can start happening.

Try it for yourself:

For ex:

I can have _______ and ____________!

I can go to church and be in a metal band!

I can get paid and be who I really am, just me!

I can experience joy and build sinuous muscular definition!

Even if we do not believe the reverse to be true, our brain starts to google search for possiblity, unlock options and , at the very  least, bring us opportunities to experience peace.   Then- see if you can notice where this ridiculous statement is already true in your life….in your neck of the woods…..in the world?

Let me know how it goes!  I would love to hear from you!  ~Sarah

sarah@followyourfeelgood.com

originally published at Maria Shriver’s blog

If you’ve been married (or in any long-term, successful relationship) for twenty-plus years, it’s not because you made the perfect choice back in 1990 when you pony-stepped over to your future partner on the dance floor as Madonna throbbed in the background.

Or that your souls were divinely destined to live in harmony (though they could be).

Or that somehow you were two of the fortunate ones (though you are).

It’s because of a series of teeny tiny choices you’ve both made, over time, day in and day out, choices that look a lot like these.

1. The choice to overlook it when they called a decision you made “offensive” (or, better yet, when you chose to become buoyant and laugh it off).
2. The choice to step out of the way when they’re struggling with something, because stepping in would take away their dignity and tell them, through your actions, that you don’t trust them.
3. The choice to believe in their dreams, even when you’re shaking in your boots.
4. The choice to love them deeply and compassionately, even when stress and struggle have made them about as fun to be around as a rotting log (actually, I enjoy rotting logs quite a bit…but I digress).
5. The choice to read yet another book on how to heal the marriage, even though doing so feels about as fun as reading Virgil’s Aeneid. In Latin. By flashlight.
6. The choice to allow them to have their own adventures, without you, even when you don’t fully understand them. (An extended vision quest in a Montana yurt, including fasting, while all four kids are out of school for the summer? Sure, honey, go for it.)

As my friend Indrani says, “If you’ve been married for over twenty years, that adds up to a hell of a lot of teeny tiny choices.”  One of the teeny tiny choices I make is kissing my husband Mark goodbye every morning. No matter what.  With four kids and two careers, life can get pretty wack-a-doodle, as in crazy-ridiculous. Our morning kiss is a moment where things s l o w d o w n and I remember what’s really important.  Well, on some days, anyway. On other days it’s a discipline. If we were grumpy with each other the night before, doing that morning kiss feels like doing one more walking lunge at bootcamp on already rubbery legs.  When I feel hopeless about the state of our relationship, moving in for the kiss can feel like I’m working hard, doing something like filing things alphabetically.  This particular teeny tiny choice felt pretty difficult some days…that is, until dog intervened.

Two years ago, we got an amazing dog. “Spirit” was the name given to her by Animal Allies.

Though the name fit her to a T, I thought something more Anglican, like Charlotte, would suit her very regal and attentive face, but the kids wouldn’t hear of changing it. They did graciously allow me to give her a second name.  I chose “Francis,” to give her a more well-behaved, saint-like vibration, which, as I got to know her more, was definitely needed.   As a shamanic healer who calls spirits for a living, it only seems fitting for me to be shouting “Come, SPIRIT, come!” through the woods during our daily walks.

Spirit is an incredibly enthusiastic being who loves and adores each of us in the family with such ferocious intensity that it can literally knock us over.  People are always asking me “what” she is. I have no idea. One thing she’s not is repressed.  She’s lean and wiry, has the relentlessness of a border collie and the speed of a leopard, and experiences extreme frustration every day in her thwarted attempts to herd us around the kitchen island while we’re all getting our breakfasts together.  As her sheep, it seems we’re a great disappointment to her.

So, you may be asking, what does Spirit Francis have to do with my marriage of twenty-one-plus years?  Spirit Francis is incredibly attached to both Mark and me. Every morning when we try to make our teeny tiny choice, she creates an obstacle.  When we kiss, the dog goes insane. She begins barking in a shrill, bust-your-eardrums way the split-second she even suspects we’re about to attempt our morning smooch maneuver.  I’m sure this kind of barking and anxious leaping around was a key behavior for Spirit’s breed (whatever it is) while herding 3,000 head of sheep along the wuthering heights, but when it’s directed at you full-blast at, say, 6:30 a.m., it can be rather jarring.   I know at least one of you reading this is going to be a dog trainer. “If Spirit Francis was well-behaved,” you’re saying right about now, “perhaps you wouldn’t be having this problem.”  It’s simple issue of dominance, you say? Yes, I’m sure it is. We won’t argue. We’ve been dominated.

What’s become fascinating to me is how exquisitely difficult Spirit Francis has made it for me and Mark to take that teeny tiny step we know we must take to keep this marriage ship sailing.  Her barking is so loud it reminds me of the dark voices in my head that sometimes bark at me to “Hold a grudge! Don’t be nice to him! He left the kitchen in a mess!” Or “This thing can never work out. We’re tooooo different.”  Or (the very worst kind of barking) “Somebody somewhere has a happy, easy marriage, but mine is doomed because Mark and I made the wrong choice in choosing each other.”

Some days, the dog’s barking is so shrill and so loud and so disconcerting that we both actually physically cringe as we go in for the smooch.  Sometimes, we think ahead and sneak into the garage for the smackaroo. On a rare day, I’ll remember the kiss while we’re standing at the bathroom sink without Spirit Francis and we’ll snog before she catches us in the act.  Every day our kiss is different. Sometimes it’s a dutiful peck, along the lines of unloading the dishwasher, something that must be done to keep life from spinning out of control.  Some days it’s an air kiss blown at each other because we’re both in such a full-on frenzy of rushing out the door.  On really awful days, we “forget” to kiss, even though we both know we’re “forgetting” on purpose, and that ends up only feeling like a terrible loss.

On very magical days, the forces of the universe align and we have a really amazing kiss that feels not unlike the very first.

Spirit (the dog and what’s acting through the dog) has taught me that in order to cultivate the treasured relationship of my marriage, I must ignore whatever loud, shrill barking is going on (the dog’s or the snapping and snarling in my head).  When the barking is loud, making it exceedingly difficult to enjoy, relax into, or even want to attempt that goodbye kiss in the morning, I’ve learned that I must tune it out so I can tune in to my beloved.  That’s the one thing I must do to chose my marriage again for today. Every day.

I have been noticing a STRONG urge lately to say-  rip out all of the kitchen cabinets, repaint every room in the house, buy a new shower curtain and toss every item out my closet.  If you were born to FREAK like me you may get these episodes of “jonesing” too.  Strong cravings for change…even for chaos?  Because we FREAKS feel things very deeply and intensely,  this jonesing can feel a bit overpowering.   I have found ways to examine my own episodes of jonesing which I find very helpful.  This process helps me to discern whether the jonesing:  (1.) comes from a heart’s desire trying to manifest or whether (2.)  it’s the kind that comes from a desire to escape something uncomfortable.   Here is a bit from my bookie on the latter kind of jonesing.

This kind of JONESING is an intense longing to escape, a desire

to avoid or subvert the strong feelings we’re experiencing, such

as pain, anger, sadness, fear, or distress. This is why many

FREAKS fall into the arms of addiction, JONESING their way

unhealthily through life via food, drugs, spending, sex, and

more. I’m not talking about drinking a glass of wine (according

to my mother, “A glass of wine can maketh the heart glad” …

unless ye are an alcoholic), eating an occasional dimebag

of chocolate chip cookies, or reading Fifty Shades of Grey and

getting inspired to buy some rope. It’s when you let JONESING

run your life, exchanging unhealthy activities for lifeaffirming

feelgood activities, that there’s a problem.

~from Born to FREAK:  A Salty Primer for Irrepressible Humans

I have been collecting (free) paint swatches and being curious about what this about and leaning into the discomfort.  How do YOU “know” when an episode of jonesing will lead you closer to a heart’s desire or further away?  Please share, if it feels good, by leaving a comment?  My hunch is that if we can share our own methods-  it might help a fellow born to FREAK human out:)  Namaste, Sarah

Puja means honor, worship or devotional attention.

I recently returned from an amazing 21 day expedition into India- to the Kumbha Mela- the largest human pilgrimage on earth.   There were reportedly 30 million people present in a 7 sq. mile area on one of the days we were there.  I will never forget the kindness, curiousity (in us!) , the beauty of the people, the sacredness that seems to permeate nearly all aspects of life there and the incredibly JOYFUL children we encountered everywhere.  This is a little compilation of images from the trip and some thoughts/music:)  How do you create “puja” in your own life?

Through my personal work and my work with clients and groups, I’ve made so many connections between ADD, high sensitivity, Asperger’s syndrome, autism, addicts of every kind (sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping), depressed/anxious/manic people, intense people, change agents, black sheep, adrenaline junkies, irrepressibles, rebels, bohemians, life pirates, bad asses, artists, innovators, performers, comedians, and healers … and I believe we were all born to FREAK. We were all put here not to fit in, but to see things differently, to ruffle feathers, and to return balance to the world and our communities by using our creative abilities, our healing presence, and our eccentric gifts.

I wrote this SALTY primer to help you discover your own wondrous inner multitudes, so you’ll share your fantastic, strange, and entirely original notions with the world. We need you.

Were you born to FREAK or connected closely with somebody who was?  Buy the book now!  or demand it (non-violently of course) at anywhere that books are sold.

Curious?   Check out Max Daniel’s blog and the recorded interview we did together here.  Max was definitely Born to FREAK in the best way has a business card that reads, “Keep Calm and Ask for More” which I think might be the most powerful mantra I have ever heard.  She is a Martha Beck Coach specializing in clients with issues around food and money:)

On Shamanic Healing:  

I have decided to make Shamanism a large part of my life: to be a healer and to share Shamanism with others. I have completed several Shamanic trainings including: The Four Wind’s (Alberto Villoldo) Light Body school (South) , The Foundation for Shamanic Studies’ (FSS) trainings including the Way of the Shaman, The Dream workshop and The Two Week Intensive. I am currently perusing the 3 year training from FSS for healers. Shamanic healing can be life changing. It changed mine. If after reading the information below, you are interested in a Shamanic healing and can visit me in person please contact me via email (sarah@followyourfeelgood.com) to set up an appointment to meet.

From Michael Harner: “…in our culture many consider it avant-garde if a person talks about the mind-body connection, but the fact that the brain is connected to the rest of the body is not the most exciting news. It’s been known for hundreds and thousands of years. What’s really important about shamanism, in my opinion, is that the shaman knows that we are not alone. By that I mean, when one human being compassionately works to relieve the suffering of another, the helping spirits are interested and become involved.”

Shamanic healing cures the spiritual aspect of disease- whether it is a physical injury, psychological injury, neurological injury or emotional injury.
A shamanic practitioner is one who, among other things, works directly with helping spirits to ask for healing on another’s behalf. There are many different roles a shamanic practitioner can play but these are some of the important ones:

1. Core Beastie (Power Animal) Infusion: In the shamanic view- each person has a Core Beastie – or wild animal spirit that is in relationship with them at birth. This is a reciprocal relationship. If somehow, the connection is lost then, the person may feel dis-empowered, dispirited or may become sick or in someway ill. To have full vitality and health this relationship must be intact. A shamanic practitioner can retrieve a Core Beastie spirit and re-infuse it in a person to empower, support and protect them. Want to know more about Core Beasties? Check out my book What The Walrus Knows.

2. Soul Retrieval- In the shamanic world we are born whole with our soul intact . The soul represents our essence or our life force. As we live our lives- certain situations, traumas, encounters or experiences may cause a part of our soul to leave us. The soul flees to a safe and peaceful place to avoid the painful experience. But, without this part (or in some cases several parts) we are not operating with our full life force and therefore not fully ourselves…or full actualized. The shamanic practitioner knows how go on a journey , aided by helping spirits, to seek and retrieve those soul parts should they desire to return. According to some experts on Shamanism (Eliiade), soul loss is the most widespread cause of disease. When soul parts are returned to a person it is life force coming back. It’s empowering. It is important to integrate those parts and honor, welcome and integrate them in different ways.

3. Extraction- Sometimes we have “stuff that does not belong” in our own energetic field that interferes with our life force or soul. This is not something evil or terrible but, like ants on your kitchen countertop, something that does not belong. I like to think of these things like weeds in a garden…..they take up space and energy that could be used to purposefully grow beautiful plants and flowers that you desire. A healing of this kind requires the practitioner to become fully merged with a spirit helper and takes skill and practice. In the shamanic view, the best way to prevent things that “do not belong” from taking up residence in you (or your life force, as it were) is to be full of power and to do that one must have a relationship with a Core Beastie (power animal).

4. Psychopomp work- The Shaman is one who can travel to the destiny of human souls for various purposes. One very important one is to help the souls of the dead that are lingering in the “middle world” or this earth place that have not transcended and are suffering and wish to be guided. Another task a Shaman might undertake would be to free a soul part that a soul that has transcended possesses (out of love and admiration OR because it was given to them out of love) so that it might return to the living person who asks for its return. The soul parts contain power or life force and rightfully belong to the person who is living. A shaman may journey to a soul that has transcended to complete “unfinished business” on behalf of a living person- to say goodbye, to express anger or to say what needs to be said and bring back information to the living person so that they may live more fully. This kind of work brings healing for the living person who seeks it.

All shamanic work that I do is done with intention: To be respectful to the individual and to do work with permission. Without the permission of another, I can do no work. This means express, informed consent of the client who is alive and conscious. In the case of a comatose patient the permission can come from the family and then (and only then) the person’s soul may be contacted for their permission. When doing work for children under the age of 12 the permission of both parents is required.

Shamanic work is a mystery. It is beyond what our minds or words can express. The more I practice it, the more mystery I uncover. It is a great privilege to do it. The effects of Shamanic work can be subtle and take time. Shamanic work is often repetitive and cyclical. For example, a person may initially have an extraction and Core Beastie retrieval that brings them to a different place and then return (several weeks later) for a second healing to have a soul part retrieved. It is different for each an every person and it is for the spirits to decide.

The most important question to ask before asking for a healing from a shamanic practitioner is this : Do you want to be healed? When we are healed and full of power (in the Shamanic sense), a lot may be asked of us. It is good to know what we desire.

You may find these online articles of interest:“We are Not Alone by Michael Harner” Ethical considerations in Shamanic Healing, Susan Mokelke, J.D.

Namaste,
Sarah

Originally published at The Fear Project. Written by Jaimal Yogis.
Part of my research for The Fear Project has been interviewing leading neuroscientists, MDs, and psychologists about how fear works in the brain and body. The other part has been interviewing everyday folks: surfers, phobics, moms, dads, police officers, etc. Sarah Seidelmann is both. She’s a Board-Certified physician who left her prestigious pathology practice to follow her instincts and do something totally off the wall. She became a shaman who helps people get their lives on track with…spirit animals.

I thought it sounded a little crazy myself. Then, I got to know Sarah better, spoke to some of her clients, read her funny and insightful book, What the Walrus Knows, and realized she really does help people overcome their fears. Unlike a lot of ultra serious doctors and psychiatrists, she has a blast doing it. She’s silly and doesn’t take her very serious work too seriously. Sarah gives people experiences that are bigger than themselves, and it’s experiences – not scientific jargon – that ultimately give people faith.

Sarah and I recently talked about how she grew dissatisfied with the “materialist-only” approach and embraced her vibrant, spirit-filled, animal world.

How the heck does a surgical pathologist that worked that hard to get to where she was leave it all to be a full-time shaman? And what is a shaman, really?

I always had an immense curiosity about the mysteries of life. As I started doing direct patient care in medical school, I realized that medical school only prepares you for part of what patients need help with: the physical manifestations of illness, i.e. cure the leukemia by dealing with the cells, repair the broken heart valve…etc. I felt so ill equipped, at times, to handle many situations. For example, when I worked on the bone marrow transplant team for a subset of high-risk breast cancer patients. I recall a young patient who was in the throws of a divorce with three young children. Her platelets (the part of your blood that acts to form clots and prevent bleeding) had gotten dangerously low and despite multiple transfusions, she had stopped responding to the platelets we were providing. My resident and I went in to her room that morning and told her how low her platelets were. There she was sitting alone in the hospital, freshly divorced, no family around that I saw, and this was all we had to say to her? That we would try to get more platelets? It all felt so wrong, like we were missing something—something BIG.

The next morning as my resident and I were flying up the stairs, his pager went off. The patient had died. Her dangerously low platelets never did recover. We sat on the stairs in the echoing stairwell and cried. We allowed ourselves a few minutes to honor our own feelings before we rushed off to the next stat page.

Those feelings, that “there is something BIG we are missing” never left me. As I went into residency to study pathology – which is essentially the basis of physical disease – in many ways to avoid the discomfort I felt of not knowing how to comfort patients, or to help guide them and address the deeper aspect, or spiritual aspect, of what was happening to them. I also loved pathology. It was complex, challenging and there was always mystery as every single case was different. But, as I practiced and as my family grew from one child (starting in the fourth year of my five-year residence) to four children, my own capacity to keep up physically and mentally was waning. I also felt as if I had come to the edge of all the knowledge in pathology that I was curious about, as if I had fulfilled as much as I could along that track. I was yearning for more human connection…and to have my work really become more about asking those deeper questions….what is life? What happens after death?

So what did you do?

I hired a coach after our third child arrived and working with her helped me tremendously. I began to work part time. I allowed myself to be creative again (gluing odd images of animals onto things late into the night with a friend in the basement). Nothing made sense to me yet. A few years later we downsized our and sold our 6000 square foot house with acid-washed marble countertops and subzero fridge and that (oddly!) felt AMAZING. I was then able to take a sabbatical and found myself I wandering back into the woods.

So how did this shaman stuff happen?

I began to connect with nature in a way I never had. I stumbled into the ancient idea that animals have messages for us. And as I began to listen for messages, I got them. That is what led me to explore shamanism and I began to journey and felt as though my whole brain and body were being rewired. I began sharing the simple ways to connect with animal messages on a podcast eventually, I had so many people messaging me and asking questions that I wrote a book, What the Walrus Knows (and app) to help people learn how to get their own messages

What is a shamanic practitioner, really?

It’s a person who works with compassionate and loving spirits to heal the spiritual aspects of disease. These practices have been in use for tens of thousands of years on the planet and they are very effective. I think that traditional allopathic medicine is much needed for the physical aspects of disease. And, there is great power in healing the spiritual aspects of disease.

Practicing daily has taught me that we are so much more powerful than it’s comfortable to believe and that the spirits can help us. Carl Jung was said to have said, towards the end of his life, that if he had it all to do over again, he would have worked with the spirits from the get go. The more I do this work, the more mystery is revealed and it’s truly a joy.

It must have been scary to leave such a prestigious career to do something creative and less, well, mainstream? Did you flip-flop about it for a while before leaping? How did you decide to trust what you were feeling?

Did I waver? Oh hell yes I got scared and freaked out plenty of times and still do [big laugh] and, every time I went out in Nature or connected to the sourced web of life via journeying…..I always felt better about whatever was happening or not happening: calm, peaceful. I experienced a deeper knowing that I was on the right path. But I will say, as I continue down this path that has many moments of fear, as does any path worthy of traveling, that I feel a growing peacefulness. When I surrender, there is an inner knowing that my path is worthy….and the opportunities and the clients keep coming.

Jaimal:

I like what you said about every path worthy of traveling has fear. Fear is a natural reaction to challenging yourself, to being in the unknown, stretching your boundaries. In that sense, every time you’re afraid, though it might feel like crap, it actually means you’re growing — stretching that comfort zone. Have you had that experience? And why do you think nature works so well for connecting to the source?

Sarah:

I think fear is also resistance. When fear comes up, we need to ask ourselves: do we deserve what we said we wanted? Maybe you wanted to become a New York Times best selling author and now evidence is showing up that it is happening and something is being asked of you, like a speaking opportunity. Maybe you want to be a better surfer and nice big waves start breaking, and you start making sandwiches instead of surfing. Sometimes the fear is just there to see if we really want it, if we believe we are worthy of it? To go out and get “it” you must have both ego and humility.

Nature just has such an inherently high vibration- it doesn’t resist itself or its desires. It doesn’t have stories built up in its head about if it can do something: water flows, tigers leap, grass grows, dragons fly (going a little mythical) [laughs]….Nature and the Beasties are living surrendered to their desires. A brief vacation from your frontal cortex can be a good thing [laughs].

Jaimal:

Yes, that frontal cortex can add a lot of trouble (not that I’d give mine up!). Interesting you brought up the fear of death. In some ways, you can see all the walls we have built between us and “nature” — as a way to protect us from our fear of death, give ourselves a false sense of security and a false sense of immortality. It’s pretty silly because the one sure thing is that we’re all going to die.

It’s Here! What The Walrus Knows iphone & ipad App

My life has undergone some pretty dramatic changes in the last several years and it was so much more effortless and joyful when I paid attention to the messages that I got from wild animals.  Weird, right?  I know-  but seriously try it and see what you think?  Animal totems is an ancient concept that has been around helping people for tens of thousands of years…why?  Because it works!  Don’t take my word for it….download the app and see for your self?    This app has almost 3X the Beasties that were in the original book and there is a field guide, a guided drumming meditation (that I created for you) that will help you to discover a Core Beastie/Life time animal.  Or you can simply look up the Beastie that showed up in your backyard today?