Loraine Van Tuyl #EmergedProud last week with her personal journey that led her to publishing her memoir;
In part 2 of Loraine’s blog, we get to hear about her new project; a guide book and online course entitled: Soul Sanctuary Alchemy…
A quick introduction of Loraine’s Soul Sanctuary Alchemy holistic healing model from a WomanSpeak gathering:
The only constant in life is change. Some changes are subtle and hardly noticeable (like the continuous replacement of our cells); others are more dramatic and miraculous.
The birth of a baby is one of these miraculous events that’s celebrated worldwide. People from every culture marvel when a fresh-out-of-the-womb newborn quantum leaps out of her or his mother’s warm, dark womb. What was once a tiny blob of flesh and bones has transformed into a separate human being who instinctively knows how and when to breathe, eat, look, love and cry on her or his own.
After the dust of this big commotion settles, life continues to be a series of exciting physical, linguistic, cognitive and developmental growth spurts that most parents welcome with gusto. Their loving arms and devotion make the huge transition and the tremendous amount of information, change, and learning, that we humans need to integrate the first years of life, much easier.
Fortunately, we also have a natural proclivity toward exploration that is apparent the minute after we are born. As soon as we have reached a certain sense of mastery in one area, we move on to the next developmental task despite the fact that we will at first fumble and stumble at attempting the new skill.
Acquiring all this physical, linguistic, and cognitive proficiency within the first decade of life is demanding. In Westernized, modern cultures, it can become all-encompassing especially if survival fear and existential angst pervade and propel most of its members to play the keeping-up-with-the-latest-trends-and-technological-advances game as well instead of unravel it altogether.
For most of us, our sense of identity and willfulness have set in by adolescence, and we begin to experiment with controlling and directing life in our favor. Once we achieve mastery in important life domains, we run the risk of becoming rigidly attached to positive outcomes. This causes us to get stuck in our daily routines, world views, and limiting stories about ourselves.
Our soul nudges us to transcend our earthbound existence––like a caterpillar, turn inward, be held in a chrysalis, dissolve the old self, and transform into a butterfly— but we no longer trust our natural instincts and resist deep yearnings to embody our fullest potential and highest truth, especially if they challenge logical, 3-D reality and all that we’ve known.
Have you ever had a dream that is so real, Neo? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the Dream World and the Real World? Morpheus
So we try to outsmart mystery and forget along the way that the challenge of leaving a comfortable state of mastery to one of risk is a vital ingredient to feeling alive and invigorated. Our creative spark and life energy are fueled by the friction and alchemy that exists between certainty and uncertainty, safety and danger, the known and the unknown, routine and adventure, and the loss and gain that we consciously or unconsciously experience every moment of the day as evolving beings.
Many cultures and spiritual disciplines have built-in rites of passage to assist young initiates with this transition. Indigenous tribes and earth-wisdom cultures in particular honor the many opportunities for growth that are inherent in transition and loss, and intentionally challenge the mind, body, and spirit through fasting, shamanic journeys, isolated meditation, vision quests, and other ego-dismemberment tests and rituals aided by plant medicines. These ancient traditions are based on the premise that learning to surrender to our changing nature, much like the seasons of the earth, is necessary for our spiritual flourishing.
Our contemporary world, in contrast, has increasingly placed more value on technological advances that enable us to predict and control our natural world, health, and life style. We forget that the safety and illusion of mastery and stability can block our access to creative adaptation, freedom, and innate strengths, stifling our spiritual growth in the long run. When our focus shifts from our inner compass to outward success defined by careers, power, money, possessions, and an avoidance of all growing pains and discomfort, we often respond with symptoms of anxiety, depression, addiction, and emptiness. Natural cycles, dips, and role shifts may lead to feelings of incompetence, worthlessness, failure, and intense stress. A vicious cycle may develop when we try to beat these feelings by responding more frantically to external demands instead of making inner changes that support us.
Instead of dreading times of transition and/or feeling stuck in dysfunctional patterns, it is possible to learn how to welcome the ebb and flow of positive and negative changes unique to your life and the rich time for inner work that they provide. Creating a crystal-clear chrysalis— guided by As Above-So Below, the 4 elements, air, fire, earth, and water, representing wisdom, protection, grounding, and soothing—makes it much easier to free-fall into the wisdom held within our sacred 7th direction, our heart and embodied connection to Source. These structural pillars of support allow for self-exploration, an opportunity to conquer nameless fears, and a chance to reconnect with your boundless, wise self. To resist these natural life-death cycles of change is to deny yourself and the world the gifts of the transitional process––to emerge from the temporary fog with a deeper appreciation for our true nature, our collective potential, and our powerful connection to the harmonious ways of the earth.
Course 1: Soul Sanctuary Alchemy – Transform Initiation Frustration within a Crystal-Clear Chrysalis
Do you experience INITIATION FRUSTRATION, often feel lost, alienated, triggered by external circumstances, off, down, confused, too big, too much, too powerful, ashamed of this and simultaneously not enough? Yearning to encapsulate, transform, integrate, and apply all of you and your potential into a dynamic whole, but feel BOXED in everywhere you go and receive just part of the answer?
I often did and this morning I felt inspired to draft a vision of what I most needed back then:
Soul Sanctuary Academy – Emerge and Expand with Grace and Guidance
Soul Sanctuary (definition): A vast, one-size-fits-all embodied compassion container supported and guided by the 7 Sacred Directions and your dream team of personal guides to integrate transformational and soulful experiences that are often pathologized, misunderstood, repressed, and/or rejected. A very simple and limited overview of the Sacred 7 Directions are: the As-Above-So Below dimensions (Tree guide), the 4 elements: Air -Wisdom, Fire – Protections, Earth – Grounding, Water – Soothing, and the 7th direction, our Sacred Heart.
Common conditions, arenas, and activities reported by clients that reveal and trigger unintegrated material and energy (from most to less frequent):
Depression, anxiety, romantic/close relationships, present-past life trauma and PTSD, psychotropic meds, professional promotions/growth, entrepreneurship, pregnancy issues/parenthood, synchronicities, psychotherapy, mental health training, dissertations, all yoga, kundalini awakenings, peak experiences, all meditation practices, all artistic/writing disciplines, prayer, spiritual callings, emergencies and initiations, anomalous/mystical experiences, miracles, near death experiences, psychic bleed-throughs, shamanic journeying, Depth Hypnosis, all hypnotherapies and regression work, crystal healing, medical mysteries, sweatlodge healing, water immersion therapy, nutrition/superfoods, flower essences, Qi Gung, Reiki, acupuncture, Emotional Freedom Techniques, EMDR, Holotropic breathwork, plant medicine, frog medicine, psychedelics, parenting or identifying self as an indigo/crystal/star child, contact or walk-in/braid-in with other energies and multidimensional beings.
I have discovered in my practice that even when these extreme experiences are held with compassion, the container and guidance are not big and powerful enough to fully integrate them (our ego-mind’s limited container is often not fully aligned and overrides our intuition and inner wisdom, which disrupts the process). This blocks our ability to fully actualize and embody our Goddess potential.
I have experienced 95% of these, at least to some degree, myself, and am 100% experienced/comfortable free-falling into these experiences after clients have set-up their soul sanctuaries. I have helped at least 5 clients who told me that they went deeper and resolved blocks that they weren’t able to with ayahuasca.
Soul Sanctuary Alchemy has offered a 1 degree shift in perspective and tools to contain and make sense of each of these experiences, and has led to a 180 degree shift in ease and grace for clients dealing with the most extreme and intense experiences.
NOT JUST FOR CLIENTS: I also benefit from this ease and joy. The moment I end a session, finish my notes and close my office door, I switch gears and am able to be fully present with what’s next, often energized and filled up with high, healing vibrations that uplift instead of drain me.
Hand-on-heart honest-to-Goddess-truth. It inspires me to reach out to you, write posts and start a Facebook group 😊 because this gift of life and healing is something that all of us deserve to enjoy and NEED if we want to touch as many people as possible without compassion fatigue and burning out. ❤
Come along and have your say… All voices matter ❤
film for FREE between the 19th March and the 9th April, 
Reframing Mental distress as a potential catalyst for positive change 