Here’s What a Shamanic-Psychotherapy Session with Luisa Looks Like

When booking your first session I’ll ask you to tell me what concerns or issues you’d like to address in our session together so that I have an idea if I’m a good match for the kind of assistance and healing work you need right now.


At the Beginning of Our Session 


I’ll guide you in connecting with a place of safety and grounding in your body. We’ll use the breath to slow down and drop into our bodies. This helps us both to attune to one another and prepare for our work together.


We’ll talk a bit to get current about what is going on in your life right now and about what I call your “growing edge,” e.g., where are you in the intersection between who you’ve been and who you are becoming.


With your permission I’ll attune to physical and energetic bodies and will share with you the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, patterns that I perceive arising from your body and emotional energy field as we speak.


The seeing and naming of these sensations in the body allows those areas to relax and release. Where there is emotional relaxation and safety there is the energetic mobility needed for a long-standing pattern to shift. 


The information that I/we glean from slowing down and seeing from a non-ordinary, shamanic perspective will give us a multi-faceted understanding about the causes and consequences of your long-standing relational patterns. By relational, I’m referring to your relationship with yourself and with others.
 As we deepen into the session we will move into one or more of the following:

  • I will drum or rattle to request that my helping spirits provide us with a spiritual, shamanic, and energy-based lens through which to understand our healing work together
  • I’ll share relevant shamanic, somatic, and cognitive-behavioral practices, rituals, and techniques with you to empower you in your connection with yourself and to enhance your daily inner work
  • We’ll create a short- and/or long-term roadmap of your healing journey
  • I will work in collaboration with the guidance of my helping spirits to re-integrate parts of yourself that may have fragmented/dissociated due to shock or trauma

A Note About Soul Retrieval


Soul retrieval has become a popular, and at times over-simplified concept in the New Age subculture in recent years. Shamanic work is not a one-size-fits-all, western technology and there are times when a soul retrieval is not a good idea, and at times not possible. 

Unlike western medicine, shamanic healing is intended to address the root cause of dis-ease. If you want immediate relief of your chronic or trauma-based symptoms this is likely not an appropriate modality for you. 

If there are still the original trauma patterns in a person’s energy field that caused the soul part (part of one’s essence) to detach in the first place, soul retrieval may be contraindicated until there is more emotional and energetic stability. A soul part is like a child who’s run away from home because they feel unsafe there. It can be be re-traumatizing to bring the child, or in this case, the soul part, back to the home or person, without some of the dissonant conditions being addressed.

Relational Trauma Detective Work

I think of myself as a relational-trauma detective. Dysfunctional family systems consciously and unconsciously cultivate stories, family myths and hierarchical power structures that are like encrypted code. These “encrypted codes” provide strategic advantage for those in positions of power in the family system and can be crazy-making for those they are designed to control.

I draw upon my own personal healing experiences with family system de-encryption along with with my shamanic and clinical therapeutic skills to expose the reality of the family system’s mixed messages. This de-encryption is not about blaming one’s parents (which can be disempowering in the long run). Instead this work is intended to validate the pain and confusion of being in a dysfunctional/toxic/shame-based family system. Such families often invalidate and scapegoat the most vulnerable, truth-speaking members of the family system.

My Mission

I am a teacher, mentor, champion, and ally for my clients as they unveil their own deep knowing about what really happened in their family systems or in a relationship with a harmful or pathological person. I help clients to heal and mend the cognitive dissonance and PTSD that result from chronic, severe emotional invalidation.

I access the places where, due to trauma, there are parts of you that are frozen in time and space. I step into those places in other dimensions. I identify where you and your soul-energy got lost. I work with you to retrieve the parts of you that fragmented due to unbearable pain and bring them back to you in present time so that you can live from your natural state of wholeness.

I advocate for you in ways that your caregivers and other (often well-intentioned) people did not. I will coach you in seeing the truth about inherent and beautiful self-worth.