Hi,
I'm grateful you're joining me today for this interview.
I'm Shannon and happy to have you here.
Recently,
I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Justine Willis-Thoms from New Dimensions Radio.
The interview itself is broken into four segments.
Today,
I'm going to share with you part one of the interview where Justine first dives into the roots of my past and what led me into the path of becoming a healer and teacher.
I hope you enjoy part one of our interview together.
It is only through a change in human consciousness that the world will be transformed.
The personal and the planetary are connected.
As we expand our awareness of mind,
Body,
Psyche and spirit and bring that awareness actively into the world,
So also will the world be changed.
This is our quest as we explore new dimensions.
Our guest today is an interfaith spiritual teacher who resides in the southwest of the United States.
She teaches from broad experience with many spiritual traditions from around the world,
As well as her communion with nature.
Trees in particular have a deep significance for her,
And she's developed a series of teachings and meditations using the metaphor of trees.
One of her teachings involves healing our ancestral roots,
And we'll be exploring what this means with our guest,
Shannon Sullivan.
Shannon Sullivan is a certified spiritual director,
Licensed massage therapist,
Creative writer,
Songwriter and performer and photographer.
She combines her passion for the mental,
Emotional,
Physical and spiritual worlds into her everyday life in Tucson,
Arizona,
And has been facilitating eco-spiritual workshops.
Join us for the next hour as we explore how connecting deeply with trees can lead you into a deeper connection with yourself with our guest,
Shannon Sullivan.
I'm speaking with Shannon in her home by remote connection.
I'm Justine Bullis-Toms.
I'll be your host.
Welcome to New Dimensions.
Shannon,
Welcome.
Thank you.
I'm so glad to be here.
I'm so glad to have you.
I would love for you to tell us,
I know that you work with interfaith traditions from all over the world,
So just give us a little flavor of what took you probably beyond your roots as you grew up.
Did you grow up Christian or Jewish or pagan?
I grew up in a home that did not practice any spiritual traditions or any religious faiths.
My father was born into a Mormon family and he himself went on a mission for two years in Mexico.
But shortly after he returned,
I'm not sure quite what happened,
But he lost his faith in that direction and left the Mormon tradition.
And then my mom grew up in the Catholic tradition and struggled with it greatly.
So when she was on her own,
Left Catholicism.
And so when they got together and we were a family,
We didn't practice any particular traditions.
So it was more based around school and home and and all of those things,
But not spiritually.
So when did you first get interested in spiritual traditions?
It's been a lifelong,
I guess,
Path or journey to understand my connection with the world,
The mystery.
And initially it was a deeper difficulty in my 20s of,
Well,
Why am I here?
And what's the point if all I'm doing is just living a regular life,
Working?
It just didn't make sense to me,
Especially with all the suffering that occurred in the world.
And that,
I think that severe disconnection and pain led me into exploring more deeply different spiritual paths.
But it took about another 10 years before an open door opened up for me to really look at faith and understanding myself in this higher connection.
Can you describe that moment,
That opening of that door,
That pivotal moment?
I,
Yes.
I went to massage school.
And that was 20 years ago.
And initially,
How I approached it was because I was a gymnast,
I approached massage therapy from the sports tradition of healing muscle tissue.
And that's why I went because I wanted to heal people physically.
And through that year of class,
I had a couple teachers that also studied connection with energy,
Which I didn't understand what they were talking about.
And as I practiced and touched more people through healing,
I began to bump into those fields of energy that didn't make any sense to my mind.
But my hands could feel it.
You were you were going into some sort of intuitive feel that was coming in through your hands?
Yes,
I,
I remember the very moment where I just graduated and was starting a private practice.
And there was a client who came into the office,
She had a lot of anger.
And I picked up on that.
But when I went to touch her to massage,
She was laying on her stomach,
My hands met about six inches above her back,
A wall,
Like,
Literally,
It felt like a brick wall.
And I thought,
Oh,
My gosh,
What's that?
And I realized,
Like,
Oh,
That's the energy field that some of my teachers were talking about.
And then once I recognized it,
And then I could do the massage for her.
But it was very difficult to penetrate into her being because she,
She didn't really want to receive.
And that took me on just an exploration of Reiki and energy work and chakras.
And it's just,
I think I had that awareness in me,
Because I'm empathic and have been since I was a child.
But I didn't have a word for it until that moment.
So,
Yeah.
That's a,
It's a beautiful story,
To be so awakened by your body,
And your teachings really have that kind of embodiment to them,
I,
From what I can gather.
So,
One of the teachings that you do is called the family tree.
And this is looking at how we can heal our ancestral roots.
And I'd,
I'd love for you to describe what what you mean by healing those ancestral roots and what they have to do with,
With physical trees.
So if we look at the spirituality of a tree,
So a lot of what's taught is more the physical aspects of trees,
And our connection with needing to care for them,
Because of the environment,
Which is,
Yes,
Very important.
And then I also look at them as spiritual teachers.
So each tree,
Depending on like,
If it's an oak tree,
Or a beech tree,
Has its own teaching.
And if we mirror the tree as ourselves,
The roots of the tree go into the ground,
And the ground carries the nutrients that we need to survive.
So our own roots,
You know,
Is our environment that we're living in,
Meaning our home,
Or our spiritual self?
Is it full of nutrients that feed us?
And then if we look at the trunk of the tree,
What they found is physically when they listen to the trunk of a tree,
The water moving up the tree,
And then back down,
And that creates a rhythm or a pulse,
Which sounds sort of like a heartbeat.
Well,
The I work with the physical body doing cranial sacral therapy.
And that rhythm,
The cerebrospinal fluid moves through what would then be the mirror of the trunk of us.
And that creates also our heartbeat and our rhythm.
And then you have our branches,
Which if you imagine those be our arms,
Those things that we can reach out for.
So if a tree reaches out for sunlight,
In order to feed itself through photosynthesis,
Do we reach out and receive?
What do we receive when we reach out?
Some of us don't know that we can receive outwardly,
That we need to ask for help from others.
And so learning that from trees helps us learn about ourselves.
And then so if you take all parts of the tree,
And mirror it,
Well,
What tree comes to you?
And what is it trying to teach you that helps you become more yourself and more connected to yourself?
And,
And the roots also explore our ancestral history that affects who we are in this world.
So that's what I explore in some of my work with people in order to heal some of those wounds from the ancestry which affect our present,
Present life.
So you're saying that the our ancestors,
Our actual physical ancestors,
Their their wounds and trauma are then carried within our own roots within our own.
I'm not sure if you would say DNA or what you would say.
I would.
So we'll be talking about how how trees can actually talk with us and actually communicate with us and how how there's a whole network of energy available to us as we think about trees and maybe even meditate next to a tree or use trees in some way.
So they'll be speaking about that in in just one moment.
I'm Justine Willis-Thomps.
You're listening to New Dimensions.
Thank you so much for joining me for part one of the interview today.
I look forward to sharing the second part of the interview with you where we explore the topic of healing our ancestral roots.
And I wish you a beautiful day.
Namaste.
