Josie: From Living in Survival to Cherishing Life

Josie is a Guardian with SOULS who just finished massage school and is about to start her own bodywork practice with the gifts she has cultivated.

Josie: From Living in Survival to Cherishing Life

12:30

Who are you now compared to when you first started working with the medicine?

I was definitely in a really rough place when I first came to SOULS and started this medicine work. I had an idea of what I was looking for, but I didn't really know how to get there. I was very unrooted.

I started the work by going to back-to-back ceremonies for about four months. I hadn't planned on doing that, but it became really clear that the path was simply to keep going in and receiving the lessons and messages.

My very first night, I was like a stone—I didn't really move. Then, on my second night of ceremony, the tornado of my work began. Around month four, I did a private session with RevKev, and it turned out my root chakra had essentially disappeared. It just wasn't online.

At that time, I was living in full survival mode—very dysregulated, ungrounded, and in pure chaos. Now, I feel deeply rooted. I can actually feel myself on the ground, and that brings a profound sense of peace and stillness. There's still chaos all around me, but the peace outweighs the chaos.

That's where I feel I am now after about two years of work and taking time for integration. I've gone from being a tornado of chaos, disconnected from the ground, to knowing exactly where I am, loving it, and cherishing all of it.

How do you find this rootedness and peace expressing in your life now?

There's so much more love and compassion—for the people around me and for myself. I appreciate all parts of myself, including my shadows, while also recognizing the purity that exists within them.

This work has also brought me more fully onto my path. I'm stepping into my role as a bodyworker and coming into greater service with SOULS as well.

Speaking of service, when did that path start for you in your journey? When did you begin doing Guardian work?

I became an Assistant Guardian last August and recently became a Guardian. But at the end of the day, the title isn't what matters. Even from my very first ceremony, through all the tornadoes I experienced, every time I came out of that process I would feel and be shown, "This is where you're going. You're coming into a role of service. This is your soul dharma—your soul path."

So it's always been there, even before I was actively moving around the room or serving in that capacity. Even as a participant lying on my mat, there was still so much service happening—not only in the room, but for my own body, for the people in my life, and for the collective. You're doing a lot of work for the world.

Where do you feel the next edge of your growth lies? Your expression, your expansion? Where is your path taking you?

I don't know—and at the same time, I know exactly. Most of it is beyond words. It's about humility and honoring what's unfolding, while also owning where it's leading.

Right now, my path is simply the continuation of becoming more and more soul embodied, living more from my heart, deepening my work as a bodyworker as I begin my own massage practice, and continuing to serve wherever I'm needed within SOULS.

What do you feel you've had to work through, alchemize, or clear in order to create more space for your soul to come through—to be rooted and express what you're here to express?

Beyond those first four months—which were really about getting my root online so I could go further into work I had no idea was coming—I took about five months off.

That's when the real work truly began.

Much of it centered around safety and coming into relationship with my inner child and the many younger parts within me. There was a lot of healing around safety, particularly in relation to the masculine, and allowing my nervous system to settle into trust.

As that trust deepened, I was able to come into communication with the younger parts of myself that were scared or unwilling to show me what they had experienced. The work became much gentler.

Instead of approaching healing with the mindset of, "I'm going to go in and fight," it became, "I'm going to come in and simply be. Whatever wants to arise can arise." It became about communication and relationship with whatever energy was present.

We often learn to think of energy as either good or bad—that difficult energy needs to be removed. I definitely carried that mindset for a long time. But over the months, I've come into a much softer relationship with it. I honor the energy I'm working with. I love the energy I'm working with—and, it no longer serves me.

Approaching the work in this way has allowed my awakening to unfold in a much more soulful and feminine way. It's helped me find balance between the masculine and feminine and discover a gentler way of meeting whatever is moving through my body or coming to the surface.

Part of that has also included exploring both what I've experienced in this lifetime and what has arisen from past lives. It's given me a new understanding of karma—what it means to burn karma and why karma exists in the first place.

That has been a deeply meaningful journey: honoring whatever I've experienced in former lives, honoring what I've experienced in this life, and seeing how they intertwine to create the experiences I have now.

Ultimately, it's the way we meet those experiences that determines whether we break the pattern and release it, or continue repeating it until we're ready to face it with enough love for it to transform into something new.

Why do the work?

I ask myself that all the time!

Because you get to truly live life. You get to experience more, see more, feel more, and receive more. You learn to love in a new way and exist in a new way. That's why I do the work. It allows me to become more of who my soul is. It allows me to express my soul more fully and in the way it wants to express itself.

To me, that's an incredible gift. No matter how difficult the ceremonies may be, it's so worth it when you come away with an entirely new perspective on life and find yourself thinking, "Wow... this is what it's all about."