Today I’m chatting with L’Erin Alta, a soul guide, shadow diver and spiritual teacher known for burning down the stale, fluffy, boring “self-help” formulas and helping women ignite true spiritual liberation.
Her workshops, retreats and 1-on-1 intensives have been called, “transformation temples for unruly, soulful women”.
She believes loss, grief and pain are healing initiations and if honored, they will fortify you, bringing you through the shadows into the light of your soul.
L’Erin has studied healing in backwater ashrams, jungle temples and mountain monasteries of 23 countries, working with spiritual teachers, medicine women and shamans from many faiths and spiritual paths to learn about trauma, healing and transformation.
And, of course, her favourite fairytale – actually a classic childhood classic – reflects her ethos. I’m so happy to share our conversation with you. Enjoy!
Enjoy our ramble through Free To Be… as well as L’Erin’s relationship with her body and creativity.
Things we chatted about in this episode:
- the children’s book/video/record Free To Be You and Me
- how it was her introduction to feminism before she had a name for it
- how it’s such an inclusive way of relating to the world and talking to children
- the gift of never being raised to believe she needed to be rescued or to that there would be anyone arrive to rescue her
- the gift of having an alternate narrative about what boys and girls could be
- on coming from a very long line of very strong independent highly educated women who taught her those qualities
- how to be independent and learn how to share power
- her grandmother’s motto of ‘every tub has it’s own bottom’
- relationship with creativity
- on being a writer
- right now, using poetic non fiction to help women dive through their shadow to connect with their soul and ultimate power
- published her first book independently in highschool
- used to over-edit and be overly perfectionistic, now surrenders to just letting what needs to be said come through
- Creativity as connection to god, to source
- on loving to sing even though she’s tone deaf J
- how creativity is about surrender and not trying to control it
- how her work is soul work, and creativity is about her relationship with god
- On approaching work as a devotional practice. This shifts everything – relationship with clients, with money, etcetera
- the sacred as the ultimate creator and her as one of it’s creations
- being in devotion to the sources that fuel her to be creative
- on being 4th generation college educated, all educators with multiple degrees
- on trusting yourself, and the possibility of what’s on the other side
- how thinking ‘I got this’ was a spiritual arrogance that stopped her from praying, trusting intuition, and make life difficult
- on deciding to experiment with praying for guidance, and not needing to know everything.
- relationship with body
- on being, by nature, a workhorse. Loves to work, loves what she does, can keep going and push herself far harder than her body can handle and then her body shuts down
- what it looks like to have physical limitations and still have drive and ambition and passion
- on how pain is a great motivator
- nowing that her habits don’t support her wellness and trying to shift from reaction to prevention mode and weave them into a schedule
- in 2012 had brain surgery, first and only surgery in her entire life, it was successful, and recovery was really hard
- on learning to walk and understand her body again after the surgery
- has always felt she had a medium-sized average functional body but ended up losing a ton of weight because of all the calories necessary to heal the brain
- became very skinny after the surgery and now has a body dysmorphia, because her sense of self was the same as before
- on how it took years to normalize her weight after the surgery and has now filled out a bit, but still less than she did before the surgery
- therefore still learning what it means to have physical, energetic and emotional limitations after the surgery
- on dealing with daily pain. Before the surgery she was asymptomatic, and now has more symptoms, even though the issues themselves have been resolved
- the value of having a support network set up for dealing with pain and taking care of her body.
Resources from this episode:
- Free to be You and Me by Marlo Thomas
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