We recently connected with Lisa Hedley and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lisa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
My parents influenced my early experiences of the material and spiritual realms by virtue of being polarized examples. My father was a secular, western doctor who believed in science and intellect as the primary ways of knowing. He was also a socialite and someone who appreciated the pleasures of material reality excessively. My mother in contrast, was a spiritual teacher and painter who believed in pushing the boundaries of consciousness and ways of knowing. She gave me a healthy appreciation for what feels magical and even impossible through sensory experience alone. Her lifestyle choices were considerably more austere.
For many years, I felt as though I was straddling a fence between their two realities without feeling sure footed in either. My mother’s influence and involvement in my spiritual growth meant that I made an early commitment to the awakening of my consciousness. At times, this was a difficult burden to bear in a world that had yet to start awakening en masse. It meant that I was a closeted mystic until well into my adulthood. My father gave me a healthy appreciation for beauty and culture through the many opportunities I had to travel, enjoy the arts, and pursue education. Life with him was often about sensual pleasures and the accumulation of knowledge.
Eventually, I began to integrate the value of what they each had to offer. I cultivated an appreciation for the validity and importance of both the spiritual and material experiences being vital to a fulfilling human life. I began to see them as two sides of the same coin. It’s through my own journey that I’ve learned to apply spiritual principles to material form . . . knowing the difference between when the soul is sated versus the ego’s bottomless pursuits, for example. I also have tremendous gratitude for how having a human body that gets to enjoy sensory pleasures, becomes a source of joy and inner peace that enhances the spiritual Self.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m a Psychospiritual Counselor and Hand Analyst who specializes in uncovering and integrating the shadow side to help clients heal, alleviate the ego’s control, eradicate negative habits, and liberate and expand consciousness to actualize the higher Self. I see my work as high efficiency counseling, because I use hand analysis (which is not the same as palmistry) as my entry point, because it provides a blueprint of the soul and personality psychologies, so I don’t need someone’s back story to help them; the shadow is fully accessible in the hands, because our sensory cortex is sending distinct and recognizable patterns to our hands all the time.
With the tools I utilize, I can help shift someone’s life radically in a few sessions! I’m very proud of this for a number of reasons . . . I spent years in therapy and often felt like I was treading water, so I went in search of tools that could speed up the process. After in-depth explorations and the implementation of a number of different systems, I believe hand analysis is the most concretely predictive and expeditious. I also teach some of the tools I’ve gained, so clients can create their own shifts without necessarily needing assistance. I see this as a way to empower and help others assert their sovereignty. My work is transformation training at the intersection of therapeutic and spiritual practices, as a science-based and intuitive healer. I’m dedicated to guiding clients to discover and trust their own inner wisdom, so they can go deeper, foster more meaning and sustainability, and fully actualize their gifts.
I hadn’t planned on being a healer . . . I stumbled into it. I’ve always been interested in consciousness, in fact I’d say it’s the most consistent love of my life, but I have artistic gifts I explored for a number of years before changing direction. I have an educational background in fine arts, philosophy, transformative learning, Ashtanga and therapeutics yoga, hand analysis, and 38+ years of spiritual practice. I used to say I was acquiring keys for doors I had yet to reach, because one day it just became so clear that my education and life experience added up to a whole lot of wisdom in service to healing. But, it was when I became a single mother in the midst of a PhD program that I realized I was going to have to shift from my intended work in mediation, to work I could do at home while caring for my son. So, my practice was born of necessity. Fast forward a number of years, I discovered hand analysis and my hands confirm I have a rare fingerprint marker of the healer. It turns out, I was born to do this work! (Our fingerprints – where we find the soul purpose – are fully formed in-utero by 15 weeks and are unchanging for the duration of our lifetime. That’s right, we’ve already chosen our purpose before we’re even born!)
It’s my purpose and joy to help others align with their purpose and joy . . . and I love my work! I can’t imagine anything more gratifying than helping people heal, discover their purpose, and become fully actualized. I get to witness awakening and aliveness as it births from within; luminosity liberated is profoundly beautiful!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Like most of us, I believed in the human perception of separation: we’re all separate beings who use our brain to navigate through the world, specifically the world of business. But in 2000, during a trip to Egypt, I spontaneously woke up, meaning, I had a transcendental experience that shifted my consciousness so radically, that I not only understood from an intellectual level, but also from an energetic level, that there is no such thing as separation. We are all one: consciousness is energy, it’s the foundational ground of being, and we’re all connected. Therefore, we’re all playing a vital role in shaping our collective experience.
I began asking myself, if I hold this awareness to be true, then how do I move forward in ways that are not only beneficial to my life, but play a part in transforming the collective for the better? Everything that initially followed that awakening experience was a clean up job. I began to unravel all the ways I held onto old mindsets that created limitations and I really worked to clear my ego’s control, so I could start tapping into my heart’s wisdom more and more. As the ego dissolution work progressed, I not only acted in accordance with my integrity more, but I began to actively seek ways to open and expand my heart’s awareness. As I did this, all the barriers my ego held fast to – barriers that had served a purpose and kept me safe until I was capable of integrating them and moving on – fell away and I noticed an expansion in my creative capabilities. My heart wanted to lead and as I let it do so, my intuition strengthened, my connection to others deepened, and joy become a sustainable state of being.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
I think we often discount the value of intuition. It’s easy as a counselor/therapist/coach to be prescriptive in the ways we work with clients, because there’s always training to depend on. But, I think that undermines the intimate heart connection we’re cultivating with each particular client who needs a completely unique healing and transformational experience. When we, as practitioners, allow our intuition to work in tandem with our training, we’re in a position to craft the most personal treatment, but also get to the heart of the work and do so efficiently. I want to see my clients shining their brightest in the shortest time possible and intuition is vitally important to the process.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lisahedley.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awelisahedley/
- Other: https://lisahedley.substack.com
Image Credits
Whitney Welshimer Photography