We recently connected with Shaia Astra and have shared our conversation below.
Shaia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
One of the biggest risks that we can take is to learn who we truly are! It seems so simple, but the search for our truth, our destiny, for living our purpose, and finding our gifts, is one that requires us to step bravely outside of our comfort zone and begin to explore all that is within. It’s the deeper meaning, what drives us, the greater experience of our lives, and when we begin to explore that, we’re invited into a brand new way of being. And that can be terrifying!
I remember when I first started down this path.. I was newly divorced, a single parent, and had just moved across the country to California for a fresh start. I knew that the field I had worked in previously (video editing) wasn’t fulfilling my soul and so I looked for something that might. At that time, I didn’t really know who I was or where I was going.. but I knew that where I had been wasn’t where I wanted to stay. I stumbled upon a training program in Holistic Nutrition and when I spoke with admissions I asked: “how can I know if this program is right for me?” and her response was simple: “Sometimes you just have to leap.”
The breath of air that I could feel deep down inside when she said that was one of utter fear.. and absolute possibility.
And so I decided to leap, starting class just a few days later!
Those words stayed with me as I completed the 2 years to become certified, as I opened my private practice to clients, and as I continued my education with courses in integrative and functional medicine. They stayed with me as I started learning more about topics that I’d always been fascinated by, incorporating them into my work.. energy medicine, consciousness, quantum healing, akashic readings, channeling, astrology, sacred geometry, and so many more.
The more I learned, the more I changed. Each program offering a scary jump from where I had been, to where I wasn’t even yet sure I was going. And I kept going until this most recent leap.. shifting from practitioner to teacher, from messenger to guide.
In the last few years, I’ve let go of my office and moved fully virtual, shifting my entire practice so that I could begin to teach the depths of what I’ve learned, what I’ve experienced, as I continued opening my channels and leaning further into my higher self, my soul.
It meant that many of my old clients, the waitlist practice that I had built, were not all the same souls for my new teachings, my new offerings. It meant stepping into who I truly am and connecting to divine (source/love/light) so powerfully, learning to trust and offer myself in service to something so much greater.
The rewards though, have been far, far worth it.
Doing what I love and seeing how magical this work is for those who are ready has been absolutely and totally awe-inspiring!
Hearing from my students that their entire lives are different because of our classes, that they can access the truth within, knowing their gifts, their purpose?
Hearing from my 1:1 and group session clients that they are making powerful changes, learning to live their dreams and embody who they truly are… while building a life rich with emotional resiliency and soul-deep knowledge of self?
Absolutely worth every risk along the way!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hiii, my name is Shaia (pronounced “Shy-ah”) and I am a spiritual healer and teacher! I have been working in wellness and healing for about 15 years and have given thousands of 1:1 sessions, have led workshops, taught classes, held group healing sessions and more.
In the last few years I have really been coming into the depth and beauty of the work that I do, and it’s this:
I help you find and connect to your divine destiny.
We all have our day to day experiences, our stories of who we are, and who we have grown up to be. But there’s also a place inside of us that is… powerful. A place that knows there’s *more* to you, more for you; a greater purpose, a greater calling.
For some, it’s feeling like something is missing, a spark within you not being fed or nourished. Often it’s an inner longing for more depth, more truth, and a knowing that you are here for bigger and bolder experiences; something inside wanting to be seen, wanting to shine more brightly.
Knowing how to access this light, though, can be difficult especially when we’ve been through trauma and pain in our past, when we don’t have the right teachers and guides, and when our environment feeds us messaging of not being enough, of staying small, and of doing what we’re told.
It is incredibly brave and absolutely transcendent to do this work as it can change everything!
I share this on my website, and I think it conveys so much:
“I know what it’s like to be a soul lost and alone in this human experience. To want so badly to express and actualize all that is felt so deep down within.
Through my work, my process, my gifts, I’ve learned to walk my path and embody my soul’s purpose.
And I am here to help you do the same.”
It truly is the best descriptor because I help my clients and students connect to and align with their destiny, their path, their purpose, and I LOVE IT!
I love seeing the radiance of a soul on their true path, the beauty of an inner knowing rise up to be shared in new ways, as they take actions in their lives because of the work we’ve done together. My clients and students tend to have this incredible inner essence, this old-soul-ethereal-magic within them and the knowledge that they came her for beautiful and bold aligned choices and experiences.
Most of my clients and students also have been through A LOT in their lives, intense traumas that have invited them (or forced them!) into a spiritual awakening whether their small selves wanted to or not! They absolutely know they signed up for their path and they really, really, really want to live their divine purpose, their spiritual destiny, but they need support and guidance. A light to shine the way and remind them of what they already know deep within.
I also love that I can help with this in so many different ways, bringing my professional and personal experience into sessions and classes for an unending source of support and wisdom. I’ve studied immense breadths and depths of subjects from holistic nutrition, herbal medicine, functional diagnostics, applied kinesiology, and even one year of anatomy and physiology… all the way to akashic records, BodyTalk, PaRama, BioGeometry, Mindscape, Human Design, and lots, lots more. Beyond that, I’ve spent the past 6+ months in deep training directly from Divine Source, my guides, angels, and helpers, to bring in new ways of connection and transformation, new ways of healing and experiencing our multi-dimensional reality.
Each session or class, begins with scanning the energetic hologram to see how you are showing up, and what’s needed to help you have the resources for your highest resonance. We then connect into the akashic field, through an initiation that I received directly from source, as we connect into the highest frequencies, opening the channels and accessing the information available to us in the field and from divine/love/light.
Every session is different, every connection an invitation to heal or transform a different part of us, a different layer or level of our past, present, or future. I often suggest someone interested in this work begin with “Divine Integration” which is a free gift session that I have available on my website. This session is designed to help you start experiencing what is possible! Next is “Rise” then “Ignite” and “Guide”, which help you learn to rise within yourself, awaken the light inside, and guide you through a week of energetic shifts and changes.
I also offer longer healing sessions such as “Warrior”, a 6 week healing experience that helps you reclaim your inner fire and meet your inner warrior.. and I have mini-classes such as “Activate” which helps you know your chakras, learn how they have impacted you, how to align them, and how to invoke their gifts and wisdom!
One of my favorite offerings is my year long training program. It is absolutely transformational and I love being able to share this work as our class meets weekly beginning with Level One: Light, and continuing to Level Two: Shadow, Level Three: Dark and our weekend intensive Level Four: Completion. It is absolutely a journey of self-ascension, deep inner transformation, and divine destiny where you will learn to embody your soul’s purpose, heal your mental and emotional bodies, meet your guides, and change your whole world… It’s experiential, interactive, emotional, educational, and deeply, powerfully healing!
Plus I have 1:1 sessions, starting with Transcribe: a three session bundle of healing, rewriting, and transforming into the magic and beauty of your soul!
I have more available on my website too, and I send updates out to my newsletter with new offerings and opportunities as they open so signing up for that is a great way to stay connected and up to date with what’s possible!
I’m so so so blessed to do this work!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Ahhh, yes absolutely! There are so many things I could share that have been painful and traumatic, from dysfunction to abuse, from barely surviving to barely making it through, but I think the places where resiliency has really been profound for me are in the emotional and spiritual realms.
As a child, I learned that having an emotional reaction was a fault, a character flaw. I learned that being angry meant you were a problem, being hurt meant you were dramatic, being triggered meant you were broken, and being happy meant someone would strive to take that away or the other shoe would drop, the bubble would burst. I also learned that other people know me better than I know myself, and that I was weak and powerless, helpless to those who were better and brighter.. stronger. I learned that everyone else was more important, more deserving, and more worthy, by miles and miles.
I carried these messages through my teens and into my twenties, struggling to make sense of it all as I continued to see the feedback from the world outside of me, from my relationships to my experiences, mirroring back these same patterns over and over again. It wasn’t until my early thirties that I finally began to do the inner work, finding clarity and deeper understanding of what resiliency truly means.
Working with energy medicine, consciousness, and emotional healing practices has been profoundly transformative. It first began with learning that anger and emotional responses were natural and healthy, and that emotional *reactions* were actually places inside that needed love and healing. Beyond seeing how the “negative” emotions didn’t equate to a failure within me, I began learning that there were many “positive” emotions I had yet to experience. I remember learning about joy and having no idea what it actually felt like. I knew what happiness felt like, at least to a certain degree, but what did the experience of joy feel like in my body?!
As I continued to heal the places in my nervous system and energetic body that had been poked and prodded and attacked so many times, I began working on belief systems and thought forms, the record players of yesterdays stories that had been keeping me in loops.
I felt what needed to be felt.
I cried what needed to be shed, screamed what needed to be released, and accepted what was finally ready to be faced and seen.
Days, weeks, months, years of letting the trauma and pain of my past flow up and out, as I continued bravely taking step after step in my own healing, learning that resiliency doesn’t mean I have to blindly accept the world around me and let it control who I am, who I want to be.
Resiliency means that as the waters and temperatures change, as people say and do things, and as experiences happen, whether good bad or indifferent, I can stay steady and adapt throughout all of it, allowing the full range of my emotional experiences to rise up and balance at the center.
And if I can’t, then that’s ok too. Because resiliency has taught me that it’s ok to be human and it’s ok to not always respond perfectly, that it’s not who I am, but rather just an experience that I am having.
Those are the times that may take a moment before I am reminded that I can find myself again and that I can reconnect to the strength and power within, reconnect to my awareness of self, of my truth, of my center.
It’s been an incredible gift to have healed through so many layers and levels of my own story, and when those moments of feeling off-track or misaligned happen, it is beyond words magical to have spirituality fill in the blanks.
Knowing that I don’t have to hold it all, that there’s more than whatever it is I may be feeling in the moment, that there’s a greater purpose or reason, and that I can *offer* to divine/love whatever is too much for me, has been a new kind of resiliency to learn. I don’t have to fix or figure out every piece, I don’t have to hold all of the reins of control and force, but instead I can allow… I can offer.. I can surrender.
Being in this space, knowing that I am loved and held and supported, knowing that I have the means within to transmute my emotional experience, and knowing that it’s also not on me to take care of it all, has been so profoundly and deeply healing!
Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?
Working in spirituality and teaching others how to go into the depths of who we are, the darkness and shadow, in order to come into the light, has really helped me understand the path of awakening and walking one’s own soul journey.
There are a lot of people working in spirituality, and the field is of course very varied, though for me, if it were all boiled down into one sentence, it would be a quote that I once heard by Adyashanti:
“True autonomy is lived only by standing on your own two feet, and walking wherever they take you.”
This sums up so much of what I teach: how to stand on your own two feet, how to know where to go, to be ok through the ups and downs with life, to not be caught in the pain and trauma of yesterday, or the fear and anxiety of tomorrow… but to heal it; to be free from the triggers and wounds and feel the inner strength of stillness and oneness within.
In my experience, this requires us to have a connection to something that is deeper than our “small self” and our own individual experiences. To connect to divine, to source, to love or light, however it is you want to call it, in whatever language or view, the connection is to a source that is simultaneously outside of us, inside of us, all around us, above and below, and all that we are… We are “all that is” and “all that is” is us.
This self-awareness, knowing that there is something more, and that *we* are that something more (at a different layer or dimension of consciousness) requires a level of self-authority and self-ownership that invites us into deeper resonance with all of who we are. This is something that can not be faked, not truly. It requires us to look deep within and excavate our trauma, our wounds, healing what was and letting go of who we were, who we think we are, in order to find the self that’s been there all along, underneath the conditioning and programming of our culture and society, how we were raised, and all of the experiences we’ve had, including the epigenetic impacts of those who came before.
It’s a big package of stuff to work on and clear, heal, release, embrace, transform.. so that we can heal, release, embrace, and transform!
So when we talk about what is most helpful in succeeding in spirituality and deep inner healing, it’s that we ourselves as the teacher and healer must do our own work… and continue to do our work. It’s that we ourselves must walk our walk and deeply embody not just the practices that we teach, but the way of life that says “I am Divine, I am Love, I am Source… and I know what that means and I AM living that.”
It’s forgiving what was, trusting in what’s to come, having faith in what is. It’s facing all of who we are, throughout all of time, well beyond this one lifetime as we explore more of our souls journey including our past lives, parallel lives.. And it’s saying “I came here for a divinely guided powerful and beautiful reason, and it’s not just to make money or sell courses, it’s not just to have a ton of followers or bypass what we truly feel, who we truly are.”
It’s so that we can learn to stand on our own two feet, through everything we’ve been through, and when you do *that* work, everything everything everything changes!
Because then “success” begins to be defined as being in full alignment of who you are and what you came here to do, no matter how scary, no matter how challenging, or how big your mountain is to climb. You go forth anyway, and you find the success within of living your purpose, of embodying your divinity, of fully being YOU and sharing that with the world in the way that is just right and absolutely perfect for you and your soul!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shaiaastra.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shaiaastra/
- Other: Threads: https://www.threads.net/@shaiaastra