A CONVERSATION WITH BRY

Today, soulfood is featuring, member (and soul sister), Bry: your local witchy healer friend.

After inviting my newsletter readers the opportunity to share their story, Bry and I discovered that we were both alumni of the MindBody Therapy program at Embodied Philosophy. Like kindred spirits, we instantly resonated with each other and our mutual interests in plants, planets, and somatics.

A “mercurial, multi-dimensional woman,” Bry weaves you through her journey with nature, healing, and magic, and her new relationship with pain after a series of awakening experiences.

Grab some tea and let’s chat…

1. You had mentioned to me personally that your history of chronic pain urged you to study mind-body therapy, herbalism, CBT, and astrology. Please share more about this story.

I love origin stories so much! So here’s mine. In December 2018, during a particularly stressful time at work and emotionally confusing time in my personal life, I developed shingles and a really bad throat infection at the same time. It was a horrible pain like I’ve never experienced. When I went to the doctor, all I was given was a topical cream treatment for the shingles, which meant the rash itself went away but the underlying nerve pain stayed (and the rash returned 6 months later…). For the first time in my life, I started experiencing pain every day and it was incredibly destabilizing. I’m a naturally curious person, so naturally, I got curious about alternative remedies for chronic pain and why this happened to me, when I felt let down by Western Medicine (which I didn’t even know was “a thing”, I just thought that was all medicine was).

Other than trying to incorporate turmeric into my diet, I stumbled upon a documentary called HEAL that flipped my entire world upside down, shaking me at my core. It introduced the idea that the mind and body are not only connected, but that our thoughts affect our reality, our beliefs affect our experience, root causes affect our surface level symptoms, and our whole lives affect our whole being. It made me realize how disconnected I really was from myself — the bully AND the victim of my negative thoughts, a stranger to my own body, and unaware of my own soul.

I suddenly understood that there was more to life and more to being human than we’ve been led to believe. This moment ignited a deep desire to learn anything and everything I could about this more holistic way of living, being, and healing. From then on, I basically just followed my interests and my curiosities to modalities that felt really alive for me. Oftentimes they would find me, and I just accepted the invitation to dive in. It feels like I’ve slowly been piecing together my knowledge in wholeness: mind, body, soul, life, nature, astrology. It turns out we live in a deeply interconnected, divinely intelligent web and it’s become my life’s purpose to share this knowledge with the world.

2. After that awakening experience, how has your relationship been to pain? What does pain mean to you?

I still experience chronic pain, but it’s evolved way past the initial nerve pain. The pandemic dug a deeper trench of stress that resulted in a tense, shallow breathing pattern that I’ve had trouble easing and has sustained the chronic pain. But as always, my insatiable curiosity has my back and it’s helped me see pain as a wise teacher.

When the body feels pain, it’s a signal for us to look, pay attention, go inwards and explore what’s lying at the root. It’s difficult to be in pain, but how else can our bodies get us to notice? The more aware I became of where and how I felt pain, the more aware of my body I became. Now when I see different bodyworkers, they are astounded by my strong bodily awareness and intuition. It supercharges the work we can do together.

The biggest thing pain means to me is that it’s an invitation. An invitation to accept it’s there (instead of deny it), to learn what it’s here for (what’s its role and root), and to work with it instead of against it (as compassionately as we can). On the other side of pain is such deep embodied wisdom that just applying a topical cream will never, ever open us to.

3. Being a fellow graduate from the MindBody Therapy program at Embodied Philosophy, I’m curious to know what your experience was like. For me, it was SO therapeutic, healing, gentle, and awakening. What was your experience like and what did you learn about yourself?

I tooootally agree, it was INCREDIBLY therapeutic. It invited me to meet with my body on a real, relational, reciprocal level and it encouraged my body to open up to me in ways I never thought possible. It taught me to go inwards, ask questions, and listen — a skill that reclaims all the times we outsource our wisdom to others.

I always thought our relationships with our bodies were just physical, like working out to change how it looks. This experience showed me how to have an emotional bond with my body, where working out became something I do to nurture and nourish my body. Because of this, I fell deeply in love with myself. There was also a moment when we were studying Touch Therapy that made me sob, making me realize I deeply crave physical touch (whereas a lot of my therapeutic approaches until then were more cognitive or energetic). And about 9 months later, someone else I befriended from the program serendipitously connected me with an Osteopath meets natural-born energy worker, and it felt like a manifestation coming to fruition to meet my body’s deepest needs.

Apart from learning a lot about myself and all the wisdom my body carries, the program also showed me how to hold space for others in very intuitive and creative ways, like closely following where someone’s at (their words and responses) to guide where we need to go. A lot of my work now is a reflection of this skill, even if somatics is only one part. My clients have told me I have a superpower of intuitively uncovering exactly what needs to come to the surface, when in reality, I’m just tracking and guiding where they’re leading me to (i.e. my intuition holding space for theirs).

4. I’m fascinated by your knowledge of both plants and planets. What drew you to study astrology and herbalism? What have you discovered in those studies that you want to shout from the rooftops?

Weeee my heart sings at this question. I’ve been interested in astrology for a long while, even before my spiritual awakening. The second I learned that I’m more than just my horoscope-limited sun sign, I was hooked.

I’ve come to see it as a fascinating system (a language AND a map) of understanding that illustrates how everything in nature follows similar patterns at different scales. I’m a nature lover at my core, and I was really lucky (or synchronistically led) to stumble upon Tyler Penor’s work that teaches astrology in a nature-rooted context, something I had never seen before. So I completed his 15-month program and it felt like a homecoming. Instead of just learning what Virgo meant (my Sun and Moon), I learned what it represents in nature and in MY nature. It felt way more intuitive and grounded, because we’ve known nature our whole lives. It all turned my inner witch ON.

And then I saw that a friend of Tyler’s, Sajah Popham, runs School of Evolutionary Herbalism and signed up for his course, Alchemical Herbalism, which explores how alchemical patterns (which of course connect to astrological patterns) can be mapped to herbalism. What I learned about Virgo is that it rules the plant kingdom and it awakened what felt like an ancient desire to work closely with plants. So this led to studying herbalism as the latest development in my journey. I completed a 6-month program with Ecoversity last year, which wonderfully included a module on Astrological Herbalism. I am still very open to being guided towards exactly how I am to bridge plants and planets, and I’m excited to find out.

What I want to shout off the rooftops: IT’S ALL JUST PATTERNS, IT REALLY IS ALL CONNECTED, and NATURE JUST WANTS TO HELP YOU!

5. I love your compassionate language when it comes to relating to the body. Why is it important to embody compassion when relating to our somatic landscapes?

When your friend is going through tough shit, do you meet them with shame and judgement, or love and compassion? Well, your body is no different! I’ve slowly learned to treat my body (as well as my mind and inner landscapes) as a beloved friend, or even better, a beloved child. Because while we all need and deserve love from others, it’s also crucial to give and receive it from ourselves, too. And most of us don’t even realize how rough we are to ourselves!

Experiencing chronic pain and being slingshot through a spiritual and self awakening experience showed me all the ways I was mean to myself. And as I started working with myself somatically, I realized “omg my body is just a precious thing that wants to be loved and appreciated and supported” (and this is the same realization all of my clients have too). I began working WITH myself instead of AGAINST myself. But we’re taught to do the exact opposite in our anti-aging, “perfect” body culture! A reclamation is in order, and compassion is the key. The more compassion we can offer ourselves and our bodies, the more we heal, feel better in our skin, and seed a new culture of loving acceptance that I deeply believe is (already) changing our world.

6. When life gets turbulent, what resources do you turn to?

Love how you use the word resources there, because it’s crucial to have a toolbox/support system we can lean on.

My toolbox includes: spending time with friends to get out of my head, turning to nature as a wise ally (specifically: laying my body on the earth and listening for guidance), doing yoga to ground and centre my attention into my body (and to help me feel strong again), talking to myself as supportively and compassionately as possible, doing activities that feel safe and inspiring (going on a walk, watching a movie, journaling), and, most recently, creating something. I’ve spent the last year intentionally waking my inner artist and healing the self-expression wounds I carry, and now when I’m feeling down the act of creation ALWAYS makes me feel better.

7. You recently told me that you are a future thinker — but you articulated it in a way that I had never heard before. Please bestow upon us your wisdom when it comes to holding the vision of the future while making peace with the past.

Oooo I’ll do my best to do this succinctly (not my forte as you can tell)! I’ll answer this in two parts, because my view sort of holds two threads.

The first is when I discovered the work of Barbara Marx Hubbard, who is a late futurist and teacher of conscious evolution. This is kind of silly and obvious, but I always thought of evolution as a thing of the past that brought us from single-celled organisms to monkeys to the humans we are today, but she frames evolution as happening right here, right now, THROUGH us. We are constantly evolving individually and collectively, and the more consciously you work WITH evolution (just like working WITH yourself) the more enriching future you can create for yourself and others. This soothed me, showing me that the past is the past and that evolution by nature is always looking ahead at what’s possible, while taking steps now that slowly lead towards that vision.

The second thread came through Joe Dispenza’s work. He teaches that we often assume our future will be like our past, because that’s all that we know and have experienced. The future is unknown, so we project our past into our future, which affects how we act in the present. But this causes us to remain stuck in loops that don’t serve our growth. So the inverse of this, similarly to conscious evolution, is to accept the past for what it was and what it taught you, while seeing the future as its own separate thing (i.e. not a direct correlation of the past). It’s rewiring your brain to see the future as something that can be (and will be) different from what you have and are experiencing. This is incredibly freeing!

An example of this I shared with you, Stephanie, to really ground this is that I don’t have a great relationship with my Dad, but I want to. I’ve spent a lot of time in resentment and assuming it’ll always be that way, but the more I consciously work with the future as a flexible, malleable thing, the more I know it’s possible for us to have a great relationship one day. This wisdom is also a HUGE resource in my toolkit — to constantly remind myself “I know you’ve felt this way for a long time, but it’s possible to change it if you keep changing” every time I feel triggered by my past. Our past is naturally limited, because it’s come and gone. It has boundaries. But the future is unlimited because it’s not happened yet! When we think this way, it opens up our futures to surprising possibilities we could never have imagined for ourselves. It heals how we respond in the present to our past, which creates our future. That’s some time-travelling wizard healing magic right there.

What is your “why”?

It can be better than this!!! Science is proving spiritual teachings, healing is becoming more holistic, innovation is solving climate change, and more people than ever are reclaiming their power over the state of their own lives. Too many people are suffering, and we need to change in order to change things. On an individual and a collective level, we need to believe we can build and experience something better than all the separation, destruction, and control we experience now. We need to believe life can be good, that people can be good, that good change can happen, and that you can feel good. Or else we’ll continue suffering.

I believe each and every person carries exactly what they need to heal in order to lead meaningful lives and be in service to the world. I believe that if each person on this Earth felt loved and supported by both themselves and by others, it would literally heal the world. And that’s all I want to help people experience for themselves.

At the root, we need to change our way of being to change our way of living to change the future we’re moving towards. And that’s what drives my work. I’d like to leave the world a better place than I’ve found it, in my own little ways.

I also deeply believe each of us carries a unique imprint of goodness that needs to be shared with the world — our own flavour of natural magic. Like a plant carrying a specific medicine or an animal serving a particular eco-purpose, we too have something special to offer that only we can offer; and it is exactly what the rest of us needs! It is my deepest pleasure to witness people befriend themselves, align with their true nature, and melt into joy.

What’s the connecting thread between all these modalities, ideas, and beliefs for you?

While there are so many words to describe what I’m about to say, there’s one that really ties it all together for me: Witch.

When I had my spiritual awakening (after 25 years of being a devout atheist) it knocked me off my axis to learn that we live in a sentient Universe! That all of creation is dancing with us? That nature is a supremely complex interconnected organism of which we’re a part?! That we are glistening refractions in a great cosmic play?!? That we are whole, multidimensional beings with a mind, a body, a soul, a spirit, a life?!?!? That we hold our own creative place in the natural order of things??? That everything is alive and the Universe is listening!!!!

The interconnectedness brought me to my knees. This is why I’m so wildly passionate about all these modalities and this idea of living our wholeness. I love that our mind and body work better as one, I love that Astrology is nature’s blueprint for our unique existence, I love that plants and nature are coded to heal us, I love that we are agents of our own life and being. To me, being a Witch is a reclaiming of this interconnectedness in the name of goodness.

It was absolutely incredible to realize that magic is, in fact, real: in wild synchronicities, chance encounters, unbelievable manifestations coming to fruition. But to me, magic is even simpler than that. When I call myself a Witch, I mean I am one with aliveness in the purest sense: being moved by the orchestra of all living things. The birds, the fires, the waters, the people, the mycelium, the galaxies, the trees, the planets, the bodies, the stars, the ladybugs, the winds, the atoms — it all gives my life more depth of meaning, and that’s all the magic I need. Some people call themselves Animists, others Pagans, but to me, Witch encompasses it all.

Here’s a great example that happened to me just yesterday. I’m house and dog-sitting for my friend who has a beautiful country house and a sauna on her land. I built a fire, heated the wooden room, poured water over hot rocks — and what could’ve been a nice, mundane experience quickly became a spiritual encounter. My heart was ripped open by the weaving of earth, fire, air, and water to offer this thick, cleansing experience. My pores seemed to open, not just for the heat but also to allow the whole Universe to exist in my heated moment. Then later that night, my friend woke me from bed to the astounding site of the Aurora Borealis overhead, far more south than we’ve ever seen. I placed my bare feet on the bare ground, whispered “thank you” and a shooting star flew across the sky. It felt like a giant wink! And this kind of thing happens to me all the time. The more I let life in with a smile, the more life welcomes me with a wink.

In this way, I see magic and being a Witch as a state of being, where being moved by the magic in a mundane moment is the only spell I really need. The way nature responds in wild ways when I am deeply present is the only potion I need to take. All other magic is a bonus! To me, life as it is is magic enough, yet it constantly tears me open to reveal more. It’s a thrill of a lifetime, to be a Witch.

♡

Thank you, Bry, for sharing your heart, your magic, and your intimate experiences with us. You are such a beautiful soul, reminding us of the magic in the mundane. 

Want to learn more about Bry or work with her 1:1? Check out her website here.