Hello and welcome to the Rooted Source podcast.My name is Ionsul Ferrin, and I’m speaking to you from the unceded ancestral lands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. In this inaugural episode, I wanted to introduce myself and where I’m coming from, as well as my big why for starting this podcast. Please keep in mind that this podcast is not a substitute for professional care of any kind, and any spiritual experiences I describe are my own personal stories, and not intended to suggest what anyone else’s path should look like. I also want to warn you that this episode includes some discussion about medical discrimination and violence, so please listen at the pace that feels right for you. So, let’s dive in. First thing I want to disclose here is that I’ve had a pretty good amount of imposter syndrome that’s come up around starting this podcast, mainly because I don’t come from an ethnic background that’s directly connected to ancient healing pathways. I was raised white, middle class, and somewhat agnostic, somewhat Christian in the suburbs of northern VA. But I’ve always felt a strong connection to my Celtic Pagan ancestry that was indigenous to Northern Europe long before Roman Catholic colonization. So even though I grew up in a middle class, white suburban neighborhood, and even though I was conditioned in that environment to have a pretty strictly materialist perspective, I’ve always had an innately spiritual curiosity. I was / am an HSP, or highly sensitive person, and had a lot of philosophical quandaries from a young age. I remember wondering, by the time I was old enough to realize how messed up the world is – “Why is the world like this? How did it get this way?” and, “What can we do to fix things?” In a very real way, these are still the big motivating questions of my life. And I feel like I do have some answers. When I cross-reference history, sociology, and psychology – which are all related – it seems pretty clear what the answer is. Generational trauma. That’s why the systems are so messed up. That’s why there’s so much suffering on a personal and collective level. Hurt people hurt people. And after 6,000 years (at least) of increasing war, violence, and extraction, we’re reaching a tipping point. We have to heal – as individual people, and as a unified people – if we’re not going to burn out all our systems and self-implode. In a future episode, I look forward to nerding out on some of the theories that exist about what started the cycles of trauma 6,000 years ago. But for the most part I think it’s much more important that we talk about solutions. That’s what this podcast aims to address. But I’m coming at it from a pretty subversive angle. One consequence of having parents who suffered with acute mental health conditions throughout my childhood was that I never really trusted authority. Because I had to rely on my own discernment from a young age, I’ve tended to naturally reject systems that rely on power hierarchies and strict adherence to tradition. In other words, I’ve explored many “alternative” modalities and practices throughout my life. After I became a single mother 10 years ago, I especially got serious about my own healing journey. It wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about my kids’ future as well. They were 3 and 6 at the time, and had already lived through far too much with all the drama of their dad having substance use disorder, and me being his codependent enabler. So I had to take a sober look at myself and realize that it was my responsibility to transform my unhealthy patterns and low self-worth that had led me to such a dysfunctional relationship in the first place. By that time I was already living in Asheville, where I still am currently, and luckily there’s a smorgasbord of alternative modalities on offer here. So I tried all kinds of things – women’s retreats, breathwork, yoga, psychedelics, life coaching, even talk therapy – which honestly, I found the most disappointing of all at the time. But still, I couldn’t seem to find lasting solutions to my chronic anxiety, depression, and low self-worth. Eventually, in the midst of all this seeking, I was at a potluck with friends, when a sister friend of mine (shout out to ML!) started telling me about this amazing shamanic healing school she was attending. Like me, she had tried basically countless modalities over many years, and she was very excited and enthusiastic in telling me that this school, called wildernessFusion, was the “real deal.” She told me that people who attend the school, or see the healers trained there, often have truly miraculous results. One of the women in her class was in Hospice, literally dying from heart failure, when she started seeing NIASZIIH practitioners (NIASZIIH is the modality taught at wildernessFusion). She had such a dramatic turn around that she not only came out of Hospice – she started working again! Another woman in her class had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and went into full remission after attending clinics at the school. And a third was going blind from Graves Disease. The doctors told her there was nothing they could do, that she would have to adjust to living without sight for the rest of her life. She started seeing NIASZIIH practitioners and fully got her sight back. Obviously, I was intrigued. So I went to a free intro class and was immediately hooked. I signed up then and there and have attended the school ever since. I’m currently in year 6 of the 7 year program, and I’ve already completed the 3 year bodywork training. I can affirm, just like ML said, it truly is the most real, effective thing I’ve ever done. I count it as the reason I have the courage and self-worth to even start this podcast in the first place. Now, I want to just pause and say that, even after years at wildernessFusion, I wrestle with using the word “shamanic.” It’s a term that was coined by a white guy, and it’s often used as a Western umbrella term that unfairly flattens many distinct traditions. But just like all words are symbols for more complex ideas, “shamanic” is simply the best word I know of in English to denote healing modalities that bridge physical and non-physical dimensions. If you know of a better term, please leave it in the comments! I also just want to be clear here that while the wildernessFusion curriculum is based in Lipan Apache philosophy and spirituality, I am not by any means claiming to be an authority on that – or any other – indigenous tradition. I am not speaking on behalf of cultures or lineages that are not mine. In wildernessFusion, we don’t engage in any specific cultural practices that people often think of related to the term “shamanic” – things like drumming, chanting, or taking psychedelic medicine. Those are beautiful and valuable practices. They’re just not ones that we engage in. Honestly, what classtime mainly looks like is uncovering the hardest and most painful parts of ourselves so that we can stay in contact with our authenticity, with the Earth, and with each other. NIASZIIH – again, the name of the healing approach taught at wildernessFusion – is an Apache word that means “Place or Vessel of Healing.” And, in a way, to call it a “modality” is even kind of a misnomer. Because it’s really more about a consciousness shift, about embodying a state of being, than it is about learning a set of distinct practices. It’s something I’m really passionate about, so I’ve offered NIASZIIH healing sessions professionally for years now. But it’s been challenging to make a living at it for a number of reasons. For one thing, if you throw a stone in Asheville, you’ll likely hit an alternative healer of some sort. There are so many amazing healers here, so there’s a good amount of competition. I also can’t stand marketing and self-promotion, which are kind of essential if you’re going to make it as a solopreneur. Plus, almost no one has heard of NIASZIIH, and most people won’t pay for something they haven’t even heard of and don’t understand. So, in order to create more financial stability for myself and my kids, I started grad school for mental health counseling last year. My goal is to do a version of NIASZIIH that fits with counseling, and be able to take insurance, particularly so I can see people from underserved communities. Admittedly, before I started grad school, I was pretty skeptical that I would like it. For so long, I was resistant to becoming part of an industry that has some pretty dubious origins (which is something we’ll get into in a future episode). Plus, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve had my own disappointing experiences with talk therapy. But I’m grateful and relieved to report that I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by my experience in grad school so far. My professors have been humble and wonderful, and I’m finding it’s actually quite fun to study a topic I’m passionate about alongside other people who are nerds about the same things. I also started seeing a talk therapist that I really enjoy, and who feels like a great compliment and support to the inner work I’m doing through wildernessFusion. Nonetheless, I still see that both conventional talk therapy and allopathic medicine practices are often inadequate to helping people meaningfully transform suffering. Practitioners of both are mainly taught to treat symptoms, rather than the root causes of dis-ease, and so long-term results are often disappointing. To explain a bit more, let me give some historical context. The reality is that modern mental health and allopathic medicine industries, such as we know them today, developed amidst colonialist, capitalist mindsets. And medicalized frameworks were often used to justify oppression. I’ll give just a couple of examples. Did you know that in the 1800’s America, enslaved
