Living Between Worlds - Bridging Psychology & Holistic Healing

What a sacred Ceiba tree taught me about my role as a bridge between psychology, embodied practices and complementary approaches to holistic healing.

A few months ago, I noticed something growing in a planter on the rooftop of my home in Mexico. It was already a substantial plant and looked strangely purposeful there — a piece of jungle foliage that had somehow found its way into this planter and decided to stay.

So I let it grow.

Months later, it was about four feet tall and reaching the roofline. By then, I was curious enough to figure out exactly what had taken up residence on my rooftop.

It was a Ceiba tree.

The Ceiba is a sacred tree in Mayan tradition, understood as a connection between realms — its roots extending into the underworld, its trunk inhabiting the earthly realm and its branches reaching toward the heavens.

A tree associated with connecting worlds had somehow planted itself on my rooftop.

When I shared this story with a relatively new friend, his response carried a kind of knowing. Of course this made sense.

“You are an Anutiama — a being who resides between worlds.”

I had never heard the word before.

But I immediately recognized myself in its meaning.

I Have Always Lived Between Worlds

I was born into a family with many lineages and have spent much of my life moving between cultures, communities and different ways of seeing the world.

I have often existed at the edges of communities, never feeling entirely of one place.

As I've gotten older, I have come to appreciate the gift within that experience.

Living at the edges has made me an explorer. It has made me deeply curious about people and the different ways we make sense of being human. It has allowed me to enter different spaces, learn from them and notice connections between ideas and practices that might otherwise remain separate.

And it has made me a connector. A bridge.

Receiving a word for this part of myself somehow made it feel more substantial. I could suddenly see a thread that has been running through my life for a very long time.

And increasingly, I can see how that thread is shaping my work.

Bringing Psychology and Holistic Healing Into Conversation

I will always be a Clinical Psychologist. I have enormous respect for science and for what decades of psychological research and clinical practice have taught us about the mind, behaviour, relationships, trauma, resilience and our capacity to change.

And my curiosity about the human experience has continued to take me into other spaces: yoga, meditation, breath, sound, energy, ceremony, embodied practices, ancient traditions and ways of understanding ourselves that invite us to access information through the body, through experience and through forms of knowing that aren't always intellectual.

Increasingly, I am interested in what becomes possible when we bring psychology into conversation with holistic and complementary approaches to healing. I have experienced enough in these spaces to remain deeply curious about what they have to teach us. And I have witnessed enough transformation in my work to know that we should be very careful about deciding too quickly what is and isn't possible for another human being.

More and more, I find myself interested in the places where these worlds meet.

What might modern psychology learn from practices humans have used for thousands of years?

What can ancient wisdom gain from what we now understand about the brain, nervous system, trauma and behaviour?

What happens when we allow ourselves to remain curious about both?

I don't feel a need to choose one world.

Perhaps my role is to help build bridges between them.

The Experience Is Only the Beginning

There is another part of this that feels particularly important to me. As people experience different modalities, ways of healing in the process of coming home to themselves, I am increasingly interested in what happens after the experience.

A meditation can open something. A retreat can reveal something. A ceremony, a yoga practice, sound, breathwork or a powerful therapy session can allow us to encounter ourselves differently.

And then we return to our lives. This is where integration matters.

What are you going to do with what you now know?

How will this awareness influence the way you relate to yourself?

The boundaries you hold?

The relationships you participate in?

The choices you make?

The way you care for your body?

The risks you are willing to take?

How will it change the way you live?

For me, this is where my experience as a psychologist becomes an important part of the bridge. I can explore and experience complementary approaches to healing while bringing the discernment of my clinical training with me.

And through our approach to psychotherapy, we can help people take what they discover through these experiences and integrate that awareness into meaningful change in their everyday lives. Because ultimately, healing has to find its way into how we live.

Crossing the Threshold

Perhaps this is also why I find myself so drawn to thresholds.

There is a moment in so many processes of change when we encounter a possibility for ourselves that we haven't experienced before. We can see something on the other side. And crossing toward it requires courage.

Sometimes it also helps to have someone beside us who is comfortable standing at the threshold — someone willing to explore with us, to help us make meaning of what we discover and to support us as we bring that discovery back into our lives.

I recognize now how much joy I experience in being that person.

I am an explorer.

I am a psychologist.

I am a healer.

I am a connector.

And increasingly, I understand myself as a bridge.

There are so many ways of understanding the human experience and so many practices that may support healing, growth and transformation. I want to continue exploring them with curiosity and discernment and creating opportunities for others to experience what may serve them.

This is part of the evolution happening within me. And it is part of the evolution happening at The Design Your Life Centre.

We are interested in creating more opportunities to bring together psychological science, embodied experience and complementary healing practices — and to help people integrate what they discover into the way they live.

And because being a bridge means listening as much as it means bringing something across, I would love to hear from you.

As we imagine what might come next at The Design Your Life Centre, I’m curious about the experiences and approaches to healing that you would like to explore with us.

I would love for you to be part of shaping what comes next.

WHAT ARE YOU CURIOUS TO EXPERIENCE WITH US?