Intuitive Channeling Unveiled: Stephanie Banks' Journey through Psychic Connection, Dementia and Death

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Grief to Growth. If you're joining us for the first time, let me let you know how I am. I'm Brian Smith. I'm your host On this podcast.

We explore topics to help us grow through grief. We talk to experts, authors and individuals who offer different perspective on life, death and the afterlife, and we aim to provide a safe space for you to navigate to your own journey. Whether you're grappling with grief from a job loss, a divorce, an illness or the passing of a loved one, this is a place for you. Today we have a really extraordinary guest. Her name is Stephanie Banks.

Stephanie is an intuitive channel. She's a mentor and she's a guide who bridges the gap between our physical world and the spiritual realm. She doesn't just channel messages from humans, but also connects with the energies of trees, animals and even our very own planet, gaia. She's the author of the best-selling book Joining Joni staying connected to your loved ones through dementia and beyond, and she's hard at work on her second book, chronicling Her Spiritual Journey. If you've ever questioned the power of intuitive gifts, you might have seen her in TED Talk. I am an intuitive channel, which I watched recently. In it, we were just laughing about how it's been flagged by the TEDx people because it's been materialist mindset. But it's a great talk and today we're going to dive deeper into the fascinating world of intuitive channeling and explore how it can be a vital tool for soul level connection and for healing. So, stephanie, welcome to the Grief for Growth podcast.

Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to see where our conversation goes.

Yeah, I'm really excited about having you. This is actually very personal for me. My wife's parents have gone through dementia. Their father passed from dementia I think it was 12 years ago. Now we're going through it currently with her mother, who's in the kind of the later stages of it, so I know what it can feel like to feel like you're losing someone. So start by telling us about Joni and your relationship with her.

My mom and Joni. We had a great relationship, and also not without its own complexities. So, as you know, the parent-child relationship has many layers to it and growing up when I was younger, my mother struggled a lot with mental illness. So I have that to thank, actually for my ability to be really attuned to energy, because in order to live in a family when someone is struggling with mental state and mental illness, sometimes people develop very well-honed intuitive skills to be able to understand what they're walking into when they come home from school or when they wake up in the morning in order to prepare and predict and manage harmony. So I had that in the background with my mom.

And then she developed a form of dementia that affects younger people. It's called frontotemporal dementia. It's not Alzheimer's, so it's not as well known, but she started developing symptoms of it when she was in her 50s and it wasn't for quite a few years that they even accurately diagnosed it. So for a long time we thought it was just more of her depression or anxiety that was surfacing, and so she wasn't getting any proper interventions to help it. At the time.

There weren't great interventions anyways, but at least knowing what she had would have been very helpful, and even though I was trained as a speech language pathologist and I had a lot of clinical experience working with people with cognitive disorders, it was really hard for me to apply that with my mom, because it's a different relationship and there's emotional components to it, so I was finding that our interactions and our conversations were incredibly frustrating for both of us and we were really disconnected. I needed to find a way to stay connected to her that transcended verbal communication, since that was becoming less and less of an option for her, and that's when I learned to connect through the soul.

Yeah, so you met somewhere. That was Jennifer, I believe. Right, that kind of led you to connect you through the soul, so tell me about that.

Yeah, jennifer was is my best friend. She's on the other side now but she helps me very much with my channeling work and she's the first person that showed me that it was possible to transcend the three-dimensional connections and go to the soul and the heart of things. And I met her because we just had children in the same preschool class and we instantaneously fell in love with each other, in terms of friendship of course, and we had a lot in common. And she was a channel and I asked her, after seeing her channel for so many different friends and souls, I said could you please help me with my mom? I don't know what she needs from me. I don't know how to be a good daughter in this stage of her life and right now it's not only dissatisfying but it's deeply sad. And she channeled my mom for me and I got to understand that what her soul needed, why it was in this part of her journey, what she was gaining from it and how I could join her. Wow.

So let's for people that might not know, because the word channel carries a lot of misunderstanding and sometimes some negative connotations. So what does channeling mean to you?

To me, it simply means connecting to divine energy, and we are divine energy. So a lot of people think you have to go outside of yourself in order to make those types of connections in the spiritual or world or with your divinity. But no, it's within us. So what's required to channel clearly and well is to keep yourself, to take really good care of yourself. Basically, your self-care is absolutely foundational, and that's what allowed me to tap into what my mom's soul wanted to communicate to me, so that I could help pave her path of greater ease during the last years of her life.

Yeah, and we hear about channeling and we hear about connecting with souls that are on the other side. We don't often hear about connecting with someone who's still in the physical. So when did you realize that was even possible?

When I met Jennifer. She's the first person that showed me there are no limits here. You know, mediumship is what it's called when you connect to people, souls on the other side, and channeling is what it's called when you're connecting at the soul level, and it can be any soul anywhere. And so and that's now my jam, my zone of genius, I suppose, is connecting to the souls that are here on the planet. There's so much that we could be understanding. That would make all of our lives and relationships so much smoother, so much more deeply loving, if we peel away those layers of what we do in personality and go right to the spirit. Wow.

I heard you say that you know because your mother's mental illness when you were younger. It seemed to help you develop this intuitive side. I heard that from a lot of people who are mediums they end up being professional mediums. It's like this part of us is almost forced to develop, I think when we're living with that, that uncertainty has that been your experience as well?

Yeah, I think that for me I really needed harmony and when there's dissonance and disconnection and unpredictability that can come from mood disorders and any other type of mental illness, really a child will do what they need to do to take care of themselves. And I really needed to feel, of course, loved and to have harmony in the home. So I learned to predict by reading that this very subtle changes in energy from my mother's mental illness, in energy from my mom, because everybody kind of calibrated to her, everybody in the family calibrated to what was going on for her, and so if I could figure out how to do that or how to make her laugh, to bring her out of a funk, to help bring levity to situations, I learned to do that really well too. So it might have been steer clear or it might have been move in and bring some humor to. There's lots of options. But yeah, I definitely feel like it was born out of necessity to protect my own emotional state and space and I'm using it really well now as an adult.

Yeah, so do you have to ask you when it comes to that? Do you believe that this is like your sole path, or was it something that was planned for you to go through these experiences?

I definitely believe it's my sole path, because it's what I'm walking, but I don't know that I totally believe in this pre-destiny idea. I think that we have free will and we apply it in all areas of our lives, and that can really change the trajectory of everything, so we do have a lot of agency, I believe, over the direction our lives take and the people we're in relationship with. I also believe, though, that I chose my parents on some level, and the gifts that I've received from being their daughter and being in that family dynamic are assets to my soul.

When it comes to dementia, I think, as I was telling you, I've been through it a couple of times with both my in-laws, and one of the questions I think a lot of families have is, like, what happened to my loved one? Are they still there? Are they still in there somewhere? What is going on? So what's your impression of what's going on? And maybe what's the relationship between the brain and the soul or the spirit or whatever we call that, that other part of ourselves? It's such a good question and we can't really say for sure.

But what I believe is that, even though the clinical aspect of dementia shows that the pathways in the brain are disconnecting, breaking apart, there's not that ease of synapses and connections that we rely on. Even though that's going on, that person's spirit is still very much present and available, and their heart and their ability to love and feel love. And so we do tend to feel those of us who are on the outside of it observing, tend to feel that we're losing our loved ones because what we've come to understand of their personalities and their preferences and really all aspects of them up until that point has been in a certain way, and now it's very different. And personality changes are common and so we're trying to change is are common, and so to our anger and sometimes rage and mood, and seemingly it can look like the person is spacing out, like they're not there. But I do fully believe that they are there. They're just not engaged in the same way, but that doesn't mean they're disengaged.

I found with my mom that even when she couldn't communicate clearly, we could still laugh about things and we could still have a deep connection. I could squeeze her hand and communicate so much in that touch that transcended the need to say I really love you, mom, and I'm here for you and I'm going to help you and support you. So it changes for sure, but it's not. I don't want anyone to think that their loved one isn't there, because what happens then is we start to disconnect as a self protective mechanism. It's so painful and it's unnecessary.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I like to explore that a little bit more because there is that time and I was just thinking that, the heartbreaking time it comes to when they don't recognize us anymore. When they don't, they can't call our name, they don't know who we are. So I know you went through that with your mother, with Joanie. How did that feel to you?

I'll never forget that moment. We were driving home from an appointment and she turned to me. I was driving, she turned to me in the car and she said why do people keep referring to you as my daughter? And I had been mentally preparing for that moment because everybody knows that's a component of dementia is the person not recognizing your role with them, your relationship to them? And I had this split second moment where I had just a few options. I could reorient her and tell her I am your daughter, and if I did that I would have risked our connection because she would have felt likely embarrassed, humiliated, confused, perhaps scared. I also had the option to start crying, which is essentially what I wanted to do, and that also would have been very confusing for her and I was driving. So not such a safe option. But what I opted to do.

The third option I can think of at the moment was I took a breath and I said to her what does our relationship feel like to you? Because if I could get at who I feel, who I am in her, in her feelings, then I'm happy to take on whatever she says that relationship was. And thankfully she said to me well, you're my best friend. That's how you feel to me and I thought I just got a promotion. Yeah, that's amazing, right, I went from daughter, with all of its stickiness, to best friend, with all of its like wonderful aspects, and I went with it.

And that's my whole point. When I teach people how to interact with their loved ones with dementia, wherever you can find to join them, do it's worth it. You don't you know what's the reality for you, but you don't always have to correct them or to or to re, you know, reconnect them to the factual things they're. One, just going to forget it again. And two, it can be very disconcerting to hear that when you're in a different space and my mom thought I was her best friend and I'm fine with that.

Yeah, I think that's such a beautiful story and there's so much, so much in there for us, because a lot of times again, we're trying to always reorient them. No, this is the fact, this is the fact. And, as you said, that can be confusing and scary and actually fraction that relationship and just interject something personally. The same similar thing happened with my father-in-law and my wife. You know, she was there one time and he's like I don't know who you are, but you look like a friend, and I thought that was. And she took it as a really beautiful moment too because you know he knew the connection. He just didn't know the relationship.

Yes, and that's a beautiful moment, yeah.

So, when Jennifer started channeling your mother and telling you, what was your mother's soul saying to you, what were some of the messages that she was giving you?

One of the things she was saying was I should really stop taking myself so seriously and stop trying to manage everything for her, which gave me a lot of breathing space because I had been heavily managing. I was very involved with recruiting caregivers for her, and that's a journey in and of itself. When you're interviewing people and you know some are a great fit and others you just think maybe find a different job because this is not your calling so. And also it's scary to think about leaving a loved one with another adult when your loved one can't clearly communicate. It's kind of like finding a babysitter when your children are very young and can't tell you when something's wrong or something's happened. So I really wanted to make sure that everything about my mom's experience was loving and safe and positive, and her messages to me were you know, let go a little bit here, thanks for what you're doing, keep you know, keep doing some of it. She let me know my dad did in fact, need my support, so what I was doing was very helpful, but that she was okay in her journey.

She. She on some level was fully engaged in the in between, I call it Not totally here in this 3D reality as we know it, and not totally gone, because she's still embodied, but like traveling, I would describe it being in other states, other realms, other presence, and that that was something she was benefiting from and even enjoying, which was another signal to me not to keep reeling her back in. So when she would space out or look, you know, like she was completely in on another planet, instead of bringing her back after hearing from her soul, like to let her travel, I would just join her in silence and sometimes I would ask hey, what's, what are you seeing right now? Or what are you, what's on your heart right now? Or what what's on your mind, and sometimes she could share it and sometimes she couldn't, and that's. I got a lot of messages about letting up a bit and letting her be fully engaged in her journey, while sharing love, but not tasking myself so heavily with all the details I had been.

Yeah, I think that's really also important because we tend to think of them as just like that again they're going away. We need to keep bringing them back, but and this is why I've learned from people from mediums that have sat with people who are terminally ill their souls are starting to come and go and I truly believe that when people are getting to these latter stages of dementia, it's not that they're nowhere, they're somewhere else, they just happen to be somewhere else, their minds on something else, they're, they're preparing for that, for that trip, and they're going back and forth and, as you said, they may be even be enjoying it, even though from our perspective, you know, it's like they're just sitting there.

That's right. What if they're enjoying it and we are disrupting them? It's kind of like watching a good movie and someone's like hey, hey, you okay, do you are you all right? What? What do you need? You know what day it is? We're so guilty of doing that. As a clinician, that's how I learned like keep reorienting and reorienting and drilling certain things. It's not useful when you want to stay connected to somebody.

Yeah, I've talked to some clinicians that you know actually similar same profession is, you know, speech therapists and stuff, and they're trying to be helpful, like, like you said, reorient them, bring them back, and I'm kind of like, no, maybe it's time to start letting them do what they, what they want to do, because there's their soul knows.

Yes, yes, well said.

So I heard you in your in your TED talk and I love the way you described it. It's a lot of easier said than done. It was kind of like you talked about Jill Bolt Taylor's thing about the left brain and the right brain and I guess, for you at least, it's kind of like let go of the left brain, the thinking brain and all that, and get more to the right brain. How did that process work for you in terms of learning how to do that more?

Wow, channeling is all right brain. So you know we use. The right side of our brain is the creative, receptive, intuitive side. I cannot channel if I'm in my left logical, linear side. So the more I practiced channeling and there are strategies and techniques that you use to practice this, developing this skill the more I enhance the capacity of my right hemisphere. And it's like anything else if you have an area of weakness or less development in the body, then you exercise that and it's the same with the brain. This is why we can learn new tasks. We know we have this plasticity in the brain that lets us learn new things, create new pathways all all the time. Even older adults still have this, maybe less than younger years, but still it's still present. So I just kept showing up to the practice of channeling. There's, there are tools that I use when I was learning to channel. A pendulum was one example.

Meditation is a great way to be in the receptive right brain, and so is chanting and mantras. Think, if you give the left side of your brain something to do and it loves to repeat things, as you probably noticed that you have the same thoughts today that you had yesterday, every other day. So if you give it a mantra or a word or you're chanting something and the left can repeat it, it leaves the right more open to receive. So that's a little trick and tool that I have used as a professional channel to bring in messages and clarity and connection with regards to that. But we have, we have a society that really places an enormous value on the left hemisphere. Right, we like fact, figures, data, cognition, thinking, you know, sorted, figuring things out and then the right hemisphere, which is really what I believe is going to save humanity and our planet, goes underutilized and underdeveloped. But we can change that instantly.

Yeah, thank you for explaining that and, as you mentioned, as you were talking about our obsession with the left side of the brain, as I was looking up your TEDx talk, I saw the little disclaimer and it's like well, we haven't proven any of this stuff is real, so we don't take responsibility for it, even though I talk to people every day who do this and prove that it's real. But again, we think well, it's not possible, therefore it can't be real because it's. You know, we think the mind is the brain and the brain is the mind and you're proving, you've proved, you've shown that that's not true.

You know, what's great is that I understand why TED flagged my talk, because anything that deals with supernatural or paranormal they are going to shy away from. At least back when they flagged it, they are. I think they pretty much do the same now. But there is research on channeling, there is science, there's data. There's an entire Institute that is dedicated to this. It's called the Institute of Noetic Sciences and their researchers are exclusively studying channeling and the potential, the human potential.

So actually my classes, my class participants, get to be part of a long term study being done at the Institute of Noetic Sciences that will prove, finally, that channeling is a thing that we're all. It's our birthright, we are all able to connect in this way. But the data is there, it's just we do need more research and it takes us so long to get up to speed because humans are slow in that way to change our beliefs, our minds. You know there's sometimes religious beliefs that prevent us from connecting in this way or feeling safe connecting in this way. There's a lot of reasons why people would have fear around it but, it's beautiful, it's love, it's divinity 100% agree with you.

My background is engineering, so I'm about science and data and all that kind of stuff too, and when I talk to people who are skeptics. I was just on a message board the other day and someone said there's no such thing as near death experiences. You die and then you die. And I'm like okay, julie Bysel's work, gary Schwartz's work, ken Ring's work, bruce Grayson's work, you know on and on and on. You know there's all kinds of evidence out there, the Institute for Noetic Sciences, there's. There's a lot of information, a lot of data out there. For people that want data and it's it can be really frustrating. You said humans just recently. In the last couple of years we developed this mindset that says everything is material. It's a fairly recent thing that we fell into and now we're just closed to anything else. But I see it's starting to open up and I'm glad that talks like yours are up and available. And while we're on the subject, just remind people the name of your talks. I want to encourage them to go look it up.

The TED Talk.

Yeah, the TED Talk.

It's called. I Am an Intuitive Channel and that if I can share the quick little story of doing that. Ted Talk.

Oh yeah, please.

I. I decided to do one because I wanted to be a a presenter at something else. And the person who interviewed me said well, most of our presenters have a TED TEDx talk. So I thought, okay, I guess that's the next thing I'm going to do. So I found a local TEDx and I was working with the curator and I was trying desperately to not talk about channeling. I did not feel comfortable or safe.

That was years ago and in my journey at the time, while I was doing it professionally, I wasn't as confident as I sit today and being able nor as well studied about it. So now I have the, the data and the science that I can refer people to if they're truly interested. But the curator would. She would say to me okay, give me a sample, you know, write me a script of what you would want to talk about. And I, I covered every area except channeling. And she finally said to me what is it that you do professionally? And I told her well, this is what I do, but it's very hard to explain. I can probably just show you in a session.

So she had a session with me and at the end of the session she said you must speak of this in your TED talk. This belongs. The fact that you were able to connect with this loved one of mine, that loved one of mine, the messages, the way they resonated, these are the things I could hear them saying you have to do to talk about this. So I did and it was scary and and it's because I knew you know, a TED talk is out there forever it's not like I can say I changed my mind. Can we pull that video? So it's really been a transformational process for me to have that out and so many people resonate with the message and it has given courage to others, just because I was willing to step into that for myself.

Yeah, exactly, and it takes those first few people to step out there and to take that risk. So I appreciate you doing that and you know and putting yourself out there. And again, we know we have to educate people that there is data out there, that there is science for people that want that. But the most important thing is people trusting their own experiences. You know if you, if you go to a channel and they actually channel someone for you, you're going to know whether it's real or not.

You're so right and I encourage everybody because there's all different types of psychics, mediums, channels. If it doesn't resonate with you as the customer or client, it's not for you, then it's okay. You do not have to believe something that someone else tells you that really doesn't feel right to you, and that's really important, because we never want to give our power away like that.

Right, Right. So I'm curious, you know again. You know you're only one of a handful of people have talked about channeling someone who has dementia, or someone who's in a coma, or someone even who's autistic, people who aren't able to communicate with us verbally the way they normally do. Do you get clients coming to you now asking you to channel people like that? Like, am I Okay? Yeah, Definitely.

I work with a lot of parents who want to hear from the sole perspective of their children. Sometimes they will have developmental situations that make it hard to clearly communicate. Sometimes a child's very young and not as verbal. I've channeled a lot of autistic individuals from the sole perspective to help their loved ones to navigate what they need and stay connected to them Absolutely All different types of circumstances that render a person challenged with clear communication, and there's lots and lots of situations like that.

Yeah, I think that's a whole area that we haven't really thought about, like people who are nonverbal for whatever reason. And the first time I heard of it it was from a person who was a medium and this family had a loved one who was at the end of life and they were trying to decide whether they should do euthanasia or not or let the person go. And I came to this person and said can you read her? I don't know, I've never tried to read anybody in the body before and, to surprise, she was able to.

Yes, yes, and I actually do that for people, for their animal companions as well. Yeah, when they get to a place where they want to do what's right for the animal, but they don't know if that animal is ready. So we can channel that as well.

So what's been your experience with that, because I know a lot of people really struggle with that When's the right time, and did I do it too soon or did I wait too late? What's been your experience with channeling animals when they're at that stage? What are just giving me some examples or what just general?

Well, my experience from the channeling aspect of it is pure love comes through and that being does communicate what they need or are preparing their human for. And we're always going to question this. I mean, as an animal lover and one who has had to support some of my own animals in their transition. Even knowing what I know and being assured in the moment that I'm making the right choice, I am still left, brain still going to go back and wonder was that the right timing? Was this a sign? Was that this is just normal? We're going to question ourselves. It's heartbreaking.

Grief is complicated and questioning ourselves is a very natural part of the process. But what I in the channeling I don't tell people. Yes, this is what you should do now. I let that soul communicate what, how they would like to experience the time that they are in the body, what they need from their environment, from their human, sometimes from the medical community. I'm not a medical medium and I'm not giving medical advice, but sometimes pain relief is an issue, right, so that's something that can come through to give them some comfort. So there are a lot of different pieces of information that can be really helpful. And when my clients almost all of them for whom I've channeled their animal companions at end of life issues have come back and said was thank you so much, that was really helpful. It let me trust myself and my knowing of my companion, because we really doubt ourselves under that kind of stress and pressure.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. This has been my feeling or impression is that animals don't fear death the way that we do and people say, well, that's because they're skilled. Their cognitive skills aren't high enough to fear death. They don't understand it. I don't think that's true at all. I think they understand. It's just a transition and I think that's why they don't fear it.

That's right, and you could argue that our cognitive skills are overdeveloped. So that's all we fear as we walk around. You know, it's a cultural thing, though, because you can find other cultures in which there is no fear of death. It's celebrated, honored, it's sacred, and it's here Western tends to be, from the time we're very young. This is what is taught to us Be afraid, it's something to avoid at all costs. This is just our cultural conditioning.

I truly believe. That's why I was saying earlier, I think it's only been the last couple hundred years that we've come to this, this, this, this Western mindset, this materialistic mindset, this science. So there's still people around the world, lots of people around the world, that understand who we are, where we come from, where we're going, and they don't fear death. And we fear what we don't understand, which is natural, and we put death like let's just put it out of our minds, let's not think about it, where I'm never going to die, no one's ever going to die, and that's kind of the way we go through life with our eyes closed.

Yeah, it's sad. It's because because death can be beautiful. I know, with my mom's passing it did not look like she was going to be able to transition peacefully, but she did and I'm so grateful and I was right there. I didn't even notice that she left. It was that peaceful and, after so much tumult and so much chaos and and strife, the fact that she was able to let go with my father and I present with her and a very loving hospice nurse who gave our family our space to be in circle with her. It was.

It was beautiful, it was exquisite and she deserved that, yeah, and you had not to give away everything that she's talked about in the talk, but you had a little bit of a surprise when you channeled your mother first, about her transition being sooner than you thought it was going to be. I'm trying to remember what you're Well, you were.

you were saying that you know, you're like getting ready for hospice.

When she was still, her body was still healthy. Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you for the cue.

Yeah, yeah. There were a lot of surprises in that journey with my mom at the end, some of which were really horrendous, but that one I started to have a sense of what it was like to be in a hospital, to have a sense that my mom was ready for hospice before any signals of her physical body would suggest that she didn't have organ failure. She was still eating, she was still, you know, moving around, independently, walking. So I couldn't figure out why am I getting so much attention of my attention directed to end of life? End of life. So I ended up calling the hospice facility to get a little more information, like how does this work? Hospice usually, at least from what I understand in present, is it's about six months. If you're, you know, if they feel like you are likely to transition within six months, then you can be a hospice patient.

I would never have said that my mom only had six months at that point, but I didn't. I didn't know what the parameters were. So I spoke with someone on the phone and she said well, how long has your mom had dementia? And I said it's been more than 15 years. I think she dropped the phone because that's a very long time typically. And so she said we're, we're going to come over and evaluate. And once they laid eyes on my mom and they saw how agitated she was and how ill it is and she wasn't able to communicate pain, but it certainly seemed like she was in some sort of generalized pain they felt she would be a good hospice patient and they brought her into the facility. They stabilized her with medications, helped helped her get some rest, which she hadn't slept in weeks and weeks, and it was really horrible. And then we were able to bring her home where she could transition peacefully with her family, and that was what she wished.

Yeah, that hospice. I think the the definition has expanded in more recent years, so I think it's and I don't want to get this wrong, but like people are in in pain, a lot of pain, they'll help with pain management. If you have a condition where you're not expected to get better, sometimes you can get in the hospice. So it's not always that six month window that I think we often think about, and hospice can be very beneficial for people who are still continuing to live and I've seen other examples of besides your mother where they because I know how to do that kind of stuff and make that. So I encourage people if you're thinking about hospice, at least give them a call and see if you're, if your loved one qualifies, because I've heard nothing but good things about it.

Absolutely so. Forget what I said earlier about the six month thing, because I don't want to misspeak. They were brilliant in terms of comfort, and that's what hospice is there for. We as a culture tend to think of hospice as giving up on the person. No, it is giving them the quality of life and time with their loved ones in the best possible way. Yeah, exactly.

I think that's. That's a great endorsement for for hospice. You mentioned and I was looking at your introduction you mentioned channeling trees. You mentioned channeling the planet. What is? What is that experience like? What's it like to guy the earth? What is that experience like to channel that?

Oh, you can imagine. It's amazing, it's delightful. We are the earth, we are of the earth, we're not separated from her, and so the messages that I get from Gaia always bring me back to the center of of our essential self.

And we're here to be in harmony with this planet and with all life upon it, really, and we've gotten very far from that. Humanity has where we're exploitative, you know, and destructive behaviors have led that to the destruction and situation on the planet right now that all, all all of us are questioning Are we going to make it? Are we going to be able to, to redirect ourselves and and heal, heal and regenerate? So that remains to be seen. We do not know that yet, but she is always loving and always calling us back to this simplicity of the natural world.

Everything in the natural world, on left to its own devices, works perfectly, it's in harmony, it is in reciprocity and right exchange and we can learn a lot, because that's actually our foundation. But we have come away from it and we can return to it, and the earth is a beautiful way to return to it getting outside in the natural world, observing the creatures, all of them, the big ones, the small ones, the worm that's flopping around on the sidewalk and needs a little lift to the soil I do that all the time and the bumblebees you know just everything that we can notice in life. It brings us back to the truth and the essence and the beauty of us.

Yeah, I, you know, I hear this concept that Gaia is an organism, that Gaia has a soul, has a spirit, and, you know, it makes you kind of wonder like, ok, what is? What is the earth thinking about what we're doing to it? Because we are, it's almost like we're deliberately trying to destroy the earth.

It's very I experience in the channeling with her that she experiences pain. It's like watching your children self destruct.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, and you also mentioned trees. That's something. We don't think of trees as having souls or spirits. So what are, what are trees saying to us?

It depends. Talk to them yourself and find out. They say something different to each one of us, um, but they you know, they're a lot of my trees that I'm very familiar with, like there's some in Ohio in particular that I talk to whenever I'm there. I think of them as my secret keepers, so I can share what's on my heart, what I'm struggling with, just just as a place to let it land, and I feel like the tree energy. They hold it, they're grounded, they are rooted, they are steady, um, and they're generous, right, you think about all the shelter we get from trees and all of the many animals they host in their branches and the food that they produce for us. So trees are a wonderful energy to tune into if you are needing grounding and centering and connection to the earth. They are a very steady, um, stable presence.

Yeah, I love. I love the vision that you're giving here, um and again, I think it goes back to more of the way mankind's been for most of our existence, where we we looked at at rocks and trees and et cetera as having spirits and being interactive and living, and we looked at the earth, you know, as our mother. And again, as we've moved farther away from that and forgotten who we are, I think we've become a lot more impoverished because of it, because we don't, we don't know who we are, and this is why, again, why we fear death because we don't understand who, who even, we are. Um and the again that mind body connection. There's definitely a connection. There's a. I look at the brain as more of a transceiver. It receives consciousness and it also transmits to consciousness, and sometimes that transceiver gets broken, but it doesn't mean that person's mind has been destroyed. So that's what I take from your your lessons with Joanie.

Hmm, thank you, that's very well said. I appreciate it.

So I have to ask you about the fear that comes around channeling. Again, there's there's there's some fear about channeling mediumship. You know to use that word, you know it's of the devil. There are negative entities out there If you open yourself up and let forget. When I first started doing yoga, one of my evangelical evangelical friends was like oh, if you open yourself up, bad things are going to come in. Um, any concerns with negative entities? Any, any experience with that at all?

I don't have any concerns about it, but, um, I know that that is a very common fear. Often I find that it does come from religious teachings and if you really dig into religious history and how things and why things were interpreted in certain ways, you can kind of understand a little bit more about the intent. Then I'm not going to get into it because it's not the nature of our conversation, um, but educate yourself around, um, you know, keep your religion If it brings you peace and joy and um and love, and also dig in a little bit and find out what. What are you believing? Is it? Where did it come from? Who's the one that interpreted it? And um, decide for yourself.

When I channel, I am only attuning to what is known as fifth dimensional consciousness, that is, unity consciousness, that's pure love. So there isn't any room or space for that which is heavy or low vibration or darker to come through. I'm not attuning there. I have a guidance system. I call them my guides. We all have spirit guides and they're my gatekeepers and we have a very good agreement with one another, which is that they will bounce off anything that doesn't belong in my sphere, so that I am able to trust and lean into and receive the messages that are the highest loving vibrational frequency, and I do the work, the inner work, necessary to maintain myself in that frequency.

So if I'm feeling grumpy and irritable and fearful myself, I'm not going to do a channeling session. That's you know. I'm going to attract in whatever I'm a match to. That's just universal law. I didn't come up with it, so that's, that's how I think of it. There are so many things that we are trained to fear and again it has led us to this place of self that is really disconnected from our true place in the universe, which is as a part of a point of light, of many points of light that are meant to be interconnected. We're meant to be in interbeing with each other, not in opposition or fear of one another.

Thank you for answering that. I hate to even ask, have to ask the question, but I have to reinforce over and over again, you know, as I have people on their channels or mediums or anybody that's quote, opening themselves up. Because for some people the first question they ask what if something bad comes in?

And it's funny because my response to my friend. That time is like what if something good comes in? What if I open myself up? And you know you believe in the Holy Spirit? What if I open myself up to the Holy Spirit? Why do you? Why do we always have to go to the negative, to the fear? And I've I've talked to so many people who are channels, mediums, whatever word we want to use, and I see the healing that comes from it. And what you're doing is opening up, not even just the people who are on the other side, but now we're talking about our animals and our, our loved ones, who may be non-communicative. It could really help us to understand each other. You know so much better and even understand end of life. You know what's what's going on there.

Yes, yes, exactly, and I do understand where the fear mostly comes from. I have a very dear friend, just like your friend, who is really worried for me. I can't, I don't share my work with her. She, she can't. She prays for me, yeah yeah, she prays for my safety and that my openness will not bring in devil energy, and so I'm thankful for the prayers. I don't need them, I'm, you know, I feel very confident and comfortable with how I do this work, but I know it's coming from learned behavior, learned fear, and I know that she loves me too.

So and your friend does as well, and we need more love, and so I'm going to keep channeling love, and so are you, and eventually that will be the go to, I think, for most people it does come from a good place, it comes from a real sense of concern and, and I appreciate that.

but it's interesting because they'll say well, I'm going to pray for you. Well, now you're opening yourself up to spirit. You know, and I've, and I've realized as I've gotten older and start learning, it's like we use different words for the same thing. You know, christians will say I'm going to pray for you. Someone else might say I'm going to, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to open myself up to spirit. And I remember when I was back, I was going to this, this evangelical church, and we had this kind of a ceremony where you would choose a neighbor that you wanted to get saved in the next year and you write the name on a piece of paper and then burn the paper. And I'm like if, if a pagan did this, we'd call it witchcraft and say it was the devil. But that was perfectly fine because we were in a church.

Wow. That's why I'm really encouraging people to explore what they have come to just accept in their religious teachings or upbringings, not for the purpose of upending your life. Just, you are, you know, your own agent here. You have the ability to really feel into. Does this still resonate with me? Does this feel right aligned? Is this how I want to to be your feel, because we get to choose different thoughts and beliefs if we want to. Right.

And just, you know, just imagine the, the healing that you're holding yourself back from. You know, again going back to the Christian thing, we would do laying on the hands. You know, for example, the Bible teaches laying on the hands. Then I talk to people who are Reiki healers or other energy healers. You know the practice, healing, touch. It's this, it's the same thing. But if we call it one thing that it's bad, if we call it another thing that it's good, and if you've got a loved one, that again there's not communicative and they're coming to the end of life, Imagine the healing and the peace you could get if you could somehow communicate with that person.

Amen.

So tell me about. I know you're working on a second book, so it's first something about your first book and what people can find there, and then maybe you can give us a little sneak peek in your second book.

Yeah, the first book really wrote itself honestly. It just it was about my walk with my mother through her dementia. So it's a very practical book to do not to do my experiences and I think it's going to save a lot of people unnecessary making of mistakes, because I've made them already, so now you can read about them and make different ones. So that's it. It's called Joining Joni, and the book I'm writing right now is really going to teach people how to channel for themselves. So it's going to include parts of my journey that have been very pivotal for me as a channel, because I'm actually not that unique Like I'm, just like anyone else. You don't have to be born a certain way to be able to connect to spirit and to channel. So I'm sharing all the techniques and tools that I teach in my courses, that I teach my participants, that I allow, that have helped me to be the clearest, highest vibrational channel I am. Yeah.

I think. Well, both books sound very valuable and with dementia on the rise as population is aging and people my age deal with parents that are going through that, that's a very powerful resource to have to know, kind of like you said, some of the mistakes that people make and to start to maybe look at things a little differently. I remember when my father-in-law was going through dementia. This was again probably 15 years ago, so before I knew nearly what I know now and thinking, okay, well, he's delusional, he's talking about people that aren't here anymore. And then it wasn't only until years later I realized every time he was talking about people he had seen that we thought were pretend, there were all people that had been in his path and they were all on the other side. So he was seeing people who had crossed over. And that's the perspective I have now.

So, all these years later, with my mother-in-law going through similar things, not quite as bad with the delusions as he was, but again it's like we see it my life, when I both see it differently, having gone through that with him and having learned all the things we've learned about the spirit and the soul, and it's a much more peaceful for us thing, watching her make that transition and understanding she's not gone. She's at this point. She's going back and forth. It's kind of like when we sleep at night we go back and forth in our sleep and as our brain starts to shut down and tune out of this world, it just starts to focus more on the other world.

That's right, and if you have a loved one who has dementia and they are talking about seeing their loved ones who have crossed over, you can join them and ask them so who's here with you? Are they saying anything? What do you feel in their presence? How is this? How are you connecting? You can, there are some ways you can seek, if you wish to, to be part of that experience, because they have access to something that we don't, because we're talking ourselves out of it.

Right, exactly, and that can also help with our own fear of our deaths, as we all inevitably approach that point. If we can understand what it is that they're going through and seeing that it's not the end for them. And I think it's really interesting the language they'll use. Like they told me to get ready, they told me to pack my bags, they'll start to ask where's my passport, all these traveling metaphors that they use. So it helps you not to see the death as not the end.

That's right. It's a beautiful thing really.

It is. It is so tell people. I know you offer services, you do readings and you also teach, so tell people what you offer.

Yeah, I do. The majority of my work is private sessions where I work one-on-one with clients and I channel whatever they tell me to channel, so you can really ask any question that's on your heart. You can tune into any soul on the planet on the other side, your cat fluffy. Wherever you want to go, I am at your service. I will channel what's there for you. And then I also teach workshops and masterclasses. It's my greatest joy to watch people be astonished by their own ability to tune in and channel, so I love that I'm teaching a masterclass right now, and last class we were using a pendulum and just watching the faces of the participants as their pendulum was like moving and giving them answers yes and no. They were just so excited and I remember what that felt like years ago when I started that work. So that's what I do and my website is soulinsightcom.

It's awesome. Yeah, it's interesting. You talked about the pendulum because I know my wife started messing around with the pendulum for a while, but you also alluded to it a little bit earlier. You said the pendulum was like a tool that you use when you first get started and it's not necessary for you anymore. In sound sight.

That's right. One of my mentors used it as a way to probably, I think weed out those that were committed to the work and those that weren't, because using a pendulum requires such an inordinate amount of attention and concentration that it's not everybody is devoted to that. So if you can and you're willing to and you really want to hone this, this is the great tool for it. I don't use it really anymore. I used to use it to create charts of soul aspects of different clients, but I don't do that anymore. The channeling that comes through is just a stream of words and I see images and videos almost. But I like to teach it because you can have great success with it. It's a fun tool. They can be very pretty.

Yeah, yeah.

So why not?

So one of the last questions I want to ask you is I know you started channeling Joni before she transitioned. I assume you're still in contact with her. What is she telling you about what it's like where she is now?

Oh, it's beautiful where she is now and I know that from all the channelings that I've done of souls that have crossed over that report back through the channeling. My mom's presence for me takes the form in nature. She sends birds to me. In fact, she used to love cardinals, she loved brightly colored birds, and there is I'm not exaggerating, she died like over nine years ago there's a red male cardinal that harasses us in my house. He's not in my house, he's outside. He comes to the window every day constantly.

I don't think it's the same one because their lifespan isn't that long, but however she's doing that. She's magical at sending this bird because it looks in the window, it pecks at things. My dogs go crazy. I've got my son at all hours and it's our little joke, and that started the day she passed. That bird started to come then. So I feel her with me. We laugh together. You know my connection with my mom is as beautiful as it's ever been and I also at this time have so many other ancestors on the other side who offer me different support. Like Jennifer, she's always with me in my channeling sessions and she's helping me get the highest clarity, and I have an aunt who I adore and miss deeply, who same thing. I can hear her and feel her, and we're sharing experiences together. It's just a lovely aspect of being here in the body and also being connected to my loved ones that are not in the body anymore.

Yeah, I think. Thanks for saying that, because you know, I know a lot of times as our life progresses and we end up with more and more people on the other side, some people can get depressed about that, because I've heard people say, oh, all my people are on the other side, but they're still with us and I can see the joy in your face when you talk about your mother and you talk about Joanie, you talk about your ancestors, because we can still have that connection with them. And channeling sounds is a very formal sounding word and we're not all going to be professional channels or professional mediums. But learning to trust our own intuition, learning to shut down that left brain at least a little bit, you know, through meditation and stuff, can start to open you up to the world that's always around us.

That's right. And if you don't feel the presence of your loved one because I do have a lot of clients that will say I just don't feel them around me Trust that they are around you. It takes there's a learning curve here to our. I believe our job as those in the body is to find a closer frequency match to the subtle realm, which is a much higher frequency and obviously much more subtle, and we tend to be so dense here and so you know again, left brain focused and distracted that all these ways that our loved ones are trying to get our attention and stay in contact with us we are just not paying attention to, we're just distracted from. So don't blame yourself for that, just acknowledge probably they've been working on connecting with you for a while and you can do the work necessary to align your energy closer to theirs so you can have that communication more easily.

Yeah, that's, that was well said, because I get a lot of people tell me the same thing. It's like I don't, I'm not getting anything from them. Then we start to talk and they're like, well, yeah, I do have dreams about them. Or yeah, there is this cardinal that comes in my window every day, or I do see the number 1111 all the time, and so it's like, yeah, there it's, but it's it's not. That we look at those five physical senses and it's like, you know, we don't. I don't hear them in my ear, right, but you know. And so I guess maybe the last question I'm going to ask you about about that, because I've done a little bit of studying of channeling a mediumship, and what's it like when you're, how do you differentiate your thought from your, your loved one speaking to you, right? I'm going to try to channel my loved one and I hear Shayna say this and I'm like is that me or is that her?

Yeah. And then I would say does it matter? Because that question will block your access, because what it inherently suggests is that there's a wrong and a right. And if it's coming from yourself, even your greater grander, higher self, or your heart, or your imagination, then then that would be wrong. So so we have to, we have to make sure it's coming from Shayna. And how will you? You know, there's no way, that I know, of having looked at research, to differentiate this. So I say let's not.

If you feel like you're making this up, celebrate it. Everything in existence on this planet, not created by creator, but created by humans, was first made up, was first imagined. Use your imagination. If it feels like it's something that you just assume, you know that your loved one would say you're probably right on, then why would you think they'd say something so wildly different when you knew them, you know so beautifully in the body? So there's that's. That's where I feel like we really need to start to give ourselves the freedom to connect, celebrate whatever comes through. And when you ask you know, is this, am I just making this up? Say, oh, that's good, I'm making it up, I'm in the imagination, I'm in the receptivity of it and that will continue the relationship.

Awesome. Thank you, anything that you wish. I asked you that I didn't anything you want to leave as as a final word for the people that are listening.

No, I think you were pretty comprehensive, brian, thanks.

All right. Well, thanks so much for being here for doing this. Thank you for stepping out and doing the TEDx talk and putting that out there, because we need more people doing that. We need more people spreading this message and letting people know that we're all still connected and this stuff is real. So thanks, stephanie.

Thank you too.