Becoming a Professional Wisdom Keeper in the Healing Arts Rosy's new book COMING SOON!
Wisdom Keepers and Seekers: A Working Definition
For centuries, Native American and indigenous cultures have identified the elders and teachers in their communities as Wisdom Keepers. Wisdom Keepers have been revered and trusted not only for their sharp minds, but their compassionate hearts and strong spirits. Able to embody and impart sacred, holistic teachings, and to nurture a humble-yet-potent relationship with the Great Mystery, Wisdom Keepers have helped their communities through hard times for generations. Both spiritually and practically, they’ve served their communities by bringing everyone in the tribe closer together, as well as closer to the earth, and the cosmos. Many people in today’s world are Wisdom Seekers. We long for the healing and empowering guidance Wisdom Keepers have traditionally provided in the past, but we have lost touch with the ways of our ancestors. Very few of us still live in indigenous or traditional communities where elders are respected and responsible for passing down ancient, experientially-tested wisdom to the younger generations. Because of this, many of us turn to modern-day professional Wisdom Keepers for support and inspiration. Professional Wisdom Keepers are today’s therapists, healers, coaches, psychologists, bodyworkers, astrologers, psychics, spiritual counselors, yoga teachers, inspirational speakers, workshop leaders, meditation facilitators, metaphysical mediums, urban shamans, and more.
This book is dedicated to the modern-day Wisdom Keepers of the world, and to the sincere Wisdom Seekers they aim to serve.
ABOUT THE BOOK
After observing diverse and evolving healing arts communities for decades, I’ve come to believe that an ongoing, nuanced and collective dialogue on professionalism is deeply needed. Walking a Fine Line was written to empower, inspire and support professional Wisdom Keepers and communities around the world. My hope is that together, through a shared and honest inquiry, we can raise the quality of our collective service and grow as a planetary family of creative, caring individuals. An alternative healing arts movement emerged in the West well over a century ago, in response to a growing desire to acknowledge that we are more than our neuroses, psychological problems and material struggles. Many who became healing arts professionals felt called to honor the ‘feminine,’ the intuitive and the spiritual, to use modalities that bridged ancient wisdom with modern practices, and to embrace philosophies that transcended the intellect while acknowledging the manifesting power of Mind. They came to see their clients and students as Spirit in form, as empowered beings, fully capable of thriving—not as helpless patients, barely able to survive.
As a rich and multi-faceted community of practitioners, teachers, coaches and healers took shape, its members began to rely on holistic and integrative ways of working with people. No longer following purely illness-based models and symptomatic medical treatments, they embraced a rainbow of paradigm-shifting approaches to healing—like the expressive and dramatic arts, somatics and bodywork, meditation and mindfulness, shamanism and shadow work, divination tools and cosmically-inspired systems, and more.
Today, most professional Wisdom Keepers (standing gratefully on the shoulders of these brave pioneers) know the importance of making ethical decisions, holding conscious boundaries, and understanding the power dynamics that often arise within healing and teaching relationships. Intellectual appreciation, however, doesn’t always translate into responsible and congruent action. Although I wrote Walking a Fine Line back in the early nineties, I believe it holds special relevance in today’s times. With the #MeToo Movement gaining steam, we are being asked as a collective to better understand the emotional, psychological and socio-political forces that contribute to abuses of power and systemic inequality. Since many of us working as alternative professionals have no external authority to evaluate the quality of our services, and no checks and balance system to keep our egos (and shadows) in check, we are especially vulnerable to losing touch with our integrity, without even realizing it.
If you are a professional Wisdom Keeper, and if you live, work or serve in an alternative learning or healing arts community, my hope is that this book has some relevance for you. Though I explore therapeutic concepts and applications, you don’t have to be a professional psychotherapist to benefit from what’s inside. Walking a Fine Line speaks to the knowledge, wisdom, skill, art and balance we all need to be of true service to those who come to us, regardless of the technique or modality we use. Please join me in exploring what it truly requires to cultivate professional Wisdom Keeping integrity.