Finding Peace in San Diego

Have you ever struggled to receive care when you're always the one giving? That uncomfortable feeling when someone showers you with kindness and you don't know how to accept it? My recent journey to San Diego cracked me wide open in unexpected ways, forcing me to confront my relationship with receiving.

When my retreat attendee-turned-friend Betsy invited me to her beachfront Del Mar home, I had no idea the profound lessons awaiting me. As she lavished me with extraordinary hospitality—trips to the San Diego Zoo, boating excursions, the aquarium, and introduced me to countless friends—I felt almost overwhelmed by her generosity. When I confessed this discomfort, her response hit me squarely in the heart: "You deserve it, and you deserve to be taken care of." Those simple words illuminated my lifelong struggle with receiving care as freely as I give it.

This revelation sparked a cascade of boundary realizations. During a transcendent sound bath experience with a vibrational therapist's extraordinary instruments—seven-foot gongs, crystal bowls, and Vogel crystals programmed to balance energy—I entered a state of profound relaxation that opened me to crucial insights. I recognized I needed to stop co-hosting retreats with people not matching my energy and commitment. I'd been overgiving—handling logistics, marketing, technology—compensating for what others weren't providing. Right there, I decided to establish clear facilitator rates and honor my energetic limitations.

Perhaps most challenging was confronting my 24/7 accessibility to clients. By giving out my personal phone number, I'd created unhealthy patterns where the mere sound of a text message triggered anxiety. This constant energetic drain was affecting my wellbeing, and I recognized I'd enabled dependent behavior in some clients. The journey of unwinding these patterns has just begun, alongside exploring potential relocations to Santa Fe or Bend, Oregon—places calling to my spirit.

What boundaries do you need to establish in your own life? How might valuing your energy transform your capacity to serve others authentically? I'd love to hear your thoughts—drop me a message or share your own boundary journey with our community.

To Connect With Me, Visit Me At: www.joyfulshaman.com

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Have Questions Or Episode Ideas?? Email Me!
Naomi@joyfulshaman.com

Thank You So Much For Supporting Me & Energetically…The Collective

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome Back After a Break
• 1:06 Beach House Hospitality in Del Mar
• 5:04 Extraordinary Sound Bath Experience
• 8:45 Retreat Realizations and Boundaries
• 17:00 Returning to Florida and Physical Pain
• 25:30 Future Plans and Potential Relocations

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Welcome back to the Joyful Shaman. This is Naomi, your host with the most, and I am so glad to be back with all of you. I'm sorry I've been away for a little while. That's partly due to my travels. I'm traveling every three weeks for either personal, spiritual, or leading a retreat or professional. And also life is life ink, and astrology transits are happening and waves of emotions, some lessons, some challenges are coming through, and I am integrating. So I am living, but I am back to share with you all right where I left off. Don't think I've forgotten that it was about San Diego. So let's just get right into it. I'm going to talk about very brief about my trip because that was a very personal trip, but more about the lessons, experiences that I've had, challenges, aha moments, and how I began to integrate that when I came back to Florida. So I left to San Diego on Friday, August 1st, and everything went fine with my flight. I was picked up by my amazing friend Betsy, who was an attendee at a retreat that I facilitated at in Mexico at the end of April. She invited me to come and spend time with her in August at her home, and she lives in Del Mar across from the beach in a very typical California beach house, which is gorgeous. And I was very grateful to spend 10 wonderful days with her. She is a kind-hearted, huge person that has a big heart. And I have never been taken care of as well as she took care of me, so much so that I was feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of grand hospitality and kind gestures and taking me everywhere, paying for things, um, you know, just really ensuring that I'm having a wonderful time when honestly I could have just hung out, slept half the day, every day, walked on the beach, and been a happy little clam. But she took me everywhere. She took me to the San Diego Zoo. I met so many of her friends. We went boating. Um, we went to the aquarium. We went to all these wonderful restaurants. Like I just had an amazing time. And I told her, I said, Betsy, you know, I'm a little overwhelmed with all of this. And she said, You deserve it, and you deserve to be taken care of. And I want you to recognize that about yourself, that you deserve this. And I hope that other people can love on you in this way and that you can love on yourself this way because you're always worth it. And that really hit my heart because I realized it's so hard for me to receive. I'm always giving and giving because I love giving. It's what I do, and a lot of us do, but for some reason I still was struggling with receiving, even just receiving compliments, even just, you know, when someone tells me you've been a huge part of my, you know, transformational journey. You've helped me fix my life. I'm so grateful to you every day. I get a little like, okay, yay. I'm thank you. But I'm also like uncomfortable. But I also need to like recognize like this is not from a place of ego, but like I'm grateful that God has put me in your path to be able to help you in any way I can. And so I'm starting to learn to better reframe that. So I was able to fully rest. You know, I slept well, I ate well, I relaxed, my body felt safe, my mind wasn't racing, I wasn't thinking about posting on social media, I wasn't thinking about retreats in that moment. You know, I was just being present. And that's really hard for me to do sometimes, to be perfectly honest. I'm always wrapped up as a Gemini. My ear mind is constantly more, more and more information, learning, learning, learning, intellectual stimulation. And I had to really learn to stop and slow down. And one of the requests that I had asked of Betsy, uh, because she's like, What do you want to do? And I said, take me to a sound bath. I said, I always have to facilitate them as a sound healer, and I rarely get to experience them because I'm always so busy. And when they are happening with another healer in my community, unfortunately, I am always working. And so she said, Okay, I'm gonna find a sound bath for you. So she talked to a friend who she has an apprenticeship with a gentleman who is a vibrational therapist of close to 20 years and a former scientist as well. And on his property, he created a building. He built a building that's almost EMF free. And inside of this place, he allows about seven people every Monday night for two hours to experience a sound bath with him. Let me tell you, I have never experienced anything like this, and I will probably never experience it again unless I'm there with him. But inside of this building are some of the most incredible instruments I've ever seen in my life. He has two seven-foot gongs, various other gongs, a full harp, guitar, hand pin, theramen, talk about sci-fi, woo-woo, type of sounds. But when you're in it, you're like, yes. Um, other instruments that I've never seen before, flute, like 120 Tibetan bulls and crystal bulls together. I mean, it was incredible. I was like, oh my God, this is unreal. I'm so grateful. In the center of the room, this gentleman has a very large table that has all of these lights on metal bars that hang over you very close to the body. And he inserts eight Vogel crystals. And if you know anything about crystals, vogal crystals are very high-grade lab-created crystals that um are used in a lot of our electronics and things like that, but they can be really big and they are energy transmitters. So he hooks them up to these special lights and they actually flash based on your energy to help balance your energy. Well, guess who was chosen to lie on the table, yours truly? And I was so grateful because in those two hours, I definitely exited this planet and this dimension in a really great way. He put bowls on my body, around my body, you know, I had an eye mask on. I was on a grounding sheet. I was in absolute bliss. And I was grateful for it. And you know what happened? If you recall, my other episode talking about my experience in Mount Shasta at the end of our nine-hour tour, um, I started to experience that a little bit. So either my body must have been in deep, deep relaxation that I was able to open my energetic feel to other dimensions and frequencies, but I'm still learning what that is. And I still feel some kind of galactic, otherworldly connection. And maybe my body's just trying to process it. Regardless, it cracked me open emotionally. So while I was out there, I started to process some thoughts and feelings that I had been having in regards to retreats, in regards to boundaries professionally, in regards to um believing in myself and in my abilities, in regards to my health. Um, I was feeling amazing in Mount Shasta. I felt really good in San Diego, but the food is a little rich. I was off of my special fast. So, you know, eating breads, rice, cheese, all the good stuff. Um, the inflammation started to come in, and I'm like, I'm not feeling so great. And my right knee always feels it first. And so um I started to, you know, have a little bit of pain. And when the pain starts to increase, my mind starts to spin, emotions start to get the better part of me sometimes. So I'm sitting there and I'm reflecting on retreats. And I'm gonna be honest, I'm really struggling in the retreat world right now, um, with filling my retreats, getting it out there, feeling like I'm being seen, like feeling that people value me in my local community and out there on the internet, you know. And it's not because I need validation, it's more of like I am doing all of this work. Do you even see it? Does it resonate with you? And that's really hard for me because I don't do it for others. I do it for myself because I'm walking my journey and I'm the only one that can walk my journey. But it's also like I want to share this. I want to teach people that really want to heal themselves and live their best life, but I just can't seem to find those people right now. And it can be very isolating and alienating. So I've been struggling a little bit with retreats. You know, obviously Mount Shasta was amazing. And I have an upcoming retreat actually in three weeks in Towns, New Mexico, that I'm still needing like three more people to fill. And so my co-host for that retreat lives also in San Diego and uh she lives in La Jolla. And so I was seeing her as well. She's very, very good, longtime friends with Betsy. So would come over often and see me and we talk about business. We even did a Zoom meeting out there with someone that had registered, you know, and I just started to come to the realization of like the people that I am trying to co-host retreats with are not stepping up either because they don't know how, or they don't want to, management of time, whatever it is, it's just an unequal energy exchange. And I realize while I'm out there, I no longer want to co-host retreats with people. I can host my own retreats and I might do two or three a year, max. But I rather just facilitate. Why? Because it allows me to stay in my lane and just focus on showing up, holding the container, being there for the group of people, preparing for the ceremony and not overstepping my personal boundaries and overgiving to make up and bridge the gap from what I think is lack. And that was a really hard thing for me to come to the awareness and accept. And once I did, it's like I woke up and I'm like, I'm no longer going to co-host. And I'm gonna follow through with New Mexico because we are in it and we have people signed up for it, even though we need three more. But the retreat that I was gonna do in Isla Mujeres in Mexico in November, I pulled out of actually. I was like, this is not an alignment with me. I don't have the time, energy, or resources to put into this and put into New Mexico so close together. I also felt that the host for the Mexico retreat, although a wonderful person, I think needed to go on this journey on her own for her own growth. And that was not my lesson to learn. And I felt that I was kind of overgiving from a logistical business admin side, a tech side, a marketing side, and I just wasn't being met at the same level. Now I do realize that no one's ever going to work as hard as me on the things that I care about. But it's also like if you don't know how, then we need to bring in a third-party person, and that's what you need to do. I can't do the job of three people, and you're just like, hey, I'm hanging out, waiting for people to show up, you know? And so I decided that I'm going to create facilitator rates while in San Diego. And I decided, you know what? I need to value my time as a guide, as a teacher, as a person that's listening to people, as a person that's doing a tremendous amount of energy work and emotional balancing with people and channeling, mediumship, psychism, all of that. As much as I love it, it's super draining. And those of you that are intuitives and work in the healing arts know what that feels like. As much boundaries as you try to put, it's physically exhausting. I mean, think about mental health counselors, um, psychologists, psychiatrists. That's hard work. Doctors, that's hard work. And so I'm like, I need to value myself. I need to value my time going out to people's retreats. You know, it's not the ceremony. I never charge for ceremony. That's not shamanism. But you are needing the energetic exchange to pay your bills and and put food on the table and keep a roof over your head, you know? And with me still having a current brick and mortar business in Central Florida, it's also my time away from my regular monthly clients. And I've actually also opened up my online booking as well. And that's just recent, and I'll get to that. But it's to pay for my time away. So what I would be earning in my business and being available for online based on the length of time of your retreat, and for me to go out and facilitate for you, that's what I'm gonna charge, plus airfare and accommodations if needed. And then I decided, well, there's a lot of people that are newer in the retreat world, like me. And maybe they're not well tech versed. I see that. I work a lot with older people that are like, I don't know how to do all of the stuff that you do on social media. I don't know how to make reels, I barely know how to post, I don't know hashtags, I don't know groups, I don't know this. And I get that. And I love being creative, it's a super amazing outlet for me, just like podcasting right now. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm going to offer with another rate extended business and logistical help. Like, if you don't know how to create a landing page or you don't have a website, sure, we can use my website. I'll create a landing page. I'll link everything, I'll link all the social media, I'll backlink this, I'll do all the things so that you have greater visibility to be able to have something beautiful, presentable with working buttons and links that link to contracts that lead to registration forms. If you need an invoicing system, you can use mine. I'll transfer you the monies. Like that will be an additional fee on top of my facilitation fee. That way I know that my work is being valued and that I am not overgiving of my time and my energy, like I said, to make up lack for somebody that may not be able to. And that's why I'm no longer going to co-host. That's why I'm gonna stay in my lane as a facilitator because it keeps me in check. So that's the number one thing that um I really got out of that time out there. And so I was really proud of myself for being like, when I come back to Florida, I need to pull out of the Isla Mujeres retreat. God bless her. I pray that she feels it. It's gonna be wonderful if she does. It's just not for me. It's not alignment with me anymore. And then I also spoke with my co-host when I came back to Florida because I was just noticing her behavior was just a little bit funny. She had been chefing out in Costa Rica and was in between chef gigs for retreats. I was getting ready to go out to Kauai after I had left California for another retreat. And I was like, hey, you are kind of dropping the ball. I don't know what's going on. Are you okay? But you know, you're not meeting me at my level. And you're kind of doing some off-the-wall things with our retreat in New Mexico that we haven't talked about. And if we're going to be co-hosts, we are 50-50. We have to run through these decisions together, you know? And she was like, No, I understand. I'm so sorry. I know I'm hard to work with, this and that. And so I told her, I said, I love you, but this is the last retreat I can co-host with you. You be a chef and I'll be a facilitator. If you're running a retreat, you want me to come facilitate, pay me my fee. If I'm running a retreat and you can come in chef, I will pay you your chef, right? We stay in our lane, we preserve our friendship, and we don't, you know, I don't get mad at her. She doesn't exasperate me, as she says, you know. So I was proud of myself for voicing that. And then the third thing that I learned about myself is boundaries, not just any boundaries, professional boundaries with clients that I have helped and continue to help in an ongoing fashion. I realized that I still had some old programming about as a healer, as a counselor, as a teacher, as a guide, I don't have to be accessible and available to people at any time. I have realized over the past, I don't know how many years, I give people my personal cell phone number, which I have highly regretted, and just say, like, hey, reach out to me anytime that you need to. One thing is if you're having an emergency, another thing is if you need to reschedule your appointment, another thing is you're like freaking out over a bunch of normal life things, and you're like, oh my gosh, I need help. What do I do? And then I'm feeling responsible for you and being like overgiving of my time where I'm just like maybe watching a movie, maybe eating a snack, maybe I'm taking a nap. My text noise, the little beep sound on iPhones, you know, that's the typical text sound. I have now only turned that off. And I have to keep my phone on silent because when I hear that sound, it triggers trauma. It triggers anxiety in me. Now my brain is wired to hear that sound, and I'm like, fuck, is that a client? Am I needed? Do I have to respond? Oh my gosh, I just want time for myself. So now I'm having to rewire my brain by keeping all of that silent. Now, this is something that I have to undo, and it's going to be a process. So having high amounts of accessibility to people constantly is draining my energy. It's allowing those energetic ties that they have to me to be wide open and me just constantly feeding energy to those people where they feel like, hey, Naomi just is always there for me quickly and responds to me rather quickly. I'm just going to keep doing this behavior. I have enabled that behavior. It's not them, it's me. And so now I have to slowly pull back. So when someone texts me, I'll be like, hey, friend, you know, I'm not in the capacity to be able to help you right now, but here are the tools that you know how to use. Do them. And then, you know, if you are still in dire need, check in with me or, you know, call your mental health counselor. Because I'm not a licensed mental health counselor. I'm a spiritual guide and teacher. I can't fix all of your problems, but I can't also be a band-aid and be like, send me some good energy. Yeah, I'll send you lots of love and thoughts and, you know, I'll pray for you in that moment, but I've got to keep it going because I've got a life. You know, I got to think about me. And right now, I have inundated my energy lately, where I'm like, I need to cocoon. I need to go into a chrysalis and become sludge and then emerge a butterfly again. But back to San Diego. So these are the awarenesses that I had. And it was so hard for me to leave California. As much as I love the West Coast energy, the West Coast vibe. And I'm not really a big ocean person. I really loved being on those high cliffs looking over the Pacific, just feeling my heart swell with love. It brought tears to my eyes. Betsy took me to a beautiful meditation garden where I could have just been there all day looking at the koi, sitting on the bench, you know, touching the flowers. It was just really beautiful. And I was like, man, you know, I hope these people know how grateful they are to be in such a freeing, high-energy place, you know? And so I came back to Florida, um, you know, almost mid-August. And my God, as soon as I land, my knee is burning, swelling, the heat is miserable, I am miserable. I had a bad, bad flight. I made a very poor decision of changing my window seat to an aisle seat because I like to look ahead on the flight list. And if I see a possibility of an open row where there might not be other people, I like to move around. Well, I did that and I did not realize, yeah, that flight is totally full. So I'm stuck in an aisle seat for five hours. And the young woman that was next to me literally drank so much water and kept eating all her snacks that she constantly had to get up to use the bathroom. So I I don't know if I've explained my ritual on planes. I wear an eye mask that blacks out. I have my earbuds in, least listening to frequency music. Um, I have a face mask on. So my whole face is like, you can't see it. And, you know, I'm sleeping or deeply, deeply meditating. So she kept tapping me to get up, which is gives me anxiety. And I don't like to get up on planes because as a bigger girl, it's really uncomfortable for me because I'm a big booty judy and I don't like to bother people. And but I'm working on that. So it was really uncomfortable for me. I wasn't as relaxed. It gave me anxiety, and then my headphone battery died. And so I'm sitting there listening to like five children scream. I felt so bad for those babies, and then I still have my earbuds in trying to just focus on my breath, but my back started to seize up because of the anxiety, because of not being able to move my legs, not having sufficient space. I had just made very poor decisions. So I get to Florida, I am like, get me the hell off this plane. My buddy's waiting to pick me up. I'm trying to get my bag, and I just feel my whole back seizing, my knees seizing, the muscles around it, and I'm like, oh no, oh no, I gotta get home. I gotta be able to walk. Well, I had this sharp pain since like mid-August. And I started to see my friend, the chiropractor, um, who helps me, and I was like, oh my God, you know, please, please help me so that I am not feeling bad, you know. And he was trying to adjust me, doing my therapy for my scoliosis, trying to loosen up, you know, the muscles and my legs so I could be ready for England because I knew I was going to be doing miles and miles and miles of walking. And and um, I wanted to be ready. I was worried about my knee hurting or or straining or me tearing possibly something with one wrong step on dirt, on a cobblestone road, on brick or something, you know. So I'm coming back to Florida and I'm really mad and I'm grumpy and I'm like, I don't want to be here, you know, typically how I usually am. And then, you know, I'm like, okay, well, let's shift our mindset. And so I focused on updating my website, you know, putting out my facilitator, putting up all the pictures from Shasta, um, checking in with the ladies post-Shasta, like we're still in Mercury retrograde. And so just kind of acclimating, seeing all my clients that I didn't see while I was in San Diego. So, like hustling and bustling in my studio, and um just being forthright and honest with a woman of Islamushed is just being like, I can't do this, you know. Either I need we need to shift and you pay my facilitator fee, or it's I need to bow out. And I needed to bow out, and that's really what it was. And um, you know, just working with clients and just working with my energy and trying my best not to overextend my boundaries. So San Diego as a whole, I will totally go back. I love it. I will totally go spend time with Betsy. It's so funny. Betsy's like, my door's literally always open, which is true. I'm not used to that, but I guess it's pretty safe there. And she's like, So if you come, you just show up at my house. My son's here. He always is used to my friends just coming over anytime. And and she's like, and even if I'm not there, you always have a place here with me. And that makes me feel really good because I know that I can go somewhere where I'm like, I need to recalibrate, I need to be by the water, I need to play with her dog. You know, I I just need to be in West Coast energy. Um, I know I have a place to go there. So San Diego, super amazing, learning to receive love and hospitality, coming into my awareness about my boundaries and really working hard to do that. And I'm being tested by it all the time. And um realizing it's time for me to end the cycles of co-hosting. And in fact, I'm not gonna end my cycles of re-hosting retreats myself, but I am gonna do a pause after my St. Augustine retreat in February and maybe after doing Mount Shasta again next year because I really want to focus on relocating and don't think I didn't forget that I said I know where I'm moving. Well, I think I do. After, you know, taking some time, I realize that my heart is being pulled into places. Of course, Santa Fe, New Mexico definitely has my heart, which is why I wanted to do TAWs. And in fact, I'm going back in November, literally a week after I get back with my mom to do a scouting trip to see if this is a place that I could root and live here, be successful, be happy. And I feel like I could. The other place is Bend, Oregon. I don't know why, but God keeps putting in my dreams and in my heart and in my mind, check out Oregon, check out Oregon. I don't know if it's a place for me to go and rest, to possibly meet people, to collaborate, to facilitate for their retreats. I'm not sure what that is, but my plan is to go in the spring um to check it out. Like in the late spring after the snow, most of it melts with Cassie if she's willing to go with me so we can go hiking together and just spend a couple of days and be like, is this a place that I could be? A part of me feels that I'm gonna be more drawn to Santa Fe because I've been there before. I know what it feels like when it feels like home and I'm super calm and I'm at peace and my mind is super clear there. I channel really well there, I trust myself there because my sun line runs through Santa Fe and my astrology, but my Pluto line also runs there. So it's like deep death and rebirth transformation. So it's very much like strong shaman energy. You know, you shine the brightest, but you're also gonna be challenged and pushed to the limit. So you will be expanded in a lot of ways there. So it's more about like what kind of life do you want? Do you want big expansion, big energy being seen? Or will bend Oregon be more of a place where you can land softly and just live and exist there, but not necessarily grow in shamanic ways or maybe professionally in the way that you like. What do you want and this part of life? And who's to say? I might live in one and then move to the other one, or spend time between both. I'm going to begin to determine that starting in November. So I just wanted to check in with you guys. I've recorded this episode for San Diego, but I am going to record another episode to talk about England because OMG, I am fresh from England by almost a week, and I have got to give you that download, and I've got to give you the whole story about that because that was a journey and a half, and it was wonderful. I will say I loved England. Thank you to all my UK listeners. You guys are amazing. I will totally be back. Um, and I'm planning on going to Ireland for my 40th birthday. So, Ireland, welcome me. And I definitely want to go back to England, North England, Scotland, all of those places as well. But I will save that for the next episode. But if you are finding this, if you are finding my podcast, you're listening to some of my episodes, you're listening to my journey. I am a young shaman, you know, I am 38. But I want you to know that you're not alone. And I hope that maybe my stories and my moments of growth and my rawness and my emotions here and my vulnerability help inspire you for your journey. And I want you to know that there is a purpose and a place here, and there's a reason why you are incarnate, incarnated in this lifetime. And know that you can always reach out to me. I know that I'm trying to hold boundaries, but I am here to be of service to humanity. So I will respond to you. But if you find this, be well, friend, stay in the light, love yourself. You are not alone, you've got a friend in me. And until we meet again, be well. Satnam friends.