Denise Perez - Alchemic Healings: The Art of Remembering

What if healing isn't about repairing what is broken, but remembering that we were never truly broken in the first place?

In this episode of "In Conversation," host Terry Shepherd sits down with Denise Perez, the author of Alchemic Healings: The Art of Remembering and the founder of Alchemic Healings in Alachua County, Florida. Denise shares her deeply personal and mystical journey of stepping off the corporate "hamster wheel" as a six-figure commercial insurance producer to rediscover her authentic self.

Catalyzed by the emotional heartbreak of her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and a chance encounter with an NLP practitioner, Denise shifted from being a 15-year atheist to exploring energetic modalities and past life regressions. She also openly discusses her profound experiences with plant medicines like ayahuasca and mushrooms. During a 2024 ayahuasca ceremony in the Peruvian Andes, Denise connected with her deceased mother, who encouraged her to write her book and simplify the concepts of spiritual alchemy for others.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How healing is a process of reclamation, moving away from fear and toward freedom.
• Why plant medicines and psychedelics can act as "permission slips" to help our subconscious let down its guard.
• The importance of befriending your ego instead of seeking "ego death".
• How our everyday human existence, including our relationships and finances, acts as the perfect laboratory for spiritual alchemy.
• Why finding your own inner joy and learning to surrender can lead to profound life transformations.

Through her writing and her practice, which includes Reiki, access bars, and Akashic records readings, Denise aims to empower people to become conscious participants in their own transformation.

Connect with Denise Perez: To learn more about her book and her spiritual practices, visit her website at alchemichealings.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:35

In conversation with Harry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator and author. I deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

What if healing isn't about repairing what's broken, but remembering that we were never truly broken in the first place? That idea is at the heart of Denise Pettett's book, Alchemic Healings, the Art of Remembering, a deeply personal exploration of transformation, spiritual awakening, and the power of reconnecting with our authentic selves. Denise is the founder of Alchemic Healings in Olachua County, Florida, where she works with clients through practices including Reiki, access bars, and Akashic Records readings. Her own journey began with what she describes as a deep inner calling to rediscover who she was beyond the pain and experiences that had shaped her life. In The Art of Remembering, Denise Blends memoir, mysticism, and spiritual alchemy to explore what happens when we stop viewing ourselves as problems to be solved and begin seeing healing as a process of reclamation. It's a journey from fear toward freedom, from pain toward presence, and from searching outside ourselves toward recognizing the strength that may have been within us all along. Denise, welcome to the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Thank you very much, Terry, for the invite. Listening to you read the description of my book. It's very emotional because it's and I'm glad that I'm able to share my journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

When did you decide to write Alchemic Healings?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

That's a very interesting question. I started a plant medicine journey with ayahuasca specifically, and I participated in local ceremonies. When I say local, I'm here in the state of Florida, and it wasn't until July of 2024 that I just had a calling to go to Peru. Which, for those of you who aren't familiar with ayahuasca, it is a plant medicine that's native to the Amazon. And obviously, Peru is part of that collection of countries around the Amazon. So I'm in Peru in the middle of a ceremony up in the Indian Mountains. And in the middle of the ceremony, I connect with my mother. Mind you, this is 2024, and my mother transitioned in 2019. Okay. I was raised extremely religious, conservative. So uh working with plant medicine and speaking with uh deceased entities and just working with energy as a whole, that was considered from the devil. So here I am in Peru in the middle of a plant medicine ceremony. And now my mother from the ethers starts to communicate with me. Not only did she share with me the message that she had been wrong for dissuading me from pursuing my spiritual gifts, she encouraged it. And she also mentioned to me that there was a reason why she meant she named me Denise, that it was the name of her favorite French author. Don't ask me who, because she didn't share that. But she said that my purpose was to help speak people by simplifying spiritual alchemy. And I could do anything and everything in the world as long as I had fun, creating fun and in love and out of joy. But the aspect of sharing my journey was an integral part of my purpose here as a human. And she even shared some insight as to how I can release some resistance that was keeping me from writing the book. Because by the time I had gotten to Peru, I had already read a lot of the esoteric texts. I had created a roadmap for myself in terms of how to alchemize certain experiences. She went on to say, you've been wanting to share your journey. And this is as clear as the conversation that I'm having with her, the same way I'm speaking with you. Her voice, she tells me, the reason why you've been hesitant to share your journey, Denise, is because you have felt that you needed to be have a doctrine, you needed to be extremely wealthy, so that you can rationalize that your message is worth listening to. However, who more so than you, Denise, is an authority of your own joy. So share that process with other people. So when I got back from Peru, I literally just I started, I not only did I start writing, but I also started participating in other activities to tap into even more so my emotions so that I can let those bubble forth and alchemize those emotions so that I can release the resistance to put my message out there.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Our special guest is Denise Perez, Alchemic Healings, The Art of Remembering, is her book. And that's the website, alchemichealings.com. If you want to learn more about what she does, this life that you're leading right now feels very different than the world in which you grew up. What was the trigger that made you decide you wanted to try something different?

SPEAKER_02 6:36

I it was feeling as if I was on a hamster wheel, repeating a lot of the same quote-unquote mistakes back then, what I thought were mistakes. And even though I was a successful commercial insurance producer working for a company that's publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, making well over six figures, I was unhappy. That coupled with my mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's a few years prior. And as the youngest of five, my mother was my greatest fan. She knew when I was taking an insurance designation exam, when I was prepping for a final exam, she was always in tune. And every time I would pull an overnighter, I would always crash at her place afterwards, and I would wake up and she'd have lunch for me. So my mother was my source of unconditional love. So when she had the when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she literally, Terry, she stopped calling me from one day to the other. So you couple not being happy, plus having to look in the mirror for my source for the source of unconditional love, that created like the perfect recipe for transformation. So one day I got on my knees in tears, because I had been an atheist for 18 years after I'd left the religion. And I got on my knees and I said, if you effing exist, you better show me a better way. And at that point in time, I had been involved with the local chamber of commerce. I sat on the board. I was at a fundraiser for a nonprofit, having a glass of wine, and in walks this woman with a Scottish brogue, and she makes a beeline to me, and she says, You can't breathe, Kanye. And I thought to myself, how does this witch know my chest is tight? And how the heck does she know what's going on with me? So she was an NLP practitioner, and she started talking about NLP, literally reprogramming how we speak to ourselves. Because words have frequency, they have resonance. And again, go back to the to what I mentioned a few minutes ago. I was an atheist. So when you start talking about energy frequency, okay, now we're talking about science and resonance. Okay, that makes sense. So after a few sessions, I started seeing changes in my life, especially with how I was feeling. And I took a leap a couple of months into it, and I decided to do a past life regression. And I saw myself as a French man in the 1600s, and it just completely changed the paradigms that I had created for myself. And again, it all had to do with how I felt. And then slowly the doubt turned into faith, and then the faith turned into knowing. And here we are. I went down a path where I started learning different energetic modalities. I started reading a lot of esoteric texts, and a lot of that helped me survive emotionally, my mother's transition in 2019, just a few years later. And the upward momentum continues. When I talk about upward, I'm not talking about this view of success that we have where it's based on dollars and property and this and that. It's about emotions. And I feel as if that's what was so impactful with what my mother shared with me last in 2024. Who more so than I is an authority of my own joy.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

How would you describe your life today?

SPEAKER_02 10:51

My life today is it's one of complete joy and surrender. I have no clue as to how the universe is going to deliver certain, I want to say things, but how the universe is going to unfold, how my day is going to unfold. I'm currently living, as you mentioned at the beginning when you were reading my bio, currently in Alachua County. I was actually born and raised in South Florida. And in September 22nd of 2025, which is just last year, it's it was a transformational trip. Shortly after publishing my book, I sent a copy to Mickey Singer. He is a best-selling author, the uh Living Untethered, The Surrender Experiment. My daughter being uh a student up here, I uh decided to go visit Mickey Singer after sending him a copy of my book. And he said something that has set the tone for what I do today. He said something that I had read about Terry, I had listened to so many podcasts, I'd read, I'd even use so many different affirmations that contain these words. But when he said it, I guess I was ready for it to land on my heart. Which is detach yourself from outcome. Put our happiness in a box. This is what life has to look like in order for me to be happy. And what I've realized is that we handcuff God, I know that's a loaded term, source, the universe, our angels, our guides, whatever you want to believe in, that power that is constantly conspiring to help us. We put it in handcuffs because we limit what we're actually able to experience. So those chain of events brought me here. I resigned from another six-figure opportunity because I wasn't happy. I came here and it inspired my second book. And in the meantime, I'm here supporting my daughter, who is uh a chemical engineer major. And guess what? I'm happy busting tables while I build a spiritual practice and I'm wrapping up my second book because my goal is to help people understand and to feel more empowered in their own life. Not because I know all the answers, Terry, because I don't. I'm not a I don't profess to be an expert in hermetic philosophy or in spiritual alchemy. If anything, the message that I want to convey is that life is your own laboratory. There, there is a better way of doing things. You do have a say in how you respond to life. And I want to remind people, and I want to help them realize that they have a greater capacity than they even know to perceive what's going on in their own life. Because once they're able to perceive and they become aware of what's going on in their life, it gives them the capacity to transform it.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Denise Petters is our special guest. Her website, alchemichealings.com, is where you can find out more about her book, Alchemic Healings, The Art of Remembering. How has your daughter reacted to the new you?

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Interesting. My my my oldest daughter, she's very supportive. And even not just my oldest daughter, but their way their waves in terms of whether or not she believes or doesn't believe. But the beautiful thing about this process that I love talking about is that the universe is you in verse. And that's not my saying, that's a Robert Edward Grant saying. From the hermetic standpoint, you're creating reality, and everyone around you is an aspect of yourself. So whether it's my daughter or the person in the grocery store who happens to strike up a conversation, that we end up speaking on this, everybody can be a reflection of your doubt, of your knowing, of your beliefs, of your tastes, of and I've come to realize that whether people believe or not believe what I'm promoting, every single situation, every aspect, every conversation, it's always important to have an exchange of love because they're an aspect of me. Even if there is a situation where you where you buttheads, they're a reflection of our doubt. They could be a reflection of anger that we're looking to transmute. But she's always very sportive. She's thankful that I decided to come along for the journey as she she begins to grow her wings.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

You decided to become a Reiki practitioner.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Why? Yes. My my boyfriend, who I serendipitously met on a beach, that's another story as well. I heard a voice in my head to go to the beach, and that's where I met him. After a few years of being together and having him see my journey, he's the one who said, I feel you would be amazing at Reiki. And he had a very good friend who her and her business partner had a spiritual practice. They're both Reiki master teachers, and one of is also gifted in Akashic Records readings. And he made the suggestion. And he's very intuitive. So I took the plunge. And after my first Reiki course, there is a few things that happen that gave me the impetus to continue down this journey. When you take your first course, there is a 30-day window where you're encouraged to perform self-Rakey. And you start out with the 12-hand positions. And it can be, I used to do it a lot at the house. But one day I'd take my daughter to school and she she used to go to school super early. I think she used to start at 6:40, 645. Yeah, something crazy like that, Terry. Talk about love because I literally used to drive her for the listeners who are familiar with South Florida. We lived in Dania Beach, and I used to drive all the way to Coconut Creek. So that's like a 30-minute drive. But I would still get back in time to appreciate the sunrise. So I being the quintessential South Floridian, I had beach chairs always in the back of my car. So I take myself to the beach. I I'm in shorts and flops, and I think it was like a Tuesday or Wednesday in May. I open up the beach chair, I sit down, and then I decide, you know what? I'm gonna walk into the water because I love walking into the water. So I walk into the water, the place is empty, but as I'm walking out of the water chair, they're they're footprints next to mine. Right? So I'm like, they didn't think anything of it. I was like, ah, this is interesting. So I'm sitting in the beach chair and I start doing my breath work and then I start doing myself reiki as the sun is rising. When I'm done, a couple of ladies walk on the beach. Strangers. I had never met these ladies. They walk past, one of them comes back and says, I have to share something with you. I'm like, I'm very open. I love talking to strangers, okay? So the lady comes over to me and she says, I gotta tell you something. I said, Do tell. And she said, When you were giving yourself a massage, because some of the hand positions they look as if you're massaging yourself. She goes, You were surrounded by an angel. And she goes, Whatever it is that you're doing, keep doing. I started crying and I hugged this woman and I said, Thank you. Thank you. I said if you only knew that I had been a non-believer for 15 years, and it was as if something channeled through her, and she says, It's because of that skepticism that now has you knowing. When I started my journey, Terry, I told my angels, my guides, God, I said, You make this as fantastical as possible. So having a random person tell me that I'm surrounded by angels, that was pretty fantastical for me. And that was like that little nudge, not little, that big nudge, to say, keep going. So I continued on my journey, and I ended up being a Reiki master teacher. So now not only am I able to give Reiki sessions, I'm also a facilitator so that anyone who comes to me can learn the art. Which I always tell my clients, the beautiful thing of Reiki is I don't profess to be a healer. And anyone who truly understands what Reiki practitioners are taught, which is the art of anshenitsume, all the light. The only thing we do is create the environment, the frequency, we channel it in. So that person, if they have that choice, create that choice for that person to heal themselves. We help them remember their true nature. And yeah, that right there, that experience at the beach, the encouragement from my boyfriend led me to becoming a Reiki practitioner and becoming a Reiki master teacher.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

How did you decide to do psychedelics?

SPEAKER_02 21:06

I'm a Pisces Terry. We love psychedelics. Don't you know that? Now you do. The interesting thing is I before I went on a spiritual journey, I was a heavy marijuana smoker. All right. I would say I used to I used to smoke probably an ounce a week, maybe less. All right. So I had found a lot of in I had received a lot of interesting downloads with the marijuana. I even kept a journey, a journal that I would call Meditation in Marijuana. And I'm not against marijuana. Whatever works for people, so be it. What I found that marijuana did for me was I get all these grandiose ideas, but I wouldn't do anything with them after the fact. Okay. So with plant medicine, I began to it once again, my I it came into my radar, ayahuasca specifically. Okay. I'd never done anything other than marijuana, okay? But marijuana is considered a psychedelic. So I had I started listening to podcasts, seeing documentaries, and ayahuasca just came into my field. And once again, here in the United States, for the most part, it's illegal. Okay. There are two places that I'm aware of that has First Amendment. Protection because it's cons they have it's a non-dominational church with origins in Brazil, and it just so happened that my my boyfriend knew someone who had participated in a ceremony with this church. So he told me, I'll ask so-and-so if you can use his name, but I think you can you would enjoy going through this process, given what you've talked to me about ayahuasca, you that you're interested. So uh the shaman vets you because ayahuasca, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's it's DMT, dimethyltryptomy. And they vet you because they don't they want to avoid folks who are going to just trip out. Okay, but what ayahuasca does, or what it did for me, was it was a major heart opener. So my first ceremony, which I write about in my book, okay, I think the the name of that chapter is uh the vine that opened the door. Okay, my first ceremony was blissful. A lot of people have a tough time with ayahuasca because there's a lot of emotional resistance. That's why you often hear stories of people who are throwing up or they get diarrhea, or they're just a lot of different dramatic experiences with ayahuasca. But when you allow the medicine, which is what they call it, when you allow the medicine to work through you, and you remind yourself that we talked about earlier, I'm not this body, I'm just the consciousness in this body. For me, it was a blissful experience. It connected so many dots, and it helped me realize that we, in essence, are like spiritual creatures that are, in the words of Adam Zeland, and we're reality trance surfing, man. And the goal is to alchemize everything so that we're reclaiming our energy in all of these different versions of ourselves so that we can create from a place of love. So that was my first experience. And the interesting thing is I ended up having probably close to 20 other experiences with ayahuasca, other ceremonies, and each experience because the ego has a way, until you make friends with the ego, because I'm not a big fan of ego death. A lot of people talk about ego death. No, I'm a big fan of letting your ego become your friend, you just have to be in control of it. It's like I was saying about the mind. When a lot of people intellectualize spirituality and they take their emotions and they kick the crap out of them around the corner with their brain, with logic. I felt as if I would move forward and come back, move forward and then come back. What I've come to realize though is those experiences have been a gift. Because when I have stepped back and experienced grief or shame or self-hate or anger, all of those things, I've been able to transmute the energy with more and more awareness. And those little dips on the radar, as I like to call, they continue to get shorter and shorter. The time period that I experienced. And then it's gotten to the point now with plant medicine where I've come to the realization that the more I've utilized plant medicine, the more aware I am that less I need them. Because plant medicine, whether it's plant medicine, Terry, whether it's meditation, breath work, whatever, we utilize to help us gain that awareness or feel that connection or feel that oneness with everything around us. And I describe that in my book. They're permission slips. And that's not my expression. There is an entity named Bashar that's channeled by a man named Daryl Inka. He's very popular on YouTube. But he describes the access that we allow ourselves to have on a subconscious level. He describes them and he introduces that word, that phrase, a permission slip. If you have a child, you want them to go on a field trip, what do you do, Terry? You sign a permission slip, right? And you say it's okay that they can go on this journey, right? So for us, we oftentimes need to tell our self-conscious or our subconscious, it's okay to let down your guard. It's okay to let down your guard to experience things that you're not familiar with. And oftentimes, what it is, just fear of the unknown, fear of something new. And for me, that that was my permission slip, the psychedelics. Specifically, ayahuasca, which I've talked about, and then mushrooms. Mushrooms was like the exclamation point. My first trip with mushrooms, I took, I did it a la Terrence McKenna, five grams and sit in the dark. I did that, and the result of that experience was the phrase that I utilized as one of the headings in my chapter, which is the Mad Hatter is the magician. When you realize that you're just having a tea party with yourself in this human experience, because everyone is a reflection of you. People are going to interact with you based off of how you feel. And the why it helped me stop arguing with the mirror. And the words of Rumi, which I quote in the book when you're younger, you think yourself clever and you want to change the world. But now I'm older and I consider myself wise and I choose to change myself.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

What do you hope that readers will take away from their encounter with alchemic healing?

SPEAKER_02 29:38

What I would love for my readers to take away is I want them to finish the book and I want them to feel empowered. I want them to feel more empowered in their own life. Not because I gave them all the answers, okay? Because as I mentioned earlier, I am not an expert, nor do I profess to be an expert on hermetic philosophy or spiritual alchemy. But what I want them to realize is that they have a greater capacity to perceive what's happening in their life. And I mentioned that earlier. They are the masters of their domain, and they can choose how they relate to it, how they align with the version, their true version of themselves that they choose to be, and that they can be an active participant, a conscious participant in their own transformation through spiritual alchemy. And you don't even have to call it spiritual alchemy, Terry. We can call it just transformation. And just having the awareness that we just have to give love to all aspects of ourself so that we can refine ourselves to the point where we can discover the gold within, and that we are the gold. We're the philosopher's stone.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Is there a question that I haven't asked you?

SPEAKER_02 31:06

This human existence, this human life is the laboratory for spiritual alchemy. It is our relationships with people, our relationship with money, relationship with our parents, our relationship with ourselves. Everything that we do or say with awareness, we can utilize it as an opportunity to transform ourselves. It doesn't have to be anything grandiose. It doesn't have to be another retreat. It doesn't have to be another book. It doesn't have to be another psychedelic. It literally is within. It's always within.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

The book is Alchemic Healing's The Art of Remembering, written by our special guest, Denise Pettis, the website alchemichealing.com. Denise, a lot for me to unpack here.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Thank you, Terry. Once again, always a pleasure, my love.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

In conversation with Terry Stephen. It's a copyrighted presentation. Join Terry Cafe.