“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination…”
-Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
What is Web Work?
Web Work is a weaving together of Transpersonal and Somatic Psychology with Animist, Earth Based Spirituality. It’s a truly embodied and integrated approach to healing that brings our nervous systems back into our ecosystems; and remembers the sacred living in the seemly mundane. Web Work offers a broader perspective on what's possible when it comes to staying well during the times we live in.
While the field of psychology has made quantum leaps in our understanding of working with our nervous system, its approach has nonetheless been influenced by dominant culture worldview; specifically materialism and individualism. When we shift to an animistic paradigm of inter-being we open up to the immeasurable support and guidance available in the living and unseen world. By combining both modern advancements with ancient, earth-based wisdom traditions, we can reach profound new depths in our experience of wellness and belonging.
The six tenets of WebWork are that healing comes through cultivating relationships with the wellness keepers in our physical and psychic ecosystem: our body, true self or soul, the living world, our well ancestors, the unseen world and community. My mission is to help women find an approachable and embodied path to reconnect to these dimensions of our web of life in the modern world. In doing so, we bridge back to the ways of living known to the wise women of our ancestral lineages before thousands of years of patriarchy, religious oppression, genocide and colonization.
My prayer is that as we connect to the vast and profound beauty, wisdom and love in the living and unseen world, we come to remember anew how much is possible. Further, that we become resourced enough to offer our gifts to a world that desperately needs them, sustainably, from a place of rootedness.
Origin Story of the Well Web
The true origin of this work began on my 20th birthday when I stood alone on a California mountaintop, several caps of psilocybin mushrooms in hand. Looking out at the Pacific Ocean I prayed to spirit to help me die (metaphorically) and be re-birthed anew. I look back now and wince at, while simultaneously admiring, my naivety and audacity. What I couldn’t consciously name at the time, was that I was seeking a rite of passage to enter adulthood in a culture with no elders. I wanted to know who I was separate from all the baggage of my family of origin.
The journey that ensued was tumultuous and it led to a year long, spiritual emergency; that included seeing spirits, regular lucid dreams and past life memories. Seeking help in the traditional mental health system, I was misdiagnosed with a plethora of things and offered medication. Instead, I went to see a healer who simply said, “ah, a spirit gate was opened and we need to close it!” After one session with her, all of my “symptoms” went away.
This led me down a path of deep spiritual exploration and interest in the field of Transpersonal Psychology; the only branch of psychology that prioritizes the study of spiritual experiences and non-ordinary states of consciousness. In 2010, I pursued a masters degree in the field wanting to be able to help people like me, who would otherwise get lost in the mainstream health care system. Yet what I found was that there was much theory and little practice in the field.
After graduate school, I didn’t feel that I had an experiential means to connect clients to these non-ordinary states or explore them as they arose. Over the years I found myself adrift from the work that initially got me into the field. While I learned and offered many wonderful mind/body modalities, there was an increasing disconnection from the spiritual dimension in my life and work.
Then, in 2017, a health crisis ensued and I embarked on a two and a half year journey to heal congenital hip dysplasia. As a mother of a very active two year old, I faced three major reconstructive surgeries, twelve weeks of complete bedrest and over a year of crutches.
What I did not know at the time, was that this crisis would irrevocably change my life for the better.
During one of three surgeries, I found myself watching the procedure from above my body. But I wasn’t alone, I was accompanied by two light beings who proceeded to give me a “life review”. The presence of the spirits with me were filled with a type of wisdom, sovereignty and benevolence unknown to me in the human realm.
Over the next six hours my entire life was dissected on that OR table. I like to say that the truth always sets us free, but first it can kick us in the teeth. I had to see how run down I had become by the traumas of living. I wasn’t fully inhabiting my life anymore, in some ways I was asleep at the wheel. The spirits with me explained the tremendous moment we are in as human beings and made it clear this is not a time for forgetfulness, it’s time to wake the fuck up.
I emerged from that surgery in the way one would shoot out of bed, woken by a blaring alarm clock. It wasn’t pretty and I spent the next three years of my life in a deep existential crisis. I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with what I had been shown. What I did know, was that if I was to find a path forward I would need to access the type of guidance I did on that fateful day. This led me to a multi-year journey of learning to traverse non-ordinary states of consciousness to communicate with the unseen world through the use of plant medicine and learning to journey naturally. In the end, it was the titrated daily relationship building that occurred in journeywork that had the more profound and digestible impact.
Overtime it became less about what I was doing, as I was ushered into a completely new way of being. While I had engaged in deep psychological work for over a decade (and it was a crucial part of my experience), through partnering with the living and unseen world, I was able to heal layers of trauma never touched before. What I found was that I wasn’t just repairing my sense of trust in human relationships, I was learning to heal my attachment trauma with the whole web of life itself. I went from feeling worn out, lost and despairing about the state of the world to feeling much more resourced, aligned, purposeful and connected. Further, through the process of learning journeywork I found I finally had a transpersonal model to work with clients within the dimension of spirit. From this, the vision for The Well Web was born.
Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning.
-Joanna Macy