Today’s offering is a guide for identifying an effective teacher, mentor, or practitioner.

Why does this matter?

Well, in my own life and in observing people who achieve success in reaching their goals, in healing their health or emotional states, or creating a life their heart desires, I’ve noticed a commonality. They seek help in the form of teachers, coaches, instructors, trainers, mentors, healers, advisors, practitioners, etc.

They understand that the guidance a seasoned teacher offers has the power to catapult them forward in ways that just aren’t possible on their own.

A good practitioner or teacher speeds up the process, shows you a path forward, helps tweak your trajectory, identifies your blocks, provides accountability, and shines a spotlight on what needs tending.

I also felt that this guide was important because the wellness, healing, and spiritual landscape has shifted so much over the past two decades. Fifteen-twenty years ago, when I began my healing journey, it was a completely different environment.

Coaches, healers, and alternative practitioners were far fewer and not as easy to come by. You’d usually find someone to work with through a trusted recommendation.

Today, it’s a different world.

Coaching, healing, and spirituality have become more mainstream and accessible, and often you may choose to work with someone because you’ve seen them on social media or found them through a google search.

So let’s get right into it. Here are the elements you need to look for or pay attention to whenever you are looking to work with someone.

They are dispassionately passionate.

One of the first lessons I learned when I began doing formal Shamanic sessions for others was to step into an energetic space where I didn’t have a preference one way or the other about helping my client.

Seems counterintuitive for a healer, right? But this is the key to receiving the clearest messages possible or making the best choices for your clients.

I call this state dispassionately passionate, and I found that my best teachers, mentors, and guides shared this quality.

In my experience with different practitioners of all modalities, I can hands-down tell you that the ones who were a little detached were the most effective. They didn’t try too hard. They knew their craft and focused on that. While they hope for the best for their clients, they didn’t feel overly invested.

They are passionate about their craft and area of expertise but can keep a sense of balance when sharing their work with others.

On the flip side, when I worked with someone who cared just a little bit too much in “helping” me, they usually lost the objectivity required to problem solve efficiently and effectively.

This leads us right into the next one.

They are more focused on serving vs. helping.

The best teachers know the distinction between serving and helping and make a clear decision to serve.

Why is this important? Because wanting to help becomes about the I. Whereas serving is about dedicating your life or work to something larger and removes the practitioner’s personal need to be a part of the healing equation.

Whenever the I comes into any kind of healing work, I’ve noticed things can go wonky, messages can get muddied, and treatment plans can go off course. As I mentioned earlier, one of the issues is losing objectivity. Another for those doing energetic or shamanic work is that it can distort the wisdom they are sharing.

They focus on the person/body in front of them.

A great practitioner has their training, skills, and gifts but pays close attention to the person or body in front of them. They take in the uniqueness and history of the body or person they are working with and craft a plan accordingly.

I cannot tell you how many practitioners or teachers I’ve gone to that try and squeeze me, my body, and my history into their framework. It’s never worked out well.

Those who let the framework be a loose guide and are willing to let go when needed and adjust to the individual and unique needs of my body, circumstances, and constitution have helped me pass hurdles I never knew were possible.

Healing is a very individual journey and so pay attention to working with someone who honors that.

They help you maintain or cultivate a sense of independence.

The best mentors, teachers, and healers I know are very clear about their role. They are only guides and their clients do the real healing work.

They cannot heal you or move you along your path. Only you can do that by doing the work offered to you.

Because they know that it is you—the client or student—that does the healing work, they make sure that you maintain a sense of independence and teach you how to stand on your two feet. A great teacher or guide will offer support, but they don’t encourage dependence and they expect you to do the work.

They acknowledge that there is a duality in the spiritual realms.

This one is specific to spiritual teachers, energy healers, shamans, channels, etc.

As metaphysical and energetic healing work has gotten more mainstream, some of the underlying teachings and philosophies important to understand about this work are completely ignored or lost. One of those principles is acknowledging that duality exists in the energetic and spiritual realms.

This one is important because spiritual messages and energetic work will often be distorted from Universal Truth if a practitioner does not acknowledge the duality and have checks and balances to ensure a clear connection rooted in Light.

I see many well-known teachers (even some famous ones!) channeling or sharing what they hear from their guides with very minimal training. Often, my inner ears perk because I can tell they aren’t actually channeling their guides or listening to an energy or entity rooted in Light. These messages can move clients and students off their true path and purpose unknowingly.

Spiritual and energetic work takes time to master and requires a certain amount of study and on-going practice. Learning to identify and bond to your true Guides and Helpers, those that are ambassadors of the Highest Light, requires time, practice, and clear intention. And even after one has mastered this, a teacher or practitioner must learn to identify intrusions or other disturbances that have the potential to distort messages.

This is an important factor in ensuring you receive messages aligned with moving you forward on your sacred path and helping you master your soul lessons.

They are rooted in their work’s integrity and aren’t driven by modern marketing techniques or finances.

Again, this one is specific to spiritual teachers, energy healers, shamans, intuitives, channels, etc.

While making a living is very important, I’ve found that the best teachers and practitioners can detach their work from a sense of commerce.

Now, this has nothing to do with what practitioners charge. You have healers, coaches, trainers charging on a spectrum from the low end to the high end to serve all types of communities, and that’s completely valid.

What I’m talking about is where people let modern marketing techniques or finances drive their practice instead of being committed to their work’s integrity first and foremost.

So here’s an example. For my Shamanic sessions, how much I charge comes directly from the Helpers. It’s specific to my path and me so that I work with a particular audience that I’m meant to serve.

While I may have a personal preference to charge more or less, or I’ve heard from countless business coaches that I should be charging more given my unique abilities and experience level, I will always stick to the guidance first. This is being committed to the integrity of the work instead of letting business practices lead the way.

For Intuitive Health Coaching, it’s the same approach keeping in mind the integrity of that specific modality.

While it would be far easier to sell individual sessions or smaller packages, I only work within a package of 6 months. Why? Because for me to truly support someone in transforming their body, we need that much time together. It may make it harder for me to find the right clients for my program, but when the right clients do come along, they know my work is 100 percent structured to serve them.

So dear beauty, remember to look out for healers and teachers that prioritize the integrity of their work or modality over business.

They work on their own lessons consistently.

This again especially applies to energetic and spiritual healers and teachers, intuitives, shamans, channels, etc.

When seeking a healer or spiritual teacher, sometimes people think they should look for someone who has reached a pinnacle of knowledge or the peak of their growth. They often picture a kind of ‘guru’ who has learned it all, has mastered everything, is super zen, and is now there to impart their knowledge to others.

While you don’t want to work with someone who hasn’t committed to a certain amount of work on themselves, you also want to be wary of the healers or spiritual teachers who behave like they’ve achieved all there is to know.

Why is this important? Well, for one, everyone has soul lessons. And soul lessons exist until our dying breath, even for those advanced on their spiritual path.

The tricky thing is that when a healer or spiritual teacher is not working on their own lessons consistently, they can begin to pass on distorted messages and teachings or share only partial truths.

This happens most often because the lessons they avoid will begin to color their teachings and shift the wisdom from Universal Truth unknowingly. So it’s important to work with or learn from someone who is committed to working on their soul lessons consistently.

That means that there is no ‘spiritual teacher’ or ‘healer’ vibe. Just another human learning as they move on their soul path as they share their wisdom with you.

Now that you’ve read the guiding principles, you might be thinking, but Aarti, how am I supposed to know these things about a teacher, guide, coach, healer, etc., right away??

You won’t. These principles aren’t really a checklist you can go through by asking directly or looking at someone’s website or social media feed.

These guiding principles help you use your inner knowing when you’re interacting or working with a practitioner. Sometimes that means you’ll get a sense right away from their website or social feeds. Or sometimes it means you might do a few sessions with that person and then get a feel.

This isn’t a black and white process but more of a fluid one. Ultimately this process will help you find those teachers, guides, practitioners, coaches, and healers that you can turn to repeatedly over the years as you move further on your life’s journey.

With love,

Aarti