orrinaC PORTERFIELD

Holistic Medicine Practioner

Eden welcomes Corrina Porterfield, a health and wellness expert with diverse life and spiritual experience. With a Master's degree in Wellness Program Management, she spent the early part of her career at Lockheed Martin, helping people reach fitness goals. A personal crisis led her to alternative modalities and subsequently to pilgrimages in Mexico and Central and South America. From the indigenous people, she learned powerful ways to heal the body centered on intuition, dream visions, and communion with nature. This became the foundation of her practice. She now offers multi-dimensional medicine. In this approach focuses on the mind, emotions, physicality, spirituality, and shamanism. She leads groups to Peru twice a year and hosts the Starseed Collective and Auric Energetics Groups.

www.corrinaporterfield.com

You have a fascinating story. Please share some of your awakenings.

Growing up, I was into athletics, fitness, and nutrition. My mom was an herbalist. She cooked healthy food. When it came time to attend college Colorado State University had a wonderful program called Wellness Program Management. Back then, in the '80s, wellness wasn't even that big of a word.

One day as I was sitting in Wellness 101, the teacher wrote SPICES on the chalkboard. She began talking about spiritual wellness, physical wellness, and intellectual wellness. Further wellness involved with your career, your cultural wellness, and finally, emotional and sensual sexual wellness. This was the beginning for me. I was fortunate to study it in college. I got a degree in wellness program management. Then I got my Masters and ended up working for Lockheed Martin at Buckley Air Force Base. I worked with the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines.

I was the wellness center girl. I had a place where people could work out, have a chat, and talk about behavior modification, but in a way that was manageable. I did a lot of stress management.

Did you implement specific programs?

The reason I got hired was to help Air Force members who weren't passing their annual health fitness tests. You had to be fit enough to at least run a mile or be able to ride a bike and have good cardiovascular fitness. People who were failing their tests would come to me, and I would get them on a program. Since I worked for a corporation, they paid for continuing education. The next thing you know, I was getting certified in Yoga and Pilates. I did Jon Kabat Zinn's Mindful Meditation. We were beginning to realize that all these things were helping the performance of the employees.

When was the moment you said, "I need more."

I was in my late twenties. I clearly wanted to look at healing in a deeper, more meaningful way. I was preparing to attend the Naturopathic Medical School in Portland, Oregon. I ended up on a woman's healing retreat on an airplane to Belize with a couple of girlfriends. I had never been to Central America, and it changed my life. I began learning from indigenous healers who had never been to school. Some of them didn't know how to read or write, but they had a wealth of knowledge and information that they would get from dream visions. They would dialogue directly with the nature spirits and the plants.

Fill in a few blanks. From Lockheed Martin to Belize?

I started having synchronicities of "right place" and "right time." I had my own health crisis. It woke me up to the fact that there was more than the allopathic way of medicine. I was diagnosed with endometriosis ovarian cysts. I ended up in the emergency room with a ruptured cyst. I had surgery.

That's when I started exploring other healing options. The surgeon said to me, essentially, what we've done is pull weeds. They're going to grow back in three months or a year. That didn't sit right with me. This physician told me that the destiny of my healing was that this was going to grow back. I wanted to prove to him and myself that it didn't have to happen that way. I started acupuncture, yoga, meditation, and visualization. All ways we can holistically help the body to heal instead of just having surgery or taking medications, hormones, or whatever the case might be.

There must have been enormous frustration too -

It was frustrating, especially when it did come back. I realized through the synchronicities of finding natural healers that there's a lot more than physical going on here.We hold emotions in our bodies, with many other kinds of stuck energy. I had my degree in wellness, but it wasn't until I had practiced all those aspects that I really understood it. I said to myself, "you're going to have to dig deeper into that at some point," but I wanted to go to South America first.

I quit my corporate job.

I had been doing massage full-time. Then I was in a car accident. The physical therapist who was working on me said they needed to hire a massage therapist. The next thing you know, I was working at a physical therapy clinic, getting the last of my prerequisites for Naturopathic College.

I knew of several women in Denver, CO, that would often take a group of women to South America. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but my intuition said, "you have to go." On the airplane, these women were reading a book, Sastun, by Rosita Arvigo. Who is Rosita Arvigo? We got down there, and it turns out Rosia Arvigo is an amazing woman who had moved to Belize to apprentice with the last Maya shaman, Don Elijio Ponti. Rosita Arvigo did a twelve-year apprenticeship with him and wrote this book. It was all about women's health, abdominal health, and spiritual healing with the plants and the water. I arrived there with one person, and when I left, I was a completely different person. I had a profound healing experience.

What got healed?

Everything. In their tradition, they believe there are spiritual illnesses. We see anxiety, sadness, and grief or anger in the United States. They are issues we can treat with talk therapy or drugs. Down there, they see it so differently. They make a pulse diagnosis and work with plant spirits and prayer, and faith. One day they were talking about a spiritual illness called triste which in Spanish means sadness. It's the kind of sadness that you come into the world with. You don't know why it is that you have this low-grade sadness. You have it. They started speaking about unwanted babies and/or were supposed to be a boy instead of a girl. Suddenly I began to feel a wave of enormous emotion. I started crying deeply because I was the third girl in my family. I was the third try for a boy. I was supposed to be Michael David. In utero, I knew and felt that I did not fit the desires of the family unit. Suddenly I was fully aware of this "unwanted" sense.

I had this lovely experience where these granny healers came into the room. They were whispering prayers in Spanish with plants that they had gathered on my wrists, forehead, and heart. I was sobbing and feeling grief and sadness at not being good enough. That I was wrong for being who I was. It was such a profound feeling. As they whispered these prayers, the sadness lifted. A heaviness lifted. Suddenly I could take a deep breath, and I could see more clearly. I felt more room in my body. I was asking myself, "what just happened?" I have to learn more about this, not only for myself but for other people. I keep saying it.

It was profound. That was the beginning of my exploring medicine beyond what I had learned in the United States. It was the indigenous oral traditions that were handed down from generation to generation.

Incredible. You have become a powerful teacher sharing these traditionsWhat I love about South America and being in the Andes and my dear teacher Puma is they have the consciousness that we seem to have forgotten in the United States and the Northern Hemisphere. It is that we are connected to all things. The crazy time on the planet right now was prophesized. It's part of a transitional time where we're moving towards a new era. And a new consciousness, a new Earth. We hear those words a lot. It is a new way of being on the planet, which is centered on cooperation, creation, collaboration, and harmony.

How have you incorporated these teachings into your work?

Earth-based medicine is the foundation of my work. Essentially, it is in rhythm with the physical and spiritual natural world. It promotes wholeness and interconnectedness with the natural world to help nourish the body, mind, and soul. It also has a reverence and appreciation for our ancestors and the traditional medicine that has been passed down from generation to generation.

It is also an honoring of the cycles - seasons, moon, and sun - that help enhance our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being. When we connect to the spiritual aspects of nature, we can amplify transformational healing. For example, the equinox and solstice are great times for intention setting and rituals as powerful unseen portals open to supporting us during these times.

The spirit of nature wants to commune with us, to teach and heal us; We are being asked to slow down, get grounded, and take the time to listen to the natural world. We can only do this when we learn how to connect more deeply to our intuition. Nature is the best medicine. I teach people to find the truth within themselves., I call this work Soul Embodiment.

What is your Starseed Collective Group?

I believe our soul has many experiences. Starseed just means that you have an evolved soul that has wisdom and an inherent knowing that you're not going to learn just with your mind. It's also a knowing that you're here for a reason. You have a mission. Starseed often refers to people who are light workers or healers or artists, or singers. It's not to say that Starseeds can't be accountants and business people as well. It’s what many would call an old soul. I host this group to make space for community and healing among people who resonate with this description. They can come and talk and be "woo woo," and it's okay.

There is more we could touch on and share with readers. This is a great start. Corrina Porterfield, thank you so much for being here today.