Welcome to the Wise Not Withered Podcast! This month's guest is Javi Martinez, who shares her incredible story about her gaming history, her experience being a trans-feminine, gender-fluid person, her spiritual and shamanic path, including her current work at the International School of Temple Arts, as faculty and event organizer and coordinator.

Thank you so much, Javi Martinez, for joining us on the Wise Not Withered podcast! What is your age?

Oh shit… Heh, my age is 54.

54, all right. And where did you grow up?

Well, the first few years of my life, I grew up in Guatemala. And then we ended up moving to the United States roughly when I was nine or ten years old.

Okay, and what brought you here?

Just my family moved. My dad was working up here, and we ended up coming up to join him.

Okay. And where do you currently live?

I live in western Massachusetts, in a town called Amherst.

Amherst, okay. How long have you been there?

Since I was about ten years old!

(laughs) Oh! Oh wow, so you moved to Guatemala…

Well, off and on. I’ve moved to other areas nearby, and then ended up coming back here.

Okay, so it’s kinda been in that same area since ten years old. Okay, cool.

Forty-something years, yeah.

Yeah. Great. So I met your partner at a recent retreat. She mentioned that you’re an avid gamer. Can you tell us about your gaming history?

Well, let’s see. I guess it’s something that I’ve always liked. I’ve always liked playing games. Games have always been an important part of my life, just overall. And then yeah, when I was about nine or ten years old, I started playing tabletop games, like Dungeons & Dragons. And that was one of my favorite things, so I started doing that pretty religiously for a while.

Then I also grew up in the time of arcades. There really wasn’t home gaming systems. You know, we all had to like, save our quarters and run out to the video game arcade and play video games there. So my friends and I would do that. We would like, not eat lunch at school, and take our lunch money and go play video games after school.

Wow!

Yeah, so it’s just been something I’ve always enjoyed. Then I got the original Atari, and then you know, kept playing video games at home. You know, as well as other games. And basically, once the Play Station came out, I’ve just been like, a loyal Play Station person.

Yeah. What are some of your… The gems, yeah.

The gems are mostly role-playing games. I just… Not having the time, or even the group of friends—we all had time to play tabletop role-playing. Once I wasn’t able to do that, my desire and my love of role-playing games transferred over to video games. So I’ve played games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Skyrim. Those are my favorites. The Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was really good. I really love that one as well. But yeah, mostly role-playing games are the ones I love.

Mhm. Yeah, me too! I tend to gravitate toward those ones. I’m not very good at the shooters or the platforming games.

Yeah, so I don’t do like MMOs or go online with people. Yeah, for me it’s about entering a fantasy world. Tied into that is my love of reading. I grew up reading fantasy books. So it’s all woven together.

Do you still read those kinds of books, or not as much?

Not as much because of time, and other interests. But yeah, the past few months I did go back and re-read a few of my old favorites. So it was really nice to go back and re-read them.

What made you decide to go re-read those books?

Um… I’m not sure. I just basically have been playing video games a lot, and was getting sort of bored with that, and I was like oh yeah, reading! (laughs) I mean I’ve been reading other books, like spiritually-themed books. But yeah, I just felt like wow, I haven’t done like, pleasure reading in a long time. Just sat down with a fun book and just devoured it. So that felt really good.

Yeah, something a little more light.

Yeah, exactly.

That’s pretty cool. So she also mentioned that you’re a Guatemalan trans goddess! I love that title.

She gives me all kinds of titles!

(laughs) Yeah, “She’s an avid gamer, trans goddess”, all these very, very fascinating things. Yeah, I’m so curious—the whole transitioning process, like identity, spirituality, social constructs, culture… Whatever you’re comfortable sharing, I’m very curious!

Well that’s really open-ended! Yeah… I guess it’s a funny thing. My transition is… I don’t know if it’s particularly unique, but I think it’s different than most other people, because it was very much tied into my spirituality and my shamanic path.

Okay.

Where to begin… Yeah. Growing up, I didn’t remember or know that… I’m like, so feminine and a woman inside. I didn’t know I was a woman. I grew up thinking and feeling that I was a boy, and a man. Things like that. I knew I was different. Like I always had a funny sense that I wasn’t like all my other friends, like I felt things that they didn’t, feel things that they didn’t feel, I would think differently… Yeah, I just thought okay, I’m just different. I’m just a weird person.

But then when I started my… Really stepped into my spiritual path, and I started doing my shamanic work, like shamanic journeying, and really stepping forward into my shamanic path, I was called into service. One of my Patron Goddesses that has been with me my whole life stepped forward, and was like, okay, I want you to devote yourself to me, whole-heartedly. Like 100% devotion. And one of the rules or stipulations that she put, is that if I am to do this, I have to devote myself 100% and effectively do everything she asked, no right of refusal—which was, you know, pretty intense, to think of like okay, I want to be in devotion, I want to serve, and I want to do these things. But to have like… Yeah, to give everything over, to really do everything Spirit asked of me was a big step, and I had to really think about it for a while, and really feel into it, if it was something I was really willing to do.

And yeah, so after a couple of months of meditating on it and really feeling into it, I was like okay, I guess this is something I need to do. And she told me that you know, it was my choice. If I do it, it would be really challenging and difficult, but also very rewarding. And if I didn’t do it, that I could go on living a regular, boring life. And the more I thought about it, I was like, I didn’t want to have a boring life, and I do want to be a healer, and do all these things… And if I don’t do this, and I don’t gain the skills, what’s gonna happen in the future if those skills are needed? Like, I have a daughter, like what if my daughter needed some form of healing, and because I chose to just be a regular, boring… Call it a “muggle”, you know, and I didn’t have access to that divine connection to provide what I needed to provide, I would regret it. So I thought well, I guess this is something I need to do.

Yeah, so I did it, I held a ceremony, I did my devotion. And pretty much right after I devoted myself to her, she said, “You’re a woman.” And I was like, “Excuse me? What do you mean, I’m a woman?” And she said, “You’re a woman.” And I thought, “Okay, I don’t know what the fuck that means.” (laughs) And I had to sit and meditate with that, and then she started giving me tasks. Like I had to get rid of all my old clothes. I had to go buy women’s clothes. All these things that were really about feminizing me. So she started giving me all these tasks to have me really drop into more a feminine place. The more tasks she gave me, the more I realized wow, she is guiding me really to this thing of like… She says I’m a woman. So I started feeling into that. Like okay, I promised I’d do everything she asked. She said I’m a woman. Let me feel into that, what does this feel like for me? Really feel into it, am I? Am I really a woman? So I started doing like a deep dive with this feeling, with this idea…

I went to other shaman people, shamanic practitioners, I went to psychics. I would go to different things, and I would ask like, “Okay, can you help me with this? Can you journey and find out, or can you get a reading for me? Am I really a woman?” I did that a few times, I’m like I need to double-check this. Maybe I’m going insane, let me go ask a few other people to see if this is congruent. And the answers were pretty much in alignment that there was something there for me to explore. So I’m like okay, I’m exploring this.

And after… I don’t know what it was, like six, seven months of doing tasks, like wearing make-up and doing different things, I did another journey, and this time she said, “Okay, now you’re gonna go and get estrogen. You’re gonna go get hormones.” And you know, that was a big step for me! I was like okay, I guess we’re reaching a new level. And I still wasn’t fully convinced I was a woman at the time.

And how old were you at that point?

It’s been fifteen years, so… Yeah it’s been about fifteen years.

So like 40, 39?

Yeah. 40, 39, yeah… Sixteen years… Anyways, so I went and spoke to my doctor. I mean, I knew all the things I needed to say to get the estrogen. And yeah, it was a very… It was like a big portal for me in my life and my transition and my sense of self, because the moment that I injected the estrogen for the first time, when the estrogen coursed through my body, it felt… Yeah, it really felt in my system like, I’m home. I’m home. And it really felt so much like home, and so much like… Like, this is what I’ve been looking for my whole life. This feeling is what I’ve been seeking my whole life and I didn’t know it.

You know it’s almost like having that… Like my body always felt off, wrong… I always felt… I don’t know what to call it, like… I never felt comfortable in my own skin, kind of a feeling. And it was a constant thing that I wasn’t aware of until I had the estrogen, and then I was like oh my goodness, this is what I’ve been waiting for. This is it. This is it. This is home for me. I felt at home in my body, maybe for the first time. And yeah, I remember that as soon as I felt this, I looked up and I was like, “You were right!” I had this moment of, “You were right.” So that was how it began. It was not like I had any idea that that’s what I was doing… Yeah, up to that point I had doubts. Even after that point, I had periods of doubts. Even now! (laughs) Even now there’s still moments where I question my gender.

You know, people say that gender is fluid, and it changes with whatever throughout your life… I’m not sure if that’s the case or not, but for me there’s definitely been elements of fluidity, particularly in the first half of my transition. I did go through periods of time where I felt like I was more trans feminine, but gender fluid, and I would flow back and forth.

Hm! How would that show up, like in a day-to-day thing?

It could be day to day, it could be minute to minute. It could be situational. Part of it is that I do carry forty-plus years of living as a man in my system, in my body, in my muscle memory, in my brain. Biologically speaking, you know, testosterone shaped my brain. The testosterone brain and the estrogen brain are very different on many levels. There’s different neural pathways that run through the brains, dictated by hormones. So I have all the masculine—I don’t know if masculine is the right word… All the testosterone neural pathways, and then I got and formed—my brain got reshaped, with all the estrogen neural pathways. So my brain does some weird things sometimes. (laughs)

So yeah, I mean, it’s… Hm. I’m trying to think of a way to explain it that makes sense. At times, like in the past, like the first half of my transition, I would say that I typically shifted within the spectrum of what I would consider my identity based on if I was feeling masculine or feminine. So if I stepped into a real masculine space, it was almost like everything just sorta shifted, and I would step into that place.

You know, like I was before my transition. It was a full shift. You know, body mannerisms, the way I spoke, the way I carried myself, the way I sit, the way I talk. It just becomes very much like that. And then when I was feeling more feminine, I would flow more into like a soft, feminine place, where I could feel my identity as a woman more fully. So I was like going back and forth based on how I felt within the masculine-feminine polarities and dynamics that are within me. I mean, everybody has them.

Right.

Everybody has them, but within me it would cause shifts in how I felt about myself. How I felt about myself in the moment. And that still happens periodically. And yeah… There’s times that I just feel, like I feel my body, and I’m like “Is this right for me?” I don’t know… There’s moments of questioning.

It’s interesting, like sometimes I don’t realize I’ve made a shift until I’m talking to someone about something. And then my language sometimes gives me a clue. For example, as an educator, if I was to be talking about let’s call it male psychology or male health, male sexuality, or growing up that way, or something… And I’d be talking, and I might shift into language of like… Including myself, like “We often feel this way when…” or things like that. And when that comes out, sometimes I’m like “Oh. I’m a ‘we’ with this now. Okay, that’s interesting…”

And there’s other times that I’m not aware of it, that someone will use my pronouns, of like she or her, that don’t feel good in my system. And someone will refer to me in that way and I’ll constrict and be like whoa, that’s not me. And then I’ll be like okay, that’s weird, I didn’t realize… I don’t feel good being a she/her right now. And it makes me feel like, “Am I a he/him?” Where am I on the pronoun spectrum? But it’s not like a conscious thing, like I wake up and go hey, I’m gonna be this. It’s just how I am just going through my day, there’s little indicators that tell me, you’re more this way on the spectrum today, or in this moment. And a lot of times it’s those things… Even though the majority of the time, when I’m going through my day, when people misgender me, and call me “sir” or a he/him, it hurts… You know, it hurts, and I know I’m over here. And so it’s more situations and external reflections that give me an indicator as to where I am in the moment. But I would say the majority of the time, I’m definitely in the trans feminine identity.

A lot of times it’s easier for me to say I’m a trans-woman to people, than to say oh I’m trans-feminine but sometimes I’m fluid, and da-da-da… And like, it just turns into this big, huge, confusing thing, and if 99% of the time she/her pronouns make me happy, I just say hey, great. Just please use she/her pronouns, because 99% of the time they make me happy, and it’s so much easier to say I’m a woman. And I am. I mean, even as far back as February, just a couple months ago, I was going through a questioning period. I was going on shamanic journeys, and getting help from other practitioners, to figure out like… What is my gender? Who am I? I was going through one of those questioning periods. And at the end of the day, the answer I got through all of the guidance I got and journeys I did, was that I am a woman. So I am. Yeah… It’s complicated. It’s simple but complicated. (laughs)

Yeah, I can understand that! Can you talk more about the shamanic journey? What started you, what got you interested? I’m sure that’s a whole thing too!

Well, I’ve always been interested in the metaphysical, the spiritual… When I went through adolescence, I was interested in the Occult. I was always interested in those kinds of things. You know, I read books and practiced basic rituals. And you know, Pagan things, as I was going through adolescence into adulthood, and that’s always been important to me. But yeah, it started with… Okay. I have to give you a little bit of background. I’m a licensed mental health counselor. And I used to work in a juvenile detention center, working with delinquent kids. And I did that for almost twenty-five years. And I was at a conference that was based around the treatment of sex offenders. At this conference, there was a clinician that was also a shamanic healer, who worked in the treatment of sex offenders using Native American healing ceremonies as part of his practice.

And so he was giving a presentation, and I was like “Yeah, that’s my shit right there. I need to be in this. I need to know about this.” And so I sat in this class, and he spoke about you know, living in Africa, and learning to be a shaman in Africa, a Sangoma, and he gave all these presentations and things that were amazing, and he even talked about shamanic healing for things like anxiety. And he led a healing circle for a shamanic healing ceremony, to help somebody who was there who had anxiety. So I participated and witnessed this ceremony, and the whole time that he was speaking, the whole time this class was happening, and during the ceremony, I felt like lightning was going through my body. There was so much energy coursing through my body throughout this whole class, that I was just like “Damn, I need to look into this. I need to do this. This is amazing!” I could feel it. It’s so… In me! I had to do it.

So I took some of the recommended books that he had listed on his thing. I think I might have ordered them from Amazon, I don’t remember. But yeah, I just took the books, started reading. I started going to drumming and journeying circles near my house, that other shamanic practitioners were doing. And so I just started journeying and connecting to my spirit guides. Building relationships with my spirit guides. And then yeah, the more I did it, the more it felt alive in me. And that’s when my teacher, my spirit guide, my Goddess, who I’d been building a relationship with shamanically—I already had a relationship with her before, when I was in my Pagan… For lack of a better term, growing up Pagan. Yeah, she stepped forward, and was like, I want you to devote yourself. So I devoted myself… And yeah, it’s just gone from there.

Yeah. And so I’m curious what the whole devotion thing… What all does that entail? And I guess, what purpose does it serve for you, too?

Well, what it entails is being in service. So it’s not just being in service to her, but it basically means being in service to the Earth, being in service to people, being in service to our collective. In essence, I’m a priestess. And as a priestess, I’m here to serve. And that may look different ways at different times to different people. You know, I may be doing ceremonies in nature for Mother Earth, that have to do with healing, water, or connecting to trees. Cleaning up trash, I do that. (Laughs) Or, it could be going on journeys for people that need help, need questions answered, need healing. It could mean doing Reiki or energy healing on someone that needs healing. It could be… Yeah, numerous things.

Part of my path, part of being in service is also being a teacher, being a presenter, being an event coordinator. There’s a lot of areas where I’m in service. What does it mean for me? It means a lot of things! Like for one thing, it meant me finding who I really am. And ultimately, I will say that my transition was hard. I was terrified. I was terrified to transition. And especially in this world where there’s so much hate toward trans and queer people… I mean right now you know the Republican right wing agenda is all anti-trans. Everything is anti-trans. There’s politicians calling for us to be eradicated. There’s all kinds of crazy stuff.

So yeah, I was terrified to do so, not just for the world, but within myself. I had internal fear about doing the transition as well.

Right.

You know, coming out, and just everything. And so I really feel like if I had not promised to do everything she asked, I probably wouldn’t have done it. And I think that Spirit, the Divine, knew that at this point in my life and who I was and where I was in life and everything, that I needed to be fully devoted with no right of refusal, for me to do the things I needed to do. And to really step into myself, into my power, into being authentic. Because I think if I didn’t have that, I would have been too afraid.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think that that’s one of the things that served me, as hard as it was! Yeah, I mean I’m living… (laughs) I live a crazy life! Most people would consider it crazy. You know, I don’t think I would have had the courage to step into it and do all of the things that I do if I didn’t have this… Yeah, this place of being in service. And feeling like I have this spiritual safety net—that I can jump into all these things, knowing that I’m supported, that I’m doing the right thing, if that makes sense. If I have Spirit telling me to do something, and it’s spirits that are my guides and teachers that I have a close relationship to, I feel safe that this is the right thing for me.

So it’s nice to have guidance. So many people in this world wander around, like looking for a purpose, looking for, “What the hell am I doing with myself? Why am I here? What’s my purpose?” Mid-life crises. All these things. And for me, it’s been handed to me in a sense. Like, here you go, this is what you’re doing, like it or not. And half the time, I haven’t liked it cause it’s been really hard, and painful. Having to also face and heal all my trauma, you know… I needed to heal all my trauma, so that I can better serve and heal other people’s trauma—has not been easy. But it’s been rewarding. It’s like my Goddess said, I mean it hasn’t been easy, it’s been challenging, but it has been very rewarding. And continues to be very rewarding.

Yeah, I can resonate with a lot of that. You mentioned drumming, and journeys? What exactly is a shamanic journey? I have heard that term before—can you describe it a bit more?

Yeah… Let me see if I can summarize this quickly. Okay. So when I speak in terms of Michael Harner, and his school and foundation of shamanic studies… Michael Harner was an anthropologist that traveled around the world and lived with many indigenous cultures, and eventually became a shaman. He was welcomed by the village shamans into their mysteries. The more he traveled around the world, the more he realized that universally, all the shamanic cultures around the world do the same things. They may have different flavors of how they do it. They may have different techniques that vary in appearance or flavor but ultimately, all the shamanic practices are the same, or similar. And so he called it Core Shamanism. So this foundation of shamanic studies teaches what he calls Core Shamanism. And so in Core Shamanism, the idea is that people go into ecstatic states—altered states of consciousness, where we communicate with spirits, with entities, with trees, with the Earth, with the seasons, with elements… And there’s different ways of doing it. Everything from dancing, to fasting, to vision quests… You know, going out in nature for a few days with no food… It could be going into a dark cave for two days, in darkness… There’s all these ways that universally, people have done these things. Plant medicines. Every culture around the world uses some form of mushroom or plant medicine, to… Or you know, frogs, or whatever. There’s different nature medicines that help open the mind, and expand consciousness, to communicate with Spirit—that’s spiritual growth.

But ultimately, to narrow it down, what he found is that people can do this naturally without medicines, without doing anything else—through drumming. Oh yeah, I should mention breath work—breath work is a big way to also enter these states of consciousness. But yeah, so drumming, where you just take a drum, and beat it at a particular speed or frequency, has a particular vibration that is encoded in our DNA. Every human being across the globe, it has been proven in studies, that if you just sit and close your eyes, and listen to a drum, just beating, and you just relax, it will put your mind into a trance state. I forget what it’s called, like the theta state, where we dream. I forget what it is, if it’s beta or theta state, I can’t remember.

Yeah, I’m not sure.

So basically, people that are awake, that are just sitting and listening to drumming, if they just allow themselves to relax, they will automatically go into this kind of mental wave length state where you can receive visions, or dreams. And every person can do it—it’s part of our brain. Our brains are wired to do this, naturally. So effectively, it’s in our DNA that we are all shamans, and that we can all do shamanic journeys, just from using a drum. Just like we can all do it through breath work. Like if we do the Wim Hof method, or the shamanic breathwork. There’s different types of breathwork—holotropic breathwork. All those kinds of things. It’s naturally in our systems, in our brains, that when we do these things, this happens.

So everybody can do this naturally. And I think we all did it naturally, two thousand-plus years ago, before the advent of the Judeo-Christian religions, that told us that we needed to go to a church, to talk to a priest, and the priest could talk to God for us, and that we couldn’t do it ourselves. We’ve been disempowered, and disconnected from Source, and disconnected from Spirit. But we all have it. So yeah, shamanic journeys can come in many forms. Like ayahuasca or mushrooms, or it can come through holotropic breathwork. But I started with drumming, because that’s the most basic, most foundational one, where you really don’t have to do anything but sit, and listen to the drum.

And then there’s guidance, where for shamanic journeys, we do use… People do use their imagination. Like visualization. Like if you go to some psychic circles, and people take you through a guided meditation, where someone is guiding you, down a hall and down some stairs, and through a door, and into a room, and what do you see in the room. And so a guided meditation is very similar, where you have someone guiding you through the experience, but when you learn to do a shamanic journey, you’re doing it for yourself. So you imagine yourself going into a cave, and following the cavern down deeper and deeper and deeper, to go into what’s called lower world.

In shamanic cosmology, there’s upper world and lower world. And middle world—the middle world is where we live in. And the upper world is where, traditionally, the spirits that are human-shaped are found, like ancestors, passed loved ones. Some people might say deities. Basically the human-shaped, humanoid-type teachers and guides are usually found in the upper world. And when you go into the lower world, that’s where you connect with plant and animal spirits, like your animal spirit guides, like your Power Animal.

Okay.

So you visualize yourself going down into this, or you visualize yourself climbing a ladder or climbing a tree. Like the World Tree imagery. People talk about the World Tree—that was usually what the shamans used to travels the worlds. So yeah, you follow the path to where you’re trying to go. You imagine it, you visualize it, and you visualize yourself walking in those directions, and eventually you cross a threshold, be it a doorway, an archway, the pearly gates into heaven. I like to use the analogy of Jack and the bean stalk. Like Jack climbed a beanstalk, all the way up into the clouds, and then Jack climbed through a cloud, and when he came out on the other side of the cloud, he was in a different world. He could stand on the cloud, and there was like castles and geese that laid golden eggs, and all these things.

So there’s usually a threshold. And when you cross that threshold and enter the spirit world, is usually when your imagination sort of isn’t… It’s no longer like… Something will happen, like Spirit will interact with you in some way… That you’ll sit there and go, “Okay, I’m in the spirit world now, because there’s no way I would have dreamed this up.” You know, your imagination only takes you so far. Our imagination only has so much in terms of creativity, in these moments, that when you step into the spirit world, something will happen with the environment, with you know, an animal or something that’s gonna be so weird, that you go, “Okay, I’m here. I’m with spirit now, because there’s no way my imagination would have done this.”

So it’s hard to explain, but that’s how it feels. It’s like, yeah, I didn’t imagine that. So I know that something’s happening. That’s usually the indicators for when you’re in the spirit world. So Spirit lets you know, “Okay, you’re here, let me show you this weird thing so you know you’re here.” It’s almost like lucid dreaming, where something weird happens and you’re like “Oh, I think I’m dreaming!” Something different, like an indicator. So basically, in a nut shell, that’s shamanic journeying! (laughs)

Yeah, interesting! Do you remember your first one?

That’s a really good question… I don’t know if I remember my first one. Yeah… I was doing it so much, just trying to map out my worlds, and where all my guides were. That time, just meeting my spirit guides, I don’t remember what my first one was. I know it was profound, because I went back!

Again and again!

I don’t remember what it was that made it special or profound.

Okay. So you did mention the Mystery School. Is it Neo-Tantra? Is that how you say it?

I mentioned Michael Harner’s foundation of shamanic studies. They offer training, like two or three year apprenticeship for shamanic studies. I just want to throw a plug out there: it is a foundation that, when people do go and pay for their programs, the money does go to indigenous cultures, and to indigenous shamans, to help keep all these shamanic practices alive, different cultures in the world. I just want to say that because it is important, something that we need to do. But yeah, I do belong to a mystery school!

Yeah, what is that? What does that mean?

I belong to a mystery school that’s called the International School of Temple Arts. I am a faculty for the International School of Temple Arts, or ISTA for short. And we are a… Hm. It’s like defining who we are is always a changing thing. Yeah, we operate within the realm of sacred sexuality, and do utilize elements of tantra, taoist teachings, shamanism, Buddhism, and so many other spiritual practices into one melting pot of things.

And really, it is about uncovering you know, the mystery of what it means to be here, in this life. The mystery of life. The mystery of love. The mystery of sexuality. The mystery of the divine, the mystery of Source. Where everybody came from. You know, what is God? Like, the Native American tribes referred to God, or, you know, as the Great Mystery. It’s a mystery. The Divine is a mystery.

So we’re a Mystery School that delves into these deep things. Like delving into Shadow—shadow work. Delving into darkness and light, and really all that it means to be human, and spiritual, and sexual. So while people wanted to classify us as tantra, because we fell into the Neo-tantric umbrella where people think of sacred sexuality in that way. While we adhere to some tantric practices like sound, breath, and movement, and many of our teachers are tantra teachers as well, that’s not effectively who we are.

So we started coining the term Sexual Shamanism. So what we do is sexual shamanism, which is different than tantra, because it’s a different flavor. Like tantra comes from India, and has this rich tradition, which… There is a lot of cultural appropriation, and spiritual appropriation that has happened, within Neo-tantra communities, and even within ISTA where we’ve taken things from the tantra traditions of India, and we’ve utilized them and changed them, and you know, adapted them to what we do. But yeah, so we basically call it sexual shamanism. And again, it’s difficult to explain in a short period of time because so much of it is a mystery, because it’s so different for everybody that comes to our trainings.

Do you do like, one-on-one, or are there group classes, or is it mostly individual?

Yeah, we do group offers. For the most part, we do trainings. We do week-long intensives. The first… We’ll call it the starting point, the level one, is called the Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Experience. And so I facilitate those trainings. And this experience is… Even though we have a core curriculum, everybody that goes through it experiences something different, because everybody is on their own journey.

And you know, we have a feeling, or a sense, or a belief that everybody that comes to our trainings gets exactly what they need. So it has that shamanic feel, that for some people, they get some things like where… They open up sexually in ways that they didn’t know they could. Other people receive healing from trauma. Other people just go deeper into their own spiritual practice. Other people basically develop a stronger sense of self and identity. And yeah, the primary core of the level one has to do with sovereignty, personal sovereignty and self-empowerment. So that looks different to everybody that comes.

So there’s this level one, which is about self-empowerment, then there’s other trainings. One that’s being renamed into Soul Initiation. We used to call it the level two, and it used to be called the Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Initiation, Level Two. So the first is the experience, the second is the initiation. Now we’re taking the “level two” part of it out, and just calling it a Soul Initiation, I believe—the name is still being worked out. Because, too many people felt like… You know, in our Western culture, we have you know, first grade, second grade, third grade. So people thought “I’m gonna do level one, then I’m gonna do level two.” like a progression. And it’s not like that. It’s two separate things that aren’t linear. It’s about the self, or it’s about killing the ego. And really going into deeper initiations: death initiations, sexual rebirth initiations… So it’s a totally different thing.

And then there are other trainings that are… There’s another one that has to do with really… The core teaching of it is disillusionment, and being disillusioned with the mystery school, with ISTA, with everything. Being disillusioned with things in a way that if everything is falling apart around you, can you still hold your center? Can you still hold your ground? Can you still stay grounded with who you are, in your mission in life, in your purpose, and continuing to do what you’re here to do, even as everything else is falling apart around you?

Even as the world is collapsing in on you, know you can do this. “I’m gonna go change the world!” There’s gonna be that push-back, like “No, this is radically different, this is bad, you can’t do this” because of the old belief systems. How can you sit there in the fire and still hold your center and continue plodding forth? So that training is that piece.

And then we have the practitioner training, which is really becoming a healer, a sexual healer, within the frameworks and teachings of what we do, within ISTA, that framework and philosophy of healing.

Yeah. How was the transition from, you said you were a mental health counselor, then you started going the shaman route… Like, was it kinda gradual, or did you make an abrupt switch? What did that look like?

Well it was a gradual thing. I continued to work, I continued to work at my job while I was an apprentice at ISTA, working toward becoming an ISTA faculty as I learned and healed and worked in the field, in all these trainings. And then it just got to a point where… I reached a point of no return, where my soul just felt like I couldn’t be in my job anymore. I couldn’t continue to do that work. I needed to leave that job so that I could follow a path that’s more soul-aligned.

Right.

I think my job was definitely soul-aligned for that period of my life, you know, healing and helping all these kids in needs, where I was saving lives. I did save a lot of lives. I have a lot of love for the kids I worked with, and that population. I feel like at some point I’m gonna go back and do more work with that population somehow. I just don’t know how or when. But yeah, when I was at my office, even though I was doing good work, I felt stifled and trapped, and I just knew my soul was like, no you need to do something else, something bigger, something grander, something beyond this.

And so that’s what I’m doing now. I’m out creating events, I’m a training organizer. I organize trainings and events for other teachers and other people. I was organizing for ISTA, so I would help bring ISTA trainings to different places as an organizer. And I’m an ISTA faculty, and I’m teaching the ISTA Level One. So above and beyond that, I’m feeling a call to be a shamanic counselor. I don’t know what else to call it. Open myself up to seeing people individually, one-on-one, which would be a variation of coaching, and counseling, therapy, and shamanic work, as well as healing work if needed. Be it Reiki, or even body work, like I did complete the ISTA practitioner training and I have skills in different healing modalities. So it’s whatever is needed. That’s what I’m doing now.

Okay, nice. Wow… I feel like I need to just take all of that in for a second. Thank you for sharing all of that. Wow. I feel like the last questions I wrote seem kinda silly, like “Okay, what are some of your hobbies?” (laughs) But yeah I guess, kinda related to hobbies… It does seem like the work you do is very deep. I would guess that it might be very draining, too. Like, how do you… You did mention light reading. How do you balance that? How do you not take that home with you, you know?

Well, I mean, I would say that part of it is that I use tools to help release things… Release energies, stuck energies within me. Tools that I teach at ISTA for example, as well as other tools that my beloved has been teaching me as well. So we work together in different ways to help release things. There’s times I have to come home and just have decompression periods where I need to just sit and relax…

That’s basically it. I do need some down time. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s not like really… I don’t know, I think I do push myself a little bit more than I should, but a lot of times it’s something that I love doing, so then I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do it!”

Yeah! All right, let’s see… What are some things that you’re looking forward to in the near future?

The near future?

Yeah!

Wow… There’s a few things that I’m really excited about. I mean obviously, one is I’m gonna be… I’m working on an oracle deck. Yeah, and I have a friend of mine that’s doing the artwork for it.

Okay!

I’m like, in my second edit of the description of all the cards and everything. So I feel like pretty soon I’m gonna see about getting it published, or do self-publishing. I don’t know how it’s gonna go yet, but that’s something I’m excited about!

In a little bit over a week, on the 24th [of April], I fly out to California. I’m gonna be teaching ISTA out in Northern California.

Where specifically?

I don’t know the name of the venue, but it’s about an hour and a half from San Francisco.

North or south?

North.

Okay. I actually grew up an hour south of San Francisco.

Yeah, so I’m gonna be out there teaching ISTA.

Cool!

And then… Something else that I’m really excited about, in June, I have a training up here in upstate New York called the Shamanic Kink Immersion that I’m organizing, and assisting, and being a part of. So that’s up here in upstate New York. So I’m excited to organize and help create this event. And then, in July, at the same place in upstate New York, I’m gonna be teaching another ISTA training.

Okay!

So yeah! If your viewers want to come meet me in person, they can come to upstate New York, and yeah, get a taste! (laughs)

Yeah, that’s great! That does sound pretty exciting! Cool, well those are all the questions I have! That was so much. So much really interesting stuff. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about that I didn’t ask about?

Talk about… Um… I’m not sure. You know, to come around full circle to this originally being an interview about gamers and people my age that play video games…

Well it’s not just that. I wanted to just interview older, interesting women doing interesting things. Yeah.

So definitely yeah, I’m excited for the new Diablo game that’s coming out soon. I’m excited for the Baldur’s Gate III game that’s coming out in August. So the makers of Dragon Age, many years ago, created Baldur’s Gate I and II for PC, like twenty years ago. And now, there’s a new Baldur’s Gate III coming out. And what I really love about it, besides the fact that it has beautiful graphics, great storytelling… I mean so much of it is impressive… The artistry of it is incredible, and the storytelling… It’s that the makers, Larian Studios, are actually doing everything in their power to make the game as close to Dungeons and Dragons 5E core rules. And to make the game feel like it’s a tabletop role-playing game, even though you’re playing a video game.

Huh!

So their goal is to make it feel like you’re immersed in a tabletop game, not just playing a video game. So it’s really incredible. Really, the storytelling… The way it’s done, like if you’re playing a tabletop role-playing game, when you do checks and abilities, it actually shows a little box where a twenty-sided die rolls, or you know, six-sided dice rolls, to really see if you’re successful in your actions.

And then, you can play multi-player with friends, too, so you can go on campaigns with three or four of your friends. Right now it’s only in early-access, but the new game is coming out, and I’m super excited for that!

Yeah, cool! Sounds good!

So that’s the other things I’m excited about! Upcoming video games.

Yeah, nice! Cool. Well yeah, thank you so much! This was a really great interview. Thanks for sharing so much of your story.

Thank you! Yeah, until I put up my own website, which I’m working on at this moment, people can find my profile on the ISTA website, which is ista.life. You can find all the trainings, and all the faculty, and I have a profile there. I have my own website for the trainings I’m organizing that also has some information about me, which neistatrainings.com. So that’s the simplest way to find me. Find me on Facebook, you know, find me on Instagram.

Yeah, what’s your Instagram username?

I think it’s my full name. I’m on my phone right now… It’s yeah, @javi_martinez_stahl.