Episode 14: Find and Live your Life’s Purpose with Jan Castro

Jan Castro is a Shamanic and Holistic Energy Healer, a Certified Rune Reading Counselor, and the owner of Peaceweaver Spirit Medicine. She spent 25 years practicing traditional Western medicine as a Physician Assistant (PA), certified, in Urgent Care/Family Practice, OB-GYN, and Pediatrics.

Although she has always practiced a form of Shamanic and Holistic healing, retirement has given her the opportunity to pursue this dream full time.

Healing the soul and spiritual aspects of traumas and illnesses, you can be free to change old habits, beliefs and patterns of the past. ~Jan Castro

Jan compares the Western medical model against the Eastern medical model. Western is black and white and is usually an external treatment.  Eastern, or, Shamanic healing is about going within and recognizing that all illnesses and traumas have a spiritual component to them.

Jan decided to go from Western medicine to Eastern medicine because all her life she practiced a form of Shamanic healing and just did not know it.

How did Jan make the transition?

Jan relayed a story about a grandmother that came into the office. The woman asked…what are you?  Jan was taken aback and said what do you mean?  The woman asked if Jan was a healer. The woman said to Jan, “I need to tell you that you are a shamanic healer and if you haven’t followed this path then you need to.”

Jan recognized the things she had already been doing and that she could accomplish this.  She went to Hawaii and learned from a Shamanic program for a year.

The word Shaman comes from Tibet. The term designates this type of healing she provides.  She was not sure of her calling and an external influence told her what she should be doing.

Was it hard to tell her friends and family?

A hardship in her journey has been outsiders or family judging her and thought she was practicing a strange or evil thing. Another hardship was getting the word out because people do not want other people to know that they received shamanic healing.

Jan grew up in a very spiritual home and knows that shamanism does not have a conflict with any religion, no drugs are used, no discouragement to go to western medicine.

Who does Jan help?

Jan talks about the what traits people have that she helps:

• Traumatic experiences
• Feeling Lost in a crowd
• Terrified of making a mistake because they cannot forgive themselves
• Self-sabotaging behavior
• Abuse

How does it work?

First, Jan determines the person’s intent. Sometimes people do not know what is wrong. Maybe it was a loss of a loved one or maybe it was abuse. Jan talks to them for a little while and then she knows exactly what is bothering them.

She forms a bridge between the seen and the unseen worlds. A part of a person’s soul is trapped in that space and time. All the talk therapy in the world is not going to heal that piece. Jan helps replace those past agreements with new and healthy agreements. The person is free to live in that new space with new healing. Jan’s biggest goal is to balance your spiritual world with the physical world.

How about runes?

Jan also reads Runes. A Rune reading is an ancient art. The energy of each rune has continually vibrated across the universe for all of the time. They are considered seed sounds and each Rune carries a specific meaning. Runes are about looking into your own soul to see what is there and what has been blocking you.

Jan uses the medicine wheel and a runic wheel which is based on a Nordic cosmology of the world tree in the nine worlds. Each of those represents a part of yourself. She can see what is blocking you and see where the energy is working for you.

We live in ever changing present moment and we have a choice about what we put into our past. ~ Jan Castro

As we weave that into our future, we create more options. The ability to see which energies are working for and against in your own psyche helps make a more happy and peaceful life.

Jan love runes. She thinks they are so insightful and point you into a direction of what you should be doing. With runes, there is no time, space, or distance. Doing a remote session is 100 percent the same as doing it in person. All she needs is a photo, your birthday and an intention and she can give you a rune reading with video.

How does she find new clients?

Jan has a mentor who has spread the word about her. He has gotten busy and has given Jan work which has allowed her to work with people all over the world. They have given referrals to other people. People also find Jan on her web page. Jan helped with a shamanic retreat and met a group from Australia.

After one session, Jan was convinced

Jan describes her own experience, which is on her PeaceweaverSpiritMedicine.com.  Jan endured six years of spousal abuse including being stabbed, beaten, and choked. When she finally got out of the situation, she went on to become a PA and raised her kids. People just kept saying…time will heal. But the feeling of not being worth anything became overwhelming,

She went to a Shamanic healer and after one session, he removed the bad agreements. Her heart was pounding during the session and when she was done, she walked out of there a new person. From that moment forward she never allowed that feeling back in her life. It was shamanism that saved her from that trauma of her past.

Another story was that a woman had a curse placed on her with a figurine in her garden. Jan had a session with her and a week later contacted Jan and told her stalker had raped another woman. The woman felt like what they did in the healing helped the situation.

Jan practices live and let live

Jan has tried to show her non-believers where ancient techniques were used for healing. Old healing ways were dealing with the issues very soon. In our society, we do not deal with things for years and years and create blockages and intrusions. When we use the elements of the earth and the sky and the energy that surrounds our physical world, that we are not doing anything against our personal religious beliefs. People that are open-minded can see the advantages.

Jan talks about the medicine we get from the medicine wheel. We can talk about our life cycles. East is birth and new beginnings, South is growing your seeds, West is Harvest, North is the winter or the end of a cycle.

Other people have said she has no right to this medicine. It was not passed down to you. Jan is not part of a tribe. She does not perform tribal medicine, but all of us have history and DNA passed down from many generations that give us a connection to our roots. This healing is available to everybody.  Each culture practices their traditions in different ways with different symbols and metaphors.

Jan is a deep learner

Jan does not call herself tech-savvy, but she is not afraid to try. She has always worked as a professional in a professional field. She has always given her business respect. She used the resources in her community to get her business started.

If you do not know how to do something find somebody who does. ~ Jan Castro

Jan reads everything she can get her hands on that contain information about runes. She is always learning. Always reading about the study of language. One of the books. Dancing with the Wheel. Everything she does is about balance and the medicine wheel. About balancing. About going around every direction of the wheel.

What about that medicine wheel?

When Jan was doing her apprenticeship, so she decided to build a medicine wheel in her yard. Her husband helped her, and she told her mentor about the wheel. She painted this big rock in her yard with a picture of a mountain lion, and an eagle. Her husband helped her carry the rock out by the medicine wheel. The next morning, she got up and saw a mountain lion. She went out and watched her and played her flute. This was such a huge reinforcement that this was truly her life purpose.

Many of us have had an encounter with an animal in a dream or in real life. The animals remind you of the attributes you have that are like them. Jan can do power animal retrieval.

Jan’s Goals

Jan’s goals for her business are to help take her clients to the next step beyond acquaintances. Jan is accomplishing these goals and is starting to be contacted by people who googled her. Jan is retired and all her appointments are scheduled so that she can still enjoy retirement. Her goal is to be steady but does not want to be overly busy so that she is not stressed out anything.

Jan’s website is PeaceweaverSpiritMedicine.com. Jan has always been a peacemaker and that is how the name came to her. She realizes it is a long domain name, but she likes it. She says you only must type it once and then it will pop up on your screen.