MysticMag has the opportunity to interview Chris C. Stewart who offers psycho-emotional-energetic-somatic-karmic healing, energetic empowerment, and spiritual guidance through deep presence. As a Therapeutic Experiential Astrologer, Spiral Dynamics Consultant, and Energetic Healer trained in multiple lineages, Chris integrates diverse modalities into Heart Healing, a unique form of Integral Psychotherapy. Initiated into service by Kali-Durga in 2012, Chris has facilitated meditation and ritual for individuals and groups, drawing on decades of spiritual study and personal transformation. With a foundation in non-dual Tantra, experiential therapy, and VortexHealing®, Chris bridges ancient wisdom and modern techniques to support conscious embodiment and healing.
Your Heart Healing practice emphasizes connecting deeper with one’s heart and the hearts of others to live with more presence, passion, and pleasure. How do you guide individuals in cultivating this deeper heart connection, and what common challenges do they face during this process?
Getting to the heart of things is an infinitely deepening process: there’s always more richness to be had in our life experience: more wholeness, more health, more aliveness, more presence, more pleasure, more understanding, more wonderment, more connection, more meaning, more purpose. So the kind of people who are drawn to work with me are incredibly diverse. But generally there are two types.
First it’s people wrestling with repeated patterns, triggers, or conflicts in their relationship to self (e.g. their sexuality, spirituality, mental health or psychic attacks), to others (including intimate partners, family, or colleagues), or to life in general (looking for meaning, purpose, direction). The core challenges here are daring to reach out for help in the first place, recognising it and allowing it in when offered, and finding enough hope and agency to keep working their process without shutting down.
The second group of people I work with, and it’s the majority actually, are the hungry ones. Hungry for more – more awakening, more love, more connection, more growth, more aliveness, more potency, more depth. They’re usually practitioners in their own right – tantrics, healers, bodyworkers, coaches, trainers, shamans, you name it – who are leaders of their own community, have a deep expertise to be of service with, and have explored self-development and spirituality for many years. They may have some of the first group’s issues around which they want trustable support. Or they are drawn to connect with specific deities or archetypes or aspects of the divine that I work with like Kali-Durga, Chiron, and Merlin, respectively – among dozens of others. Mostly, however, they’re looking for energetic activations and support, and mentoring and inspiration, that quickens their process and adds to the value they have for their clients. The core challenge here is recognising there can be more, and daring to reach outside their familiar domain of expertise and support networks to invite in new empowerments.
So given the diversity of who sees me, and why, how I support each person to deepen into the heart of things is equally varied. I meet each person where they are at, and engage with what’s presenting on the surface of experience for them. Together we find out how their system is organically ready to deepen and what transformational tools may best support their process. These are chosen based on what the client wants, what the nature of the issues suggest will be helpful, and what will most empower their own navigation of their process outside of any session time.
The kinds of challenges that come up once the process is initiated are both unique and common. Each of us has our own distinct multilayered combination of the common human limits in motivation, understanding, skills, energy levels, external supports, and space in our schedules. What’s key is finding access points that work within these limits, so that our day-to-day habits are steadily, step-by-step, opening up more richness in our lives. I delight in helping people find what will truly work for them, no matter how different or simple it may be.
You describe Heart Healing as a form of Integral Psychotherapy that integrates distinct modalities. Could you elaborate on the specific modalities you incorporate and how they synergistically contribute to a client’s healing journey?
I employ a wide range of therapeutic and transformational techniques, approaches and modalities.
I draw techniques from dozens of therapeutic frameworks, practices and lineages: from within mainstream and developmental psychology, from the wild field of self-development, from newer trauma models of the nervous system and healthily attached relating, and from multiple ancient spiritual traditions.
Some approaches include things like being deeply present: co-presencing with the client what’s going on in their lives. Meeting things with an appreciative disposition. And relating through a lens of mutuality: acknowledging that we’re both just humans, with endless opportunities to find more ways to love ourselves and each other into more wholeness.
The main modalities I use are Embodied Astrology, Emotional Clearing, The Yoga of Gazing, Karmic Releasing, and VortexHealing®. They are each holistic in their approach, and they also have unique strengths given their primary focus, or how they connect into the human system. Embodied Astrology works primarily somatically, but also archetypally with the psyche. The Yoga of Gazing works largely to co-regulate the nervous system and entrain healthier states of functioning and connection. Emotional Clearing is working to resolve emotional charges. Karmic Releasing works at the root of our psyche’s conditioning, from this life or past lives (if you’re open to that idea; otherwise, you might consider it as working with dream-like aspects of the subconscious, for example). And VortexHealing works through energy and consciousness, directly getting to the subtlest aspects of our systems and inviting Source to bring in focused changes.
When using these modalities I explain what’s needed for the client to be orientated to the process, feel they still retain agency within it, and are positioned to get the most out of them. But they don’t need to know anything about them beforehand, or otherwise study them to get the benefits.
All of these modalities have a common method of action, even if the process is quite different. They’re all bringing awareness into the bubble of separation consciousness that sits at the root of all conditioning, unresolved tensions and traumas. Doing so wakes up that piece of us that has been stuck and unravels, discharges or dissolves, and/or transmutes, the conditioning it once held in place. With each drop of awakening, healing occurs. And with each healing, more awakeness is naturally, organically, embodied.
So each modality enables a pathway of healing and awakening, of ever deeper embodied awakening. But awake to what, you might ask? To our Source nature, by whatever name feels like Home to you. So all of the modalities, approaches, and techniques weaving together synergistically, to meet the client where they are at, are aligned to That.
Your offerings include personal sessions, group events, and deep renewal journeys. How do you determine which format is most suitable for an individual’s unique path, and could you share an example of a transformative experience from one of these offerings?
The sessions, events, and journeys are just access points for connecting to me. They have various themes, including, most commonly, just being ’whatever is up’ for the client. The format and the starting themes involved appeal differently to clients. Some like to test the waters in a short group event, others prefer the privacy of starting in a 1on1 session, while others leap into a multi-session journey. Usually though, clients get a taste in a group event, then engage in some 1on1 sessions, and from there, in discussion, we might explore if committing to a journey with a specific focus will best serve them.
While I might have some ideas, and can explain various options, it’s important that clients follow their innate impulse and interest. This supports their perseverance and leads to maximal benefits, including growing in autonomous capability for managing their own deepening process. I endeavour to foster personal agency through this relationship with me. It’s crucial for their health and life, for healthy power dynamics, and for enabling a deeper transformational relationship to unfold.
Some events, such as group Embodied Astrology rituals, can involve dynamic meditations with movement and deep breathing, and so deep somatic/primal catharsis can occur. Because of this, these are most suitable for people who already have good self regulation skills, experience with exploring and integrating altered states of consciousness, and are capable of resolving trauma discharges somatically. If people are unsure about their tolerance for this type of work, they are invited to chat with me, for free. We’ll determine if it’s suitable for them, or if exploring Embodied Astrology in a 1on1 context would better serve them. A personalised engagement allows us to carefully regulate the pace and breadth of what arises and build their resilience without (re)traumatising them.
Client processes are highly confidential, so I don’t relay their specific experiences, but many have been gracious enough to write about them, and I include a list on my website on the ‘what others say’ page. That said, I can describe the huge range of experiences and outcomes I’ve witnessed.
Experiences can range from being gently and easily drawn into subtle meditation states; to having memories and emotions rapidly surface, discharge and be digested; to having shadow fixations or split off parts reveal themselves, come into relationship and be integrated; to sudden shifts into healthier habits in diet and exercise; to being drawn into vivid and dynamic healing journeys through past life traumas; to experiencing in-dream-digestion of ancestral content; to powerful Kundalini activations; and even to profound deity embodiments.
The outcomes, while equally diverse and utterly particular to each individual, overall result in people feeling more at home in themselves and life: more present, grounded, embodied, spacious, clear and at ease – and less often triggered, anxious, reactive, and the like. Persistent tensions and troublesome conditioned patterns of behaviour, be they physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, energetic, relational, etc, routinely, suddenly, and easefully resolve and re-pattern. The contained life force, with its lessons and consciousness, integrates back into a deeper wiser wholeness. As a result, people often report feeling more resourced and motivated, more vital and capable, and simply able to handle and enjoy life better, while also being able to connect more deeply to themselves, to others, to life in general, and to All of Life in its mind blowing, multidimensional fullness and mysterious depths. It’s the grace of gaining skillfull means while enjoying the unfolding of ever greater enrichment within oneself and in communion with others. Fundamentally, it’s (re)enchantment with Life Itself.
In your blog post titled “Orgasms, Kundalini, Awakening & Embodiment – WTF?”, you delve into complex topics related to spiritual awakening and embodiment. How do you approach discussing such profound experiences with clients who may be new to these concepts, ensuring they feel comfortable and supported?
No matter what topic is up for my clients, or how bizarre or challenging it may be – from the domains of sexuality, through spiritual states, energies or challenges, to traumas surfacing from this life or past or their ancestors, to dealing with relational struggles – the first steps are always the same: to offer a safe space for them to reveal their experiences, to normalise and relate to what’s going on, and to remind them the heart can contain all experiences. Engaging the heart reliably invites in wise grace. Even if circumstances seem confounding and overwhelming, or simply impossible to make progress with, there’s always hope in the heart of things: where your heart is already at one with the Heart of existence.
Now, I don’t tend to approach clients with matters such as those discussed in that article: it’d be a great way to scare them away! Instead I invite them to raise topics relevant to them, their struggles and curiosities. I meet them in that enquiry, only bringing in things that are easily relatable to the context, at most a half step into an already adjacent possibility. So only if relevant and useful might I then bring in a small sliver of the perspectives outlined in that post, or send them the blog to read. Again, only if they’re interested will l invite them to dialogue with me about it. This way I’m accountable to continually (re)attuning with them. Transparent responsive connection is healing-liberating ground.
I invite my clients to join me in holding a key disposition to ensure our sense of mutual comfort and support. It can be summed up as one of ‘open light appreciative curiosity.’ I don’t think any of us know what’s 100% true in any situation, relationship or topic. Our framing, languaging, sense-making, and efforts in relating and life will always, therefore, be inherently imperfect. This innate limitation, incompleteness, and imperfectness can be challenging for some to accept. It may not feel comfortable. In my experience, however, if one at least sometimes looks through this lens, it can open spaciousness around what’s tense in our experience, and generate compassion for seeing and relating to it with fresh creativity. This opens the door to graceful transformation. Clients report feeling Life flowing again.
This approach, plus the responsive and accountable relational container, and anchoring somatically into what feels safe, can help us learn to feel ‘safe with what feels unsafe:’ we get more comfortable with being in relationship with what’s uncomfortable. It makes it safer, and easier, to unravel the knots we’re encountering into more freedom, without getting stuck in old limits, pains, wounds, reactions, trauma loops, or (un/sub)conscious commitments.
This disposition, and the spaciousness, compassion and creative connectivity it fosters, then naturally gets extended to others and our life more broadly. We develop resilience for being in a heartfelt, appreciative relationship with whatever is emerging within us, in our relationships, within others, and in all of life. No matter how bright or dark it may be. We hold our sense-making lightly, knowing it could be wrong to even some small degree, and will likely change and evolve as we do, by following the organic process of our unfolding. And that creates openness in ourselves, in our relationships, and with life… where more aliveness can enter, and magic can emerge.
Operating from Melbourne and working both in person throughout Australia and online globally, how do you adapt your Heart Healing practices to resonate with clients from diverse cultural backgrounds and varying levels of familiarity with integral psychotherapy?
First, I don’t think I have any clients familiar with Integral Psychotherapy. Not one! Nor do I ask them to be, or even explain it to them – unless they ask about it from seeing it on my website. I’m simply offering a support for their healing and awakening journey. If they happen to resonate with me enough to approach and connect, and only for as long as it continues to serve them, we lean in together according to what seems worth it to them.
As for adapting to people from diverse backgrounds, be that cultural, religious, gender, age, etc – my whole approach is founded on adapting to meet the person where they are; on getting to know them and what ideological, linguistic, or cultural frames they feel safe relating through. I adjust my style, language, and sense-making to meet them as fully as possible.
Despite each human being utterly unique, what pains us and what draws us forward, are often very similar, archetypal things. It’s about challenges to our self love, reckoning with relationship impasses or breakdowns, facing our and other’s mortality, dealing with traumas and illnesses, relating to the state of the world with all its horrors and wonders, and yearning for connection to things greater than ourselves, and even to the Source of life Itself. These themes play out as the structural, existential dynamics of the human condition. All other factors are more like language translation issues, where we have words for the same things, and once we know how to match them together, we understand each other directly.
So from these common core challenges and aspirations I have developed a library of concepts, phrases, metaphors, and the like. But they’re always used freshly, and held lightly. Meaning they’re adapted in authentic response to the other and their needs and wants, to how they’re able to show up for connection in the relationship. It’s always a spontaneous creative process in engaging openly with each distinct person. Each relationship is unique. It’s part of what I love about my work. It’s always fresh and self-renewing, and the outcomes clients achieve and unfold in their lives is reliably delightful and frequently surprising. What fun!
Due to my own language limitations, I mostly work with people from Australia, South East Asia, India, Europe, and North America. They usually speak enough English to discover me, or they feel comfortable reaching out by way of their contacts referring me. And we need to ensure we can connect through timezone differences. That said, some of my work, such as VortexHealing, can be done without any talking, and at any time, sometimes even as people sleep! There’s no need for words when presence and energies emerge directly from within you and self-validate their benevolent depth in your lived experience.
People are welcome to connect with me if they want to know more. https://chriscstewart.com/contact/
