Delving into the realm of mediumship after a profound encounter, Danielle Searancke has spent a decade nurturing her spiritual gifts. Through her renowned Spirit School, Danielle not only imparts the art of mediumship but also champions vulnerability in the spiritual space. From podcasting to mentoring, her journey showcases the transformative power of embracing one’s unique path in the world of energy and spirit. MysticMag has the pleasure.
How did you get into the spirit work and what’s the story behind the Spirit School? How did it come about?
I have always been interested in mediumships, ever since I was a teenager. I didn’t realize I had the abilities of mediumship until I was 31 years old and I gave birth to my first daughter. I just so happened to see a medium right after her birth, and that was the 5th medium who said that I had the abilities for mediumship. I never believed it before but, for some reason, I believed her, so I went to one of her development classes and was able to make a mediumship connection in that first class. That was in 2013, and for the past 10 years, I have been focused on my development journey. That’s how I got into spirit work.
When it comes to the Spirit School, it has grown into something quite big, but I originally found that something that was missing in the spiritual space was vulnerability. I never previously had a teacher talk about bad readings, difficult clients, not feeling good enough, comparing yourself to other readers, having stage right, or being okay with being wrong. Mediumship is an art, it’s not a science, so it’s not 100%. You should be ok with that.
In 2018, after a nervous breakdown in the corporate space, I decided to launch a podcast that talks about the vulnerable side of mediumship development, and that’s how Spirit School was born. From 2018 to 2020, it was just purely a weekly podcast where I was sharing different things that I kept thinking about in my early development and different experiences that I’ve had. I started gathering a loyal listenership of people who were actually very thirsty for vulnerability. In that light, my podcast is really well known for being a vulnerable take on the mediumship development journey.
When the pandemic happened, I had just left my career in First Nations Health and Healing to pursue mediumship full-time, and I found myself locked in my house 24/7 with my babies. I was slightly freaking out, but what ended up happening is that during the pandemic, podcast listeners kept asking me if I can teach classes on different subjects. That’s where my online spirit school was born, in March 2020. I started teaching online classes, and I became internationally known as an accessible mediumship mentoring teacher in the human art space.
Now, in 2023, I have a physical school on the oceanfront in Squamish, British Columbia, in the mountains. There’s a TV show on the horizon about the school so it has morphed into not only an online ecosystem but also a physical school in which I do intend on creating a retreat center and other offices around North America, with California being next in line.
Spirit School essentially is a sanctuary for lightworkers. My career is focused on supporting developing mediums to confidently blossom into their highest potential on this path and Spirit School is a place where we wear vulnerability with pride and share openly, without judging each other or comparing ourselves.
Can you walk me through one of your Mediumship sessions?
Mediumship is something that I focused on very heavily from 2013 to 2020 when my teaching path unfolded. I’m not able to do as many mediumship sessions now as I was in the first 7 years of my development due to the high demands for my mentorship and teaching, but typically a session with me has an opening where I try to educate my sitter and normalize the practice of mediumship by explaining in a grounded and practical way how I have developed and how I tune into energy, as well as that the energy that surrounds me gives information that can be validated evidentially. I explain the process of a reading through an educational lens and aim to normalize the art of mediumship of my sitter.
A reading always starts with evidence, meaning bringing through evidence of life continual which is one of the reasons why spirit comes through a medium. It will usually be information, facts, and details about a loved one in spirit that the sitter would then claim “Yes, I know that spirit communicator, that’s my family member”. Once they have identified that through the evidence that I bring forward in that beginning part of the section, we move into what I call the evidence and message blend.
I do believe that messages are also highly evidential so I will ask the spirit world questions like “What have you seen of the world since you’ve gone home?”, “Who are you with?”, “What memories do you share?”. Then I enter in a conversation with the spirit communicator and bring through evidential messages that the sitter will then be inspired by and hopeful by and, hopefully, receive some healing with.
I also leave space in every session for a sitter to ask some questions or even ask if I want to tune in psychically for them because not everyone’s need is actually mediumship. I myself have not lost anyone of huge significance to me so my need for mediumship isn’t as great as some of my clients’, and because I’m a teacher, a lot of the people who come get readings by me are actually other people curious about their gifts. In that way, my sessions are a little bit lighter than somebody’s who is purely focused on providing healing through evidential messages from the spirit world. In short, it’s basically an education pace, letting people know what it’s about, that evidence comes first and messages second, etc.
Then I tap into people’s humanity – how can I serve you, human-to-human, what do we need to move this healing journey forward? That’s where I lean into my mentorship.
What can people expect from your mentorship?
You get all of me in mentorship. This is where my deepest passion is because I felt a little disserviced by my mentors early on. I felt that everyone just wanted to be seen as spiritually superior and not able or willing to show their vulnerability because of that perception of them. Therefore, in my mentorship is you get the rawest and realest of me and it’s very catered to the specific needs of the mentee or the group that is in front of me. Some people may have a lack of confidence in themselves, so the mentorship journey for them is not actually about how to connect with the spirit world but how to believe in themselves. In that way, mentorship is much more personal.
Other people know who they are and they just want to go for deeper details, and in that mentorship session, I may bring in some techniques around mediumship that help support them on their personal goals and mediumship moving forward. In my group classes, which are my membership or my programs that I teach, I have a more specific pathway that people can be informed about. My mentorship is also about holistic development. It’s not just on technique and practice, but also on self-reflection and personal growth. It teaches people who can enter lightworking in any capacity, whether it’s psychic mediumship, Reiki, spiritual coaching, spiritual advising, etc., can benefit from my membership because I teach it in a holistic way. We take care of the human and the spirit. On the other hand, I have programs that are specific to mediumship development where I take people through an eight-week pathway that gets them the foundational structure of mediumship and I do that through group mentorship capacity.
Essentially, in a mentorship session with me, you get all of me. I hold nothing back and I gate-keep nothing. I teach through storytelling and through my experiences, so I’m almost never regurgitating anyone else’s teachings or philosophies, but even if I do, I always give credit where my teachings come from. However, my teaching is always done through my lived experiences. In that way, the prerequisite to mediumship development is a life well lived which I have lived.
You also offer different courses and retreats. What can you tell me about that part of your work?
I have courses that are specific to mediumship development, specific to mediumship growth, and I also have courses that are specific to business development because I don’t think enough of us in the spiritual space consider what we do to be businesses, but they are. We need business licenses, we need to pay taxes, and we need to operate our practices as businesses. That’s why I offer practical teachings for people on how to launch their business or how to grow their spiritual businesses and do things on the up and up.
I host retreats here at Spirit School that are pretty focused. Recently, I taught a foundational mediumship development circle to 10 women here in the local community. We gathered for three weeks, and this was very specifically designed for people to learn the foundations and basics of mediumship development.
As for the retreats that I do off-site, I rent a retreat space every single year and I host what is called the Sacred Spirit Retreat. This is my favorite offering, and it sells out every year very quickly. My retreat this year sold out in three days, so it’s very high in demand.
This is a sanctuary for lightworkers. I am a First Nation woman, a reconnecting Indigenous who lost connection to her community through the residential school system. My reconciliation with the path in my indigenous culture has been to reconnect with the land, with the tree people, with the plant people, etc. In relation to that, at the Sacred Spirit Retreat, I teach these teachings on how to be in harmony here in this human experience on Mother Earth, connecting in with the nature that surrounds us. Why else would we come to this planet? Why else would we come to have this human experience and be surrounded by the beauty of the ocean, the trees, and nature and not learn how to live in harmony with her?
The Sacred Spirit Retreat brings our lightworkers back down to Mother Earth, back down into the most beautiful aspects of this human experience. I teach them how to work with the nature that surrounds us all.
My membership has a 70%+ retention rate and it’s been around for 3 years. I still have people who have been there for 3 years and just make requests on different things that they see me doing. I will teach them about it and I’ll share anything. Anything you see that I have, I’m willing to share with you how I got it. I respond more to the actual live needs of my students through the membership, which is the Spirit School Collective.
What topics does your podcast cover?
My podcast originally covered my development journals. They covered the first 3 years of my development; the things I thought about, the things I was worried about, the things that surprised me, the things that brought me the most joy, etc. The first few years of my podcast really cover those early years of development. Later on, as I stepped into my empowerment as a teacher and an internationally known mentor, I let people know about what’s going on with me, such as building out the school, because a lot of people who are drawn to my podcast have some interest in my work and how I got here. That’s why I share through my podcast the growing pains, struggles, and the celebrations I’m having. I keep people along the journey with me as I’m building out Spirit School to eventually be a retreat center and establishing a series of school locations around North America and maybe even the world.
I’m trying to keep people informed. I also have a free community where we host very deep conversations around grief. I’m also a death doula, so I will pay attention to the conversations that are taking place in my community and I will create podcast episodes around what’s on people’s minds at the time, meeting their direct needs.
I also do a monthly podcast episode called “My Spirit Messages” where I practice my inspirational mediumship, which is an inspired speaking form of mediumship, which is another way that the world of spirit loves to move through me. It’s all focused on lightworkers and their development path. that’s where my body of work is geared towards supporting other people who are here to serve the world of spirit and humanity through spiritual arts and services.
Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
I am someone whose background is working with race cars and in the health field. The only prerequisite to doing this spirit and energy work is a life well lived. The world of spirit does not play Duck, Duck, Goose with us on who gets the gifts and who doesn’t. We all have equal access to the world of energy. Not all of us will awaken to that curiosity and follow it, but we all have equal access to it. In that way, mediumship, psychism, healing work, it’s all for everyone and if you’re someone who has been thinking about it, that means that your soul is trying to awaken you to that path, so stop waiting for the signiest of signs or signier signs. Just follow your curiosity and release expectations on where that may lead you because the most enjoyable life experience I have experienced on this path has been the spiritual, psychic, and mediumship development path. It really is about the journey and not the destination, so relax, lighten up, and have some fun.
To learn more about Danielle, you can visit her website at www.squamishmedium.com
