In today’s blog post, Mystic Mag delves into the unique approach of Sandra Corcoran, a seasoned practitioner who seamlessly blends traditional therapeutic techniques with intuitive and esoteric practices. Discover how Sandra utilizes tools like ART™ and the Thoth tarot to help individuals uncover their deepest truths, overcome self-limiting beliefs, and embrace their authentic selves.
How do your backgrounds in psychology and education integrate with your intuitive and esoteric work?
For me, life is a spiritual practice. What I mean by that is that the mundane and the esoteric are often just a different language. Mundane come from the Latin, mundus, which means ‘world’ or ‘of the earth.’ Esoteric has its roots in the Greek concept, esōterō, meaning “further inside” or ‘looking within’. For me looking within while living life on this earth plane, is the spiritual gift and the spiritual challenge offered to each of us.
Throughout my trainings—whether psychological, scientific, multi-cultural, indigenous, esoteric, educational, body-oriented modalities—the aim is to hone my gifts and share those skills, helping others to hone theirs. I have been a Special Needs Educator, an educational director for homeless shelters, an integrative therapist, a shamanic practitioner, and sacred travel organizer. Each role has helped me to build my perceptions and observation skills.
Everyone has the capability to tap their inner knowing, whether instinctual or intuitive. To some these skills come naturally and easily. For others it is through learning what hasn’t worked when they ignore that inner voice. For others it’s to find that inner voice. It’s a combination of faith and practice. No one can give you faith, just like no one can give you intuition, you either acknowledge its presence, try it, or you don’t. The alternative also applies. Intuition needs to be grounded even though it is often inspired by liminal spaces. But sometimes a chair is just a chair.
Knowing whether it’s inspiration and motivation is key. Inspiration is sourced from within; motivation is more external. Just like education and intuition appear opposite but potentially can feed each other. Neither needs to be discounted as better than the other, and both offer more appreciation to further inspire and motivate.
How do you combine ART™ and shamanic practices to help clients uncover deeper truths?
I have been blessed, through a series of devastating personal losses, to have been guided and mentored by indigenous elders throughout the Americas. Their teachings and challenges helped me to understand we all have choice in how we approach our life’s course.
We all come with a mission, great or small, it all contributes to the wheels turning. Finding our mission, being willing to commit to that mission, continuing to explore and grow the mission, for me, evolved in circuitous ways and lots of self-work. You can’t ask another to do what you haven’t done yourself.
From all that was shared with me, I consolidated my shamanic and therapeutic practices into a process called ART™, Alchemical Reintegration Therapy. From a shamanic perspective everything we encounter, from the wind to a thought, a rock to the stars, is energy moving and pulsating at different wavelengths or frequencies.
When energy becomes stagnant or entrapped it can cause dissonance physically, emotionally, mentally, psychically, and/or spiritually in an individual. Traumas, challenges, accidents, loss, family lineage issues, to name a few, can diminish one’s sense of connection, joy, purpose or health.
This clearing technique identifies known and unknown wounds, past life patterns affecting current life circumstances. It requires one to be accountable for facing and releasing the power you have given that ‘story’ through the work we do together.
Quantum physicists tell us that where we put our attention, that is what we will experience. Shamans believe the same: “The trick is what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy—the amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda
What role does the Thoth tarot play in your sessions and how does it facilitate self-discovery?
Readings are best when they build a narrative, opening little apertures for the client’s personal discovery, self-empowering them to choose or change. The goal of a reading is never to tell the client what they should or should not do, rather to open possibilities and probabilities for consideration.
My prejudice, given the impact a card reading has, is an untrained reader may mistakenly do more harm than good−just like any therapist who hasn’t done their self-work, or a shamanic practitioner who has developed the ability to see beyond the veil but doesn’t know how to ground the information−running the risk of misguidance.
Cards don’t always give the answer a client wishes to hear. They may ask a range of similar questions, seeking the answer hoped for. A good reader kindly points out this impulse to the client, be it conscious or unconscious on their part. The worst thing a reader can succumb to is making the cards say what the client wants to hear; it doesn’t serve anyone.
A reading can facilitate a client’s ability to self-reflect and then their capability to self-direct their actions concerning issues they are wrestling with. Tarot does not take the place of therapy (medical or psychological). It is not a quick fix for issues some clients bring to a reading. It is important to know your lane, and your limitations.
When someone books a reading, they have given me permission to be very direct unlike the slower pace needed in a therapeutic setting. Either way it is important to provide a safe space for a client to ponder what was shared, letting them know they have free will to consider or reject what was said.
How do your services help individuals identify and overcome self-limiting beliefs?
Every service I offer is meant to help a client make the unconscious, conscious. To bring insight into clients choices and encourage them to feel more empowered, uncovering what is real for them and what is not. Often our struggles are our own self-imposed beliefs, formed by someone or something else.
We are all programmed from birth by image makers, good, bad or indifferent: family members, family pathologies, medical issues, schools, religious, and governmental rules or regulations. Many folks are unclear of what really brings them joy. They take their cues from movies, social media, or others’ opinions of what they should mimic or what they should desire, instead of finding their own expression.
My job is perspective−assisting clients to get above the issue or into the weeds of their stuck, unhappy, unmotivated, or unclear feelings. Then encouraging them to reframe a more fulfilling confident story, learning they have a choice to cut cords with expectations or obligations that were never theirs to begin with. The commitment must come from within, As my tag line says, “To change your story, you must be willing to change your script.”
How does integrating both “light” and “shadow” aspects contribute to a more fulfilling life?
We live in a dualistic world that is much more apt to create inner or outer conflict in realizing or aligning with our truth. We feel limited in applying alternate ways that feel supportive or fruitful moving us forward. Finding that balanced sweet spot, where we legitimately feel seen and heard in healthy ways, is nuanced differently for everyone.
To make peace, to fit in, to succeed, to survive, we often consciously or unconsciously dimmish our light, our worth, our shiny sense of self. We also err on ignoring our shadow side, that part of ourselves that tends to ignore, blame or project onto some else what we haven’t resolved within ourselves. Both may be hidden from our knowing, repressed by events or create unchecked emotional impulsiveness.
If we wish to experience more fulfillment, it means uncovering and managing where we hide our light and ignore our shadows. Fulfillment comes if we are willing to change what no longer serves. To make a new choices and commitments to consciously explore. “What is my contentment?” That path is not always easy nor convenient, but what is the alternative?
Do you offer workshops or retreats focused on spiritual growth and personal transformation?
Yes, the intention of all my work is geared towards self-awareness. I offer mini classes throughout the year on a variety of topics and travel opportunities that can stimulate self-growth creating transformation.
Yearly there are opportunities to visit sacred international sites for folks to discover the magic in other cultures and within themselves. Travel, whether of the mind or of the body, is a pilgrimage of the soul, a sacred journey for self-discovery that can be a catalyst for positive change.
These burgeoning timelines we are now in require us to open our hearts and minds to new perspectives, both in how we perceive ourselves and that of the world around us. Appreciating diversity, other cultures, exposure to sights and sounds different from our own, encourages us to question our own beliefs. Questioning is powerful, it has the potential to connect us to something beyond the known, to something within our greater Self.
By moving out of our comfort zone, physically or mentally, we are challenged to be curious, to find empathy and optimally, to be responsible for broadening our own story. We only improve ourselves through our own efforts, but these classes or pilgrimages are safe and fun opportunities to explore who you are. Play after all is an important part of self-discovery. And the effort of self-discovery is so worthwhile.
