For as long as I can remember I have felt like I am being chased by an angry ball of rolling black darkness. As a child, I would visualize it and picture myself outrunning it, but it was always a few steps behind me.

Even today, four decades later, its tentacles threaten to reach out and wrap themselves around my heart. Sometimes I want to lie down and just let it flatten me.

Some of my trauma is ancestral, but not all of it. If you’ve ever seen or read Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, and you’re familiar with her family chart, that will begin to give you an idea of the chaos that is my family, only we’re not famous.

I’ve seen dozens of mental health professionals. I take medication and I see a psychiatrist regularly. I have seen therapists who know less about my condition than I do, who take one look at me and tell me I don’t “look depressed,” and who have never experienced trauma themselves and therefore don’t know how to truly help me heal from mine.

Finding a therapist whom you click with and who gets it is a bit like online dating. It’s frustrating AF and it can take years to make the right match. What has helped me most is working with a breathwork healer who specializes in trauma and who has firsthand knowledge of what I call The Darkness and The Fog.

I first met Beth Hardin nine years ago at a New Year’s firewalking breathwork retreat. (Yes, we actually walked on fire without getting burned, but that’s another story.)

A few years ago, I saw her at a memorial service for a mutual friend. She was smudging — using a large turkey feather and sage to clear people of negative energy as they entered. As she started to smudge me, she leaned over my shoulder from behind and whispered in my ear, “Hey, you have to be nicer to yourself.”

I felt my body flood with energy as my eyes became wet with tears behind my sunglasses. During that small exchange, I knew she understood and I knew I had to work with her. But it still took me four years to reach out to her after that day. It took a global pandemic.

A few months ago — after what can only be described as languishing in The Darkness and The Fog for what felt like forever — I signed up for one of her virtual weekly breathwork meditation group classes. I was hoping to slide in on the down low and blend into the background of Zoom. But Beth doesn’t roll like that. The setting was intimate. She welcomed me immediately. Within a week I had scheduled my first one-on-one healing session.

Beth Hardin is a healer, breathwork practitioner, licensed massage therapist, Reiki master, yoga instructor and spiritual coach. Her intuition is unparalleled and I find that I always get exactly what I need from each session.

She gets it because she’s been through it and she’s not afraid of anyone’s monsters. “Our darkness is our greatest art, and the light and the dark go hand in hand — that’s the balance. I’m now honored to have gone through everything that I’ve experienced because I know I can help a lot of people,” Beth tells me.

If you’re curious about what breathwork healing is all about and whether or not it’s right for you, I asked Beth nine questions about what brought her to healing work, what breathwork healing is, and how it can benefit trauma survivors.

1. What brought you to healing work?

Really from the beginning of my life, I always knew I was a healer. My father passed away when I was 11. But before that, he was a single dad raising me and my sister. He owned a few laundry mats and he was also into golfing and he was very social so we were with a lot of babysitters.

When we were with him, we were in the laundry mats and we were on the golf course so I really had to learn how to be a chameleon for my own survival by creating a bubble around myself because I was in a lot of different places. I had to learn how to read energy, and spending so much time in the laundry mat actually taught me a lot about people and their energy.

When I was around 8, a lady came up to me and asked me if I’d ever smelled death before, and then she put a dollar bill under my nose that had been in the pocket of somebody who had died. I felt this really dark energy inside of me and it scared me so much. My father raised us very Christian and we were in a private Christian school from kindergarten to fifth grade when he was alive and he planted God and spirituality in my life.

But the feeling of that dark energy went way beyond anything that I was learning at school and in church. What I felt was very dark and nobody ever talked about the word dark or anything like that. They’d just say good or bad or evil. And so I knew that there was way more on this earth and in the universe than I was being taught.

When was my dad was sick we lived with one of our teachers out in the country and that’s where I connected with nature. I started eating vegetables and taking supplements and realizing there was this whole-body way of living versus a dense energy way of living. I was also learning to trust my intuition.

I was blessed enough to be in the hospital with him and hold his foot while he took his last breath. To be an 11-year-old and to hold that space for somebody is profound, and that’s when I realized, OK I’ve got big things to do in this life. So, the short answer is death and darkness are how I came to healing.

Our darkness is our greatest art, and the light and the dark go hand in hand — that’s the balance. I’m honored to have gone through everything that I have because I know I can help a lot of people.

One of the biggest pieces of my being a healer and stepping into my healing work is having my daughter and being a single mom because I really had to dive into my intuition and my warrior self to really know how to be the mom and the dad. And Spirit would jump in and talk to me through her. She would say things to me sometimes and I just knew that it was Spirit talking through her.

You hear people say that God will give you a message through your kids or through music or writing — she really helped grow me up in my spirit big time. She’ll be 30 this year, and even still, she’s truly one of my greatest teachers.

2. Who is Sage Lightfeather — Can you talk about your Cherokee roots?

Sage Lightfeather is my Native American name. I’m Cherokee on my mother’s side, but because I haven’t lived with my mother since I was 3, and I was partially raised by my white grandmother who rejected my mother, that part of my heritage wasn’t nurtured in me growing up. But I found my way there on my own.

When I started massage school and did my yoga teacher training and I started spending a lot of time out west, my Cherokee roots really started coming out. The first time I did the breathing in a group, my consciousness opened up.

I remember I positioned myself by the door on purpose in case I needed to escape because I was still in survival mode. When the breathwork session was over, I just opened the door and ran. Literally, there were stairs to go down. I think I might’ve touched two stairs. I flew down those stairs, ran to my room and locked the door.

Oh. My. God. That experience hit on all of the darkness that I had been holding in a container and it scared the crap out of me. So that’s why I prioritize getting people safe and let them know that they always have a choice and we don’t have to hold onto dark energy. Spirit is your copilot and can kick the passengers out that you don’t want along for your journey. No parachutes. I love it.

3. How has healing work changed your life?

I’ve learned that hurt people hurt people, and until you heal the hurt you’re just going to keep hurting people. After my dad died, my sister and I went to live with our aunt who was abusive, then we went to boarding school, then we went to live with our paternal grandmother.

When I was in my mid-20s after I had my daughter, I went to school to become a massage therapist, and the massage world really opened me up spiritually. I was on my playground, and I didn’t have to hide anymore. I was understood. I was heard. I felt Spirit and I was finally validated because the things I had been sensing my entire life, I knew I wasn’t making it up the whole time. This. Is. Real.

It helped me get over the darkness, get over the fear, get over my being afraid of stepping into the light. Very quickly I moved on to other modalities. It almost happened automatically because I was always breathing with people during massages, you know, because I wanted them to feel safe and I wanted to feel safe with each person. I just really felt at home instantly.

I also learned that when I was taking care of myself and feeling good, I could hear Spirit better and I could actually feel energy in my hands. I could hear things. I could sense things. I could smell things. People would give me messages. I would be massaging somebody and tell them, your grandmother is here.

These experiences just kept opening me up and I felt totally in my element.

4. What modalities do you work in and why?

In addition to massage therapy, I started doing Reiki and became a Reiki Master and energy healer, I’m a certified breathwork practitioner and I’m a yoga teacher. I really started just doing everything I could learn about how to communicate — whether it’s singing to plants or learning more about nature and bringing everything back full circle to what I sensed and felt as a child.

I worked with a Bulgarian Yogi named Tony here in Tampa where I live, and I did 1:1 yoga with him at 5:30 a.m. three times a week for three years. The first time he asked me to breathe I let out this tiny little breath. And he said, “No, I said breathe!” I said I don’t know how to do that. So he came over to me and as a comfort, he placed his hand on my back — that’s the receiving door. He said, “Just take a breath in and exhale.”

And I took a breath, and these tears started dripping down my cheeks because I’d been wound so tight and I had held on so tight for so long that I just hadn’t really given myself permission to be with myself because my entire life up until that point had been about survival. The breath just really brought me back to myself because nobody else is there. It’s just you and your breath.

I got really into Deepak Chopra and I saw him live. I was in the front row and he looked me right in the eye and said, “You can change your DNA; you can transform your biology.” That idea led to more and more expansion, and I worked with Tony for many years and got really into the breath and yoga and I got really into my body and I had this rockin’ amazing body that came from doing the work.

But I wasn’t ready for that body because I hadn’t healed the trauma — the physical, emotional and sexual abuse — from my past. I got really freaked out and I ran away from it. I hid and started to put weight back on as a sort of protection.

I knew I had to go through that experience because I had to go back and deal with that darkness I experienced as a child. I chose to live because I was a mother, and thank goodness I had that beauty to help pull me up.

When people are resistant to healing work, I totally get being in the place of, “this is hard, I want to check out, it’s over.” But that place of dense energy is also trying to teach us, so I knew I had to get back to the breathwork and back to yoga because my body and spirit craved that healing and responded to it.

Because when you’re in that space, it’s just you. There’s nobody else. There’s nobody telling you what to do and you’re not doing it for anybody else. It makes me feel safe because I remember all of the places I’ve lived and all of the homes I’ve been in. At night I get into bed and put myself in my energetic bubble, and I just always remind myself that I’m safe and I give myself this breathing space.

Really, I’ve been breathing my entire life and creating this safe space and the dark energy always reminds me that I don’t have to hold onto that darkness. I can remember what happened to me without staying in the dark energy.

I focused on getting back to my breath and someone gave me David Elliott’s book The Reluctant Healer during a time when I was in a lot of pain physically and mentally. I really related to his story, so I flew out to California to have a private session with him and ended up working with him for about 14 years and being a part of this amazing breathing meditation community.

5. When you’re working with someone and you say you’re communicating with guides, what does that mean? What are you tapping into when you hold space for someone?

I really started to feel that I was tapping into another dimension right before my dad died. I could hear footsteps in the kitchen, I could feel touch on my legs and I could see waves. It wasn’t until I started massage school and started meeting spiritual people and learning about mediumship that I began to understand what was happening to me.

One of the women said, “Oh honey, you have guides all around you; they’re tucking you in at night.” She told me it was important to understand that I get to choose which ones to let in. I get to say no to any guides that aren’t of a high vibration. I said, “Whoa! Where were you when I was a little girl!”

I’m communicating all day long. I wake up really early and do between 30-45 minutes of meditation while doing my Bemer electromagnetic field map therapy. I get into my bubble and get my frequency really high and evaluate any downloads from my dreams to see if there are messages.

When I go to bed, I ask the guides for what I call my spa time in order to sleep because I do need to rest, but sometimes that doesn’t always work out if messages want to come through. I always say anybody can come and be with me as long as they’re of a high vibration. Anything low has got to go.

When I wake up in the morning I do a little check in — is there anything I’m supposed to remember? And then I look at my day and see who I have sessions with. I always connect with my guides. I’m part Native American, and with the guides, the labels, to me it’s all the same. God, Buddha, Jesus, nature, crystals — it’s all part of Spirit. It’s all the same energy and I just ask them to come and be with me. Some of them have names, some don’t.

We all have a master and a little girl. The little girl is playful and jokes around, but she also is the one misplacing our keys. The master helps us progress through life and death and has been with us for many lifetimes and directs our other guides and helps us with our spiritual growth and development.

It took a few years, but my guides all revealed themselves. They’re always with us. Always. Most of us just don’t know it. I really had to let go of every paradigm of how I was raised. When I’m working with someone during a 1:1 healing session, I tune in to my guides and I ask for their guides — for both of our teams to come together to create the experience. So I guess you could say I’m sort of a spiritual surgeon.

6. What is a 1:1 virtual healing session with you like?

If someone has never been to me before for a 1:1 healing session I like to take 30 minutes of face-to-face time (virtually) to get to know them and make sure they feel seen and heard before we get into the breathing.

I ask that you come with an open heart, turn off your phone and consciously create a safe space for you to be by yourself with yourself. Everyone is different and every session is different. If a person is willing, I want to go to the harder stuff first because if you’ve gotten to the point that you’ve come to me, or you found me, or you’ve heard about me, then you know that I am not scared to go into the darkness with you. I’m not scared of anybody’s monsters.

I don’t need to be scared of your stuff. I’ve already contacted my guides. I’ve called your guides and I’m holding that container, allowing you to have a space to trust that you can hold space for yourself as well.

7. How does the breathing work?

If someone is new to breathwork then I explain that we’re going to move our breath in different forms. I always start slow and let them know that we’re going to rev up similar to revving up a car and then we’re going to get into the journey.

It’s a two-part breath that’s done lying down. The first breath is an inhale through the belly, the second breath is through the chest, and then you exhale out your mouth. It’s an active breathing meditation that’s beneficial for everyone but is particularly helpful for people who struggle with meditating. Because it requires your participation and doesn’t require you to sit still, it helps you get out of your head, into your body and allows you to access your spirit self.

Some people struggle with the two-part breath, which is why we start slow and work up to it. I also encourage people to move around if they want, or I’ll have them put their hand somewhere on their body to find that connection if they’re struggling with the breathing.

This breathing technique floods your body with oxygen so people might feel tingly in certain parts of their body, especially in their hands. This is totally normal and you can reduce the intensity by simply slowing down the breath.

I’ve always believed in the power of nose breathing but I encourage even more after reading Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.

He says: “A last word on slow breathing. It goes by another name: prayer. When Buddhist monks chant their most popular mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum, each spoken phrase lasts six seconds, with six seconds to inhale before the chant starts again. The traditional chant of Om, the ‘sacred sound of the universe’ used in Jainism and other traditions, takes six seconds to sing, with a pause of about six seconds to inhale.”

For me, all forms of breathing are a form of prayer and can help move stuck energy and promote mental and physical healing.

8. What kind of benefits will people get from group or 1:1 healing sessions?

If they show up and do the work they get the benefit of feeling their vibration. Feeling lighter. Feeling better physically and mentally. They may have the realization, “Oh my God, I knew this was in me but I didn’t know how to access it.”

People often feel empowered to take back their agency and realize they don’t have to listen to outside influences. I love getting people to a place where they feel it’s safe to be themselves. Feeling safe is probably the biggest piece. Let’s get you safe first and let’s grow from there because if you don’t feel safe, you’re not going to feel empowered to take control of your voice and your life.

9. It feels like we’ve been collectively holding our breath for the past year amidst a global pandemic and a racial reckoning. How can this kind of breathing help our trauma responses?

Breathing can help heal trauma by getting a person into a space where they can recognize what hasn’t been healed in their lineage and release any dark energy they’re holding onto that might not necessarily be theirs.

We can say all day long ago, “Oh that was in our parents’ era, our grandparents’ or our great grandparents’ era,” but the truth is that it’s going on now. And if this last year has taught us anything, it’s that if we don’t heal that trauma in ourselves it continues to inflict itself on the next generation.

We can’t hide from this anymore. I’m not a member of the Asian, Black, or Latino communities, but I am Native American and when I was a little girl my white grandmother would make me scrub my knees until they bled because she said they were dirty. It took me a long time to get comfortable with the color of my skin because when somebody tells you you aren’t enough or physically abuses you because of how you look, that’s traumatic and that trauma is stored in your mind, your body and your lineage.

There are spaces in our cells and in our memories that are holding the voices of our ancestors, whether we’ve experienced racism or perpetrated it. There is a proverbial storage container inside of you that you don’t even realize that you’re holding and until you flush it out, you can’t truly heal.

The best way I can describe it is you can’t run away from yourself. When you run away from yourself you actually just run right into yourself. You know, wherever you go there you are. And so any place where you haven’t accepted yourself is going to keep coming to the surface. With the breathing meditation, you can go to that space where you’re being authentic and you feel safe and allow yourself to truly be seen. I always imagine that it’s just me and the divine and this beautiful light.

The more we feel at home in our own skin when we’re owning our superpowers and we’re owning our superstar selves, it’s just like the saying “you can’t touch this” because we don’t have to reject ourselves anymore. It’s an everyday thing in some way, shape or form. Because again, we’re on the densest planet of the highest evolved beings. That’s why it feels like work.

And if you’re ready to do that work, I’m here to walk beside you.