Karen van Kriedt, Spiritual Facilitator

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My life has been full of spirits and out of the ordinary experiences, beginning with my first memory as a toddler. I found myself inside a tunnel with spiraling blue walls that sparkled with sunlight while golden globes rose inside them like hot air balloons. The tunnel ended in a spiral some feet in front of me. I was completely unafraid and wide awake to the beauty when my mother’s arms appeared from above and pulled me up. She held me close and sobbed. 

For many years, I wondered about this memory. I had learned to walk in Hawaii so I tried to make it about me getting rolled by a beach wave, but the details didn’t jive. Eventually, I recounted the story to someone who had had a near death experience. She told me that her tunnel had looked different, but she was sure that I had almost died. Perhaps a near death experience accounts for the many spiritual encounters I have had, perhaps it doesn’t, but here are a few of my experiences: 

In 1959, at eight years old, I spontaneously saw my last past life's death. I was sitting on the floor looking at a book and minding my own business when the room where my brothers and sisters were playing around me, became transparent. As if looking through a window, I saw a river of energy. Across the river, soldiers were lining up men in cloth caps. Among them was an old woman in a flowered housedress and babushka and a little girl with braids. While I watched, the soldiers raised their machine guns and killed them all. The only sense I’ve ever been able to make out of this is that it was my death in my last past life, and that I was at that moment the same age to the second as the little girl who was murdered holding the hand of her grandmother. 

That same grandmother visited me again when I was in my forties. I had been praying for at least a year for two things: a vision of the goddess and a mother who loved me. I had imagined seeing the goddess as a beautiful fairy in the sky and that some older woman might take me on to mentor me. One morning as I drove the winding West Marin roads on my way to work still groggy with sleep, a wall of mist opened up on the left side of my vision. Yes, I was driving. In the mist, stood the old grandmother still in her housedress and babushka. I was instantly wide awake, tears waterfalling from my eyes. I felt what I can only call divine love coming to me from Grandmother and pouring back to her from me. I got what I had prayed for, two in one: a vision of the goddess and a mother who loved me. 

Back in my childhood: one night, I heard my parents talking. My mother was crying and my father sounded worried. I found out later that he had a septic ulcer and needed what was then a serious surgery, possibly fatal. As I listened to them from my bed, I thought, “I know what to do about that.” Without further thought, I left my body and traveled through the house as a piece of consciousness, past by my sleeping brothers and sisters, through the door that had been left ajar by my ever-anxious mother, and to the table where my parents sat. Without further ado, I entered my dad’s abdomen. I have no memory of what I did, but the next time I heard them talking about the surgery, my dad said, “The doctor can’t explain it. It just disappeared.” He no longer needed the surgery. 

As for experience, trainings and certifications: In 1985, I graduated from the Berkeley Psychic Institute. As part of my commitment to BPI, I did hundreds of readings (aura, rose, past life) as well as energy healings for the public over six years. In the late nineties, I co-founded and co-managed a spiritual center called The Sanctuary where I continued to read and heal. Around 2010, I read Sandra Ingerman's Soul Retreival: Mending the Fragmented Self. Eventually, I studied with teachers from Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies. As a shamanic practitioner, I’ve done a number of journeys for myself and others. I also discovered my favorite spirit guides - power animals - with whom I have a strong affinity. During COVID, I trained with Mark Beale, founder of the Past Life Awakening Institute and led regressions online for many clients. It is his protocol that I use to help my clients reach deep relaxation when I do a guided shamanic journey. I have also led shamanic drum circles, as well as women's circles on the beach under the full moon. 

Of interest relating to my course Psychic Survival Skills: Not only have I run my energy, the meditation I teach in the class, for easily a thousand hours over my lifetime, I have also taught the skill to many individuals and groups. When I was a young teenager, I used to wake early and work with an invisible teacher who somehow showed me things through my mind. When I was 27 and found my way to the Berkeley Psychic Institute, I discovered they used the same tools and techniques. They even called them by the same names I knew them by at twelve years old. 

Related to my Guided Shamanic Journeys offering: At one point in my life, I came to an impasse as a healer. It seemed to me that all the time and effort I put into “healing” other people was mostly futile. For healing to happen, people need to change, a difficult process. To make a change, you must find clarity. Clarity brings the willingness to change. It often makes it impossible not to change. When someone I was working with spontaneously met a power animal and that power animal greatly contributed to my client gaining clarity, I began to regularly invite my client’s spirit guides to participate in the process. The outcomes have ranged from enlightening to life-changing, and in some cases, miraculous. In these sessions, I am mostly along for the ride. I keep the container safe and give a gentle nudge now and then while my clients do the heavy lifting and reap tremendous rewards.