PSYCHIC COUNSELING AND SPIRITUAL HEALING
in person/by telephone in Santa Fe, NM 505-982-3294
About Elissa Heyman
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND:
I was inspired to attend the University of California at Santa Barbara because of a particular professor I heard about in the Speech Department, Dr. John Macksoud. He taught a class in subversive language and had the reputation of teaching people “how to think”. At U.C.S.B. I could also write my own degree program, which I did in my sophomore year. Interested in all things psychic, I titled it: “Communication Theory with an Emphasis on the Limits of Language.”
In Santa Barbara I also found the greatest influence in my life: my metaphysical teacher Eric Teissedre. He was a trance channel and psychic medium whose spirit guides taught psychic development and spiritual healing. I studied with Eric from the age of 19 and continued on after I began my own practice in 1979.
My related interest in counseling led me to create a peer counseling and ombudsman center at U.C.S.B., “The Help Center.” Although I never hung out a shingle as a traditional therapist, I had six years of counseling experience, working both at my own Help Center and also six as an intern at the Santa Barbara County Mental Health Clinic, under the under the supervision of chief psychiatrist Dr. Richard Lambert. The six years Dr. Lambert mentored me gave me the confidence to do psychic counseling on my own.
PROFESSIONAL INFLUENCES
My practice is the application of psychic ability to the personal counseling process. I became a full-time practitioner in San Francisco in 1979. I have always combined psychic counseling with energy healing and spiritual healing, which includes being a medium.
The person who originally introduced me to counseling and made it seem fascinating was my mother. In the sixties she was a counselor at the Free Clinic in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury. She would take me sometimes to go talk to the kids there, runaways who were alone and from the Midwest, mainly. Afterwards, I would talk to her about what happened between me and the kids, and her insights would amaze me. She showed me the healing power of insight. She also told me she saw auras of colored light around her clients, but didn’t have a system of interpretation.
My first job as a psychic was on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review in 1976. My job: reading for whomever wanted some psychic guidance and healing on the road. Bob Dylan and his amazing friends showed me that being wildly creative could make money and work out fabulously. I was very impressed with their magic lifestyle.
My second job was arranged by another magic man, Reverend James of New Orleans. He was a voodoo practitioner and healer who worked out of a “sweet shop”. It was filled with little glass bottles of different colors he had made for his potions, and many other curious and magical objects. I would watch Reverend James counsel and heal people with his powerful style. When he thought I was ready to work professionally, he set me up at The Bottom of the Cup Tea Room on Royal Street in New Orleans. Every year when I went to Jazz Fest, I’d do readings tarot and palm readings there.
I went to Peru in 1999 to learn about Andean shamanism and spirituality. Juan Nunez del Prado was my teacher. He is the subject of an interesting book on shamanism, “Keepers of the Ancient Knowledge” by Joan Wilcox. On that trip I came back with my most prized possession, The Speaking Stones. They are my own unique system of seven stones and one crystal. Like all divination systems, they represent different phenomena in nature. Using the stones in person, I have them make a divination with them, and over the phone, of course, only I am making a design, but they are magical either way!
Here’s more about me! This is another “About” section from my blog:
MAGIC
Although my parents did not introduce me to religion except to define it as a psychological crutch, I had the concept of a “magical world” at a young age. Even before kindergarten, I was allowed to get up early before anyone and walk by myself. It made for thrilling mornings in Mill Valley, California, once I stepped off the pavement and into the hills that rippled all the way to Muir Beach. I loved to stalk deer and make my own trails.
When I was 14 I got a bee in my bonnet about going to Greece, and when I got there at 17, I had a new kind of magical experience. It happened at the first ancient site I went to, the Temple of Delphi. Just as I started walking up the hill in a group of tourists, a little girl maybe 4-5 years old ran up to me and began to walk by my side. Somehow she communicated to me telepathically to follow her and we’d go up a path tourists didn’t usually go up. Although I didn’t think communicating that way was possible, it happened anyway, so when she veered off a moment later, I followed her. She led me all the way up to where the oracles received their visions, and then disappeared into the crowd. What surprised me the most was how disappointed I was when I didn’t receive any visions myself, being in that spot. I wondered why I was so crushed… what was I expecting?
I had so many unusual and intense encounters in Greece that I couldn’t integrate into my life in California, I just forgot about it all when I came home and headed to college.
In college my training and Independent Major prepared me for counseling work. “Communication Theory with an Emphasis on the Limits of Language” allowed me to study metaphysics. My practical training came from four years at a peer counseling service I created at UCSB, “The Help Center”, and six years as a paraprofessional counselor at the Santa Barbara County Mental Health Clinic.
When I was19 I met my metaphysical teacher, trance medium and psychic Eric Teissedre. In a minute he showed me the reality of knowing things directly, and how helpful it could be. I studied with Eric about twenty years, and other great metaphysical teachers, especially Pyramid Power author Pat Flanagan, Andean spiritual teacher Juan Nunez del Prado, and spiritual healer Reverend James of New Orleans.
I began working full time as a professional psychic at 29, but before that, I had another kind of magical experience: doing psychic work for whomever wanted it on the Rolling Thunder Review with Bob Dylan. Everyone on the tour was some kind of artist or self-made person leading a magical life doing what they loved, and they were doing well…I was liberated knowing I could stay free and make a great living!
The longest continuing magical experience I have occurs regularly working with clients, and the sacred circle experience I get to share with them. The communication of healing words and healing energy, and all the ways it takes place, is always a fresh adventure. Thousands of people sharing the real and intimate details of their lives have taught me great respect, and to understand that every person’s life takes a lot of courage to live; that people can change; and one way or another we are each here learning about love.
Elissa Heyman, Psychic Counseling and Spiritual Healing, in person/by phone, Santa Fe, NM 87501, 505-982-3294. elissa@elissaheyman.com