2011 windy day in Canyon de Chelly

About Sandra …

I founded Crossing Worlds in 1991 to share my passion and experience with Southwest landscapes, cultures, ceremony and spiritual awareness pathways.

We come together in safe and respectful circles to remember, to stretch our wings into new places, and consciously create a life in greater alignment with our soul’s calling.

The path of knowing by direct experience, the mystic’s way, is innate within. Each time I heard and heeded that calling to experiences in wild nature, ancient sites and Native cultures, new doors opened I had not imagined.

At a sacred Sedona spring with a Hopi friend, circa 1996.

Wild nature has always been my healer, my best friend. I am from an Arizona pioneer family and all my life I have explored and gone to nature for sustenance. I know the Colorado Plateau region as a luminous lightscape that helps open vision.

I was a schoolteacher in a rural, mountain village in Arizona for several years and worked three summers for the Forest Service. The call of the wild called me to quit my indoor job and become a fire look out in the Sierra Ancha Mountains for 6 months.   This was a major life turning point. I was partners in a land project, drove a truck in a copper mine for awhile.

Inner guidance led me to Alaska and Peru where beings from Nature communicated with me and I had direct vibrational experiences with earth energies.

I worked for a time on the Arctic slope coming to know the magic of northern lights, no sun for two months and the moon never setting, and  resonant waves of swans, geese and loons arriving with the thawing of the ice. I obtained an M.S. in natural resources planning and became a land manager with the state of Alaska for several years.

I absorbed Alaska into my being. I have maps in my mind of the landforms, internalized sacred mountains that nurture me even from afar. I made relationship to Bear in physical encounters and dreamtime teachings. A bird showed me the way back to camp when lost in the Alaska wilderness. Migrating caribou passed close by while I lay on the earth entranced.  I left Alaska in 1990 soon after I clearly heard the voice of the Colorado Plateau call me back home.

At Machu Picchu in Peru ancient doorways were activated in ways I still can’t define–I experienced breathing with the mountain in a kind of rapture born of deep connectedness to ancient sources of life.

Eagle showed me in vision a destiny to work with earth energies that even now, years later, I am trying to understand. Wild places gifted me with deep receptivity and a willingness to live on the edge, to push my limits and to reclaim my inherent indigenous soul. This experiential alchemy stimulated shifts into new levels of soul expression.

Knowings came to me from my attentive time in Nature and from lucid dream messages. Shamanic insight pathways, Native medicine people and metaphysical wise people deepened my practices. More than 3 decades of practice with ancient principles of ceremony, sound healing (drum, rattles, gong and Himalyan metals) and working with spiritual energies of earth, cosmos, intention and focus have have honed my ability to hold space for people, to mentor, to trust my intuition.

A photo of author exploring at Chaco Canyon in early 2000’s.

My Navajo and Hopi spiritual friends have taken me into their homes and lives and showed by example the power of prayer and reverence and of a living relation to earth, opening more ancient channels of knowing. Peruvian medicine people shared their ways welcoming me to connect with their heritage.

Years of practice with being Present with my fears, pains, and spinning mind have honed a deeper place of centered peace. I have developed many experiential tools for releasing old patterns and creating positive change and unlocking the wisdom of soul that comes every night in our dreams. East-west awareness practices of being here-now and meditation are an important complement to the mystical and ceremonial practices. Tools, to be valid, have to be lived and honed within each of our own soul’s wisdom.

Always for me first hand experiencing is my path to understanding. I extend these relationships with Nature and ancient ways to you encouraging, facilitating your own inner awareness and vision to emerge and you to activate change in your life through your intention. We use ceremony to make new intentions real to the physical body as we walk our new pathways. The Directional Beings and elemental forces of nature are real and respond to our intention creating a powerful circle of support as you enter into your inner journey to the beat of the drum or the whoosh of wind–these beings flow through me and guide the pathways of our shamanic journey.

Hopi dancers at my Arizona mountain valley retreat camp, 1996.

Sedona and the Colorado Plateau lands are radiant with earth energy and ancient wisdom–this is my beloved homeland I extend to you, bring you in to.

I have explored hundreds of prehistoric archaeological sites, sensing energies, imagining another time. I have explored some of these sites with Hopi friends, descendants of the ones who built and abandoned these fascinating places many centuries ago. I have also enjoyed many stories of spiritual wisdom from Hopi, Navajo, Havasupai, Pima, Yavapai, Peruvian Native people.

Photo taken many years ago with a Navajo friend with whom I have shared more than 25 years of backcountry experiences with groups in Canyon de Chelly.

“Sandra comes in a good way to the Canyon–she listens to the wind, the air, the water to be real close to Mother Earth. She likes it, wants to be with it and is a healer to other people.” Daniel Staley

2012 photo with Uqualla of the Havasupai tribe at a spring ceremonial gathering

“The indigenous ways and lands, have spoken thru the work of Crossing Worlds to Visitors of all nations. As a friend of Native people, Crossing Worlds has brought together travelers, to a consciousness of land and spirit.  A life long commitment to the teachings of indigenous philosophies, Crossing Worlds experience if of integrity.”  Uqualla, May 11, 2012

Sandra created Crossing Worlds Hopi Projects in 1999 as a non-profit to support Hopi people, their culture and sustainability.