In this episode of High on Healthy, host Richard Zwicky sits down with Dr. Sandra Bailey, a registered nurse and holistic practitioner who navigates the intersection of conventional healthcare and ancient shamanic traditions.
Dr. Bailey discusses her unique approach to treating depression, anxiety, and trauma by scanning the body for energetic “roots” and addressing spiritual concerns such as soul retrieval, past-life vows, and auric attachments.
While she maintains a background in clinical nursing, she explains how her remote shamanic practice—which includes wealth activation for businesses and central nervous system resets—offers a path for those who haven’t found relief through traditional psychiatry or medication alone.
Key takeaways
- Sandra Bailey believes lasting relief comes from finding the root of a problem rather than treating only the symptoms.
- She says trauma is held in the body, so she scans the body for where it sits instead of talking it through.
- She advises clients in deep meditation to let whatever comes up pass without reading into it.
- She suggests simple daily habits such as walking barefoot, taking salt baths and doing guided meditation to feel more grounded.
- She asks skeptical clients to hold back negative talk about a session for a few days, because she believes doubt can get in the way of the process.
The big idea: Can You Heal by Feeling Instead of Analyzing?
More conversations on Trauma and Healing, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, Purpose, Meaning and Mindfulness
Read the full transcript
Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we explore the many paths to healthy because we know there's no one path to healing. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so on Apple Podcast or Spotify or your favorite listening location. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Sandra Bailey, who's a registered nurse and holistic practitioner working with both conventional medical care, psychedelic and plant-based healing traditions as well as shamanic approaches to trauma recovery. Sandra, welcome aboard the show and
Sondra Bailey: Thank you I'm happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Richard Zwicky: It's wonderful to have you on board and taking a look at, how western medicine and shamanic and traditions can blend together and when's the right approach for the right person because nothing is right for everybody and
Sondra Bailey: Usually people come to me when they've been to doctors,
Richard Zwicky: That go ahead. But I was going to say that really bridges the first aspect which is when does somebody know this is the right path for them.
Sondra Bailey: For example, if they have depression or anxiety and they'll go to the doctor, they'll put them on the medication and then they don't get better. And when they come to me, I find the root of the problem, which sometimes they need a soul retrieval. And then sometimes they have prints and vows from past lives that are affecting this life. Yeah.
Richard Zwicky: And that's one aspect that a lot of people until they begin investigating and understand overlook which is how the past really affects us today. And western psychology and psychiatry treat trauma as something that's stored and can be of course in psychiatry you tend to deal with more the medication and with psychology you're still trying to deal with cognition and access. How does shamanic traditions handle trauma differently?
Sondra Bailey: With the trauma what we actually do is go inside the body. If it's u verbal abuse, they're going to hear it in their ears. So what I have to do is scan the body and then I go in there and I grab the roots of it and remove it and then put healing back to that area. Now if the person is hearing voices a lot of people will be diagnosed with multiple personalities from hearing voices and a lot of times 90% of the time the people that came to me it was not that they were hearing spirits around them speaking to them.
Richard Zwicky: And how do you differentiate that?
Sondra Bailey: What I do is I go into a trance and do a shamanic journey, which means that I travel in the astral realm and I look and if I see a bunch of beings around them, then I Yes,
Richard Zwicky: For somebody who's in that situation, there's a belief factor and you have to believe that is accurate and that's happening and that's the point. How do you get somebody to actually overcome their beliefs in the first place to accept this as a possible path to healing? Because it is very different.
Sondra Bailey: It is. And when I speak to them, I let them know, we go over the medications and everything they've been on. And so I sit down and do a review with them. And what I do, honestly, the first time I'm like, "Okay, let's remove them." And then in 24 hours, let's meet up again. And 98% of the time, the voices stop. So then once I have their attention, I can move forward and start removing everything else that needs to go. Yes. U majority of the time when that happens,
Richard Zwicky: On that of course there are people who are on medication who desperately need them. H what's your assessment process to understand that removing these medications from somebody won't put them or others in peril Mhm. Yeah.
Sondra Bailey: I recommend that they go to a natural doctor that works with herbs and then I correspond with them and then we start a plan. But the doctor leads it and then I base my plan on what the doctor says. If the doctor's not on board, I still just make my plan and go with it. And I don't talk about removing the medicine in the beginning. I just want the voices to stop. Or if it's depression or anxiety, I want to get the root of that first.
Richard Zwicky: And that it's critical is to get to the root. And that's actually speaks to what do indigenous and shimentic traditions understand about altered states that modern medicine is really struggling with or just beginning to discover because those altered states are, in the case where you're talking about somebody hearing voices, it's a permanent altered state. And of course when we do go through a shamanic process or a psychedelic treatment we are entering an altered state. But in both those circumstances they're not well understood or
00:05:00
Richard Zwicky: Handled by modern medicine.
Sondra Bailey: They try to do medication. A lot of people have done the psychedelics treatments for depression, for anxiety, for multiple personalities, but that's not something I do. But people have seen a lot of relief for that. And I've seen really good results from my clients that had that done before they see me. The clients that when I talk to that have the multiple personalities in the beginning, they're always like, I don't think this is it. And that's why I do that first session to remove them. And a lot of these people, like what you're saying, they're in alternate states already. They're in a somewhat connected space to the spiritual world. For me and for my students that I teach I have to work at them to get in altered states and a lot of times they will use marijuana and that helps them get into that state. Yes.
Richard Zwicky: And you have a background in training as a nurse. And when you're dealing with this, you're balancing the two different contexts and psychedelics, be it ketamine or MDMA or psilocybin, they're being increasingly studied in clinical settings. And you touched about, different benefits. There's been a research study going on out of Maryland where we had a guest from the show who was running the research program there and one of the byproducts they discovered about psilocym it's incredibly beneficial for people with migraines. But what are you seeing in the clinical setting and the way and documentation is being prepared that is improving the knowledge but what is also being documented from the shamanic processes that is coming into the mainstream Right.
Sondra Bailey: I've noticed, to treat trauma at the root. And instead of, they're starting to see that we need to go backwards. We need to get to the root. We need to see when this happened. And the natural path doctors, I see them getting into that. But the psychologists, majority don't really are not on board. But I am noticing a great number of natural psychologists and psychiatrists that work with the spiritual realm. Because I have two clients that their psychologist actually works spiritually trying to get them healed. So that's one thing that's coming out that's great. And the other thing that I'm seeing that is coming upon us all is the root of the trauma and I don't the essay trauma especially that affects everything in your body your eyes your ears your mind your reproductive organs and that energy stays in the body so I'm starting to see raiki practitioners go into that person's body and remove So, that's something that has really taken off in the past year.
Richard Zwicky: And that aspect of practition is quite fascinating because it is very remote also which people talk about and are actually shocked at how they do they are affected by something that's happening halfway around the world. H how do you explain that to people? Yeah.
Sondra Bailey: 99% of my work is remote work. And for me, it's actually stronger. Now shamanic practitioners are normally the only ones that can do this. I go into a trance. So, I actually travel to that person no matter if they're in Turkey, if they're in Central America. It's like there's no time or space that we can't go to. So, when I go to treat them within five minutes, I'm in their room and then I begin my work on them.
Richard Zwicky: And when you're doing your work on them, are you working on I've was chatting with a therapist a raiki therapist just the other day and they've been helping people alleviate physical pain. You're working on the emotional or do you connect the two or
00:10:00
Sondra Bailey: Because the physical pain will cause depression and anxiety and a lot of times what I'm finding is yes most definitely yes and
Richard Zwicky: Vice versa?
Sondra Bailey: The one thing that I'm finding is a lot of people that have had surgery they actually have an attachment where they had the surgery. For example, if they had knee surgery and that knee pain doesn't go away, the first thing I do is I check for an attachment because once the doctor cuts into your body, it leaves a hole in the aura straight down to where the surgery is. So when there's a hole in the aura, things from the spiritual realm will come into that hole and attach. So that person doesn't get better and they just need that removed and the area filled in so there's no longer a hole.
Richard Zwicky: H I've never actually thought of that aspect of it. And it's interesting having had nine knee surgeries, I've got lots of holes. So some aspects of your work are more familiar to people grounding breath work and the How is that a stepping stone for people who are looking to explore?
Sondra Bailey: It is so important. What I tell everyone if you can just do the minimum which is keeping your aura cleansed, cleared and the holes patched and your chakras rotated, balanced and repaired. That affects your mental and physical health tremendously. So people will ask how often you recommend this at least every two months. Because right now with the energy of what's going on in the world the energy that is sticking to people's aura is a dark oily type structure. So I have to actually burn that off and
Richard Zwicky: And you have to burn it off which is fascinating in itself as a concept. Be and we just had a show on with the Dr. Tina Shmer sellers and one of the aspects that came up that we didn't get it deep enough into because you covered a lot of ground but was the concept of embodiment feeling rather than analyzing. And one of the aspects in that conversation was your body's nervous system feels the shame and it's something that's been placed onto us. H how do you deal with embodiment with regards to feeling rather than analyzing? Because, for some people, myself included, I'm incredibly introspective. I tend to analyze to figure things out. And sometimes that can get in the way.
Sondra Bailey: When I'm working with a client and we're practicing on meditation, because this is very important, what I'll get them to do is go into a deep state of meditation and anything that comes up, I tell them don't read into it. Just let it pass. Because the deeper work of the trauma and things that are inside the body, they have to be removed first or they're going to continue coming up like a movie.
Richard Zwicky: And you know that some of the things that we're chatting about in this whole topic, it's less familiar to people and what's unfamiliar is just people are always suspicious of. That's just part of nature. And when you talk about practices like a soul retrieval or and trauma release everybody understands but it's approached differently in a shamanatic practice than others. They can sound like foreign concepts to listeners. How do you describe them in practical terms for people who are stuck and unsure is this really a viable path for me?
Sondra Bailey: I explained to them about soul retrievalss. So, everyone's soul is fragmented. Not unless you've had a soul retrieval. And it starts from your birth. And from the time that you're born up till now, when you were going through traumatic situations a piece of your soul will break off. It will stay there. So, that disconnects you from the body. So during a soul retrieval, I'll go repair I mean retrieve the soul pieces and then blow them back into their chest so that they can be whole. As far as trauma from abuse, they need a soul retrieval plus a central nervous system And that's when I go inside the body, reset the central nervous system and work on the adrenals so that person no longer is in fight or flight.
00:15:00
Richard Zwicky: And as we go through that and it's the retrieval it's fundamentally there's a large aspect an overwhelming aspect which is belief that this will work and
Sondra Bailey: Isn't it?
Richard Zwicky: Sometimes you And people will look at that when you believe a treatment will work, it's as important as the treatment itself. And there's a lot of stats which, there was an interesting study released just this past week about the overwhelming effect, the placebo effect, which allows the body to actually heal itself because we believe the medicine works. How do you talk when somebody says, "Yeah, this only because they believe it doesn't do anything." How do you deal with that?
Sondra Bailey: And it's interesting you brought that up. Last week, I had a client and she's only had three sessions and we did all the trauma removal that I'm talking about and she kept saying, " I don't think this is going to work. I've been to doctors all over the world and she gave me a whole list of things. So, when we were doing this session at the end, I told her, I want you for 24 hours to not bring up anything negative about the session. I said, "Let's touch base in 3 days." And when we did everything had implemented inside of her. So, your words can block you definitely.
Richard Zwicky: They can and your preconceived thoughts will block you. But one of the aspects in a lot of psychotherapy treatment is to help you reset your values and beliefs. And fundamentally is this really a two-step process where you first have to reset your beliefs to be able to then reset your beliefs again?
Sondra Bailey: I would say it's definitely a two-step process.
Richard Zwicky: And how do you work people through that? Because you're to be able to get to that point of resetting your beliefs, you're actually having to heal a lot of the trauma in the first place.
Sondra Bailey: A lot of times when these situations is from past lives, a lot of times people will make vows to never do anything spiritually. So what I have to do is go back into their past lives and find the imprints, find the vows, remove those and heal from that past life forward. And then when I speak to them, if I'll tell them, okay, so for 3 days, we're not going to talk negatively about this. We're going to let it settle. It works.
Richard Zwicky: So let's go through the shamanic process itself because I mean there's two aspect. There's the ceremony which walk us through what that looks like because there's different layers in a ceremony and not they can be very simple or they can be very extensive.
Sondra Bailey: With me. I don't do ceremonial. I Yeah,
Richard Zwicky: And just talk about the last bit the wealth accubation for business people.
Sondra Bailey: I didn't learn that. I do black magic removal, contract breaking, healing, and past lives and wealth activation for business people. It's a service that I offer for business owners and
Richard Zwicky: What is that?
Sondra Bailey: What we do is we get the lay lines are lines that come to everyone and the lines they have abundance love, health, family, career, and I have to open all those cuz most people don't know about that. So if there's blockages on your lay lines, it's going to block your life in different ways. So I first check on that and then open that. And then with the wealth activation, I take timelines and we move those. And then we also go back to see if there's anything in the past that's affecting this. And then after that on the businesses, we put a VIP beacon that pulls people in. Success, new clients, because a lot of people need clients. So, we'll put an energy on there that pulls them in. And I do a lot of that work with the Palladians. They're awesome with that.
Richard Zwicky: With the Palladians. And how do you also you mentioned you do most of your work remotely. So I'm presuming that you don't administer or sit with patients when they go through a psychedelic approach.
00:20:00
Sondra Bailey: No, I wish I did. The most common places they go is South America in Central America and then they'll have a shamanic practitioner that sits there with them and guides them through the process because basically what they're doing is they're doing a shamanic journey. They're connecting to different realms and they're able to move back and forth in those realms. It's a really empowering experience. Yes. Yes.
Richard Zwicky: It's a very liberating experience And it's not really all about what you see, it's what you feel. And the aspects of what you feel takes days to surface and for people.
Sondra Bailey: Those shamanic practitioners will bond with the herbs. And it is so fascinating. They will bond with the spirit of the herbs and then when the person is drinking it because they've already been working with those spirits and have a connection, it makes them purge not just what's in the stomach, all of the trauma that's in the body. It's amazing.
Richard Zwicky: A big part of it is also because when you are on a journey when you have entered a psychedelic state or psychedelic compounds and entered a state you generally are you're in a non-judgmental position towards yourself. So you're liberated from that shame. Which restricts you from considering what's happened.
Sondra Bailey: That is the truth.
Richard Zwicky: And that's incredibly powerful because ourselves are generally our biggest block to overcoming our challenges. For somebody who's stuck, who's feeling, how do I move forward and considering is a shamanic process the right one for me? How do I unblock myself? What are the first practices you recommend? And what does grounding involve for you? Because some people think, if I'm working in my garden, I'm getting my hands in the ground. I'm working. What do you mean?
Sondra Bailey: When I walk outside, I walk barefooted also. But to get to the deeper grounding, you want your star chakra to connect to the earth. And that's the chakra that's underneath your feet. So that's where I start. And then I also recommend the aura cleanse, chakra balancing because dark energy in your aura can disconnect you. I also recommend salt baths. I just had a lady that was having trouble connecting. She did her first salt bath and then immediately she connected. And meditation, guided meditation. But the first thing I do is get people's guides because your guide tells me what your mission is.
Richard Zwicky: And by guides it's more than just their values and beliefs at current. It's really their directionality as a person,
Sondra Bailey: Once they start feeling normal again.
Richard Zwicky: So how do people begin con cultivating that energetic hygiene that they need to be able to take the steps through these processes?
Sondra Bailey: Because if you just take just a shower and pour salt water over your head, it raises your frequency and it cleanses your aura. So just that alone, people see results. With the deep meditation and the grounding with the star chakra, they're able to connect with the earth and a lot of people can see the energy leaving their feet. And then when you're connected like that, when your guide comes up, you're more grounded, peaceful, that you're able to see him. A lot of people can see them after connecting.
Richard Zwicky: Now we are running out of low on time for the day. With somebody who wants to learn more about you, your practice, but also the whole path of healing through this process. How can they reach out and learn more?
Sondra Bailey: You can find me on Facebook or Tik Tok at Shaman Sandra and my website is www.shamansandre.com and that's Sandra with an O because there's another practitioner with an A.
Richard Zwicky: I was wondering just on that one I was going to mention and website. Wonderful.
00:25:00
Richard Zwicky: Thanks for joining us today on High on Healthy Sandra.
Sondra Bailey: It has been a pleasure.
Richard Zwicky: It's been a great conversation and thanks to everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy and we'll be back again with you soon.
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly edited for readability.