Diana Min | Healing Through Spirituality and Sacred Plant Medicine: A Journey from Trauma to Purpose
Empowerment coach and spiritual guide Diana Min discusses how she prevailed over trauma, addiction, mental health challenges, and deep-seated wounds through the remarkable power of spiritual work and plant medicine. After hitting rock bottom at the age of 26, when she realized she didn’t want to live anymore, one phone call landed Diana in the hands of a gifted shamanic healer, who changed her life and led her to find purpose from a lifetime of extraordinary hardship. Her journey led her to discovering multiple healing modalities, including ayahuasca, that she now uses to help others heal, too.
Show Notes:
Learn more about Diana and her work (theurbanindigo.com)
Connect with Diana on Instagram (@theurbanindigo)
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Nicole: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, it's Nicole. Before we get into this incredible episode with Diana Min, I wanted to give you a heads up that we discussed some pretty heavy topics like child abuse, sexual assault, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, and psychedelics.
Diana beautifully shares her healing journey and how it's led her to the purposeful work she does as an empowerment coach, doing both spiritual and trauma informed work. But I share this so you can ensure you're somewhere you can safely process any emotions you may experience as you listen.
Thanks for tuning in, and now here's Diana and me in conversation.
Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned, and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion and encouragement you give to others. Because, just as we say “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone, saying “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care.
Today I'm talking with Diana Min. Diana is an empowerment coach and spiritual guide who provides people with the sacred tools they need to activate their greatest strengths and tap into their authentic soul purpose. Through one on one coaching and sacred plant medicine retreats, Diana guides people on a journey of self exploration, helping them heal their wounds and bringing them to a place of radical self love, acceptance and purpose.
Diana was called to this work as a result of her own healing and spiritual awakening. From an early age, she experienced abuse, neglect, and hardship that traumatized her for most of her life. She struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety, and PTSD, as well as fear, unworthiness, self-doubt, and self abandonment. Her journey led her to discovering multiple healing modalities, including ayahuasca, that she integrates into her practice.
We'll talk with Diana about how she healed herself through her spiritual work, and how she guides others in their healing.
Diana. Welcome to Here For Me.
Diana: [00:02:23] Hi, Nicole. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Nicole: [00:02:27] I am so excited to be here. And I love that we get to do this interview in person. Everybody, if you're not aware, you know a lot of podcasters do remote recordings now. But Diana and I are both based in San Diego, so we're here in the studio in San Diego, which is exciting.
And we met through the lovely Kate Hutson, who is also a coach based here in San Diego, and she and I were talking about the theme for this season, which is Prevail. And she immediately said, you need to meet Diana and hear her story, which moved me on every level.
So it's an epic story of surviving, thriving, and truly prevailing, rising above extraordinarily difficult circumstances to find your path and heal yourself and heal others. So I'm honored to have you today.
Diana: [00:03:11] Thank you so much. My heart, it feels so touched by that intro. Thank you so much, Nicole.
Nicole: [00:03:18] You are so, so welcome. So let's dive into that. It's a story you've told. You're obviously well versed in sharing it. It's a big part of your life and what brought you to this point. And it's heartbreaking and it's also heartening. So I'd love to start at the beginning of your life's journey, your childhood. And what were the mile markers of your journey that brought you to this work?
Diana: [00:03:38] Yeah, well, I grew up in New York, and that in itself is pretty traumatic.
Nicole: [00:03:44] Yeah, I lived there as well. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Diana: [00:03:48] Right? Even if there was nothing else that happened, that in itself, it's like I always say, when New Yorkers meet other New Yorkers, it's like when dogs see other dogs, we're like, oh my God, are you okay? Did you get out? Like, how are you doing? Right.
So I grew up in New York. My parents are immigrants from Thailand, and so that was pretty hard for them to really just acclimate to a new country, a new language. And they were suffering a lot of their own mental disorders, emotional disorders, personality disorders, and a lot of the trauma that they carried from their childhood and the things that they have gone through.
And so, that obviously would then be passed down into me and my sister. And so my mother was bipolar, along with many other things, and I was viciously abused as a child from as early as I can remember. A lot of physical abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse.
And it was a very dark time in my life.
When I really think back to the shell of who I was like, it was scary. It was always living in fear, always tense, anxious, really bracing for impact, constantly, never knowing when my mother was going to have an explosion, never knowing when things were going to be unsafe for me, you know, and there was a lot of domestic violence between my parents as well.
And so I really tried my best as a child to just survive and to do what I needed to do to create some sort of cave or solace within myself, where I hid for the majority of my life.
And so fast forward to growing up and becoming a teenager. I became an alcoholic and a drug addict pretty early on in my life. So alcohol and marijuana or any type of substance was just such an escape from the heavy, heavy pain that I was carrying.
I work with a lot of abused children now, and the biggest thing for us as abused children is that nobody ever acknowledges our pain. Nobody ever acknowledges and says things like that was bad.
Nicole: [00:06:03] Yeah. And validates your experience.
Diana: [00:06:04] Right. And I think I was looking for that when I was young. I remember I used to go to guidance counselors and ask for support and ask for help. And they would say things like, well, if it has anything to do with you being harmed, we are going to have to tell your parents.
And obviously, if my parent is the one harming me, I'm like, well, then I can't say anything. And so I always felt so stuck and so helpless and just felt like I could never ask anyone for help. And so living in a silent suffering, like dying silently inside, I think was the biggest pain and wound that I carried, because it meant that I would have to show up and pretend everything was good. Like put on a good face, right? And smile and be a good girl, be a good girl.
And so I did that, got good grades, was the captain of the cheerleading squad. Like, I mean front facing. I was doing amazing, had multiple jobs, was doing, you know, really independent, really being praised for how independent I was.
But inside I was in so much pain and the alcohol and the drugs were the escape that I needed to finally just feel relief for those moments. And so later on in life, I would say into my college years, that would get me into a lot of trouble—DUIs, getting arrested for a lot of different things, drug possession, just a lot of nights where I just don't remember. And then after graduating college, I moved back into New York City and I lived there, which just continued to snowball a lot of my addictions.
Diana: [00:07:35] And New York City is a huge party city, and so it's very normalized. I remember there was one year I didn't see the sun for about like a year, because I was just doing so much cocaine and just in this cave of my own misery.
And the thing with, you know, when they say misery loves company, it really is true. Because the crowd that I was hanging out with at that time, we all bonded because we shared the same addictions. We shared the same pain, we shared the same desire to escape ourselves. And so that would lead to a lot of unfortunate events, like being drugged, being raped, you know, waking up in places that I just had no idea what went on before that. Right?
Or waking up and bleeding from my head because I had knocked myself out in the bathroom and just it was a very dark time in my life. But I was doing everything on the 3D level that looked really good, and accomplishing goals and working in PR and nightlife and working in events and marketing and being on the red carpet and being at all the cool events with the celebrities and traveling all the time. And had a famous boyfriend.
And I got to a point, which I'll say is my dark night of the soul slash mental breakdown at 26, when I realized I don't want to live anymore, I achieved everything I wanted to achieve on an external level. I'm still not happy. I've made a lot of money. I've seen a lot of money, still not happy. And what else is there? If there's nothing else? I'm empty inside.
Diana: [00:09:17] And I just wanted to disappear. And the pivotal moment was being in my apartment in Chelsea and wanting to kill myself, not knowing how, just knowing I just did not want to exist anymore.
And in a desperate reach for help, I dialed this woman's phone number. Her name in my phone was Healer. I had gotten her number from a girlfriend. I have no idea who this woman is and what she does, but I'm just in a desperate cry for help. I call this woman and she's like, I'm in Brooklyn. When you're ready, come see me.
That call would change my life because when I went to go see her, she told me, I mean, she could see my energy, she can see my aura, she can see how much pain I was carrying. And I started working with this woman who was at the time a shamanic healer, which I had no idea what that was. I just knew that I would go to her apartment. I would lay down, she'd put an eye mask over me, put some crystals in my hand, and I'd kind of go into a trance where she was like drumming and rattling. And then I would just come out of this kind of meditation and I would feel different and I would feel rested.
I remember I'm in my apartment with my boyfriend, and there was this shift where, as if I had been seeing in black and white my entire life, and a veil just lifted, and I all of a sudden saw in color. And it was the most bizarre thing, because I was looking around the room.
Nicole: [00:10:53] Like you'd never seen it before.
Diana: [00:10:54] Like I had never seen it before.
And I had this energy that I felt that was kind of floating out of my mouth. It felt like the taste of fear that was floating out of my mouth. And people have asked me, what does fear taste like, Diana? Fear tastes like metal.
And it shocked me back into a memory where I had been five years old, cowering in a corner and had a stapler thrown at my face, and it hit me in the mouth and it tasted like metal. So this memory came up and it started to float out of my mouth.
And I looked around the room and I realizedI'm safe. And I realized in that moment that I had been living my life in constant fear of my physical safety.
I used to be very violent. I used to fight all the time. I would always just attract people that were wanting to inflict violence on me. All of my relationships were physically violent and I didn't understand why. And I really started to see this shift begin to happen energetically and emotionally and spiritually. And I think at that point I had suppressed a lot of my childhood abuse.
I actually didn't even consider myself an abused child. The only thing that I thought was traumatic was the fact that my father had went to prison for attempted murder of my mother, and that was so painful for me.
Diana: [00:12:28] But when it really started to open up all of these other pockets of memory, I started to really understand, like, wow, the life that I had been raised in was extremely dark and really unhealthy, and it started to unravel after that because I moved in with my boyfriend at the time, and obviously a lot of our wounds and our triggers and our pain started to really surface. And the shamanic healer we started working with, she started working with him, and she kind of stepped in as our, our spiritual counselor.
And she was like, you need to do the medicine. And the medicine she was referring to is ayahuasca. And I have no idea what this is. But we went in to this ayahuasca ceremony in Brooklyn and my life changed from that moment.
I drank the medicine and it quickly spiraled me down into a rabbit hole of all of my memories and all of my experiences. But what was the most profound moment in my first ceremony was I saw my life from an aerial view, from God's view, and God was with me, and I saw myself in this maze like I was a little lab rat in this maze.
Diana: [00:13:49] And God was showing me that every single moment that I had suffered all of the abuse, all of the struggles, all of the turmoil, the trauma was given to me very specifically for me to grow, to evolve, to transcend it. And for someone that had been treating my life like a rag doll, somebody that has been playing with my health, that pretty much was subconsciously asking to die, I had this new found gratitude for my life and for my existence and for my breath, for my body and the fact that I was still here.
And I could see that all the moments that I could have died could have been trafficked, all of these things, and I was always being protected.
It shifted me completely. That moment would change me because afterwards I could not drink anymore. I tried to drink like I had one drink at a wedding, probably like a week later, and I started to projectile vomit and I would never touch a drug after that. I have been sober since then. It's coming up on eight years of sobriety, and so that obviously opened up another can of worms, right? Because then I had to deal with all the things that were underneath the addictions.
Nicole: [00:15:14] When you and I first met and you talked about you had received a number of diagnoses from a traditional therapist, and they wanted you to go on medication for all of that. And I'm not shaming Western medicine in any way.
But you had this knowing. Would you say that ayahuasca was the trigger for what is a spiritual awakening, or do you think it was that moment that you tasted metal in your mouth that kicked that off?
Diana: [00:15:35] I think it was all of it. I think because the thing is, when we're peeling back the layers of our trauma and our experiences, you can't do it all at once because it could be too overwhelming. And I think everything happens the way it should. And like an onion, we needed to peel gently, slowly to not overwhelm my nervous system.
Because, yeah, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, OCD, anxiety, depression, PTSD, among many other things that they wanted to put me on medication for. And, you know, I had people telling me, oh, you're never going to heal from this without medication. You're going to be like this and well into the rest of your life. And I had seen my mother struggle with medication my entire life, and that, for me, was just not the path. I just knew that.
And I would say ayahuasca definitely is a major factor in me healing myself and my mental disorders or personality disorders. But it's not immediate. It's not a silver bullet. It took years of really intentionally working on healing myself, getting back pieces of my soul, getting back pieces of who I am, remembering who I am.
Because at that point, I was a shell of who I was. I had been taught to suppress all aspects of who I was in order to survive. And so it's a lot of reconditioning of your nervous system to say, you know, it's safe for me to be who I am. It's safe for me to be seen, to be heard. And it's safe for me to express my truth. To love myself.
Nicole: [00:17:22] I know you basically dropped out of the world a bit to go within. You really stopped everything that was happening in your life and spent a few years. Just like I need to simplify, pare back and create a life where I can go in and heal all of this. Can you talk about that journey within?
Diana: [00:17:42] When I left the ayahuasca ceremony, it would lead me on a series of events that really shifted my direction in life.
So I would find myself coincidentally in another ayahuasca ceremony a month later, and I was told that I was going to move to California and I could feel the sun shining on my face. I heard the ocean waves. I grazed my hand across the sand and I said, that's a nice thought.
And I also heard that my relationship needed to end. But I was not accepting of that. I was like, I'm going to hold on to this. Not ready. A week after that second ayahuasca ceremony, I got fired from my job. A week after that, me and my ex got into the biggest physical fight that ended us that night. I mean, it was bloody and I had to move out and I had to find a place to live. And I just kept hitting lockage after blockage after blockage in New York City. Couldn't find another job in New York, couldn't find an apartment. And I remember I was in my office, I was in fetal position underneath my desk and my hand, like, took a life of its own and began to graze my hair.
Diana: [00:18:52] And I heard a voice that said, I love you and I will never leave you, and it's going to be okay. I remember I just sat up and I had this intuition to reach out to this girl, that I stayed at her Airbnb in San Diego a couple of years prior, and I texted her and I said, let me know if you know anybody that's looking for a roommate. I'm looking to move. She's like, I'm looking for a roommate.
And everything just started to fall into alignment. I would say within three weeks of that conversation, I had an apartment in San Diego. It was the easiest move of my life, and it was across the country.
Everything was just seamless. I didn't even really have a lot of money, but because my ex had paid me out on a lot of the furniture that I bought for the house, it was the exact amount of money that I needed to move, like to the dollar.
Nicole: [00:19:42] I love it.
Diana: [00:19:42] To the dollar. I went to go buy a flight to San Diego. I had an appointed free flight. Everything was just like alignment. Yeah, it was alignment. But I had never experienced alignment in my life, so I wasn't understanding. Like I felt really like a hand picked me up and just brought me to San Diego.
And then I got here and I was like, I have no idea what to do with myself. I am newly sober. I have no idea who I am. I don't know where to go. I just know I needed to continue to follow the path of the medicine. I found another ayahuasca circle out here and I started to sit with them. And like you said, I really went within where I stepped back from the world of doing and achieving.
I disappeared for a little while. I got a job as a server, and I spent so much time and energy into healing myself. I went to Peru, I worked with shamans out there. I sat in ayahuasca ceremonies in the jungle. I just continued to do my inner work. I started actually organizing ayahuasca ceremonies for a shaman because I just felt this medicine was so incredible and it had unlocked so many things for me.
And I was just like, people need to have access to this, and I wanted to give them that access. And that's really how my spiritual path continued to unfold, of me just feeling so passionate about giving people the keys to unlock themselves from their own prison of pain.
Nicole: [00:21:05] I love that you talked a little bit about the 3D.
And we've talked a little bit about that on this show that, you know, ascension to 5D, which I would love to touch on, but I want to just acknowledge this idea of alignment, because I think something I've learned too, from my own experience is when you kind of follow the voice, the voice will find you. And when you make choices that are really maybe hard, like, I'm going to move across the country, which can seem really scary.
But when you do that, the universe literally has your back. Things start to happen for you because you're choosing yourself. You're like, I feel pulled to do this. I don't know why it maybe doesn't make sense on paper. It seems like it's going to be a very expensive move, and that's the cognitive side of our 3D lives and our brains that can convince us not to do something.
How am I going to do that? I don't know anybody. How would I get a job there? All the things that people think it's not possible. But when you just follow it and you're like, I know I have to go, maybe I don't want to. I felt like that leaving my marriage. I was like, I don't really want to do this, but I have to do this.
The universe just has your back that way. And so to hear how that unfolded for you and that you are helping other people do that now, I would love to hear about how you came to the work that you're doing now, spiritually coaching others on this same journey. And I know that ayahuasca is part of it because you've been leading like 250 ceremonies that you've sat in on. It’s incredible.
But talk more about your path to doing this work and helping others heal and facilitate ascension for them.
Diana: [00:22:38] Yeah. I think I was my first VIP client.
Nicole: [00:22:43] Yeah.
Nicole: [00:22:44] And you've talked about before you help anybody else, you have to help yourself, which you did what you did.
Diana: [00:22:48] Right? Because you can only lead others through things you've already led yourself through. Yeah. And so I really wasn't focused on helping other people as much until I felt like I was in a good place.
And it took me about four-ish years to really get to that place where I was like, I think I might have something that can help people. It was such a deep calling, and I felt like my purpose was just pushing me forward, as scared and terrified as I was. And I love that you were talking about alignment and your intuition in that voice, and how it doesn't make any sense.
Nicole: [00:23:26] You feel delusional, right? You feel like I must be crazy. This isn't possible. That's that's your logical brain. But yeah, when you're tapping into your spirituality and your intuition.
Diana: [00:23:36] Well, your intuition only makes sense after you follow it and never before.
Nicole: [00:23:40] Oh, that's beautiful.
Diana: [00:23:41] And I want people to always remember that. You seem crazy now, but down the line, everybody's going to be like, wow, she saw it. She knew it, right? Because everybody asked me like, why are you moving to San Diego? You don't know anybody there. What are you going to do there? What are you doing over there? When are you coming back? When are you coming home?
Nicole: [00:24:00] When are you coming home? Yeah.
Nicole: [00:24:01] They think it's some sort of, like, meltdown that you're having, you know.
Diana: [00:24:05] And it totally was. But it's a it's a rebirth, right?
Nicole: [00:24:08] It's a rebirth and it's the breakthrough.
Diana: [00:24:10] And so I really just started to come out of my shell, I would say like 4 or 5 years into my healing journey of feeling like I want to share.
Because a lot of my healing needed to be around, being seen, being heard. And I realized that holding in all of the things that had happened to me and keeping it a secret, that I was healing with sacred plant medicine and not sharing, was actually a disservice to the collective. Because when I would be in conversation with people, people were like, are you kidding me? What are you doing? You need to talk more about this. And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no.
Nicole: [00:24:49] You're like, I can't.
Diana: [00:24:50] Yeah, no. I was so scared to show up and be seen because I was conditioned to to understand that if I was seen, I was unsafe. But the calling was so much bigger than my fear. I just knew I wanted to help people, and I didn't really know how.
I tried to teach yoga for a little while and that was fun. And then I became a Reiki master, and that was cool. And then I started doing private Reiki yoga kind of sessions at people's homes. But then also they want to talk after, right? They want to share.
And I saw myself really in this coaching capacity and obviously organizing the ayahuasca ceremonies, people really need to talk after. And a lot of times before. And at that point, you know, I’d sat in maybe 100 ish ceremonies. And I started to see that I was really good at it.
And so I felt this calling to get a spiritual business coach. And I realized that all the spiritual work that I did, all the inner work that I had done for the past 4 or 5 years with the medicine, really put me in an advantage, because everybody was still approaching their coaching business.
Diana: [00:26:05] Again, from a very 3D perspective, from a very logical perspective. Okay, read this book, learn these skills, teach other people. But I was not teaching from that place.
I was teaching from a much higher place. I was opening up myself as a channel, as a vessel for the divine.
And none of the things that I have ever taught my clients have come from a textbook. They have all come from either my own experience, or it's come from a channel that literally dropped into my body, or my ayahuasca experiences, where I opened myself and surrendered to the divine and allow that truth to to flow through me.
And I had hired some coaches at that point and really saw the misalignments of how people were teaching and how people were trying to help other people ascend. And it's the way it wasn't working. Because the thing is I can't give somebody my blueprint and say, take this and apply it to your life and it'll work for you.
Nicole: [00:27:01] That's not it's not how it works.
Diana: [00:27:02] There's no way, because my soul's blueprint, my soul path, my soul mission is so, so different to what yours is going to be. So what I've realized is that I actually needed to help people open up to their own authentic truth.
I had to help people feel safe to listen to their intuition. I had to help people heal their nervous system so that they can trust themselves and their own channel, so they can start to lead themselves.
I call myself an empowerment coach because I really want to empower them to access their own power. Really, there's no cookie cutter way to help people ascend and heal and grow and evolve. And I think that's what makes me very different, is that I'm really good at coming in and seeing how their path is meant to unravel, and really helping them walk that of their.
Nicole: [00:27:55] Own on their.
Diana: [00:27:56] Own and not say, do what I do, follow me and everything will be fine.
Nicole: [00:28:00] It won't even work.
Nicole: [00:28:01] Because like you said, it's your soul blueprint. It's your path if people look at it from a more 3D perspective.
I've had people in my life are like, I want whatever you got. What did you do? It's like. You can't make one choice because anyone's life, and this is the perspective you're working from, anyone's soul is completely unique. So you can't just take one thing and be like, I'm going to heal in the way that I want to by doing what Diana did.
Can you talk about when someone comes to you and starts working with you, where do you start that process?
Diana: [00:28:32] Where I start is really assessing where they're at and really seeing how they got there, diving into a lot of inner child healing and a lot of the trauma that has happened and really seeing where they desire to go. Because the difference between a therapist and a coach is a coach is more goal oriented and future focused.
So I really need to see the path from where you are and the path of where you want to go. What's in the way of that? So we start to untangle a lot of those knots that are in the way and dissolve that story and conditioning, and it is a benefit that I have tried everything underneath the sun that you can do to heal yourself.
Okay, let's try this. Let's add a little bit of that. Let's add a little bit of this. And it's just a very customized concoction for them and where they're at.
Nicole: [00:29:23] You mentioned intuitive and we've been talking about intuition. To me, you're a very intuitive person. Like in the sense of you read energy, you see wounds. Would you categorize yourself as an intuitive in that way?
Diana: [00:29:35] Absolutely.
Nicole: [00:29:35] So you see it when people come to you. Is that something that you were you always that way, or has it come to you through your own spiritual awakening and journey?
Diana: [00:29:43] I think being an empath is developed as a child, when you have to be very aware of how energy is shifting, how emotions are shifting, and how you need to protect yourself because it's about to get unsafe.
So a lot of the empaths thatI work with have trauma in their childhood, which is then a skill of survival that their nervous system has taken on. However, as far as really recognizing people's wounds and what they need to heal, it's because it's a mirror for me. I see myself in them. I've had every single wound, I think, underneath the sun.
Nicole: [00:30:18] You have. I will second that.
Diana: [00:30:20] And so usually if I've healed something, I know how to navigate that wound. I know how it shows up. I know what it looks like front facing. I know the back end of it. I know how to untangle it. I see it.
So as soon as I can see that in someone, they're usually a mirror for me. And I'm like, I remember when I was there, I know how to walk you out of that, or I know how to start to dissolve that, because I've already done it for myself.
And a lot of times my work is so mind blowing in the sense that I'm always learning, I'm always healing, I'm always growing. I'm never done.
Nicole: [00:30:51] No, no. But no one is right? Ever. It's not a linear journey and it's never complete.
Diana: [00:30:56] Yeah. And so the minute I've healed something and integrated that lesson, almost immediately, a person shows up in my life and needs that lesson.
Sometimes the mirror is something that I healed ten years ago, or sometimes the mirror is something I healed five days ago. And I realized that with my relationship with God is that God gives me all of these things to heal, gives me these lessons, gives me these painful, excruciating sometimes situations, and calls me up to rise to alchemize that to go deep into that darkness, to find the gem, to find the diamond at the bottom of that, and then to present it to the world, to the collective and say, here, let me collapse time for you.
Nicole: [00:31:46] I have so many questions from that. First of all, I think the concept of God, everybody sees it differently. I was raised in a very religious Christian environment and now consider myself more spiritual. I think of God as spirit guides the universe, right? What does God mean to you?
Diana: [00:32:02] God means the ever flowing presence of life.
God is what's keeping my heart beating right now. God is what's allowing me to breathe this air that is sustaining my body, that's keeping all of my cells, all of my organs functioning without me ever having to think about it. God is what's allowing the flowers to grow and blossom. God is what's allowing the birds to fly.
God is the energy that is constantly flowing in and between all things. That is the life force that allows this forward movement of all of our journeys. It's this thread of connection that links all of us. And the way that I try to put it sometimes, God is source, right? The light, the ever shining light.
We are all just reflections of that light. And so that light is always coming through every single living being, even non-living beings. Right? But how we express it through our beingness is how we embody that God force energy, that life force energy.
Nicole: [00:33:17] I love that.
Nicole: [00:33:18] I mean, everybody's on their own path, but I love thinking of God in that way.
The way that I was raised was it was someone scary that you were going to be punished. You were a bad person. I remember being a child and asking my mom, how do I know that God is real? Which is a very normal question for a child to ask, and her saying, you will know when God is real, when you get cancer someday. And he saves you.
And I did get cancer and lived to tell about it, as we've talked about on this podcast. But I just love the way that you define it as this source of energy, of connectedness, and not as something that is fearful and punishing. So thank you for that definition.
We've talked about the 3D, the 5D. There's also the 4D. And you also mentioned collapsing timelines. Can you talk about what those things mean for people who are listening that may not be familiar with this language.
Diana: [00:34:14] Yeah. So when I say 3D I'm looking at our physical, tangible world that we're awakened right now. The table, the chair, the cars, the place you live in. That's our 3D reality.
When I'm thinking of a higher plane of consciousness, whether that be 4D,5 D, I'm talking about the realm of the unseen, where all things come from. Anything seen comes from the realm of the unseen. And so that's hard for people sometimes because they only want to believe in the things that they can physically touch and see.
But your emotions are real, yet you can't touch or see them, and your thoughts are real and you can't touch and see them. And so it's really ]in the realm of energy, frequency and vibration.
As we are living in a world that is mainly energy, non-seen energy, and we are energetic beings that are constantly sending out a frequency through our thoughts and our emotions and our beingness. And then from that space we are then attracting back into our lives, circumstances, people, opportunities that are in alignment with the frequency that we're sending out.
And then also, if you've ever done any type of altered conscious journey with mushrooms or ayahuasca, you really get to see that veil get dropped and see into the world of all that is happening in the realm of the unseen and how it affects everything.
In the simplest example, it's like when you think about somebody and you're like, hey, I miss that person. And all of a sudden they call you. Yeah. How did they know? You sent out a frequency? And they felt it and they thought of you too. And that's the realm I'm talking about when I say that. And as far as collapsing time, you are going to walk a path. And that path can take ten years.
Now, if I have already walked that path and I come here and I give you this shortcut you have now, instead of walking the timeline straight, you have now collapsed time and you've gone and ascended up into a different timeline that has saved you 5 to 10 years.
Nicole: [00:36:33] The concept of 5D as you were explaining it. 3D, 5D, that there are multiple layers of consciousness in our world. And this is again, all very new to me. I didn't know any of these terms a year ago, and I'll share my experience and I would love your perspective on it. But the difference was, being in a more 3D plane, I felt very anxious, very judgmental, a huge sense of urgency all the time.
And sometimes these things still leak into reality. And like you said, you're never fully healed and you kind of slide back in your timelines every now and then. Then all of a sudden I was like, oh, I could see everyone on their path. Before I'd be like, that person is fucked up. What the hell? So obvious what's wrong with them. You know?
And suddenly I was like, oh, I see what's going on with you. It's okay. You're on your path. You're on your journey. Let me just hold space for you. I don't give you advice. I don't judge you. And then feeling that for myself was the biggest part of it.
I've been reading more about this, that things will actually look different. A word will look different to you, a logo will look different. You'll be like, was that the logo for Saturday Night Live? Like I literally did. And someone was like, yeah, you notice things are different because you've actually ascended. I'm curious as you walk that journey with people, what do you see them experiencing?
Diana: [00:37:53] I'm really feeling into that shift for you. It feels really good.
So what's happening is we move from being attached to our ego and then detaching from that, having what we call an ego death. And what we're really ascending into is our higher self and our higher consciousness, which is connected to the divine.
So when we're in our ego, our ego is very attached to the result. Our ego is judgmental, our ego is scared. Our ego is constantly in survival. Our ego is wanting to show up perfectly. Our ego is scared of judgment and ridicule, and our ego is very anxious because it's unsafe and it does not feel tethered to anything.
The ego attaches to the identity of who you are. And then you need all of these things to reaffirm that identity. We need the car, we need the partner, we need the job, we need the money. And all this makes me good enough. And so when those things start to dismantle this really house of cards reality, that's what we call a dark night of the soul, awakening. But an ego death. You need to kill parts of your ego off that are so attached to this tangible 3D proving of your worth.
Diana: [00:39:12] Through all of this external validation an. And so the ascension, what we're really doing is ascending into our higher consciousness, ascending into our soul's perspective.
Your ego is scared. Your soul is never scared. Your soul is connected to the divine. And so when you start to see things differently, it's because you're seeing it from a higher perspective. And so you become less attached to outcome. You do things for joy and pleasure. You become less attached to what people think of you.
You start showing up authentically to do what feels best for you. This is when that shift happens because we really need to tame our ego, befriend it, make it an ally. But a lot of times our ego becomes this adversary that is really ruining our lives and stealing our peace. And so it's constant work because it's never going to go away.
It's more about having tools and learning how to work with it, and knowing these higher truths and tapping back into them when you revert back to maybe operating from an ego space.
Nicole: [00:40:17] Do you find that when people work with you, and I would just speak from my own experience, I call it a tower moment. It's in tarot that when everything crumbles to the ground and for me it was, you know, I had this where I lost all these layers of skin and my toenails, and I got eye cancer, and I realized I was in an abusive marriage, and all that stuff happened in rapid succession over the course of a couple of years. And that's what I feel like triggered this sort of rock bottom moment that this awakening came from. When people come to you. Do you find that they've often gone through a tower moment that has put them in this place?
Diana: [00:40:51] Yes. Or they go through it while they're working with me. A lot of times when people do come to me, they are at that place of potential desperation or just having that tower moment and having just a major life event, a catalyst, a divorce, you know, things like that, losing their home or just in a transitionary place.
So what I'm able to provide for them in those moments are tools that they can lean on, and helping them to open up their awareness to understand that everything is happening for them and not to them, and start to really support them in also nurturing that fear. Right?
Because the ego is super scared to lose all of this identity. Right? And so a lot of times, interestingly enough, I work with a lot of East Coast people and they're very 3D when they come and they're very in the control and the power and the pushing and forcing. And so I really help them tap into the laws of the universe of surrendering, of allowing, of letting go and really helping them to open up, to see this higher and wider perspective. But also really helping them nurture that part of themselves that is beating themselves up, or is telling them that they should or shouldn't be somewhere or really ridiculing themselves for not being good enough or not doing good enough. It's all my fault why I'm here and why all this is happening to me.
All of that is deeply painful and also harmful to the process. And so it's really about helping them develop a healthier relationship with themselves so that they can also have a healthier relationship with the universe, with God. Having a healthier relationship with the people around them, having a healthier relationship with life.
Diana: [00:42:56] Is my life always perfect? Absolutely not. I go through shit all the time, but guess what? I have so many tools and I have this wider perspective.
I have such a trust with God that I fully open up and embrace it. And the more you resist something, the more it has its claws in you. So does it get easier? No. Do you get better? Hell yeah. When I talk a lot about survival, because people that have gone through trauma, they don't realize that they're in a constant state of survival.
And it's a very, like low grade, numb version of like, fight or flight. But your ego when it's in that state also is subconsciously always a victim. Life is not good to me. Life has not been good to me. I don't have enough. Nobody's giving me any opportunities. Nobody loves me.
Having been a victim in my life, not shaming victims at all. There are real victims in this world 100%. But to stay in a victim mentality does not allow you to move forward. You're stuck in mud in that place because there's no accountability. And so really helping people nurture themselves, have compassion for themselves, but also rise into their power and out of that victim mentality so that we can move forward.
Nicole: [00:44:15] Where do you find that space? It's like where you have some agency because like you said, there are true victims. There are things that people cannot rise above. But where are there places? What can you choose to bring yourself more into alignment? I think back in my own life of how many times one thing after the other of bullshit was happening.
And when I look back on it with the awareness that I have now, I'm like, oh my God, everything was so misaligned. And if you had just taken and, ultimately I did do that, but was like just one choice, now there's some room to move. Now you can see more clearly, and then you can start moving ahead to actually getting in alignment with like your true purpose and what you're supposed to be doing here. I love that you help people do that through all these tools.
Diana: [00:44:59] I mean, life is going to continue to try and teach you the lesson. And if you're not willing to be open, to embracing the learning that lesson, you're going to be stuck in that loop for a long time of suffering. You know, avoidance actually prolongs the suffering. So you might as well just open yourself up to embrace it in the now so that you can transcend it. And then it's done.
Nicole: [00:45:22] You either feel shitty being stuck or you feel shitty admitting to yourself what's going on and making changes that feel yucky.
Diana: [00:45:31] Absolutely. And those moments are portals as well. And I think that's what people don't see the opportunity for rapid growth and transformation in those moments.
And it's really hard when you're operating from that, again, that smaller perspective of like, why is this happening to me? Everything was going great, now everything is shit and I'm in this victim state. But when you really start to open up yourself to understand that there is this flow that is constantly pushing you to uplevel and expand and and open up to your highest potential, you see these moments as portals of transformation, and there's a soul lesson for you on the other side. And so for me, I'm like, all right, let's dive right in.
Nicole: [00:46:14] Then let's go in.
Nicole: [00:46:14] Because you know, you're going to ascend to a higher level. You're going to get through it. Yes.
Diana: [00:46:18] Yeah.
Diana: [00:46:19] And again, I get to get there faster and with less resistance. And then also there's so much reward on the other side.
Nicole: [00:46:26] Absolutely.
Diana: [00:46:27] There are so many times that I have, I mean, my business is a huge example of that. Like taking that huge leap, making a big investment, not knowing what was going to happen, scared out of my mind. And here I am years later, with a very successful business where I've helped hundreds of people heal.
But then also there's other moments where I've had to go through something so painful, like losing friends, losing communities, losing so much. People don't understand. When you're looking to manifest something and you're asking for something, a lot of times you have to lose a lot to make space for what it is that you're asking for.
Nicole: [00:47:07] Thank you for mentioning that.
Diana: [00:47:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Diana: [00:47:10] And then I am going through, you know, a portal of transformation, if you will, but and on the outside could look like something painful and horrible. And in those moments my spiritual practice is my anchor. I hold on to my faith with dear life, and I feel like I'm just like being dragged through this like tornado. And I'm like, God.
Nicole: [00:47:28] That's the process. Holding on right?
Nicole: [00:47:30] Riding the wave. Just hold it.
Diana: [00:47:32] I'm just gonna close my eyes and just get there. And usually when I get to the other side, I'm like, oh my God, here's everything I asked for. Here's every single thing I asked for. And only the universe knew that it had to clear out all this space, put me through this portal, had me learn all the lessons, expand me in a way to hold the more that I am asking for.
A lot of times you're asking for more, but energetically you cannot hold the frequency of that until you go through these really hard moments that stretch you, that expand you, that that allow you to then all of a sudden hold the more that you're asking for. Because the more that you're asking for is at a higher frequency than where you are right now. So where you're vibrating at right now, actually, if you were to receive it right now, you would lose it or it would crumble because you haven't really expanded to hold that you.
Nicole: [00:48:24] You don't have the space or the capacity for it.
Diana: [00:48:25] You gotta grow the muscles to be able to hold the bigger vision, the bigger dreams, the higher purpose, whatever that is.
And so a lot of times those portals are asking for you to grow those muscles so that when you get there, not only can you hold it, but you can sustain it and you can expand on it, and it continues to grow exponentially that way.
Nicole: [00:48:48] I absolutely love that. And I just want to second the fact that you mentioned loss happens through this.
It's relationships, jobs, your health, whatever. That is all part of purging, clearing. But it feels really shitty in the moment. I mean, you feel shitty if your health or you've lost your livelihood or, or whatever it is, but also relationships falling away because they were a part of your 3D life, or they're part of a season of your life however you want to look at it.
But if you can just trust that things are happening for you, that's like, I think if more people could do that, we would maybe have a lot more peace in the world.
Diana: [00:49:27] Well, attachment is out of fear. But when you really think about, you are constantly evolving, growing. And so that means that your vibration is constantly shifting and expanding or raising, right? You're raising your vibration.
So the relationships or the things that are falling away were in alignment with your old vibration, with your old frequency. And as you continue to grow, if the things that are were there with you, then also don't start raising in vibration. It's not an alignment anymore. And so what we have to let go, of the ego's attachment to people, places and things, which a lot of times people in trauma are very attached to people and places and things because they feel so unsafe. So it's it's kind of like holding on to a teddy bear. I need all these things for me to feel safe.
Nicole: [00:50:13] False security.
Diana: [00:50:14] False security. Absolutely. And so the universe is always going to be pushing you to release attachment, even to your body.
You cannot be attached to this physical form. You cannot be attached to anything. The only thing that will never, ever cease to be is your spirit and your divinity. And so life is always going to be reminding you of the impermanence of all things.
Nicole: [00:50:40] I want to come back to the ayahuasca piece of it. Because I think that and I don't have to tell you this, as I've learned more about the elevated levels of consciousness, there is a collective awakening happening in this world right now that, from what I understand and you tell me if I'm if I'm wrong, but is kind of never happened, at least in the lifetime of the people who are walking this planet right now.
And a lot of people seem to be curious about ayahuasca, about sacred plant medicine. I feel like Hollywood sensationalizes it and focuses on the, you know, the ceremony and the throwing up that happens, and it's very sensationalized, and they're not really focusing on the benefits that people get and the journey that people go on. You've sat in on so many ceremonies. Help us understand ayahuasca, what it can do, why people might consider it, and how they can do so safely.
Diana: [00:51:38] Absolutely. So let me break it down. Ayahuasca is a mixture of two different plants. It's ayahuasca vine and chacruna leaf. And the combination of these two plants create a brew that they call ayahuasca.
The tribe said higher ascended beings told the ancient tribes exactly what plans to mix to create this brew. So it's a tea, essentially, that you're drinking, somewhat fermented. So when you are drinking this, basically what it does is dissolve the veil between you and the world of energy, frequency, vibration, the 5D.
But it also gives you access to your inner world. It gives you access to see the misalignments in your mind, your energy, your emotions. It helps to bring a lot of darker or shadow emotions up to the surface so that you can release them. It brings up a lot of trauma for you to process, to feel, to expunge from your being because we are carrying so much of our past with us energetically, that we have no idea how it's affecting how we see and interact with the world, how we show up with our money, our relationships.
So it's going deep into the shadow, deep into the unconscious, and really purging anything that is not of light, that is not of love, and really returning you back to your natural state, which is peace, which is connectedness, which is unconditional love.
Nicole: [00:53:09] It's your connection to source.
Diana: [00:53:10] Right? It brings you back to God. Really. I've had atheists come into my ceremonies and find that connection with God again. Mormons that have left the church, that finally understood what God really was through ayahuasca and really connecting you to your soul, your higher self, your purpose, and removing any blockages from you stepping into that path.
And so why people would do it is, I think a lot of times people, especially when hearing my story,it’s like, well, I don't have a lot of trauma, so I don't really need to do it. I'm already healed. I'm like, good luck with that.
Nicole: [00:53:42] Not true for anyone, but that's fine.
Diana: [00:53:44] Yes, enjoy.
But also sometimes there are these very subtle blockages that we have about what we're worth and who we are and our purpose and our powers and our gifts and and our worthiness, like all of these little, very subtle micro traumas, if you will, that stop you from expanding into your highest potential.
So a lot of times I'm like, you might not have massive trauma to heal, but how are you not showing up for the things that you desire? How do you not put down boundaries in your life? Where does that stem from? So all of these ways in which really it's about expanding you into your fullest potential. And there's trauma to heal that's going to happen, but it's not in a way where you're going to, you know, I was raped and I was abused. I don't go back into my body and experience the rape and experience abuse.
It's more about seeing it and really acknowledging it and really processing it and then feeling, you know, a lot of times when we go through traumatic events, we don't feel all of it.
Nicole: [00:54:46] You dissociate. You have to to be able to continue to walk through the world. Your brain literally breaks. And so it's almost like it's rebuilding that bridge between hemispheres to be able to go, oh, this happened to me, right?
Diana: [00:54:56] Yeah, absolutely.
Diana: [00:54:58] Yes. That was horrible. And I have so much compassion for myself. I have so much compassion for the person that raped me and how horrible his life must be inside himself.
I saw my mother walking through her childhood and how traumatic that was for her, and how painful it was for my father to experience the life he lived. And I see the pain. My sister abused me just as much as my mother did, and I see how she's drowning in a well of her own pain.
And you get this higher perspective of everybody's journey, and you start to really have compassion and understand that everybody is trying their best. And nobody has it figured out. And it was all in alignment. My soul agreed to come here and have all of these traumatic experiences, so that I can be who I am here today.
Nicole: [00:55:45] This is your purpose. You signed up for that pain to be able to do the purpose.
Diana: [00:55:49] And so you're able to just really, again, connect to this higher perspective and this infinite intelligence and understand things from God's view.
You know, I was having dinner with a girlfriend the other day, and she was saying how she's very afraid of death, and she wanted to see my perspective on it. And I said, well, when you access the other side, you understand that we never die.
Nicole: [00:56:10] It's not scary.
Diana: [00:56:11] And it's not fearful. Right. And you understand that you're going home to the place that you were before you came into this body. And once you really have that deeper connection with God and with source and this infinite intelligence, and you really feel where you're going, there is no fear. If anything, this reality here sometimes is a little…
Nicole: [00:56:29] It's a lot scarier than thinking about that.
Diana: [00:56:33] And to answer the second part of your question, how do we find something that's safe? It's super trendy right now. When I started on this path, I couldn't even talk about it online. Most times I would bring it up.
Nobody would know what I was talking about. Now I can bring it up. In most conversations, people are like, yeah, yeah, I've heard of that. I love how prevalent it's becoming. But yes, that also means a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, people having no training, people being like, yeah, I serve ayahuasca. Come on down.
The reason you want to go to a shaman is because the shaman creates a net of protection around the ceremony, and the chance, if you're going to a real shaman that's been trained in the jungle and the traditional tribes, a lot of chanting in the beginning is about the protective orb over the ceremony and all of its people, because you're opening up your soul to experience so much that if dark energies were to come in, they could attach. And so having a really good shaman will allow that protection.
And I've seen that veil, that net over all of us when we're in ceremony. And I've seen the dark spirits that literally are standing right outside and can't come in. These are the main things I ask before I sit with any new group. Who is the shaman? What lineage are they serving from? Because there's many different lineages: Colombian, Brazilian, Peruvian.
I prefer Peruvian. I've been sitting in the Shipibo tradition for the 8 or 9 years that I've been sitting with the medicine, which is the oldest tradition from the jungle. You want to ask how long they've been serving. You want to ask them where they get their medicine from.
There's medicine that comes from Hawaii. There's medicine that comes from South America. Ask how they're holding the ceremony. I love taking people to Peru because I feel like it gives them the most authentic, most genuine experience that is closest to the tribe.
I have sat in ceremonies where I realized I was in a cult setting, so I've had a lot of horrifying experiences. And I do that so that I don't ever have to bring my clients into those situations. I always tell people, be very, very careful because there are people that are taking advantage of people's curiosity and desire to heal.
Nicole: [00:58:41] So as we wrap our conversation, what is the biggest lesson from your own healing journey? And if you had one piece of advice for the collective, what would it be?
Diana: [00:58:54] The first thing that came to my heart is that forgiveness is the key to your liberation. There is so much power in forgiveness, in having compassion, in understanding.
There has been a lot of, obviously, trauma and wounding in my life. And the things that I have gone through, you would think would not warrant forgiveness. But, really understanding that forgiveness is a God frequency. And you are at the highest vibration when you can forgive another. And not only that, but it takes energy to hold on to anger and resentment. And you're draining yourself, you're draining your life force, your resources when you do that.
And so when you're asking to manifest, to create, to step into your power, to access your highest potential. Through forgiveness, you release a lot of the holding of that resistance to all that you're asking for. And it opens up channels. We're talking about in order to receive, you have to release.
Through forgiveness you can really open up so many portals in your life to really ascend so much faster. But a lot of times they're so subconscious you don't even realize you're still holding on to them. So doing the work around that is deep. Forgiveness is a journey and there's no need to rush. But it is worth investing in.
Nicole: [01:00:34] It's a gift to yourself.
I've heard it referred to as drinking the poison and waiting for the other person to die.
And it's also a gift to the collective, to the universe. It's how you can best like you said, release, make room for what's meant for you so you can ascend, so you can find your purpose, your path.
Diana: [01:00:54] Yeah, well, triggers are just indications of unhealed wounds. So if you're thinking about somebody or a situation and you still get triggered and there's an emotional charge there, that's a clear sign that we might still need to heal and work through a lot of that and untangle a lot of the stories that are attached. When you ascend into a higher consciousness, that all things are happening in exact divine alignment for your highest good all the time, no matter how horrible it looks.
And it takes a lot of practice to have that radical acceptance of our life experience. But I always say, rule number one, do not fight against reality. Because that is the quickest way to spiral down into a very low vibrational state. So acceptance. Love. Find your peace.
Nicole: [01:01:49] I love that. If anyone can do this work as you have with what you have experienced and the way that you've accepted it and embraced it in the ways that you have, it's hugely inspiring.
I just want to acknowledge all you've been through and the beautiful, beautiful work that you are doing to heal the collective.
Diana: [01:02:09] Thank you so much, Nicole. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast, allowing me to share my story, allowing me to share this medicine with so many other people.
Diana: [01:02:19] It has been an absolute honor. You are a light. Thank you.
Diana Min has experienced virtually every trauma, in her own words, underneath the sun, surviving violence, addiction and mental illness. She had all the markers of material success. An enviable career, a glamorous life with a famous boyfriend, traveling the world, and she still wanted to end her life.
As many of us do at some point, she experienced a rock bottom moment, one she classifies as a dark night of the soul slash mental breakdown at the age of 26. It landed her in the hands of a gifted shamanic healer, who changed her life and led her to find purpose from a lifetime of extraordinary hardship. For Diana, sacred plant medicine, namely ayahuasca, has been an important tool in surfacing traumas and wounds to be examined, healed and released.
I invited Diana to talk about this part of her journey, as well as topics like spirituality, awakenings, and levels of consciousness. Not to get super woo woo or shame anyone's beliefs, but to open our minds to possibilities we may never have considered. It's a language that's new to me, but familiar to Diana, and I know few people as adept as her at explaining these concepts.
I'm grateful she joined us to dive deep into them, bringing clarity and fresh perspective that might help you navigate your own healing.
Diana is a beacon of light and hope in a world that can be dark and ominous. She is proof that embracing our reality, reaching out for help and accepting it with an open mind, aren't signs of desperation or weakness, as our society would often have us believe, but the first steps to, as she said, building the muscles that enable you to hold the bigger vision, the bigger dreams, the higher purpose.
So on even your darkest days, I hope you'll think of Diana, who is living proof that acceptance, love, and forgiveness are not only free and accessible at all times, but the keys to prevailing over tremendous pain. For more information about Diana and the topics discussed in this episode, check out the show notes at hereformepodcast.com.
Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village. Our producers Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris, our audio editor, JD Delgado, designer and illustrator Amy Senftleben, and our production assistant, Sarah Carefoot. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening–here's to you being here for you and to the power of choosing yourself.