moon teitel
For the past 23 years, I’ve been a practitioner of healing arts. I am a certified EFT Practitioner, Community Herbalist, Birth and Postpartum Doula, Meditation teacher, Yoga Teacher, and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist. I bring insight, warmth, creativity, vulnerability, courage, and playfulness to my work with clients. Having journeyed through my own dark night of the soul with a decade-long chronic and complicated illness, I possess deep empathy for the challenging experiences of being human.
At my core, I am a medicine woman; that’s the calling I have heard ever since I can remember. I have always longed to know what it is that sustains us when everything we love falls away. What is the light that shines in the darkness? How do we heal? How do we love? How do we melt the hearts of those who do great harm? How do we melt our own hearts? How do we come back from unimaginable suffering? How do we sustain our faith in the midst of unimaginable suffering? Healing myself and others has been the purpose of my life.
Growing up, I spent my summers in the Adirondacks, where I still go today. This is the place where I truly come alive. I love the night sky, the trees and the slow pace of country life. The lake there is my favorite place on our beautiful earth. I spend whole days floating in the lake on a tube drinking in the sun.
During meteor showers, you’ll find me in the sand in my sleeping bag or on a mountain watching the sky until my eyes just won’t stay open anymore, no matter how much I try. Fires draw me in and when a fire is lit I can’t go home until I watch the coals dance their last. As soon as the earth warms in spring, my shoes come off and don’t go back on until late fall.
My spirituality is an intrinsic part of me. In the world of labels, you would call me Buddhist. I have deep Buddhist vows and commitments. I lived at a dharma center for 8 years in Arizona and have spent almost three years of my life in solitary retreat. I do love the dharma. I also just simply love the essence. I love deep spiritual practice, connection, and essence in all forms. Last summer was a summer of healing for me and I was blessed to be steeped in ceremonies; inipis, waterfall ceremonies, Mayan Fire ceremonies, tipi ceremonies. I am captivated and magnetized by grace, by ceremony, by depth and by melodies.
Nature is my medicine, informing my pace and tempo. Although I grew up in a city, as a young adult, I moved into the woods of Maine. My first winter, I lived in a little house on a lake. My first spring and summer I lived outside, sleeping on the grass under the stars. When cold returned to the land, I lived in a tiny cabin in the woods, hauling my water and using a solar panel for lights. When I went to college in Arizona, I lived in a tipi. And then at the dharma center, my home was a yurt.
When I am hurting, trees are my medicine. When I am too tired to do anything, the sun fills me with warmth and I rest. When I need to rest, I lie down on the earth. I love sphagnum moss and the way she holds me, and all my troubles slide into her. The rocks can hold our pain. The trees can offer us medicine. All we have to do is ask.
My life has been an incredible journey; through chronic illness, the last decade has caused unquantifiable loss, and my life looks radically different than what I dreamed of as a child on that Adirondack beach. Yet, I retain faith and hope, and I persist. And by journeying through the darkness and back, I’ve cultivated a depth of presence that I now bring to my clients, because the truest thing I know is that presence heals.
Presence HEals
I truly believe in the wisdom that dwells within all of us. I believe in supporting, nurturing and empowering that wisdom. When we stumble and struggle, a hand offered is medicine, wisdom offered is medicine, experience offered is medicine and knowledge shared is medicine. There is no one method or tool, my medicine is simply being with the unfolding within you and showing up in that space with you with whatever is called for in the moment. I can guide, give advice, be with and accompany you on the journey of the moment, the journey of a lifetime, the journey of a chapter. I can also listen deeply for your wisdom and together we can empower that to flow fully through you. In my work with people, I hold people in their totality and their wounds; I hold them in their brokenness and wholeness; I do this because it’s who I am; I also do this because it’s what I wanted and needed along my way.
At my most broken, which was completely and utterly broken on all facets inside and outside, in my body, in my mind, in my life, in my relationships, what I needed was to be deeply and tenderly held, I needed my wounds to be seen and healed. I also needed my wisdom, the depth and totality of who I was, my capacities that weren’t present and weren’t expressing in that moment to be seen and felt by those who were with me. And that was hard to find. I found that those who knew me from the past saw only my qualities and looked past my struggles as a flash in the pan that weren’t really happening. I found that most who met me in the present saw only a broken, shattered, ill person, lost, confused struggling, close to death, ignorant… I needed to be held in my wholeness and I needed to be seen in my depth and my vastness and in my struggles.
Compassion is seeing and beholding someone’s suffering and their divinity. Compassion is the recognition that karma and circumstances ripen beyond our control in a given lifetime. Compassion isn’t genuine when we place a separation between ourselves and others. If we think this could never happen to me, if we think if I were in their place I would do it differently, better, that isn’t compassion. Compassion isn’t sincere when we look down on. How we work with the circumstances of our lives, how we practice with them and how we live with them, that is where our power lies. But if we struggle and falter in that, it doesn’t mean anything about us other than that we are faltering in that moment. It doesn’t mean we are less than. There is no less than. We are all held equal in our humanity and in our beingness.
It is my gift and my commitment to behold you in your vastness and your wounds, and to bring healing and support to whatever is. Presence Heals.
training
I want to honor and acknowledge the many teachers in my life who have shared their knowledge, wisdom and experience with me and to those who have offered guidance in the unfolding of my life. My root lama HE Garchen Rinpoche and my retreat master Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche. And all the amazing teachers of my healing arts trainings. Herbalists: Gail Edwards, Jon Carlson, Leslee Vogal and DeAnn Tracy. Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapists: Elizabeth Newman, Neil Pinholster, Patti Buchannan, Margery Chessare and Michael Shea. Shamanic Teachers: Susan Marshall and Annie Fuller. Yoga Teachers: Christina Sell, Desiree Rumbaugh, Patricia Gipple and Erin Wickenheiser. Birth and Postpartum Doula Training: Michelle L’Esperance. Pre and Perinatal Work: Myrna Martin and Cynthia Cutting. Mentors and Elders: Nana Wilma and Grandfather Raymond Reitze. EFT Training: Betty Moore-Hafter and the EFT Guild, special thanks to Gwyneth Moss, Heather Carter, Jondi Whitis, Anne Ryan, Deborah Sampson, Lorna Minewiser, Deborah Donndelinger and all the Guild members. And to all my friends, family and colleagues.
