MY GRANDMA MADE ME DO IT.
I FOUND MY SPIRITUAL PATH when i hit ROCK BOTTOM.
I like to joke that, for some of us, being kicked in the butt once isn’t enough. That we had to somehow find ourselves at the point of curling into a ball on the bathroom floor, tearlessly crying into the utter void in order to reach ego emptiness and begin the process of remembering our essence again.
In 2019, I released my singer songwriter album, Elementary Love under the moniker Nate Qi. I’d hoped that finally following this childhood dream would lead into the kind of commercial success, artistic fulfillment, and spiritual nirvana I had seen other creatives achieve.
While the album was warmly embraced by friends and family, and I received some unforgettable performance opportunities, I was forced to confront a deeper pattern: the existential fear that underneath all my accomplishments, I was worthless and unlovable.
I grew more restless and anxious in the months that followed. My sleep got progressively worse and my mind was obsessively trying to reverse-engineer the kind of metrics success I didn’t see with my album. I checked my Spotify stats every few hours until I finally realized that if I continued on this trajectory, I’d probably kill my creative soul.
I BEGAN TO STUDY PATTERNS, IN THE SKIES, IN MYSELF, AND IN THE WORLD
During this time, I was also working as a corporate analyst. On my lunch breaks, I’d skip the water cooler conversations and walk outside while listening to On Being with Krista Tippett, a series of probing podcast conversations about the nature of existence. I would also sneak off during breaks to read pages from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. I also stumbled upon an interview where David Lynch talked about Transcendental Meditation, so I signed up for the next seminar at the TM Brooklyn Center, and practiced TM with the kind of rigor I had once applied to practicing Bach on the piano during conservatory years.
Towards the end of the summer, I came across Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I started doing The Morning Pages, and within weeks, I began having dreams about my maternal grandmother, the one person I felt unconditionally loved by throughout childhood. One day, I woke up from a dream where my grandma had told me to get an astrology reading. I thought that was slightly random, but not too far-fetched. After all, I grew up being obsessed with Sailor Moon. I browsed the internet for astrologers, but nothing clicked until I found my first teacher’s site. I saw her photo and I knew she was the one. I also found that she and I shared the same birthday, which I thought was wild because my grandma and I shared the same birthday.
Later, I found that Julia Cameron also shared the same birthday as all three of us.
At that point, I realized something bigger was at play here. My job was to slow down and pay attention to where this path may lead me.
IN TIME, I FOUND MYSELF HELPING CLIENTS AND STUDENTS REORGANIZE THEIR REALITIES.
I spent the next 6 years devouring astrology books, attending workshops and seminars, and finishing courses. Alongside astrology, I also fell in love with other tools like human design, the i-ching, tarot, and energy medicine. My nights and weekends were practically devoted to learning from the most skillful and grounded practitioners I could find. It didn’t feel like work, though, because I just had so much fun considering different theories about why we’re here and what we’re here to do as humans.
I began giving readings as a natural extension of my curiosity. Growing up as an artist, a classical pianist, and a poet, I was always a lone wolf. I never thought I had the gift of helping others in a relational context. To my surprise, my clients reported feeling deeply seen and held during sessions. One of my first clients, who still come regularly for sessions until now, told me that our work together has helped her question and ultimately release the self-loathing patterns she unconsciously inherited from her upbringing. That feedback meant a lot to me, because I, too, struggled with these patterns. Astrology – along with these other spiritual tools – helped me embrace my core essence with ease and gentleness.
In 2021, I began teaching astrology and energy work. I was lucky that my teachers trusted me to co-facilitate alongside them. Over time, I started feeling more confident about sharing my knowledge. I also started my podcast Healing The Spirit, which grew into my Substack.
This work has taught me the art and the skill of accompanying and guiding others as they move through change. In the words of Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home.”
When folks come to me, they’re usually seeking some kind of transformation. They’re usually at thresholds of important changes: finally reckoning with longstanding ancestral patterns, stepping courageously into letting go of a career path or a relationship that’s no longer life-giving, grieving the death of loved ones, moving out from a place they called home for a long time into new adventures. Their body and nervous system are feeling the fear of loss, but they’re also aware that they’re divinely guided to remember more of their true nature.
We work together to gently slough off their old skin. This process isn’t necessarily painful, but it’s almost always disorienting. By co-creating a space of relational trust and energetic stability, we allow challenging emotions to surface and we build the spiritual scaffolding that helps them step into a more authentic embodiment of their essence.
As children, we knew instinctively how to transform our pain. We knew how to naturally express ourselves and how to effortlessly create magical transformations. Over time, our ego began prioritizing being seen as rational, practical, and responsible in order to secure our belonging in the world of ‘adults.’ We lost touch with the innate gift of trusting our hearts to lead us into the great unknown.
Spiritual tools help us expand our curiosity and humility. They help us shift our perspectives and take us out of our old stories. They open up new pathways and possibilities.
They help us remember the miracle workers that we are. For ourselves and for the world around us.