My Story – Catherine Fehrmann M.D.

When my soul decreed my birth into form it chose for me a portal through working-class New York City, being born as the third girl to the son of a Colombian engineer and a classical pianist from Iowa, and the daughter of a Polish butcher. Though mostly devastated by my early human experience, I received occasional solace from the light coming through the stained-glass windows of the various Catholic churches we attended.

With my family frequently changing physical location it was difficult to find ‘home’, as I navigated suburban New York, the swamps of Florida and the mountains of Utah. Eventually I journeyed on my own to the Ivy League in Rhode Island, through laboratory research in Boston, to medical school in Vermont, and post-graduate training in inner-city Oakland.

Although I was frustrated and traumatized by the conventional medical model and training, I became skillfully versed in the workings of human biology, and came to respect the power of my left brain.

I was introduced to a broader view of healing through study with Dietrich Klinghardt, M.D., Ph.D., – learning about the levels of the physiology beyond the allopathic, and being introduced to the model of the ‘total load’ of stresses that make people sick, including toxins, microbes and trauma. It was here that I began to enter into deeper understanding of, and relationship with, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) as both intelligence and animal of the physiology. I was shown, through inner and outer teachings, that the ANS is central, and must be engaged with, in both the healing process and the awakening of consciousness.

Yet personally I was in great suffering, with digestive issues, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, trauma activation, and feeling thoroughly disconnected from my life and myself. As a being open to energies in many dimensions, I had to learn to work honestly with my emotional and energy bodies and nervous system, and find a spiritual path integral to me. Just to be able to continue this earth walk in human form, I began listening to the longings of my heart, and learning to make a Prayer for my life. I immersed myself in somatic and trauma resolve therapies, intensive spiritual practice, especially Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhism), mystical and shamanic traditions, and working with developmental psychology and human attachment teachings. Grace brought me to a mentor who is trauma therapist, energy Master and Tibetan Buddhist lama, who I worked with for 25 years.

A crucial turning point occurred when I started to realize that many of the ‘arisings’ (sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.) I experienced were accompanying energies of awakening that were moving through my body. My identification with myself as a ‘wounded person’ shifted to realizing that I am a divine being continually birthing my human experience. Thus there are things in the ‘vehicle’ calling to be cleared and freed in an on-going flow, to facilitate this emergence into human form.

I came to know and trust my own clairsentient ‘seeing’, my ability to heal through touch, and the power of my inner knowing and diamond mind – the wisdom of both hemispheres of the integrated brain in peace with itself. I was broken apart and reassembled so many times that ease and acceptance finally arose in the process. I welcome the on-going birthing process of trusting my ever-increasing capacity to articulate and share what I experience and know, what I see, and how it’s done.

I live in a forested knoll in northern California, on former Mi-Wuk ceremonial ground. I love to express both the human and the divine in all the languages of dance, song and verse, and moving my body through the water. I commune with all the Beings with whom I share mutual adoration …. the Light beings and deities of many lineages, the Elementals, Earth spirits, and the Reindeer People and the Jaguar Medicine Spirit, two lineage streams that come to me through my ancestors. I indulge my love for the Stone People…the way they look, the way they feel in my hands and my heart, and my love of gifting them to others.

 

I offer myself in service to embracing all the realms of existence and embodying Divine Love.