Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Alter.
Brandon, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Well, let’s see, going all the way back, I was born in San Diego under a Capricorn moon and an Aquarius Sun with Aries on the horizon. My father is an Aquarius (born the day after me), my mother is a double Taurus and my brother is a Gemini. Can you imagine my poor mother trying to stay grounded amongst all these air signs? Luckily, with all that Earth in her chart she managed just fine. In fact, I think she had a deliciously grounding influence on all of us space-cadets. She is a Reiki master, a jewelry designer and an Angel Healer– so early on I was neck deep in the spiritual soup. I remember my mother playing psychic development games with me as a young child, usually right before bed. She would ask me to intuit what color she was thinking of, or what animal. She would ask me where I was planning to go in my dreams so she could meet me there. Before I was even a teenager she had gifted me my first Tarot deck.
But of course, no matter what faith you are raised in, you rebel– you could be raised in the church of ice cream and candy for dinner and you’d rebel against that, it’s human nature. And it’s not so much that I rebelled against the world of spirit, it’s just that as a seventeen years old gay boy, I was much more concerned with Diesel Jeans and Britney Spears than the Major Arcana. But looking back, I can see how my soul was always trying to express itself as a spiritual healer– even when I wasn’t consciously aware.
I have always been an actor, a performer and a full-time ham. My last two years of high school were spent at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, a boarding school set amongst the lush nature of the San Jacinto mountains. Even though I was more interested in Musical Theatre then the spirits of nature, I began to have a deeper relationship with the natural world. I got to experience all four seasons, even snow! Once I even got lost in the woods for a full afternoon, it was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. I think that experience was my first adult encounter with the raw power, the fierce danger and the endless beauty of mother nature. I have always been a channel.
During high school, I wrote a play called Forty Miles from Tel Aviv. It was a one-act that explored the relationship between a Palestinian Suicide Bomber and his wife on the day he is called to sacrifice himself. This play went on to win the California Young Playwrights Project. From where I sit now, I can easily say that I was merely a vessel for that work. I mean, come on, where does a seventeen years old Jewish boy from San Diego get the nerve to write such a thing? I remember the night I wrote the first draft, it literally just poured out of me. My card readings too would just flow. Once I pulled cards for my math teacher at the high-school Halloween carnival and she broke down in tears. I didn’t have the language at the time to realize that I was a conduit for messages from the spirit world. I thought I was just bullshitting or making shit up. Something in me wasn’t ready to keep playing with this magic, so I put the cards away for a few years and continued to pursue writing and acting, now at the USC School of Theatre.
Acting is a beautiful game but it left me hollow. The things in me I thought it would heal, remained painful and ravenous. The small successes I enjoyed didn’t so much satisfy my deep yearnings but rather illuminate and incense them. Over the course of many breakdowns (and breakthroughs), I found my way back to the spiritual foundations of my childhood, but this time, in my own way. My soul truly came alive when I started practicing Shamanism, a spiritual discipline that is rooted in working with compassionate spirits to bring about healing, information and power. This return to the wisdom of the Earth and a recognition that every living thing has its own sovereign spirit helped me to heal my wounds around queer shame and sexual abuse. My deepening relationships with my helping and healing spirits gave me tools to aid in my life-long battle with depression and anxiety. And they reminded me of my greater purpose, to heal, to teach and to empower.
The work that helped me heal is the same work I offer to you. Tarot, Shamanic Healing, Breathwork, Reiki, and Astrology. These are how I have begun to make sense of my life and the cosmos. These are the gifts that returned me to myself. And because I have walked this path, I feel uniquely qualified to share these gifts with you. I am not a guru. I am not Oprah. But I am a healer (spoiler alert: so are you!), a teacher and a fellow traveler who has faced his own darkness and come out on the other side.
Has it been a smooth road?
Oh my goddess, show me a person who has had a smooth road to achieving their dreams and I will show you a liar. Our struggles are our teachers. If it were easy it wouldn’t mean anything to us. Having to hunt our destiny down is what makes it so valuable. I think the hardest thing for me was finding my own way of doing things.
It took me a while but discovering how to weave all my skills and gifts together in the name of service has been my biggest struggle. But that also has created my biggest reward. It’s what I call my Private Empowerment Program. Working with people one-on-one, this seven week journey is dedicated to helping people break through their personal limitations. It’s all about figuring out where you always get stuck and how to finally unstick yourself. With the assistance of my spiritual teachers and guides I tailor each session based on what people really need– not just what they want or what I’ve done in the past.
Learning different practices has helped me address the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual blocks that haunt all of us. It’s so fascinating that, as humans, humans, we all think we are so different. But everyone feels insecure, everyone struggles with addiction of some kind– everyone feels isolated, broken-hearted and lost. My willingness to face my own brokenness allowed me to find the tools to put myself back together. I only provide services that have dramatically changed my life for the better. Since I have followed my own path of healing, and believe me it’s led to some pretty dark places, I can help anyone on theirs. As a healer, your first client is always yourself.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Spiritual Gayz story. Tell us more about the business.
I am a Spiritual Healer, a Tarot reader and teacher and an Astrologer who strives to remind people of who they really are. I have studied with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and I specialize in Soul Retrieval and Extraction work. Let me explain what that is! Imagine your soul is a diamond, with a million different facets, when you suffer a trauma of some kind, a piece of your soul fragments and takes the upset with it. This is actually fairly common in our contemporary society.
Any significant shock to your system can cause soul loss but it’s different for every person. This can be a car accident, physical/sexual/emotional abuse, the death of a parent, a sudden move, heartbreak– but it can also be more cumulative… just growing up queer in the 90s resulted in a fair amount of soul loss for me. Basically, a part of your soul takes one for the team– says I will suffer this pain so the rest of you can carry on. And then that soul part catapults from the body. When someone hires me to perform Soul Retrieval work, I bring it back.
My husband and I have a whole episode of our podcast, The Spiritual Gayz, dedicated to this subject; I highly encourage everyone who is the littlest bit intrigued to check it out. Getting some of my soul parts back is hands down the most effective healing I have received in my life.
Ok, so where Soul Retrieval is putting something back into the body, Extraction is taking something out that shouldn’t be there. Imagine termites in a house, they aren’t evil, but they really shouldn’t be there. It’s not unusual for a lot of us to have spiritual energies stuck in our bodies that aren’t helping us. With the help of my spirits I simply take those energies out.
I think what sets me apart from others is that I have expertise in a collection of different healing modalities that work really well together. The Empowerment Program I mentioned before, I don’t know anyone else who’s doing that– weaving Tarot, Astrology and Spiritual Healing together to restore people back to wholeness.
I’m quite proud of The Spiritual Gayz, this is a podcast my husband (who’s a brilliant Astrologer) and I started over a year ago. It’s a twice monthly offering dedicated to exploring the wide reaches of spirituality without pretending that it all makes sense. It’s fun, funny and very informative. I really dislike how the spiritual community can sometimes be elitist and hard to penetrate. We wanted to create something that made spirituality as accessible as gossip magazines in the grocery store. We wanted to show the world that you can be spiritually aware and still a real person, who eats ice cream and watches the Real Housewives. Getting to work with my husband, Angel, is a gift and witnessing the community build around our podcast is profoundly exciting.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Spirituality isn’t a new trend, it’s a return to an ancient way of being in the world. As we begin to wake up to the empty promises of capitalism and consumerism, spiritual practice will become more important and meaningful than ever. With the state of the world as it is today, we need to learn how to be in right relationship with each other and this planet. Spiritual tools and healing are the industry that can teach us how to do just that. I anticipate many people are just starting to discover their path towards awakening and they will inspire many more to follow.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brandonalterwellness.com and https://thespiritualgayz.podbean.com
- Phone: 3107104101
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebrandonalter AND www.instagram.com/thespiritualgayz
Image Credit:
Steven Liang, Rick Proctor
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