#77 From Drag Shows to Deep Healing - Neil Christey on Modern Spiritual Work
Don’t let the blue hair and camp nature fool you. Neil Christey is a powerful spiritual teacher, leader and healer - and his path into this work is anything but ordinary.
Before the hypnotherapy, breathwork journeys, sound healing and shamanic practices, Neil trained in musical theatre and performed as a drag show queen in Ibiza. And yet, since the age of 14, he's been on a deep spiritual exploration that has shaped the grounded, modern way he supports others today.
In this fun and meaningful conversation, Kelly and Neil demystify shamanism for the curious - exploring how breath, sound, intention and imagination can open the doorway to healing, guidance, and higher conscious living.
What “modern shamanism” can look like in everyday life
Why altered states don’t require plant medicine. (Breath, sound, drumming, movement and storytelling.)
Breathwork as a doorway to the subconscious - the seat of imagination and guidance
The importance of going into a shamanic journey with a clear question or intention
How sound healing works - vibration, harmony, and energetic recalibration
Animism and the spirit within all things - rocks, trees, water, earth - and how it dissolves separation
A Soul Plan glimpse into Neil’s Talents and Soul Destiny.
Explore all that Neil has to share at https://neilchristey.com including his Holistic College, offering accredited holistic training courses, such as Sound Healing, Meditation Teaching, and Shamanic Practices.
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Read the Transcript for this Episode below:
Episode 77 of the Project Me Podcast. Hi guys. Welcome back. This is your host Kelly Pie. This podcast is normally solo episodes of me sharing stories and inviting you to reflect on how they relate to your own life path. But ever so often I'm called to bring in a guest. And today that guest is Neil Christie.
Welcome Neil. Hi, Kelly. Hello. Hey, so happy that you're here. Neil, we first met at the ibi, a wedding of our mutual friend, Nicole. You were not just a guest at that wedding. You were the celebrant, the officiant of the entire ceremony. And for the listeners, I'm referring to Kundalini Nicole. Who's come up many times now in my podcast stories.
So it was a couple of days before Nicole's wedding and you came to her normal Tuesday morning in Kundalini class, and then you let us all on an amazing Shamonic breathwork journey. And that was my first experience of meeting you and. I'm gonna admit something to you right now. I saw you as the gay shaman, totally camp funny, cute with your blue hair and your cheeky smile, but I wasn't quite expecting your work to be so powerful.
I have since attended two retreats with you, and I've invited you to lead my guest at my London Day retreat at the end of next week, but we haven't really had a chance to get to know each other all that well yet. So I've got a lot of questions for you, Neil. Okay, Kelly, let's have the questions. It's, yeah, I do remember that breath work session.
It was lovely. And you know, IHA is one of the first place I started to really grow into spiritual expression. And when I did that, I was actually doing a drag show at the time, many, many years ago. So the kind of outrageous vibes along with creative spirituality are definitely a vibe pickup from me. I wish I would've known you back then.
I was on the, I've been on the island for so long that I did not know about your drag shows. So Neil, your website, Neil christie.com is filled with so many offerings. Everything from sound healing circles to hypnotherapy, past life regression, inner child recovery. Burnout, recovery energy, healing chakra reset, soul whisper sessions, shamonic journeys.
I love a good shamonic journey. Plus, through your holistic college, you teach and accredit others to become sound healers, meditation teachers, shamonic practitioners, and you're also an ordained minister, which is how I met you, officiating Nicole's wedding. It's kind of mind blowing how much you do. What do you say to someone new?
What do you say to someone new you meet? Who says song? What do you do? You know, I have absolutely no idea. When you think about it, it's almost like I've become some kind of sacred prostitute being all things to the people who need them, but it's grown organically and my whole life. Uh, particularly since the age of 14 has been really a deep spiritual exploration.
And so through all of that spiritual exploration from 14 to now, it's been about 30 years. So, on my website, I really want to let people know that, you know, all of these things exist and I'm expert in, in practicing them, sharing them, and teaching them. You're like, I need to let people know that all of these things exist and I can help them with all of it.
It's just incredible. Yeah. I'm like, what am I doing with my life? I'm like, really? I'm just, just, I'm a soul plan practitioner and, well, I guess I do quite a bit, but do quite a few things too, but not quite as many as you do. Yeah. Yeah, well, you're a family girl. You have an amazing family. You've raised that family.
You've, you've worked your life history, you know, in, in service in many ways. And I guess I've spent a lot of my life growing up as a student, um, experiencing life through spirituality. And so that's where the CV and the, the list of qualification comes in for me there. I've spent most of my time studying, you know, the last seven years.
Seven years. Certainly I've been. I've been really nose to the grindstone with, with studies and qualifications, and that's all just to do with me wanting to make spirituality relevant when I share it. You know, the clinical hypnotherapy is a perfect example of using imagery and metaphor and spiritual.
Beliefs to help people in the real world, in the here and now in the concrete moments to help them take a spiritual perspective on a problem that they've currently got. And when I did my training in clinical hypnotherapy, it gave me the, the clinical and responsibilities, the ethics that I needed to be able to work like that in the modern day.
Oh, I love that. So did you do anything before you got into this? Like did you have a kind of before career and after career? Yes. My before career was a showgirl. I was a drug queen in ibi, literally. So I went to theater school in London and I studied musical theater. After I studied musical theater. I. To I Beha to work on the stages in Family Hotels, a family S show, singing Shirley Bassey, big Spender and Boogieing along to Kamen Miranda in I beat.
But like I said, that's when I came to I beha, I really started to. Connect spiritually, consciously. And when I say consciously, I mean making an effort to investigate what spirituality is 'cause of belief. We are all constantly spiritual, but every now and again we're called into perhaps just delving specifically into something spiritual to help ourselves develop.
Oh, I love that. I, I, I had a feeling that you never really had a desk job. I did have a desk job because I needed to earn money in between coming to IBI for the seasons. So as a school administrator, HR manager, and I've got a qualification, a degree in hr. Oh wow. Okay. Wow. And then you went on to train in Shamanism.
Yeah, I've trained in shamanism. You know, that came around very, very naturally. Once I'd took reflected on the practices that I was currently using, meditation, sound healing, working on visualizations and journeying. Also, I'd practiced with the College of Psychic Studies in London. All of these explorations all eventually come under.
An umbrella term, which has been, um, coined for quite a while now, which is modern shamanic practices. And way back in the seventies when Michael Haner, I don't know if you've heard of him, he established something called Core Shamanism in which he'd looked around the world at spiritual practitioners.
Anthropologists had studied and recorded their events and their ceremonies and everything, and they come together with a set kind of. Group of what these practices shared, you know, from, whether it's from mediumship to healing, to weather manipulation, all the way through to simple shamanic journey and for journey and for guidance as well, and all of these things together that I'd already been learning and just so deeply fascinated with, come together.
Under an umbrella of shamanism and shamanism, the word itself is a IC Siberian word, which means one who knows. Oh, that's beautiful. I am going to admit that up until about six years ago, I always associated a shaman with someone from South America leading plant medicine ceremonies like ayahuasca. And I know here in Iha, people love to bring over their shaman from Peru for their friends to get to do these ceremonies.
And all of that has just never really appealed to me. And then I gained a mentor called Dakota Earth Cloud Walker. She's a female shaman in the US and that was my. Introduction to Shamanism, shamanic breath work journeying, and it was a profound experience for me and it definitely expedited my personal growth.
So am I correct that you don't work with plant medicines in your kind of shamanism? That's right. Yeah. I don't work with any psychoactive plants or psychoactive substances. Really, I do like to use cacao in terms of plant that is technically a plant medicine, but I don't use it for any kind of psychological or altered state of consciousness with altered states of consciousness, which essentially is what you use the plant medicines for.
Very few indigenous shamans actually use the plant medicines themselves. They will facilitate the ceremonies for others, but rarely do they actually use them. And that's just from my own research, and that's not from face-to-face research, but reading and studying in on, on shamanism. A lot of people will go with drumming, chanting, dancing, breath work, sound, meditation, and storytelling as ways to alter the state of consciousness.
And an altered state of consciousness is the space where the communication with spirit happens. Oh, I love that. And everything you've mentioned, the drumming and the breath work and the dance and the, all of that. I just, I'm just so into all of that. So I'm really happy that I kind of got over my little bit of a, it wasn't a hangup, but I just kinda had this thing like, oh, you know, shaman, you know, it's gonna be too much about heavy duty plant medicines.
I did a. Podcast episode actually two years ago about my experience in Peru with a shaman that led to an ayahuasca ceremony and how much I did not enjoy that experience. And really I've realized that I truly do have far more profound journeys using my breath. That's right. The breath is a great consciousness transporter.
It can really shift you into the subconscious dominance, which is where lots of the metaphorical images, a lot of the meditations and the visions will come for you. And the um. A subconscious mind, of course, is the seat of the imagination and a direct connection to spirit rests within the subconscious mind.
And in order to get into there, we often need something like breath work, which really does shift the brainwave activity. S. To close down the conscious thinking and logical mind just for a few minutes so that the subconscious can really open up and let you find what it is you're actually looking for in terms of guidance.
And the big thing is always go with a question. Or a need for some guidance when you go on a shamanic journey because if you just go into a shamanic journey just to have a look at the colors, that's all great and lovely, but it loses any relevance and it should always have a relevance, meaning, and significance.
Oh, I love that. Yeah. When I've gone into a breath work session with kind of a clear intention in mind, it's really made a big difference for someone who's never done a breath work session before, especially anyone coming to our London retreat next week where you're gonna be guiding your shamonic breath work.
How would you describe your particular style of breath work? 'cause I know there's a lot of different ones. Yeah, thanks for asking. That's a really good question. I trained in what's called conscious connected breath work, and that breath work is a high energy breath work. It brings around five times more energy into the body that you would usually.
Having the body through regular breathing and that can physiologically shift a lot inside physically the body, emotionally and creatively inside the spiritual body as well. It lights things up. It's a very active. Session. Unlike sound healing, which is a passive session, you know you're invited to drift off and fade into relaxation and almost go into a state of B place, whereas the breath work is gonna bring you into activity activeness through the body and through the mind.
Having said that, once you are active with the mind, there are moments after the great efforts where the mind then. Does switch into the subconscious state, which is where you can start to connect with the intention that you have for the breathworks. You know, and I think you've got a beautiful plan and a beautiful intention for a theme for me to carry with that breathwork that I'm going to do as well.
Yeah, I'm gonna keep that a little bit of a secret for now for the, all the women who are gonna be attending next week. 'cause it is gonna be really powerful. But yeah, it's really looking forward to that. You know, when I first did breath work, it was in London, ooh, maybe 2017 or something, was my first experience with guided breath work, and it was with a practitioner in London and her style was very different from yours.
I did have a really profound experience, but it was exhausting. We were beating on the floor like you're lying down, but you're beating. Your hands on the floor and you're kind of like screaming in between the breath work sessions. And I did a retreat with her once too, and I just remember just being absolutely wiped out and exhausted.
So I just wanna assure anybody who's maybe done that type of breath work that there are other kinds. So if you've ever tried it once and you felt it was just like really intense, I just find the way that you do it is just so you know, you're beating your drum, you've got your guidance throughout and in years I haven't been beating the floor or screaming or anything like that.
No, that's right. So I give a lot, give you full agency as to how, how far you want to go with the breath, and I think that's really important because each of us knows really just how much we want to get out of every moment when we're using the breath work and it's invitational. To whether or not you use the open mouth breathing for the full session, or whether you want to enjoy the effects of the open mouth breathing whilst they happen.
For example, I'll invite you to take 10 great big open mouth breaths, and that's with your mouth open. You breathe in and you let go. You breathe in 10 times. And I know for a fact that just those 10 breaths have an effect on the body. So I'm saying to people after the first 10, let it simmer. Get used to what that breath is doing, what the power of the breath can give you from just 10 conscious, open mouth breaths.
Sit with it. You know, some people like to just lie there in that feeling of the body glowing, the mind alive, body feeling alive for a few minutes before they'll come back into maybe take another 10 breaths. And then there's experienced practitioners for conscious connected breath work, who I also allow in the room to breathe like that for the full session however they want.
And that gives people permission if they are looking for a heavy duty breath work session, to take that moment on those who are new or those who are looking just for the mindful awareness of what the breath is doing. That can also take place, you know? Yeah, I love that about the way that you do it.
'cause I, I do know sometimes I'm kind of floating there and I'm really enjoying it and then you're like, okay, we're gonna do 10 breaths again. I'm like, oh yeah, the breathing. And I go back to the breathing again and then I go, I do go deeper. And so I do love that kind of reminder that you do that you can kind of bring it back again and do it again.
I just love it. Exactly. And also because I know that if it's new for somebody or perhaps breath isn't the medicine for you on that day, you know you'll only you will know that. So it's completely up to you how much you participate in with the breath work and how much you get out of it really. I loved what you just said about the breath being the medicine.
So Yeah. Instead of plant medicines, it's your, your breath medicine. Yeah. I believe breath is absolutely a medicine. Conscious awareness of your breathing is a huge medicine. Our body and our respiratory system is a small reflection. Of the greater whole, and when I say greater whole, I mean the universe, the planets, and all the energy around it.
Our breath and our breathing patterns also work on our physiological selves in the same way. Beautiful. And do you also offer online breath work sessions? Does it work the same way being online? Oh yeah. I can offer ev all the therapies, all the bells and whistles can be done online as well. So the best work can be done online as well.
Absolutely. It's really, it's really a lovely way to share breath work online too, because when you build your. Comfort nest. I like to say build your nest that you're going to breathe in. When you do that, you can do it in your own home and you know if at the end of the session you're ready just to stay there in the nest, in your comfort and really just cozy in you can.
Oh, that's lovely. In my last podcast episode, I helped my listeners to understand that there are other dimensions beyond the 3D tangibles. When going on a shamanic journey, are we accessing four D like the realms of imagination? I'm kind of thinking that, that your work helps people to live beyond the 3D and to access higher realms.
Okay, so in terms of dimensional awareness, looking from a far perspective at your life is essentially raising into another dimension. So I'm saying like if you are looking at, if you are living your life and we're in it from nine to five. That's one dimension. And when we go into a shamanic journey, we actually are going into a different dimension to look back over what's happening for us at the moment.
So yeah, in terms of shifting dimension, eh, shamanic journey is absolutely working up into, into a fourth dimension and beyond. Possibly, you know, the, the further dimensions would come when you. Completely lose the self-awareness part of the journey. And then you are working with, with light and energy and moving just in without form and without time.
But the Shamanic journey is an invitation yet to move into a fourth dimensional experience because you're still making it relevant to your 3D life, but you're shifting into a new perspective, a new dimension to look over it. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. I love it. I've never really put that together before now, so that's really cool.
So as a sound healer, and because you're going to be leading all of us in a Gong Sound Bath at the Day Retreat next week, will you also help us to understand the healing powers of sound? Yes.
If you think about sound is vibration. Vibration is an energy, and the energy is pure and original from the original sound that's been created, or it has become. Distorted and it's become disharmonic in nature. Everything lives in harmony and in harmony. There is the golden ratio. There is, um, sacred geometry, which means the way plants, flowers, nature.
Grows, there's a set geometry to it, and that's what's referred to as a sacred geometry because it's the natural formation of things. When humans get involved with things, there's a potential to distort that sacred geometry, to put things out of line. Sound in the forms that we use as holistic practitioners is a natural, sacred geometric sound.
So we'd use gongs. We use singing balls, we use instruments that have been created. We a sacred intention and that do produce harmonic and harmonious. Vibrations and vibes. So those vibes and those harmonies, they drift past us. And you know, whether it's we've just come in from busy traffic, we've somebody cut us off in the road, we are having a little bit of a argument with somebody.
Or might be that we've just had the most lovely day and we've walked in. We could be very harmonious when we walk into a sound healing session. But in the cases where there's some disharmony that we're carrying in with us, if we are present with the sounds which are harmonic and are balanced, then our own subtle energies will mimic that sound and they'll balance themselves as well.
Oh, that's really cool. 'cause I love, you know, lying back and having, you know, a gong bath and that kind of thing, but I've never been kind of sure what those sound vibrations are actually doing to me. My, they're so, they're so naturally balanced and they're, they're sick, they're in sacred geometry, the frequencies and the harmonies that are coming from those.
Instruments, and that's blending in with your own energetic field, which is your electromagnetic energy, your aura coming out. And the two come together and they, they kind of make peace, iron, and balance each other out so that your energy has had a, had a refresh. Love it. Um, going back to Shamanism, I remember when I came on a retreat with you here in Iha.
You had talked about animism and how everything has a spirit. Will you talk on that a little bit? Because I wanna remember what you said. So, animism is the belief that everything has an animating spirit within it, which means it has an energy. Everything contains an energy, which is its spiritual essence.
And animism works very well with shamanism because in shamanism, the spirit of something or someone can be communed with and guidance can be sought from the spirit of a rock, the spirit of a tree, the spirit of the sea, the spirit of the earth, the spirit of the water. The most useful guidance comes from the spirit of natural things.
And animism is the oldest recorded religion, which is where people were aware that things existed on levels other than ordinary sensory perceivable levels. So you close your eyes and you remember a tree. What you're actually working with there is the spirit of the tree. 'cause the tree that you're remembering is not right in front of you yet.
When you close your eyes, you can remember what the tree looks like, feels like, sounds like what it feels to have your feet on the ground near the tree. And that's palpable there. There's something there and, and for me, that's the spirit of the tree that you're communing with. And animism gives permission for everything to have a spirit that you can commune with.
And that, for me, it just aligns with what happens when you close your eyes and you imagine something. There's a spirit there. I love that. Um, you're reminding me that when I was in Peru, we were going around different sacred places and they don't say the mountain, it's mountain like, just like you wouldn't say the to a person like, you know, the Neil, the Kelly, they, they wouldn't believe in calling it the, like it objectify it and they believe in the spirit of the mountain.
It's the apu and it was the same with like rocks and trees, just. Everything, and I just came away from that experience. Just really, really feeling more connected than ever to the natural world hasn't left me. Really, there's a sense of oneness with that, isn't there? Like the great spirit of mounting, the great spirit of tree, spirit of a thing brings you back into communion and brings you back into oneness with it, and it almost removes separation.
Which is what we need in the world. We need, we need, uh, my feet are tingling, togetherness. My feet are tingling right now, as you say that. It happened for the first time during a breathwork session, actually, that very first breathwork session, and ever since then, my feet tingling is my indication of truth being spoken.
Aw. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. You know, Neil, I know from my own soul plan that I am here to bring groups of people together and to be a catalyst for awakening into higher levels of conscious living. Like that's my soul destiny. And so this morning, you know, when I texted you and I asked you for your full birth name Yeah.
If I could look into your soul plan. Yeah. Would you like to hear your soul gifts? Oh, yes, please. Yes. All right, you ready for this? You've got a dominant vibration. So again, your soul plan. Then every letter of your birth name carries a vibrational frequency, so you'll get that with the whole sound thing.
And so your full name, as you know, written on your birth certificate, um, you've got a dominant vibration of the eights energy, and that is called Earth Emotions in Society and eights are. Deeply grounded to Mother Earth in the elemental world, that won't surprise you, huh? They have the ability to shapeshift, to adapt themselves to whomever they're with.
They change their frequency to relate to whomever they're dealing with. And so people feel deeply seen and understood by you. 'cause you can change your frequency. You can be like, okay, that person is like at that level right now. And so everybody just feels like you really get them. You're nurturing, you're sens.
You possess a high degree of emotional intelligence. You understand people and their motivations and you have a deep gift of seeing like clairvoyance. And then I looked up, 'cause I've got a lot of different resources and things to go deeper on this, and it literally said a shamanic like strong earth connection.
The ability to shift frequencies and when fully activated in using these talents in society, you'll experience. Great success. Oh, that I feel very seen with particularly the shape shifting in the frequency shifting ability. Yes. Yeah. That's your dominant vibration. It's funny 'cause this is for you, is in the earthly part of your chart, like the worldly part of your chart.
It's what you're here to do in the world. And then in the spiritual part of your chart, you've got this divine mother energy. It's a pure loving vibration. You can melt emotional blocks with your smile and people. Really trust this energy and they feel really comfortable in your presence. And it's another strong mother earth energy really connected to the elemental world.
And you're here to offer total love as a teacher, spiritual leader, and healer. So you're doing it like you are so right. Yeah. You're so right on track. And then I will just tell you one more thing 'cause there's lots of different parts of your chart, but I'm just gonna tell you one thing. Your, so your soul destiny is soul inspiration and equanimity, and this is.
This is an old soul. You've been here many times before. You probably know that already, and your mind is wide open to exploration of the intangibles. Like a lot of people would, you know, each time they come back they have to kind of overcome these kind of, you know, like people wanna deal with the tangibles and the intangible stuff feels a little bit harder to grasp, but because you've been here so many times before, you're just able to access and channel higher knowledge and it's, it's just incredible to see Now hear it.
'cause I've never had a chance to speak to you about your, your life path. So hearing that from, did you say age 14 that you've been doing this? It's just like, yeah, because you've been here so many times before that you don't need to like deal with all the kind of human stuff. You're just like, I'm just gonna go straight in, you know?
So, yeah, totally. Oh, I've, that's really awakened me. It doesn't, it has hearing your soul plan. January has December and January. Were kind of like burnout months, but you've just woken me up. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. That is what having a soul plan reading does, is it? It's always a remembering.
It's not like something new as in, you know, it might feel new to your conscious brain, but it's remembering. And so when people hear their soul plan, it's like, Ooh, yeah. You know, it's like something that begins to activate and open up. So, yeah, I wanted to share that with you. You thank you. Oh, thank you for that.
Very welcome. Well, Neil, I am more excited than ever now that you're coming to London for our day retreat. Yes. And you and Nicole and I are gonna be guiding everyone with our own unique talents to help everyone tune up their intuition, to raise their frequencies, and to not get caught up in collective fears and anger and worry, or hopelessness.
All the stuff that's going around in the world right now. We need to be in a higher. Vibration. And so this is gonna be a really powerful day. I'm really happy that you're gonna be a part of that. I am really looking forward to carrying that with you as well. Thank you for inviting me in to join you with this precious gift.
Well, it came to me as a vision, as you know, and so it just, yeah, I, that's why I feel even more excited about it. 'cause this, this came as a vision. So before we sign off, is there anything else that I haven't asked you about? Anything that you kind of wanted to share? I love to share a taliman from Gandhi.
I had this on my desk and I read that you were looking for something to share and I went to visit Gandhi's house, Gandhi's death and birth and Gandhi's death and living place and office and everything in India a long time ago, and I picked up this. Poem, which is his talisman, which is his protective mind mantra if you like, and I'd like to share that with you.
Oh, please do. Okay, so this is it, Gandhi G'S Talisman. I will give you a taliman whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you. Apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen. And ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.
Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to self rulership for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubt and yourself melting away. Um, I love that. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that.
That's a beautiful way to to end. Mm. Except I want you to remind people where they can find the whole array of offers that you have on my website, which is neil christie.com, C-H-R-I-S-T-E-Y. Okay. Beautiful. Yeah. And Cheryl, I'll add that to the Shepherd. Thank you. Well, thank you Neil, and I look forward to seeing you next week in London.
Me too, Kelly. Thanks very much. Lots of love. Lots of love. Thank you for listening to the Project Me Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, help it to reach others by subscribing, rating or reviewing, and by sharing it with your own friends and community. The more of us who are living in a higher vibration, the better the world will be.
I really look forward to seeing all who will be in London for the retreat. And now you know what your gift is. And if you'd like to be kept in the loop on my future events, including online offerings, soul plan, readings, and more, join my newsletter list@kellypietrangeli.com. My Soul Explorers members always receive the very first heads up on any offerings and they get very special pricing.
I am warmly welcoming in new members now. It is such a wonderful way to elevate yourself outta 3D living and into higher states of consciousness more consistently. Visit my website to read more and to join us. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.