Lynn Andrews’ work explores the ancient teachings of the Sisterhood of the Shields, which embrace the study of global shamanic cosmologies and sacred art technologies. The four-year training program is designed to integrate the sacred into every aspect of your life.

Participants in the school generally work at their own pace from their own home. Studies combine written material, audiotapes, the assignment of sacred tasks, conference calls, work with a graduate mentor, and two 5-day gatherings a year – the only time participants must travel.

The school offers a four-year professional certification program, leading to becoming a spiritual healer and an ordained minister, and bachelor, masters and doctorate degrees.

For more detailed information on Lynn Andrews’ work, go to www.lynnandrews.com.

At the 2006 Wise Woman Expos, Lynn Andrews will make a rare appearance in this part of the world. If there has ever been a woman who could bring your life into focus, who could help you heal your wounds, your aching spirit, your confusion or disappointment, or your challenges with abundance, it is Lynn Andrews – oracle, healer, and successful businesswoman.

When Lynn Andrews discovered the Sisterhood of the Shields 35 years ago, her life came full circle from her childhood days riding horses and exploring nature with her best friend, a Native American girl whose family warmly embraced Lynn.

Lynn was born in Seattle, but at age 6 her parents separated and she divided her time between Seattle and Spokane until age 13 when she moved with her mom to Los Angeles. Lynn loved her life in Spokane where she received an exemplary education from her European father and the Catholic school she attended. Her education was further enhanced by her artist and musician mother. “I grew up in a household where we all played instruments, sang, and read the classics,” Lynn says.

In her early twenties, Lynn started her business career in the Los Angeles area with some innovative and creative ventures that combined a longtime desire to blend arts and technology. With several business partners, she developed an inflatable, many-sided environment out of metallized Mylar, which you could both see through and see your own reflection. The motive for the invention was to internalize wisdom through experience. For example, a child could sit in a playpen made this way and touch the side, which would then change color. The child learned, experientially, that when you touch your environment, you affect it.

With her own business success and her filmmaker husband and young daughter, Lynn “had it all” and was living the “dream life” in Beverly Hills – hobnobbing with stars and high-powered businesspeople, financial success, intellectual stimulation – and she loved it, Yet she felt something was missing. That something that drove her to change her life was the desire to live more deeply and spiritually. Even though a lot of people thought she was crazy, she turned her life around to the radically different path of trailblazing visionary, mystic, shaman, author, personal development teacher, and spiritual leader.

Her first book, Medicine Woman – the story of her personal journey into the spirituality, healing and teachings of two Native American women, first published in 1981 – is now in its 46th printing.

“I was terrified at first,” Lynn says of becoming a published author and being expected to speak to groups of people. “When I was a child I had felt separate and different from other people because I could see lights around people. I learned quickly that it wasn’t acceptable or safe to talk about that quality, and I had pushed it down really far. It took me ten years to get over the terror of standing in front of others.”

Lynn says she overcame her terror by standing in the center of her fears and healing them. “That is the only thing to do with deep fears; otherwise, you are play-acting,” she says.
The shamanism of the Sisterhood of the Shields is not tied to a particular cultural worldview or tribal religion, but is more of a universal consciousness that links aboriginal cultures through certain beliefs and practices. “Shamanism is related to the harmonies of the earth,” says Lynn. “It is based on the healing of the earth from a place of love. All things are alive and all things have energy and a deeper meaning that may be visible. A shaman is someone who can see those deeper meanings and has learned tools with which to use those energies for healing purposes, especially to heal the mind and the heart.”

The Sisterhood of the Shields is a group of 44 women from different indigenous cultures around the world whose unified purpose is to preserve the teachings and traditions of ancient wisdom. “The Sisterhood finds its roots in female understanding and wisdom, particularly the need to restore balance to mother earth,” Lynn says.

Her newest book – her 19th, to be published this May – is called Writing Spirit and delves deeply into the writing life as an extension of Lynn’s teaching that in order to achieve a state of harmony and wholeness in nature, we must first find it within ourselves. “Writing is about finding the creative soul inside you, finding your style and your voice,” she says. “Global healing begins with the individual and writing is a powerful way to start your own healing.”
Writing helps you to shape shift out of old ideas into something new, something broader and much deeper than you may have imagined possible. “Our lives have become so polarized and restricted, along with our society. “We can shape shift out of this polarized thinking through art or writing, into an understanding of our oneness,” Lynn says. “It is possible to move out of beliefs that no longer work, out of guilt and blame, and into a whole new being that can express joy.”

It was for such work to be done that Lynn created her school (see Sidebar) ten years ago. “People needed so desperately to understand their conditioning and patterns in order to move out of them. Take, for example, your experience of love. You find love with people who make you feel the same way you felt loved as a child, even if that was abusive. That pattern doesn’t change until you do the deep work to change your conditioning.”

See Lynn Andrews at the 2006 Wise Woman Expos at 6:00 p.m., March 25. Tickets are available at Nature’s Food Patch, 1225 Cleveland Street; Unity of Clearwater, 2465 Nursery Road; or online at www.WiseWomanExpos.com. Tickets are $20 and include all events March 25-26.

Click HERE for Lynn's profile at the Wise Woman Expos.