Become Your Epic Self with Amber Sears

A Personal Note From Orion

How are you doing today? Are you being the best person that you can be? Or are you looking for that epic version of yourself to rise?

If so, welcome. My guest, Amber Sears, is a holistic business and lifestyle design coach who specializes in helping people heal, transform, and awaken through her potent retreats, teacher training, and online coaching. She’s deeply dedicated to empowering you to embody your highest self and live your most fulfilling life now. She started as corporate, and then she had an awakening, and she found out that there is more to life than this, that there is magic in life when you get out of your head and into your heart, and also a great success when you do that.

But it’s the type of success that makes you feel fulfilled rather than just having titles or money. So she’s very holistic and spiritual in her approach and a very successful entrepreneur. So for me, she’s super inspiring, lovely and easy to talk to, and very sweet. And I’m sure you’re going to enjoy this interview just as much as I did.

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About Today’s Show

Hey, Amber. Welcome to the Stellar Life podcast. It’s wonderful having you here.

I’m so excited. I’m very grateful to be here with you. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. Where in the world are you? You travel a lot.

I do. I am here in Austin, in our home base. I’m here for a couple more weeks before I head back to Costa Rica. This has really been my home base for the last six months. I’ve been here more than I’ve ever been to before.

Wow, that’s amazing. Before we start, why don’t you share a little bit about yourself, your passion? How did you get to your passion? What’s your mission?

I have so many passions. All of my passions are really directing me to what I would call my soul’s purpose. My soul’s purpose, I strongly feel and believe, is to help people heal, awaken, and transform in whatever way they need to, to really embody their highest self in this life. That looks like a lot of different things for a lot of different people. I’ve gathered over the years a lot of different tools on my own self-development journey, my own healing journey, that I have picked up, and that have been so transformative for me. That I couldn’t help but want to serve others and just help in any way I could with people on their self-development journey, their spiritual awakening path, whatever you want to call it.

For me, my story, I always say begins with dance. Dance was and has been my heart for the vast majority of my life. My parents put me in ballet when I was three years old. I trained up until I was about 18 years old and was in the competitive dance circuit in California, primarily. I did national competitions and stuff like that. I went on to dance professionally through college and also after college for eight years in San Francisco.

Dance was always what I got up every day. It was the thing that made me feel the most alive, the most connected to my spirit, the most connected to my body. The full expression of my being was through dance. It was my highest joy and it still is my highest joy. I’m not dancing nearly as much as I was back then.

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Along the journey, I also experienced a lot of injuries. As a really technical dancer, there is so much training that I had to endure. I loved it so much but it really broke my body in many ways. So I had a lot of injuries along the way. That’s when I found Pilates, yoga, meditation, and all these different techniques that I now teach because it helped me recover from all of these acute and chronic injuries that I was experiencing.

My whole goal in life until I turned 28 and shifted out of dance was to be at my peak level of energy mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. What did it take for me to be my most epic self, which is really where my brand comes from. How can I create my most epic self, mind, body, and spirit? How can I perform at my best and basically be the best dancer I could be?

Nutrition became a big focus of mine as well because I was like, “Cool. I’ve got the physical modalities down, but what about my nutrition and what I’m eating?” I went into the plant-based nutrition world really deep. I was a raw vegan for eight years. Now, I’ve been vegan and now I cook food. I’ve been vegan for 11 years now. That’s a big part of my path as well and my journey with self-development.

About seven years ago, I decided I was going to leave everything behind my dance career, and take my skill set that I have been teaching in San Francisco. Alongside my dance career, I was teaching Pilates, yoga, and plant-based nutrition, all these tools I picked up. I was teaching in a private 101 setting, group workshops, and stuff like that. I decided I was going to take my business, leave San Francisco, move to Costa Rica, and open up a wellness center. That’s really when everything started to shift for me. I had so much better quality of life. I was running retreats and digital training programs every month down there. It was really living my ideal dream lifestyle.

Then down in the jungle, after six months, I sat in my first Ayahuasca Ceremony. Sacred medicine has become a very powerful part of my path and the deep part of my purpose as well. What I do now is very much incorporating working with shamans in these ancient traditions.

Most recently, my husband, JP, about three years ago now in Costa Rica, we decided we’re going to move back to the US, or I was going to move back to the US. I’ve been back in the US now for about a year-and-a-half, and just doing the back and forth thing in Costa Rica until I could settle here. We’re starting a new chapter as a new married couple wanting to start a family.

That’s amazing. That also must be challenging because both of you are so busy.

We are so busy, yes. We both run our own businesses and have been doing so for over a decade. When we met, it was interesting because we both never wanted to get married. We both never wanted kids.

Oh, my God.

I know. I don’t mean that. We’re like, “How is this going to work out?” We knew there was what I would call soul recognition, where we just instantly knew there was something magical about us. I didn’t really know. I never felt anything that strong. I was like, “I don’t know how this is going to work.” We live in different countries. We have very different businesses. We have very similar purposes, though. But we just play it out in different ways. He does it through comedy, I’m doing it through a Shamanic yoga retreat in Costa Rica. There’s just such a big difference. How are we going to blend and weave this world together? That’s really been our challenge. Also, our greatest joy is to figure out what that looks like for us. It took us a good year-and-a-half to figure out how to make it all work with our schedules. It’s been interesting.

That’s beautiful. My husband and I got married in Costa Rica.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. At the Osa Peninsula. We rented the whole place. We had our own private beach. It was so beautiful and magical.

It is. Costa Rica is pure magic. That’s why it’s my favorite place on the planet and it will always be. I can see why people, myself included, when I first went to visit Costa Rica, it was like this hook into my heart that every time I left the country, I wanted to go back. There’s just this need to be there. I can imagine why you guys chose Costa Rica especially the Osa. It’s so wild and underdeveloped.

Get out of your head and follow what your intuition is telling you.

We had monkeys and tons of birds. They have more than 800 species of birds in the Osa Peninsula. You’re surrounded by life and that’s what I wanted. I wanted to start a life surrounded by a lot of life. Just the fertile ground of Costa Rica where everything grows and flourishes. It’s so beautiful.

Absolutely.

Do you think you’re going to have kids now? You want kids now?

Yeah. This is something that I just recently diving into full force. We wanted to try to conceive last August. I had a retreat in Peru. I was leading. We were going to try to conceive in Peru. I have this whole vision of, “We’re going to be in a sacred valley,” or “We’re going to conceive and it’s going to be great.” Then we worked with some doctors. They were like, “You guys should really do this preconception plan in terms of supplements and things like that to get you guys to ideal levels before you conceive.”

We ended up doing this whole three-month plan which is I’m so grateful that we did this. I was actually deficient in a couple of different things. It was important to me to have a smooth pregnancy and recovery process, that I get my levels back up to an ideal place. JP had some deficiencies as well.

For the next three months, we did this whole plan that they gave us. We did our blood work and everything, greenlighted everything, and the doctors were like, “Yup. You guys are good to go. You can start conceiving.” This is actually the first month that I have the app that tells me when I’m ovulating. Now, this week actually, I’m talking to you is the week that we’re trying to conceive this month. Next month, it’ll be this another six-day window.

I’m learning so much because I never wanted kids. Now that I want this and we’re going for it, I’m learning. There’s a whole new world of information about my body, about how conception works, about how this whole process will flow. I’m learning a lot from the women in my life, of course. That has been really cool to ask for help.

I don’t even know how to hold a baby. I really didn’t spend time around a baby in my life, which is so weird. Having these conversations with my sister, she just had her first baby girl. All of my friends through social media, all my followers, they’re incredible. They’re giving me so many resources and things to read. I’m really enjoying this learning process.

It’s going to be amazing. I just had a baby four months ago.

Oh my gosh! Congratulations!

Thank you. I did it through IVF. I had to go through surgery. The doctor gave me a 5% chance to conceive on the first go. There is more to the calling in the soul than what the doctor says. The apps are amazing and the protocols are amazing, but there is so much more than that. You do those ceremonies, you tap into this realm that is the 99% that we don’t really see and things happen there.

Spirit Babies by Walter Makichen

Oh my gosh, yeah. I just finished reading this book called Spirit Babies, which you probably have read.

No, I didn’t.

Oh my gosh, you would love this book. I just wrote about it on Instagram because this book was a game-changer especially for those who are already looking with plant medicine or maybe they have a deep meditation practice, and they’re tapping into the other dimensions and into the spirit realm in general.

This man is a clairvoyant medium. He works specifically with the spirit baby world where he communicates with them. He can help couples figure out what’s happening between them that’s causing the baby to not want to drop in at a specific time. He has all these stories in the book not only about how everything works through the spirit world and how the mother ushers the baby, all these things from the spiritual perspective.

He also shares stories of working with couples. The sharing like, “Okay. It wasn’t the relocation.” They have these inner energy blocks that were preventing the baby from accepting the soul contract. It’s very fascinating. My mind exploded last night reading this book. I just so relate to what you’re just saying here, that there is so much more to this than we know.

One thing that I did and that is something that I did for so many things in my life was a vision board.

Oh, amazing.

I did a baby vision board. I went to my friend’s baby shower, but she had her baby shower after the baby was born. I have a photo of me holding that beautiful baby boy. I took that and I put it on the vision board. I collected all kinds of photos from a line of pregnant women and one that is very beautiful inside the water. She’s very sensual because I wanted to have this beautiful pregnancy.

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Let me tell you, my journey was not as planned. My birth, the way this being came to the world, was not planned. But babies come to the world the way they want to. We have our part in the manifestation and in calling in that beautiful being. I thank God, the universe, that He’s got his own little plan as well for us.

It was actually very humbling for me because I was like, “I’m a manifester. I can just do it. This is how it’s going to happen, I’m going to be like this, I’m going to feel like this when the baby is going to be born, this is going to happen.” All hell breaks loose, there’s a lot of chaos, but at the end of the day, I’m with this beautiful miracle, warrior, wizard, little baby that I freaking adore.

Oh my gosh. I know. I got my sister. She also just got her baby 13 days ago. She said, “Amber, I thought I was going to have control over this process.” She’s like, “It was full surrender.” There was no, “Oh, I’m going to stay this weight. I’m not going to gain as much weight. I’m going to have this nice, smooth, morning sickness period.” Not at all. It’s completely out of her hands, so I feel you.

You mentioned the word surrender. How did that word show up in your life?

That word has shown up so much in my life and I feel like I’ve learned the art of surrender a lot, working with plant medicine. That says something that has been a massive learning curve for me. In my first couple of ceremonies, I learned very quickly the importance of trusting surrender, specifically working with master plans, and really understanding this need to control. Life is really causing so much suffering for me.

My former Amber self was very perfectionistic, very controlling, very type-A, very dictator-like, in the way that I ran my business and different things. When I was forced to figure out what surrender meant, the experience of working with such a wonderful plan, that’s when I was like, “Okay. We’re humbled. Deeply humbled by how the universe works, how the spirit works, how healing works, on all levels. Not just in my mind or in my physical body but on all levels.” Just really surrendering and trusting that process has been a massive gift in my life. I feel like I’m only learning that again, and again, and again, through different experiences. I think motherhood would definitely even teach me more than the art of surrender in so many ways. I also know that in my relationship with JP was always learning how to receive and how to surrender to certain given energies within a relationship. It is really powerful to me too.

Just because I definitely was standing more of my masculine for most of my life, I was really forcing myself into more of my masculine energy. Though that served me definitely, I’m definitely feeling the pull to be more feminine now, stay in that core essence for myself, and associate my relationship with JP. It showed up. We’re depolarizing our relationship by not holding our feminine and masculine poles in the relationship. We’re working with that, too. It shows up in so many ways in my life.

I feel like every day, when I study meditation, I’m just like, “I surrender to all that is meant to live through me today.” That helps me understand a bit that I’m connected to something so much bigger than myself. We have some control but there’s a greater plan at play happening.

I really resonate with what you said. Before I met my husband, I met him at Date with Destiny.

Oh my gosh. Amazing! Of course, you did.

It was on the relationship day. I figured out that, “There is something that I need to change because I’m so much in my masculine that I’ll never be able to attract a man.” I was very emotional that day and that night. I sat by a waterfall and I prayed. Forty-eight hours later, a friend of ours, a friend that I met there at the gym while doing seal training. I was really in my masculine. I was always all about training hard and being strong, and nobody’s ever going to hurt me.

Then we met and there was a spark. I had to go through my own journey of accepting my feminine. First learning to surrender. That night, I really understood the meaning of surrender. I had a breakdown and a breakthrough. I was like, “God, I can’t do it on my own anymore. Please help.” I was really surrendering.

Before that, I look at the word surrender as a weakness. I look at the word feminine and femininity as a weakness. Now I know that there is so much power in both words. Surrendering to your intuition, to your higher power, and you calling in your inner goddess, there’s so much power in that.

You talked about polarity in the way you show up with your man. When you are in your gorgeous, beautiful, radiant, feminine, you’re just irresistible. You’re a beautiful woman. You can be beautiful and attractive, but there is another layer which is that energetic layer that creates attraction, polarity, and all that good stuff.

Absolutely. I feel like this has been my journey. I know that it’s a journey for a lot of women just because we’ve grown up in a very masculine culture, where our leaders are masculine, so we also embody that especially if you’re a business owner. You just fall into all of those patterns that you think are required of you.

Find an outlet for your creativity. Don’t just work all the time.

I love that now the collective is awakening. There’s so much more emphasis, especially for women to really go back and reclaim their feminine energy and their feminine power to really stand and embody that as leaders. Whether they’re leading their family, they’re leading themselves, their team in the business.

That leadership as a female and empowered was just wow and breathtaking. It’s so beautiful to witness in my friends, my colleagues, my girlfriends that I get to see this play out. And also within myself, really feeling that essence again, has brought me back to a part of me that I think I lost in childhood. A part of me that hasn’t played out since I was a kid.

I also think that the masculine side that created this phenomenal business that you have. It’s not one or the other. It’s about integration. But you do want to learn to be strong in both because then you are on your full power.

I couldn’t agree more. I feel like I’ve learned what I would call a broken masculine tendency can be. That’s where I was really playing out. Before I sat in my first ceremony, that’s how it was playing out my life. I was very much in these patterns. They weren’t serving me, and they definitely weren’t serving my team and the people in my life. Yes, I’m so grateful for all of my drive, my discipline, my focus, my detail-oriented nature. I was so blessed and grateful for that because that’s why I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten 1000%. Now, I’m learning how to balance myself. That’s exciting.

That’s awesome. When I lived in New York, I did some sweat lodges with the Lakota people. I’ve never done a Peyote or Ayahuasca ceremony and I’m so curious about it. What is it like? What’s the big deal? What was the shift? How did it happen? I just know that people are throwing up a lot. That’s all I know.

Yes, that’s the thing. The way that I describe it is for me, first of all, there’s a master plant that indigenous people have been working with for thousands of years. Ayahuasca is one of these master plants. Master plant meaning that Ayahuasca is both a teacher plant and a doctor plant.

In the Carribean tradition, which is what I work within, they describe Ayahuasca specifically as the grandmother of all plant spirits, like she’s the ultimate. She also very much embodies the spirit of Pachamama. The earth is very much where people experience, when they experience the spirit of Ayahuasca.

The whole idea is that the Ayahuasca bind has the spirits. When you’re working with Ayahuasca, when you’re drinking it, you’re actually interfacing with the spirit of the plant. She’s what they call a doctor and a teacher plant, meaning that she heals you mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, all dimensions she’s working on. She’s also teaching you.

When you work with her, it’s like plugging into source energy. She’s teaching you about the universe, about yourself, about your past lives, about your ancestors. Often, you receive a lot of information. She shows you the things that need to be healed and worked on. Sometimes it can be a journey through your shadows. That’s why you’ve heard people that they purge, they cry. There are certain things that happened that are releasing energies.

Purging is part of what they call getting well which is when you’re purging, you’re cleaning the physical body, but you’re also an energetic body, so there’s a lot happening there. Crying, feeling emotions, is part of this process, too. What a lot of people are experiencing, they’re processing trauma. They’re processing pain that they’ve been holding onto from this life and also from past lives. Ayahuasca works seven generations back and seven generations forward. It’s very powerful.

Like epigenetics.

Exactly. It’s really powerful at working in your ancestral lines. We’re talking all sorts of cycles that could be playing out in your DNA. Things like physical ailments and also things like energetic inference like trauma from your ancestors that have been passed on to you. Oftentimes, people come to these ceremonies to heal something physical. Oftentimes through these experiences, they realize it was actually an emotional root. There’s an emotional trauma that happened maybe seven years ago with your grandfather that they’re still carrying. That’s why they’re experiencing physical issues in this life. Or it could be something really isn’t happening in their lifetime this time around.

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With that being said, it’s very layered. My experience with Ayahuasca is also called the vine of death and the vine of the soul. It’s connecting you to your soul. In doing so, oftentimes, there’s an ego death that has to happen. In order for you to be able to touch the spirit and to really step into oneness with source energy, you have to break free of the limited mind and the ego. The ego, when it feels like it’s dying, it’s going to fight like hell to prevent itself from dying. In actuality, you’re not dying. The mind, this identity that we carry about ourselves is dying.

It’s so difficult.

Very difficult.

It’s so difficult to purge your identity. Oh, God.

Absolutely. For example, my first ceremony was a complete ego-shattering. All of these control and suffering that I was ending in my life, all of these patterns I was playing out, they weren’t serving me.

What kind of patterns? You sound like somebody that never experienced any trauma or pain in her life.

Oh, yeah. I didn’t experience trauma in a way that I was abused as a child. What I did experience and what I experienced through my journey is a lot of self-destructive habits. To give you an example, I was severely bulimic for five years in my early 20s. I learned this through my first ceremony. I learned that what was happening, the reason that behavior became such a thing, and why it literally ruled my life for five years, was that I was harboring so much emotion that I haven’t let myself feel most of my life.

Growing up as a dancer, for example, you’re expected to be perfect. You’re expected to look and behave in a certain way. If you don’t fit that mold, you’re judged. I carried a lot of guilt and shame around my body image, around not being enough.

It reminds me of the movie, Black Swan.

Exactly. That pressure that I put on myself, not only coming externally from my family, my choreographer, all of that, but from myself. I was the hardest on myself internally. What came from all of this, stuffing down my emotions, I never let myself cry because if you showed your emotions as a dancer, if you were upset because you didn’t win the competition or you didn’t get chosen for the audition, you basically would either cry and give up, or you go back and fight. You keep auditioning.

You build up a very thick skin as a dancer. Just like you would if you were a model or an actor. You got to do all these auditions you’re competing. It’s a very competitive world. For me, I built up a thick skin. I never let myself cry. I was like, “Oh, everything’s fine. I’ve got this. I’ve got myself together.” I was just so controlled. I never let myself cry.

My first ceremony, Ayahuasca forced me to cry. I cried for five hours. You’re going to feel all the things you didn’t let yourself feel for all those years. This is how you heal. You heal by processing emotions. The emotions were so pressed and bottled up. That’s why I started to behave, act out, and have certain patterns because my internal dialogue was so bad. The amount of pressure building up inside of me was so intense, the only way I can cope with that, the anxiety of that, was trying to control everything I eat. It came out as control and obsession with health and nutrition, things like that.

It got so bad to the point where I was purging two of the three meals I would eat a day, and I did that for five years. The amount of physical damage I’m sure I did to my body during that time is tremendous. I’m so grateful that I was able to get out of that cycle I was in because it was very self-destructive. Many women never escape that cycle. For me, this is why I like talking about it because it is really important for women to hear. A lot of women can resonate with that part of the story.

With that being said, Ayahuasca was teaching me basically emotional intelligence. She was like, “You have to feel your feelings. The only way for you to actually live in a state of more peace, joy, content in your heart, is you first have to heal your heart. You got to clear out the stuff that’s haunting your heart.” For me, it was my whole upbringing. It’s a really professional, strict, disciplined world. I was a hard worker, a straight-A student. I think people look at people like that and they go, “She’s got everything together. Her life looks great.” Often those are the people that commit suicide because there is so much pressure they’re putting on themselves to achieve certain things, to be this certain person, for the people outside of themselves. It can lead to these self-destructive tendencies and major depression.

I had no idea how messed up I was inside until I started my ceremony. I remember going the first time and being like, “Oh, I got this. I am a raw vegan. I’m sure I’m so clean. I’m not going to purge. I’m going to be fine.” I meditate every day, I’m a yogi, I had all this pride. I have so much ego going into this. That’s one thing you never ever want to bring this medicine. This medicine will humble your ass so quickly and shatter your ego into a million pieces. You have to get to come with it with a humble heart and humbleness.

Of course, I had no idea. I showed up at this ceremony. She just rocked my world. She’s like, “These are all the ways in which you are basically causing some suffering in your life. These are the patterns. These are the mental programs you’re running. This is the emotional baggage you’re carrying. This is the stuff you need to clear and work on.” That started my healing journey. I needed that soul-shaking, though. I needed that ego-shattering for me to wake up to my own patterns. I really just had no idea.

Was that before you met JP?

This was years before I met JP. That really started my healing journey. For me, Ayahuasca has been a powerful teacher. You are working with the spirit of a plant. It’s very bizarre for people who don’t work or understand the spirit world or maybe never interfaced with it before. You are literally opening up your pineal gland and you’re able to access the spirit world and see spirits, communicate with them, in a way that you can in your everyday life.

It sounds like something that I would like to try one day.

I imagine because you’re so spiritual. I imagine it would be a really cool experience for you.

Create a vision board to help you manifest your goals and dreams.

I’m sure. Oh, my goodness. I have a lot of egos. It’s going to be difficult.

As we all do. Every day, we need it. I think it’s important that we embrace our egos because we do need it. There are so many ways that we cause our own suffering through the mind and the ego.

So right. Beyond Ayahuasca, what are some ways that you help people release mental and emotional blocks?

My background and expertise are really in movement and meditation. For me, the physical body is something that tapping people back into is super important. I feel like most people nowadays and unfortunately in modern-day society, we’re living from the neck up. Many people are just existing in their minds. They’re walking around like they have nobody. Just functioning in their mind only.

Reconnecting people to their physical bodies and back to nature is a huge aspect of what I do. Whether that’s Pilates, yoga, meditation, and breathwork, which are the different techniques I teach in the physical body or that ecstatic dance, which is also one of my favorite modalities to create containers for on my retreats and when I do workshops at different festivals. I’ll include ecstatic dance which I think is a very powerful way to reconnect to the spirit and to the body. Really, just be wild and free to express yourself in all the ways that you desire. Those modalities are really important practices.

Ecstatic dance is very different from ballet.

Very different. It’s funny because growing up as a technically trained dancer, I hated ecstatic dance. I hated improv dance because I didn’t have any steps to follow. Again, this goes back to control. I like to have steps that I knew I could complete and I could perform perfectly. That was my thing. My safety net was that choreography.

As I got older, as I moved to Costa Rica, I didn’t have access to all of my professional ballet classes. I would go to these ecstatic dances and just feel awkward and weird but would go anyway. I loved it. I got into it, and I was like, “Oh, my God. This is so freeing. This is the ultimate liberation for me,” because there are no steps, so I get to be whoever I want to be, and that was so incredibly powerful for me.

That is beautiful. Tell me about your retreat. They sound phenomenal.

I’ve been running retreats for about 10 years now. I am so passionate about them. They are my favorite thing on the planet. I love them. They’re so deeply fulfilling for me because I get to hang out with everybody for five to seven days and get to know my guest. Human connection is one of my greatest fuels. I love that more than anything. Also, because I get to witness massive transformations. In a very short amount of time, I get to see people come in with all sorts of mental and emotional stuff they want to work on, and they leave as different people. That is the greatest reward for the work I do.

My retreats have definitely transformed over the years. I initially started out doing everything from my Pilates, mat retreats, to Sakata yoga certifications, to raw chef teacher training programs, all different types of things. About seven years ago, when I started working with Ayahuasca, things started to shift a lot. I decided I wanted to incorporate shamanic work into my retreat as well.

I teamed up with the Shaman I was working with who was helping me heal so much. We developed the whole program. The Epic Awakening was born which is my shamanic yoga retreat. I ran that retreat every month for the last several years in Costa Rica. That was my baby. I just did that.

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Every single month, I have 10 people per group just coming down to work and heal. That was so profound for me. As I met JP, things started to shift a bit because I realized that I can’t just be in the jungle 24/7. I’ve got to be able to have some more flexibility with my schedule. I then decided I was going to expand my retreat to open up Peru and Guatemala, so I can now have three distinctly different retreats.

One was in Costa Rica, The Epic Awakening. The second was called Sacred Heart Activation, that’s in the Sacred Valley of Peru. That’s also an Ayahuasca retreat but it’s in the Sacred Valley. We go to Machu Picchu. We do a lot of the beautiful sacred sights in the Sacred Valley. The third is my Root to Rise Retreat which is in Guatemala. That retreat is really an ecstatic dancing and cacao retreat. No plant medicine is used besides cacao. We worked on other Mayan traditions.

One of my greatest passions with this work is to really introduce people to ancient traditions like the Mayans, the Incas, and the Shipibo down in the Amazon, these ancient practices. I strongly believe that the elders of these traditions hold the secrets to reconnect people to the heart, to their souls, to nature. They just hold so much wisdom that as modern-day people really could utilize in terms of our own healing and awakening.

Do you have anything in your heritage or in your past life that is connected to those traditions?

I think that’s a great question because there’s something that’s pulling me to this work. It’s been really strong since I moved to Costa Rica because Costa Rica really feels like my soul’s town. It feels like a place I may be lived in the past. I had different clairvoyants and people in my life, healers who were like, “Oh, yeah. You were a tribal leader of a community in Costa Rica. That’s why you’re called there. That’s why you had to be there.”

I’ll never forget that call to Costa Rica from a spirit that was so powerful where I landed in Costa Rica. I instantly knew this was home. I didn’t know why I felt that way. I just knew I had to listen to it. Then I decided I was going to move there four months later. It was really fast. The universe is really aligning because it was just meant to be that way.

I very strongly feel that I’m called. I listen to where I’m being called. Definitely, working with Ayahuasca was a whole path I didn’t even think was going to be a part of my life, but it’s something that feels like home. It feels like it was part of maybe who I was in a previous life, of who I meant to be in this life, obviously.

There’s definitely a connection to some native American traditions. In my lineage, I think there’s Turkey. Also, I have healers work on me and say that I have Hopi native in my bloodlines. Just a very interesting feedback from different people about where my soul has been or what traditions I’ve been in before.

That’s amazing. Can you share some of your student’s transformation? What happened to them in one of their retreats?

Some of my favorite stories are those tremendous physical healing. For example, one of my guests, Lance, had this retreat planned two years ago now. He was staying at another retreat center in Costa Rica, trying to heal. He had this almost elephantiasis in one leg, really bad edema. All these physical ailments that basically doctors had no idea how to fix. He was at his wit’s end in terms of options. He’d gone to many alternative doctors, acupuncturists, physical therapists, all different types of traditions, and also Western med, and he was just not getting any answers.

We’re so confused because he couldn’t keep food down. He had major intestinal issues. They didn’t know what was wrong. He had elephantiasis in his leg. He’d drop half of his body weight. He was really thin when I met him. All I remember is he called me up. He emailed me and we got in a call. He’s like, “Amber, I just saw your retreat popup. I was just doing some research on Google. I’m looking for healing. I’m really at my wit’s end. I left my family in the US to come to Costa Rica to heal because I don’t know what else to do.” He’s like, “Would you be willing to let me sit in the ceremony?” Of course, I have him take health forms and very strict about who’s allowed to sit with the ceremony because there can be some major medical contraindications and medicine contraindications of Ayahuasca, where it would be unsafe for him to sit.

I spoke with the Shaman and I said, “Here. This is what we’re doing. Would you be open to letting him sit?” She said, “Of course. I know what to do here. Let’s bring him in.” He came and he had a really profound deep emotional clearing. Again, I was sharing so oftentimes our physical ailments are stemming from an emotional underbelly. There’s an emotional imbalance happening. He had some baggage that he was carrying from maybe this life or maybe past life. He didn’t really know where it was coming from, but he had a really powerful ceremony.

He went back home and his weight came back up immediately. All the symptoms vanished. It was a true miracle. I’m not a Shaman. I don’t know exactly what was happening inside of him, but I do know that whatever he needed to heal was healed. He went back home and he sent me an email three months later. He’s like, “My weight is back up to where it was before. I’m with my two kids and my wife. I can’t thank you enough for just providing this experience. It just happened to be the right time and the right space. Everything was divinely orchestrated, I strongly believe in.”

He’s the prime example of someone who, even to this day, emails me and says, “When’s your next retreat? I want to bring my wife.” He’s so dedicated to the path of healing now. He understands working with master plants and how profound it can be for him. He’s one example.

Most people nowadays are just existing in their minds that they forget there are other, more magical ways to live life. Share on X

Another example is a good friend of mine, Jas. She came down to the ceremony. She’s had chronic stomach issues her entire life, to the point where she can’t eat food without being in pain. Every time she would have to eat growing up, she was taking medication before she’d eat. She’ll bring a pillbox with her everywhere. This allowed her to eat and keep food down, but she was always really thin, and always struggled with nutrition and eating. She had this fear around eating because eating always made her feel pain.

She also had anxiety, some depression, and other things, so they had her on medication for all these different things. I remember when she suddenly listed all of her medications. I was like, “Okay. Can you wean off all of these before the ceremony? Because you can’t sit in the ceremony with all these.” She went through this weaning process of her meds. She came to sit in the ceremony. I kid you not, the next morning, she was eating breakfast without pain for the first time in her life.

Ayahuasca is very much working in healing the gut, it’s a big part of the process that she’s cleaning you out physically. It’s very anti-inflammatory, antifungal, and antimicrobial. It just cleans the body out. Also, it’s working in her trauma. Her trauma around her eating is also part of the issue. Because she’s had this trauma around food her whole life, she’s had a big fear and anxiety around it. Ayahuasca helped her heal the root of that trauma. Then when she went to eat, it wasn’t an issue. Her head wasn’t going into that space of, “This is going to be painful.” She was able to break the cycle mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Even to this day, she’s coming to my next retreat. She’s coming down for another one. She said, “Amber, this has changed my life. For the first time in my life, I can travel without taking pills with me everywhere. I don’t have to be on eight medications. I can just be normal.” To her, that’s everything.

Those are two really standout stories of health transformations.

Thank you for sharing. I also wanted to ask you because everything we talked about so far was very right-brained, spiritual, kind of woo-woo. But you are also a very grounded, strong, savvy, businesswoman. You know a lot about marketing, systems, and how to put that. You help women do that. You help women integrate. Is it only women? No. Everybody, right?

Yeah. With my retreat, those are all co-ed retreats. I definitely, primarily, attract women, for whatever reason. In my coaching, I do primarily female entrepreneurs.

You integrate all this with real life, business, money, and helping women entrepreneurs to rise. What are some of the things you see that are connected between the physical aspect of the business to the mental aspect of the owner?

What I always love to say is that entrepreneurship is really a spiritual journey. You have to do so much inner work to get to a place where you’re willing to courageously step out, speak your truth, and build a business around something that you love. My emphasis was working with soul-powered entrepreneurs, it’s what I call them. Women who have really a soul in them, they have a big reason they’re here. They know in the depth of their soul and in their heart that they’re here to make an impact. They’re here to serve in whatever way that looks for them. It’s going to be different for every woman, of course.

They have this strong calling, but they don’t know how to build a business around it or build their life around it. Maybe they’re working nine to five, they’re really struggling with a career they hate. They feel like no fulfillment, no rewards from that. They just know they’re here for more. They end up working with me to build out their branding, their business, really understand how they can monetize, have the lifestyle of their dreams that they’ve been wanting, and desiring. It’s really coming from a different place. It’s about service and impact more than anything.

Some of the biggest challenges I see with very spiritual and soul-powered people, specifically women, unfortunately, really struggle with self-worth and confidence. If you’re very service-oriented, most people are very service-oriented, they want to just give their services away for free. They’re like, “I am just here. I’m just going to teach you for free. I’m going to do healing for free. I’m going to give away business coaching for free because it’s for the better good of humanity.” They’re in the service mode.

There must be a balance.

Oh my gosh, yes.

There must be give and take. If you just give or just take, you’re tilting the balance.

Absolutely. This is so much what the prewired has to happen in the mind and also in the emotional body, self-confidence. The soul I strongly believe, if we come in a very specific purpose. I’ve had many of my clients, within ceremonies, within the work that we do, they get very clear about their purpose. Great. Then, it’s like, how can you courageously step out, then start to live this purpose, and really embody it? That requires a certain level of confidence. There’s so much around believing in oneself and doing the actions required to get there.

How I help my women basically overcome this insecurity and this self-doubt. This is the entrepreneurial journey. The nature of it is that you will be having to put yourself out there a lot and face your fears on a daily basis and deal with things you never anticipated you have to deal with. Like hiring staff, managing staff, launching a program, technology. There are so many different aspects, marketing, sales. To be able to confidently sell something that’s from your heart, that you know was going to help so much transform their life, you have to believe in what you do.

So much of the root that I help women do is just self-realize and understand their innate power. If they can understand that and believe in that, then they can do anything they want in life. They can manifest and create whatever that is. I’ll give them the strategies, the tools, the systems—all the things that I’ve learned over the years to do it well. And to quantumly pass the mistakes I made because I made a lot of mistakes just by trial and error, trying to figure things out on my own before I was hiring mentors and coaches. I was just stabbing in the dark, trying to figure things out. I learned my ropes the hard way.

What I love to do in my coaching was to basically give all those skills and tools I’ve learned about how to do things in a way that is going to be more efficient, effective, and helpful. It doesn’t really matter because I can give them all of that. If they don’t believe themselves, they’re not going to do it. They’re not going to use those tools to actually make it happen. I do a lot of mental limiting beliefs or work. Also, just help them to really begin to take action. My coaching is very action-oriented. I give them an action list and I’m like, “This is it. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to step up and do these things. Yes, you got to put yourself on video. Yes, you have to take photos of yourself. Yes, you’ve got to write a blog. Yes, you’ve got to write on social media. You have to use your voice, your physicality, and your energy to connect with people.” That can be a really big edge for most people.

I love those two sides of you. That beautiful side of you that enjoys nature and ecstatic dance. Then connecting to spirit, alongside that super tough coach that is in your face, you just got a list for you, you just got to take action, and it’s going to happen. It’s the best of both worlds. It’s just wonderful.

Oh, thank you.

It is. I have so many more questions for you but unfortunately, our time has come to an end for now. Before we say goodbye, for now, I have two questions. One, what are your three top tips to live a stellar life? Number two, where can people find you and work with you?

Yes. Stellar life tips, following your heart. As I know, you are such an advocate of following your heart. I think it’s the most important thing we can do in our lives if we can tap into that space every single day. We can connect whether it’s through meditation or dance or whatever your practices to reconnect your heart. Whatever it takes to listen to that and to really start to take action towards the direction of your heart, it will only serve you in every single facet of your life.

Following your heart and also courageously dealing with what scares you is a massive part of having a stellar life because the most rewarding things that we seek in our lives are often on the other side of fear. If we’re not willing to courageously face our fears on a daily basis, we just won’t be able to experience that deep fulfillment, and reward that could happen when we really take a risk and step into the great mystery of life. Be daring enough to follow our hearts and chase our dreams. That’s where the magic happens. I strongly believe so.

Third, I would say, building deeply meaningful relationships. At the end of the day, when we lose all of our material possessions, and we have nothing left but each other, I love that we share. Building those deep bonds is something I neglected for a large part of my life. It’s something that I really regret. Now, whenever I’m emphasizing that need to connect to myself in a super deep way but also to connect with others and understand how to unconditionally love people and accept them for who they are, and love them for who they are, that’s a big part of my growth process right now and it’s something that I still value.

I think those great things you’ll be set.

Yeah, beautiful. Where can people find you?

You guys can find me online. My website is epicself.com. You can find me on Instagram. I spend a lot of time on Instagram. It’s my favorite platform. My handle there was also @epicself. Also, on Facebook, Amber Sears.

Beautiful. Amber Sears, thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

You’re so welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been so fun, Orion.

Thank you, and thank you, listeners. Remember to follow your heart, do what scares you, build deep meaningful relationships, and have a stellar life. This is Orion, until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Listen to your heart. Sometimes it’s helpful when you get out of your head and follow what your intuition is telling you.
{✓} Find an outlet for your creativity. Don’t just work all the time. Find ways to enhance creative skills you don’t necessarily use at work.
{✓} Visualize the life you want. Create a vision board to help you manifest your goals and dreams.
{✓} Go on a journey of self-discovery. It can be through travel, a retreat, or finding a mentor who can help you learn more about who you truly are and what you’re destined for.
{✓} Surrender to the things you cannot control and just let them be. Don’t bother with extra baggage once you learn how to let go of the things that don’t serve you.
{✓} Trust the universe is working for you. Channel all that positive energy into creating something worthwhile. It can become something that doesn’t just help you but helps others.
{✓} Find a retreat that can help you tune in with your inner self. There are numerous meditation or wellness retreats in your area. If you’re feeling adventurous give it a try.
{✓} Don’t bottle up your emotions. It’s okay to be emotionally expressive and vulnerable. Make sure you live your truth.
{✓} Reconnect with nature. Go offline once in a while. Spend the day outdoors, and breathe the fresh air. Connect with nature.
{✓} Check out Amber Sears’ website to find out more about her retreats and coaching practice.

About Amber Sears

Amber Sears is a holistic business and lifestyle design coach who specializes in helping people heal, transform and awaken through her potent retreats, teacher trainings, and online coaching. Shes deeply dedicated to empowering you to embody your highest self and live your most fulfilling life now.