What if the thing standing between you and divine light is your nervous system?
Trauma therapist Rachel Pfotenhauer has spent more than 25 years as a licensed professional counselor, and just as long as an intuitive channel. She didn’t start out in therapy. She started as a photographer documenting child labor and social injustice, which took her to Cambodia in the 1990s just as its borders opened. Survivors of the Khmer Rouge camps began sharing their stories with her, and they became her first clients. From there she worked with genocide trauma in Diné communities, then with children and teens, then in private practice. Her intuitive gifts opened after a psychic she found through a gas station brochure looked at her and said, “We’ve been trying to get you in here for six months.”
In this conversation, Rachel shares the near-death experience that changed everything. She left her body, traveled through a tunnel into a vast, soft-lit space, and felt completely unshackled. Her parents met her there. Her father told her to stop being dramatic because she wasn’t going anywhere. Her mother stroked her hair and told her to tell her body it was going to live. Rachel came back, and the back pain she had lived with for a year was gone the next morning. Recovery from the sepsis was another story: two years at the bottom of the nervous system ladder, in collapse.
Rachel now channels Earth, Sun, and the primordial divine feminine and masculine, and she brings that work into nervous system healing. She explains fight, flight, freeze, collapse, and fawn in plain language, and she makes a case that will stop a lot of listeners cold: much of what we call ambition, opportunity, and drive may actually be survival. Once the nervous system finds safety, she says, the body becomes a beacon of truth. Boundaries appear. Reactivity softens. And a quiet, physical sense of “I’m enough” moves in, the same feeling she met on the other side.
Sarah and Jane also talk with Rachel about the difference between grief and suffering, why so many sensitive and connected people feel exhausted right now, and what self-acceptance actually feels like in the body.
Key takeaways
Fawning is a survival strategy, not a personality trait. Putting everyone else’s needs first so you can feel safe can become as automatic as blinking, and noticing it is where change begins.
Healthy boundaries and less reactivity are among the clearest signs that the nervous system is moving out of survival.
Grief and suffering are not the same thing. Connecting with loved ones on the other side can help people set down the suffering while still allowing the grief to move.
It is worth asking whether a goal comes from real desire or from the need to feel safe. Some passions fade when survival drops away, and the ones that return feel more aligned.
Healing tends to oscillate. Feeling great, then feeling rough, then feeling great again is part of the process, not a sign of failure.
Confidence and acceptance can look alike from the outside, but acceptance is quieter and doesn’t need anyone’s approval.
Connecting with Earth can be as simple as putting your feet on the floor in the morning and saying hello.
Quotes
“The nervous system is the plug to the divine light.” (Rachel)
“It might look like confidence, but it’s acceptance.” (Rachel)
“When you get into safety, you’re a beacon of truth. Your body tells you the truth.” (Rachel)
“You have to tell your body it’s going to live.” (Rachel, sharing her mother’s words from the other side)
“I’m enough. Just as I am. Which is exactly what I felt on the other side.” (Rachel)
Links and resources
Rachel’s website: vast-earth.com (free Earth connection meditation, group nervous system sessions, and individual sessions)
NEW Session for nervous system healing coming up soon!
Session Dates
Friday Group – 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time (Zoom) November 20.December 4, 11, 18
Saturday Group – 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time (Zoom) November 21 and December 5, 12, 19
Rachel on Instagram: @vast_earth
The Words Beneath Our Feet, Rachel’s channeled book from Earth (available on Amazon)
Sun Raya, Rachel’s botanical perfume line: sunrayaperfumes.com
