Meet Jennifer Mani Pierce

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jennifer Mani Pierce. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jennifer below.

Hi Jennifer, so happy to have you with us today and there is so much we want to ask you about. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others developed certain skills or qualities that we are struggling with can be helpful. Along those lines, we’d love to hear from you about how you developed your ability to take risk?

I was initially raised in a one-income household and when I was young, maybe 10 years old, my father was laid off from his job. I deeply felt my parents’ fear and stress during this time, even though they tried to hide it from their children. I was a pretty sensitive kid and was too young to separate my parents’ emotions from my own.

My mother went back to work, and my father tried to start a small business which unfortunately did not work out. I developed this core belief that trying to do what you want is too risky and that the world is not looking to support your journey but rather that you must take whatever job you can get, regardless of your dreams and spiritual needs.

At least since that time, there was always a lot of fear around what could happen if you didn’t follow all of the rules, if you didn’t double- or triple-check everything, if you didn’t pursue the most conservative route in any endeavor, if you didn’t do everything perfectly. And conversely, people who weren’t perfect in these ways were criticized severely, as if they were, therefore, bad people, deserving of whatever ills they suffered.

By the time I was a young adult, I was so accustomed to this stressful mindset where all I could concentrate on was perfect academic performance and being financially prudent, that I had no concept of even thinking about what I might actually want to do with my life. Any thought of what I would enjoy was quickly extinguished by not seeing a risk-free, laid-out path to getting to that place.

Consequently, I went to an engineering-centric university even though I had no interest in engineering, simply because I earned the best scholarship to it and was afraid to take out student loans. Then, I ended up becoming a software developer for 20+ years, simply because so many people around me were doing it, and it seemed like the safest way to financial security.

Looking back on this “successful” career is heartbreaking now. I was really good at what I did, because my fear-driven qualities of intense mental concentration, attention to loads of details, and constant worry for what could possibly go wrong were very fruitful in a technical environment. However, this stressful mode of being was extremely hard on my health, both physically and spiritually.

A big turning point for me was when I started healing some of my addictions, because they were affecting my physical and mental health too much. I gave up video games, lessened alcohol consumption until it completely disappeared, quit marijuana, tried to avoid television, and mostly gave up sugar. I’m not at all saying that these things are bad for everyone, just that they were not healthy for me. The more distractions I gave up, the more I had to sit with the reality of my life and my unhappiness.

And it was at this time that I started praying for my life to change. I don’t recall ever really praying before, and it wasn’t even a conscious decision to pray. I was simply brought to my knees by unhappiness. I didn’t know what I wanted to do or how I wanted to be — just that I wanted things to change. This was a very dark time for me, because I didn’t believe my life actually could change, but I was no longer hiding from my desperation.

Then one day, an email list I was on sent out an advertisement for a Craniosacral Therapy course in Colorado. I don’t even remember reading the listing — I just felt a “yes” cry out from my gut. I took the course and absolutely loved it. It felt wholesome to do work with my hands, work that is meant to heal the nervous system, to heal the effects of stress and fear on the body. The next year, I took the class again and realized that I could go to massage therapy school in order to be in service to the well-being of my fellow travelers.

But how to take such a risk? It still seemed impossible at the time. But each day I spent at my old job, I began to realize that my safe life was actually my death, especially since I now knew my soul’s calling. A dear friend told me “if you don’t pursue your calling in this life, you’ll simply have to do it in the next life.” And for me, clearing the space to be able to “hear” my soul was the key. I knew that even if the worst possible outcomes happened, it would still have been worth it to try to align my livelihood with my heart which wants to help other people heal their patterns of stress, tension, and fear.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I have just recently launched my private practice, Mahā Samudra Massage, in Lafayette, Colorado. It is so exciting (and terrifying!) to be my own boss, but I am really passionate about delivering my bodywork through my own vision and creativity. “Mahā Samudra” means “a Great Gathering of Waters” in Sanskrit, and my work there is inspired by water, the original and greatest healer of life. I truly believe that the most effective bodywork operates like a gentle, yet powerful, flow of water, calming the nervous system and washing stress and tension from the body. Further, really good massage unblocks congested energetic channels in the body, allowing our vital energy to flow like water, unimpeded.

This world is in a time of profound and rapid change, and many of us are operating with high levels of stress and struggle. Many of us find ourselves in the sympathetic nervous system (“fight, flight, freeze, or fawn”) nearly all of the time. This is without a doubt how I’ve lived most of my life, and there is no once-and-for-all solution. It is a never-ending and multi-faceted journey to care for our nervous systems, our bodies, and our spirits. Massage and Craniosacral Therapy have been effective and pleasurable pieces of that puzzle for me, and that’s why I feel so honored to provide this nourishment to others.

More informally, I am also honored to share introductory techniques and cosmology to beginners on the Andean energy work path. I have been blessed to study in the Waskar lineage (Cuzco) and the Inkari lineage (Q’ero) for about a decade, and the work offers such practical, easy-to-understand techniques for taking care of and empowering one’s own energetic body. I also love to share the Andean practice of despacho in community, wherein we create a mandala from natural materials, infuse it with our intentions, prayers, and love, wrap it up as a present to Pachamama, and finally give it to her via fire or burial.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

One important foundational quality to my journey was making and honoring a commitment to learn a new skill. Several years before I knew that I wanted to become a massage therapist, I started taking Carnatic (a South Indian classical tradition) music lessons. I have loved the music since I first attended a concert with some university friends, and I always thought it would be a lot of fun to make that kind of music. I finally found a local teacher who teaches me twice a week. I practice nearly every day and am in my fifth year of study. In retrospect, that determined commitment to my own joy turned me into someone who knows she shows up for herself. This gave me so much confidence to know that I would be able to go to school again and develop completely new career skills. I highly recommend to everyone to be a life-long learner, regardless of where you are on your journey. What do you wish you knew how to do for no other reason than it will give you pleasure to do it? Go learn it! Just step-by-step and day-by-day. Sometimes we get caught up in how far away we are from the end goal or how we’re already too old, but I promise that it’s worth proving to yourself that you are a person who invests in the expansion of your capabilities.

Another critical component to my journey has been developing trust in subtle perception. I remember having a lot of sensitivity to subtle cues and energies as a child, but as an adult, it was easy to write off those perceptions as just my imagination. About a decade ago, I took a plant class with a beloved herbalist. She sent out a mystery box of herbal teas, tinctures, and hydrosols, and in each session we did a blind taste or smell test of some of the plants. We then were prompted to journal our perceptions of the plant’s energetic and sensual qualities using very descriptive, specific, and often metaphoric language. I was completely floored when I wrote down what seemed to me to be a highly unique and poetic phrase to describe a plant encounter only to find out that another person wrote the exact same description — so it was complete confirmation that I was not just making things up. This was profoundly healing for my sense of connection to the world. I knew then that the world is filled with beings (not just people) who are communicating with us all the time. I am always learning to deepen these connections with allies in the natural world by nurturing my subtle perception through active and present listening. This is a crucial skill in my bodywork profession, because I need to connect to and communicate with my clients’ natural healing capacity. Regardless of where you are in your journey, slowing down to listen to the world around you will increase your confidence in the accuracy of your subtle perception. Outside, third-party, or traditional knowledge is very important, but I believe that we also need to cultivate sovereignty in our knowing so that we can truly give of ourselves to others.

Finally, pursuing my passion for healing plants led me to spend time on permaculture farms with other people who love plants and the natural world. I had the deep pleasure of harvesting herbs such as mountain mint, red clover, and yarrow for my own healing. There was even a patch of mugwort that I developed a several year relationship with. Not only did this patch give me a generous amount of mugwort, it also taught me a song to sing while harvesting it. I’ve been fortunate to learn and participate in work days to build cob ovens and houses from natural materials for my friends to live in. While I myself don’t currently get to live so close to the land, receiving this generosity from the earth and from community taught me about living in sacred reciprocity. This knowing fueled my belief in the worthwhileness of pursuing my massage therapy career and my belief that in serving others, I will receive right livelihood. There is a lot of messaging in our culture about how we are primarily consumers as opposed to, say, citizens or neighbors or builders, but I think that healing some of our current predicament happens when we cultivate experiences of receiving and giving as a dance we do with each other — a dance that nature teaches us. We receive when we give, and we give when we receive.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

I feel like all my life I would hear people tell stories about their life path simply opening up before them and about having the right opportunities and people show up at just the right time. This always sounded so foreign to me! So much of my life was spent with no belief in providence, no belief that the world was connected to me and I to it, no belief that things that seemed to be so available to other people could naturally be available to me. I believe that this is the deepest wound for me to heal in this lifetime. The trick is that this isn’t a matter of my mind telling myself that providence is real, that my path will unfold for me just as it is meant to. Rather, what is needed is somatic healing — my body, mind, and spirit all need to feel this trust. For now, all I know for sure is that this trust is built with presence, practice, and patience. I must be present to everything that is going smoothly and magically in my life and to offer gratitude for it. I must be present for my own healing, caring for my nervous system so that it feels safe and truly at home in the world. I must practice everything that I believe in, praying to water, praying to the Creator, praying to Pachamama, listening to the signs and messages, showing up for my clients, my friends, my neighbors, and my family. And most difficult for me, I must be patient and not over-heat my mind with worry about how my path will unfold. There is a song lyric that goes “Worrying is just praying for what you don’t want”, and I try my best to heed that advice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mahasamudramassage.com
• Instagram: @maha_samudra_massage
• Other: email: [email protected]