Dani Burling, Resident Shaman for Two Bunch Palms Resort and Spa
Dani started her journey 25 years ago as a Registered Nutrition, Advanced Herbalist and Iridologist. She then became a Reiki Master, Theta Healer, Hypnotherapist and Drum Facilitator before she stepped into the world of the shaman. She has studied for the past 15 years with the last of the Inka Shamans of Peru, Lake Titicaca and the sacred mountains. She has journeyed with her students many times to sit in ceremony with these wise medicine men and women. Dani has seen 1000’s of clients and has taught this life changing wisdom for the past 9 years.
Dani Burling: I started about 25 years ago as a registered nutritionist and I did that because my mother got sick and had cancer. So I thought, maybe I could learn how to work with her with food. Then I became an advanced certified herbalist in Chinese medicine. Then I became an iridologist and read the eyes. So I took care of my mom but now I realize that it has a lot more to do with other than food and she passed. The day she passed I was pushed around and this glowing light stood in front of me and it was the voice of my mother saying, ‘Thank you for taking care of me. I am no longer in pain and I’m going home’. That opened a whole new door to a whole another world.
I became a Reiki master and a theta healer and a hypnotherapist and a drum circle facilitator. Then I met my first Shaman and he took me on a journey that blew me away. He took me into a past life where I was a kahuna in Hawaii but one of the coolest things that he did was he gave me a power animal. He blew this peacock into my third chakra and I had no clue what this was all about but he had this joy for life and this amazing smile on his face. When I left that day me and my best friend laughed hysterically all night long at this amazing zen place that we were at and we cried laughing. The next day I went to this shaman’s drum circle and he said, ‘Dani, I forgot to tell you what the medicine in peacock was.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘laughter’. From that moment forward I was like, oh my gosh, you have to teach me everything you know.
That’s what lead me to studying in Peru, the last of the Inca Shamans, going to Machu Picchu and the sacred sites and hiking the mountains, going to Lake Titicaca and then studying with them here and just learning as much as I could. Then I started to teach the medicine wheel of the shaman’s and I started to teach the master programs and started to take my students to Peru. Then from there I thought I was going to retire at my retreat center by Yosemite because that was what I was going to do. Three hundred hummingbirds at the top of the mountain with just this amazing energy and one day spirit said, “no you’re done.” Then I said, no this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. Spirit goes, no you can’t do this anymore and my business just started to go like this [hand movement of getting smaller]. I said what am I going to do? Spirit said that your going to go be a resident shaman at an amazing sacred resort. Then I ended up at Two Bunch. It’s been an amazing journey and I’m very blessed for where I am now.
Kimberly Maska: That’s an incredible story. Going from thinking ‘I’m going to be peaceful with my 300 hummingbirds’ and then your like, ‘wait a minute.’ Now you are working with people too, that I imagine, in a spa type arena that might not be familiar with what you are doing. They are their to do the spa piece. So how do you work with that, introducing the clients to what you do while they are there for that experience?
Dani Burling: I think its interesting. At Two Bunch Palms the land is very sacred and the intention is very much about wellness. Sometimes the guest don’t even know whey they are coming. Then they get there and they have this amazing spiritual experience. The intention is to give them a variety of wherever their at on their spiritual journey but there are people who come just because they saw the shaman on the menu. When they ask me how do I do a private with you? I tell them I’m a treatment at the spa. People come in and see me and say, ‘this journey sounded cool’ or ‘this clearing sounded cool’ but when you get in the room and you lay down on the table it can go anywhere and they get off amazed. Some people just like, ‘I need a change in my life’ and that’s what draws them to me.
Kimberly Maska: That’s amazing. Truly that’s something everybody should do. To have that shaman experience. Now, you’ve gone from having your own business and having your students and taking them to Peru and now you are in a corporate, more structured environment. Let’s talk about how you have married your spirituality and a structured environment. How do you deal with those emotions and energy that come in from that?
Dani Burling: Never being in corporate, twenty-five years self employed, but going into Two Bunch was very different but one of the things that I was told by spirit, “Look Dani, corporate doesn’t have to look like what you thought. It doesn’t have to be on cement ground. It can be on sacred land with management that wants the blessings for the land and wants the blessings for the trees and wants space held.” I still lay down on the table. I still call my shamans. Most of us aren’t enlightened so we are still on that journey of evolving as we are. It kind of runs parallel to how I ran by business before, the only difference is I don’t have to do as much marketing or advertising. Which is really nice too.
Kimberly Maska: Right, to have that taken care of for you. I know that’s the things that spiritual entrepreneurs hate that part of it. You got lucky. Lets talk a little bit about my hot topic…spirituality and money and financial success. We can talk on a personal level and then on a bigger level how this resort presents itself as this amazing place but still has to be financially abundant to pay their people. How do you marry that personally? How do you see the resort doing it as well?
Dani Burling: Yes, I think the entrepreneurs, especially the spiritual ones, we have this amazing desire to take our healing work out into the world. The problem is that we are no the business side. We’re not the advertisers, we’re not the marketers. When you step into spiritual entrepreneurship you put on all those different hats. Then that becomes very difficult. It’s like, how can I bring all this work I want to share with the world out there and that creates that financial hardship because we are trained in the healing arts and not in the business arts.
I did have eleven employees, at one time, working with my company. I had to learn how to be a business woman. I had to learn QuickBooks. I had to learn marketing. I had to learn how to brand myself. All that I had to learn on the side just so that I could bring my teachings out into the world. That’s a huge process all in itself. I think healers do what they do because that’s the work they need the most healing in themselves. When you look at any healer that’s exactly what happens. The more work we do on ourselves and define the value in ourselves it aligns the universe with that value as well, then the money part comes in.
Then there is this whole psychological piece that comes in with the guest and the clients and how do you present it in a way where … I can’t just post a sign that says, ‘Come see Shaman Dani’ because most people in the world are not thinking, I need a shaman to fix all my problems. That’s not what they are thinking. They have a problem and how do you present it in a way that they think, ‘Oh my God I need that. I need that right now’. We do that with the classes too. The title of the class is what Two Bunch Palms is all about a title that the guest go ‘Oh my gosh I have to take that class!’
That’s the way the spa treatments are presented too. I think going into Two Bunch Palms it has definitely been a transition financially because anywhere in life the finances are limitless but for me, at my age, I feel settling down and letting them do the marketing and letting them do the advertising is where I really feel is beneficial for me right now. But I still get to do my process of getting people into the medicine wheel which is really what I was wanting to do. They have been very supportive to allow that to occur. And as I watch over the instructors I teach them how to be able to book their privates to show them a way to make extra money for themselves and to send their healing out to the world too in a bigger way.
Kimberly Maska: That’s beautiful. With financial abundance, how do you view financial abundance as tied to earning that abundance for your spiritual gifts? This is a hot button for most entrepreneurs. They believe, ‘these are my gifts, I should be giving them away for free’. I teach the opposite because we need to be showing, not only the value of what we do, but to understand that someone is paying for some amazing results. What’s your personal philosophy on creating abundance with your gifts?
Dani Burling: I think we all make that mistake when we start out. I’m going to do this for free and just share it with the world. Well, that doesn’t pay the bills. The journey of my business, which is Your Sacred Destiny, out with ‘The Secret’. That movie came out and it was so big and everybody was so excited about it. I watched that movie and it’s like, ‘wait a second, they missed some steps in there.’ First of all, 90% of the people in The Secret saw a shaman. So I thought, now lets share that wisdom and then I realized I can’t give this away for free. I would lay people down for free for sessions but the energy exchange wasn’t there and the healing work wasn’t holding the way that it should.
Then my prices started going up little by little by little until I started to realize that me doing work on them is not as valuable as me empowering them and giving them the tools. That’s why I started teaching the medicine wheel and that’s where the abundance started coming in. Now I could give them all the tools so they could know how to walk that sacred journey themselves. When I started the medicine wheel everyone was on this personal journey of healing which was great and about 5% wanted to be Shamans. Now about 90% that go though the medicine wheel want to be shamans because they want to share this wisdom with the world. Now I show them the missing piece of being an entrepreneur … let me show you all the mistakes that I made and how not to make them, how to start your pricing out right, how do you get clients and what do you say to them, how do you solve the problem for them, etc.
Kimberly Maska: That’s great. So what are some of those mistakes? What would you share, if you’d only known then what you know now. What are some of those mistakes that you made that you can share with other spiritual entrepreneurs to show them your success?
Dani Burling: Yes, do not give away your services for free. It does not empower you or them at all. Even with students I have them practice on each other until they feel confident enough to hang their own sign. If you want to open a business, you need to have some training in a business background. Very important … some type of training. The people on social media who know how to do that, their business can really boom. I’d send out advertisements in little newspapers that would say, ‘Come to a Shaman workshop’. No one was coming to those because I needed to solve a problem, right?! Come learn how to create financial wealth. OH, I want to learn how to do that! Or come learn how to heal the pain in your body. I need that! Or come learn how to find more loving relationships. Those are the three areas. When I started to tap into that it was like people were going, ‘Yes, I need that’. That’s exactly what we do at Two Bunch Palms is to get people to heal those three areas and we all need that.
Kimberly Maska: I love that you said that because I’m like a broken record with my clients and all of the people that follow me…”Solve A Problem.” It’s not about how great you are, it is about solving their problems. That’s the only way they can hear you. They can’t hear you any other way.
Dani Burling: One other thing too Kimberly, when I do workshops it’s not about lecturing them. If I teach a class it’s not about lecturing them, it’s about an experience. Life is about having these new neuro pathways created in your mind and in your heart and to give you new insight and awareness by going through an experience. Every workshop I teach, if I just lectured them, people never hear you. When I take them on a journey to discover their power animal, they get to go on a journey, the get to become the animal, they get to feel what it feels like to feel the claws and feel the medicine flow though their body. They come out the other end with tears or with insight. That’s an important piece too. In the beginning I lectured and we don’t lecture at Two Bunch Palms. It’s the intent to give the guest an experience.
Kimberly Maska: That’s a great point. I think we get caught in sharing what we know. “Well, I know this so let me tell you what I know.” That does not work at all, experience is great. Now, let’s share a little bit about the experience. We are going to be talking a little more about Two Bunch Palms in another interview but share a little bit about the experience they can have with you at the resort.
Dani Burling: I think because the land is so sacred, we have the most amazing guests that are attracted to that energy. They can come into the classrooms and discover their power animal. I do journey with the Shaman where they embody four different animals to go through a journey of life which is part of the medicine wheel. I do energy of the drums, which is drum circles where everybody gets a drum and they we come back into rhythm inside of us to bring our world back to rhythm and you can’t hide who you are in the drum. So everybody gets to learn about themselves and get to connect, which is really cool. I do ceremonies for mother earth. The guests all get together and we create these beautiful blessing bundles. Then help bring their dream to them as well. Then I do private sessions where I clear and take them into other dimensions and I help them understand themselves and other differently and how to create their dreams. It’s just been an amazing experience. I think a lot of it … to be where I’m at today, is because I went through that journey of recognizing how do you talk to people in a way to get them to book a private.
How do you then empower them and then make more money in a sense because you are doing a whole group. Then it’s $1000 or $1500 a person to do a four or five day retreat which is really where, as you grow as a healer, you really want to get to. That’s what I plan on doing on Two Bunch. There are so many guests now that I have had so many amazing experiences that they want to do the medicine wheel. It just depends on where the guest is, the guest might want yoga or ti-chi or they may want angel card reading or they may want to hear their crystal sound bowls and have that reverberate through their bodies. They might want to meditate or they might want to do a Vino Van Gogh class. There’s just so many things, there’s such a variety and in every one there is an experience for them to be able to find themselves. Find their better self, which is our tagline, which I think is wonderful.
Kimberly Maska: I love how Two Bunch brought it all together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a resort where I can get an angel card reading, listen to crystal bowls or work with a Shaman. That’s so unique and I think that really … aside from everything else and how amazing the resort is, has really helps you stand apart from everybody else.
Dani Burling: You know my daughter flew down from the Bay area and on my day off I took her to Two Bunch Palms and we were busy all day long. Besides getting in the healing waters, which are amazing and make you feel so amazing, we could go to class. Then the class ends and then we could go get a facial or a massage. Then we could go get back in the water. Then we could go eat the amazing food. Then we could go do another class. There is no place else that I could have gone to that could have given her that experience in one day, to be that much of a variety, like you said, of things to do.
Kimberly Maska: I know my readers are going to love this because this is a really fantastic place. If you guys are in Southern California or you are looking to take a trip out to LA … Two Bunch Palms is about 90 minutes outside of Los Angeles Proper. A quick trip and really such an amazing place to go heal your mind, your body, your spirit and treat yourself to what we all need. Thank you, Dani so much for sharing space with me and all your wonderful information.
Dani Burling: Thank you. Have a great day!
