Becoming Fully Alive: A Pilgrimage of Healing, Meaning, and JoyBecoming Fully Alive: A Pilgrimage of Healing, Meaning, and Joy
A Quest for Well-Being
Reverend Danae Ashley talks with Valeria Teles about holistic healing as an inner pilgrimage, blending Hildegard of Bingen’s spiritual wisdom with Alfred Adler’s psychology. Their conversation touches on trauma, creativity, spirituality and the greening life-force that can help people feel fully alive again.
1:03:20•29 Sept 2026
My Sap Is Rising: Holistic Healing with Hildegard of Bingen and Alfred Adler
Episode Overview
- Healing is a holistic process that includes body, mind, emotions, spirit and community, rather than just removing symptoms.
- Pilgrimage and intentional transition can help transform painful life changes into purpose and renewed vitality.
- Hildegard of Bingen’s idea of viriditas invites people to notice and nurture the inner greening life-force that connects them to the divine and others.
- Alfred Adler’s focus on encouragement, strengths and social interest highlights the importance of moving from isolation toward shared, horizontal connection.
- Unhealed trauma often shapes adult choices and relationships, and therapeutic support can help shift from survival patterns into healthier ways of living.
“"Pain that is not transformed is transmitted."”
What drives someone to seek a life that feels "fully alive"—body, mind, and spirit? This conversation between host Valeria Teles and Reverend Danae Ashley speaks directly to anyone craving deeper healing and meaning, especially those who know pain, trauma, or emotional struggle all too well.
You’ll hear Danae share how losing a beloved church role pushed her into a limbo season that felt like a cocoon, eventually sending her on a solo pilgrimage to Germany along Hildegard of Bingen’s pilgrimage way. That journey, and a pivotal encounter with guidebook author Dr Annette Esser, led her to write *My Sap Is Rising: A Pilgrimage of Holistic Mental Health Healing with Hildegard of Bingen and Alfred Adler*.
She describes the moment in a Hildegard parish when "my sap was rising"—a tingling sense of life-force returning—as a turning point in her healing. Drawing on Hildegard’s idea of *viriditas* (greening spirit) and Alfred Adler’s focus on courage, belonging and social interest, Danae talks about seeing people as whole beings: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and deeply relational.
As both an Episcopal priest and Adlerian psychotherapist, she blends art, movement, music, ritual and embodied prayer with solid psychological training to help people move from survival patterns into genuine growth. There’s honest talk about childhood trauma, how "pain that is not transformed is transmitted," why familiar but harmful dynamics can feel like home, and the hard work of choosing the "useful side of life"—connection, compassion and community—over isolation and harm.
If you’re drawn to holistic healing, spirituality, creativity and the idea of life as pilgrimage, this episode offers a gentle invitation: what might it look like for your own sap to start rising again?
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