People We Adore: Tara Byrne

A: I bring together shamanic healing, soul guidance and copywriting for energy-aware leaders who want to make sure their copy (and specifically their sales page) is energetically aligned. It’s a bit of an unusual combination, and it took me a long time to get here! But it makes perfect sense now I look back.

Ten years ago, I was a copywriter for big companies in London. I always loved words and writing, and for a long time, I felt like I had the perfect job. But I’d also had a lot of childhood trauma, and eventually it caught up with me in the form of burnout and a sense that I needed to follow a different path. I decided to follow the inner voice that had been telling me to go to Peru and work with plant medicines. I thought I was going for two months, but Soul had other ideas.

I stayed for a year! I apprenticed to a coca shaman, and experienced so much magic and adventure. When I came back to England I trained as a shamanic healer and Purpose Guide. After focusing on that for six years, I felt called to bring copywriting center stage again. Now I finally feel like I’m doing my soul’s work. Blending my skills like this feels very shamanic, because the essence of shamanism is 'walking between the worlds'. There's a 'real' world aspect to copywriting, which is the structure and conversion strategy. There's also creativity, which feels divinely inspired. And because I bring in energy work too, with shamanic journeying and ritual, it feels like it really hits the spot for me.

A: I’d say it’s my commitment to letting soul (rather than ego) lead the way, and knowing how to work through the fear and resistance that can come up when I think about taking the soul-aligned path. It often starts with paying attention to an intuitive nudge, a feeling or an inner knowing. This superpower serves me almost every day, because it’s the way I make all my decisions, from where to live to how to spend my time and energy. It’s opened the door to magic and adventure more times than I can count, especially during my time in Peru. I find that Soul is more committed to ease and joy than my mind is, and more trusting, too!

A: Writing can be a lifesaver for me. It can help me untangle fearful thoughts, find clarity and provide a doorway for ideas and insights that come from beyond the mind. Drumming changes my energy and helps me to ground. And I love walking in the woods on my own, early in the morning when there's no noise but the birds. I also get a lot of joy from connecting with the plants and flowers in our garden.

A:I'd have to say the Root chakra. It's not the most glamorous, but it's foundational. It's really difficult to build anything meaningful without a firm sense of belonging. The Root chakra also helps us have a sense of our place in the world; our relationship to the whole. That makes it fundamental to our purpose. If I'm not feeling fully rooted, I feel dislocated and disconnected, and I have to focus all my energy on the basic stuff of coming back into alignment.

I feel like part of what we're all here to do is integrate our spirituality with our humanness and bring them together in harmony, so we can embody our soul's purpose fully and do and be what we came for. It all starts with the Root chakra; accepting and fully embodying our humanity, together with our divine nature.

We can't wait to share Laura's live interview with Tara - check it out here.