Healing Isn’t a Trend — It’s a Skill: Joanna Wiley on Safe Container, Grief, and Coming Back to Yourself

An interview with Joanna Wiley

People aren’t just stressed right now. They’re overloaded.

And the more overloaded we get, the more we start craving something simple and rare: a place where the nervous system can finally unclench.

That’s what came through in my conversation with Joanna Wiley, founder of Heart Mountain Wellness in Portland. She teaches shamanic work and energetic medicine, informed by decades of practice across multiple lineages, plus years of yoga and Buddhist devotion.

And what struck me most wasn’t the vocabulary.

It was the steadiness behind it.

“I really believe in this work… because it works.”

The pivot: from art school to the call

Joanna’s origin story isn’t packaged. It’s human.

She went to art school for eight years. She wanted to become an art therapist. She loved academia and learning. And then trauma changed the direction of her life.

What followed wasn’t a neat plan—it was a chain of “meet this person,” “take this class,” “follow this thread.”

“It was never my plan… I just kept saying yes to the next step.”

Energetic medicine—where science and spirit stop fighting

Joanna says it plainly:

"We are energy. And energetic medicine has existed for as long as humans have existed."

She also said something I think we need more of:

we don’t have to treat science and spirituality like sworn enemies.

“Science and spirituality are becoming friends.”

And she draws clear lines around misconceptions—especially around plant medicine versus mountain energetic medicine.

“This is energetic medicine—mountain medicine—not plant medicine.”

The container is the medicine

Here’s the part I wish every “healing space” took seriously:

tools don’t matter if the environment isn’t safe.

Joanna returns again and again to space holding—what she calls the container.

Because safety is not a mood. It’s a nervous-system requirement.

“When the container is safe, the healing goes deeper.” 

Trauma-informed means: we don’t bulldoze the soul Joanna described trauma-informed healing as gentle—not because it’s light work, but because forcing it creates backlash.

She works with early attachment and developmental wounds, sometimes pre-verbal. Her approach centers capacity: what someone is truly ready to meet.

“I’m not here to push people past their edge.”

Healing as remembering

One of Joanna’s most resonant themes: healing isn’t necessarily “fixing.”

It’s reclaiming. Calling yourself back. Bringing pieces of self online again.

“A lot of healing is remembering what we forgot.”

Sound baths as ceremony (including one in warm water)

Joanna co-creates Sanctuary Sound Baths on land—and also offers pool sound baths in 94° water, with participants floating in hammocks while the practitioners work in the pool using sound and energetic tools.

It’s not a performance. It’s not background music. It’s designed for regulation, release, and reset.

“In the water, you feel the sound in your whole body.”

Death, grief, and the conversations we keep avoiding Joanna also does death doula work, and she’s outspoken about how much the West avoids death talk—until we’re forced into it without preparation.

She’s planning death cafés and spaces for real conversation, because planning matters. Support matters. Caregiver care matters.

“We need to talk about death… because you need a plan, and you need a vision.”

And grief? It isn’t linear. It comes in waves and layers.

“We have little deaths all the time.”

Where to find Joanna + what’s next

HeartMountainWellness.com

Socials: @HeartMountainWellness

Events: posted on Facebook and Eventbrite

February 21 (1:30–3:30 PM), Soul Ascension Studio: Intro to shamanism, medicine wheel, and space holding.

March: Medicine Wheel program begins (year-long; four weekends across the year).

If you’re craving healing that doesn’t rush you, doesn’t hype you, and doesn’t push you—this is the kind of work that meets you where you are and helps you come home to yourself.