ANNA SINGH DEO is a Lay Chaplain, ordained by Roshi Joan Halifax, Upaya Zen Center; and is trained in Subtle Energy Healing, by Elizabeth Frediani.
With more than thirty years of meditation training and spiritual practice, Anna provides a strong, grounded and loving container for clients. She assists people in cultivating their inner resources and skillfully navigating life’s challenges.
Anna has worked with grief, loss, end-of-life-care, trauma, despair and burnout. She has served as a healing presence for and personally bore witness to racism, ecological disaster and intergenerational trauma. She has studied with highly respected teachers including Sobonfu Somé, Joanna Macy, Frank Ostaseski, Ruth Denison, Reggie Ray and Rodney Smith. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences and a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies. Having personally recovered from toxic exposure, Anna’s experience includes facilitating Hospice grief and bereavement groups, rehabilitating injured and orphaned wildlife, and working in the environmental clean-up industry.
This diverse breadth and depth of experience provides Anna with skill and keen ability for relating with each client’s unique circumstance and situation. Her deep passion is to support change-makers, care-givers, eco-tenders, and people committed to their own healing journeys, so they may be well, vital and sustained in their lives as well as their work.
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“There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken, a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow beyond all grief which leads to joy and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength.” ~ Rashani Rea
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ANNA’S PERSONAL STORY:
At 6 years of age, worlds collided. East met West in my own living room. My white American birth mother fell in love with my milk-chocolate skinned Hindu East Indian father. These eyes would see the unkindness of racism. This heart would know the wounds of trauma. In my mind, seeds of wisdom would be planted. An inaudible vow was made by that small girl’s Soul, “I’m gonna make it!”
At 35 years of age, nearly swamped. With the ailing ecological state-of-the-world reports and a loved one’s tragic torture in an African prison, despair overwhelmed me. I retreated to wilderness for survival. These eyes would find beauty and inspiration in wild places. This heart would be nourished by Nature’s resilience. In my mind, silence and stillness would return. Wind whistled a commitment through that young adult’s Soul, carrying her back down from the mountain, “To dedicate this life I am still given toward easing the suffering of others”.
At 50 years of age, almost sunk. It was not the grief from bearing witness to The Gulf Oil Spill in Barataria Bay, Louisiana that threatened my sinking. Rather, it was the nearly lethal dose of chemical and energetic toxicity from working in the environmental clean up industry, while being personally stalked and harassed. Bedridden, my mind pondered, “Had I seen enough?” My Soul pleaded, “I do not want to die of a broken heart!” And so it was…An Invitation to Learn…to allow grief and pain as experience moving through, to accept their wavelike nature as part of this human condition, to see them as tenderizing and strengthening agents for the blood pumping muscle, still beating strong in the center of my chest.
