Mikaya Heart (www.mikayaheart.org) grew up in a rural part of Scotland. She developed a deep love of nature from an early age, which sustained her through a difficult childhood. At York University, long before the environmental movement had started, she studied ecology. Unable to accept how disrespectfully our planet is being treated, she dropped out, finding herself most at home in the radical hippie culture of the seventies. In 1978, she came out as a lesbian, and in the same year, trained as an agricultural mechanic. Disillusioned with the homophobia and sexism in the UK, she immigrated to Northern California, where she ran an organic market garden, raised pigs, and built her own house out of recycled lumber in the backwoods. She is a keen writer and has always worked hard at her personal healing, often using shamanic methods. Since she was sexually abused as a child, this led to a book on women's sexuality - When the Earth Moves: Women and Orgasm, published in 1998. Sex, at its best, is a profoundly shamanic activity, so this fitted well with the belief systems she was developing. Several of her short stories, and one other book - The Straight Woman's Guide to Lesbianism - have also been published. She has two books coming out this year - one on the Art of Being Human, and the other on her travels in Indonesia and Thailand.Mikaya started studying earth-based spiritual practices with a variety of teachers in the eighties. The concepts of shamanism came to her easily as a result of her personal growth work and her ease with the rhythms of nature. She has always had an obsession with truth, and over the years, that crystallized into existential questions, such as, what or who am I? Who put me here on this planet, and why? She found answers to those questions through AMAG, a number of non-physical beings who speak through Dayana Jon. A horse riding accident at the age of 48 turned out to be the first step in a "shamanic break" which led to profound changes. She sold all her property, in order to be absolutely free, and took off traveling on her own, visiting Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Hawaii, Mexico, North America, the Caribbean, and Brazil. She finds it essential to spend time alone in nature, feeling the being-ness of a place, and consequently her traveling is usually about camping in the wilderness. One of her most memorable experiences was an eight day solo kayak trip in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Her favorite pastimes are dancing, singing, horse-riding, and kitesurfing, all of which she experiences as deeply spiritual. She now identifies most strongly as a marveling mystic, since she has a very powerful awareness of herself as a being of spirit, and is constantly amazed at the extraordinary beauty of this world. Kitesurfing is her greatest passion. She has become the woman who follows the wind, intent on experiencing the delight of dancing with water and air whenever she can.Read more about this authorRead less about this author