Toni Maita
“The fear of our desires keep them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress truth is to give it strength beyond endurance” ~Audre Lorde
I am native Californian, and I grew up in San Francisco Bay Area. My mother is descended from the Potawatami tribe (Keepers of the Fire) of Illinois, and my father is from Sicily. I attended high school in Castro Valley, and continued my education at Chabot College in Hayward with a focus on Guitar Performance. I transferred to Cal-State Hayward in 1983, and completed a BA in Music with an emphasis on Guitar Performance in 1987.
I began my graduate studies in 1989 in Counseling Psychology at California State University, Hayward (East Bay), and received my M.S in 1991, and became licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in 1995. Since that time, I have worked in private practice as a marriage and family therapist serving communities in the Bay Area. I relocated to Placerville California in 2019.
I integrate core shamanic healing, energy medicine and hypnotherapy with psychotherapy and mindfulness meditation practices to help individuals free themselves from complex developmental trauma and insecure attachment patterns, as well as anxiety, fear, and limiting beliefs. We will work to revitalize and unleash what is your birthright; energy, vitality, and an authentic sense of self. We will assist you to progress to the next stage of your life journey; and awaken your light, passion, joy, freedom, and purpose.
My belief is that our feelings of security, healthy attachment experiences with others as adults, and a high sense of self worth are often times based in our early attachment experiences with our caregivers. So much of who we become is rooted in these very early experiences of self with other. I will work with you to repair many of those early experiences that may be affecting your daily life – in ways obvious to you, and in ways that are left in the unconscious, yet still expressed through actions, feelings, relationship patterns and behaviors in daily life.
My interest in Shamanic Healing came upon me by surprise. I had always been a very analytical person by nature. Science, and if you can’t prove it I don’t believe it, was how I framed my belief system. Things began to shift for me very suddenly, after having read the Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz. Something in his words, in the way that he talked about who we are, and how we come into being, spoke strongly to an inner knowing that there was more that is unseen that I had never been fully open to exploring. It was then that I began to seek out the path of the shaman, and it was then that I was re-enchanted with the natural world.
I began my own Shamanic journey in 2015, and began a series of workshops and training's with Girvani Leerer, PhD “The Shamanic Psychologist”, and her associate Kent Dorsey. I also studied at the HCH Institute, in Lafayette, California, where I completed a 4 month hypnotherapy program, and also studied the medicine wheel and Shamanic Healing with Greg “Wilder” Harper.
Through Sounds True, I participated in the Year Of Ceremony, and have had the privilege to be guided by Alberto Villoldo, Sandra Ingerman, Llyn Cedar Roberts, don Oscar Miro Quesada, and many others.
In 2016 I was privileged to be accepted to study Soul Retrieval with renowned Shamanic Healer Sandra Ingerman.
In my free time, I love hiking in nature, playing with my beloved Golden Retrievers Sweet Pea and Luna, making music, spending time with friends and loved ones, and above all else, exploring the mysteries of the unseen worlds. I am currently deeply focused on the healing powers of plant medicine.
Further Education:
2011 – Completed 3 year post graduate training program with the Masterson Institute
2015 - Completed medicine wheel workshop series, Core Shamanism with Girvani Leerer and Kent Dorsey
2016 - Completed Soul Retrieval training at Joshua Tree with Sandra Ingerman
2016 – Completed 175 hour training in Hypnotherapy at HCH Institute
2017 - Completed Shamanic Journeying for Guidance and Healing Part 1 and 2 with Sandra Ingerman
2017 - Completed the Andean Mystical Tradition training "Master Your Energy" with Joan Parisi Wilcox
2017 - Completed Shamanic studies 12 month training at HCH with Greg “Wilder” Harper.
2021 - Completed MAPS MDMA training program.
2020/2021/2022 - Completed Ketamine training with Polaris in San Francisco
2023 - Completed an 8 month Certificate program with Soundmind Center of Philadelphia. Psilocybin, MDMA and Ketamine training.