Raechel Bratnick

about raechel

My Story

When I began my in-depth personal process in 1976, I was a frantic, aggressive, urgent person, living a fast life. I was successful in the world of marketing and public relations in New York City. But I had no idea what was going on inside me. I had a title and an office window with a view of the Empire State Building, but I didn’t know how to be quiet and introspective.  Today I enjoy sitting in stillness with a client or a group, listening with presence to a dream or a story or emotions occurring in a client’s life. I’m content creating a safe space for people to explore themselves and inspiring them to live as honestly and deeply and richly as possible.

My own spiritual journey began 44 years when I became a student of the Pathwork of Eva Pierrakos and Dr. John Pierrakos after discovering my interior world through Werner Erhard’s “est” training, which was a transformative consciousness intensive in the US in the 1970s. For years I had been longing for a way into my inner world, but having been raised in northern Idaho in the 50s, I had to wait until I moved to the New York City to discover a spiritual path and community that was fiercely anchored in both truth and love.  This was the Pathwork which combined spiritual, psychological and energetic bodywork, a community where everyone was in process, including the Helpers.

After five years of deep process work and Helpership Training in the Pathwork, plus the birth of two daughters, I changed my career from public relations in NYC to spiritual psychotherapy and imaginal dreamwork. I continued my studies with the Center for Intentional Living and then Kabbalah and non-dual healing at the Society of Souls, where I also taught for five years. In 2003 I published Awakening the Dreamer, which Barbara Brennan called the best primer on dream work she had seen. Kenneth Porter, MD, said, “It reads like a poem from the heart.”  Since 2003 I have been helping individuals heal and awaken to their true essence. 

I was born in the middle of WWII in Moscow, Idaho. For one year my parents and I lived in New York City where my father was stationed. That had a huge impact on the rest of life, for though I was raised in a University town surrounded by wheat and lentil fields, in an area known as the Palouse Hills, I always knew that New York City was calling me. At age 21, I married a graduate student from Sydney, Australia. After we both finished our graduate degrees at the University of Idaho, we moved to New Jersey. 

I was unaware that I was moving closer to my destiny. Seven years later I met the Pathwork and my soul mate. Life is strange. Through a series of missteps and unexpected connections, I ended up in a publishing company in New York City, where two women who became friends of mine, were studying the Pathwork and were close friends of Michael, who would later become my husband and the father of my daughters. 

Certainly I was not in charge of my destiny: What I was in charge of was paying attention and taking risks to follow my heart and my calling. Even mistakes are part of the path that leads you.  

In 2008 my husband and soul mate died.  Fortunately he and I had done very deep couples work throughout our marriage, as the wounds we each carried from childhood became entwined in our relationship.  Because of our commitment to healing ourselves we were able to go through his dying process with compassion.  After swimming through grief and letting go of our house and possessions, in 2014 I became a sojourner in Mexico, the Middle East and Europe.

Today I am in my house in southern Italy, carved out of an ancient wall in a medieval hill town. Listening to jazz on Spotify and making potato salad from new potatoes grown in the fields below to go with a salad of raw zucchini in olive oil, salt and pepper and fresh rucola. I am surprised that this is where I am living at age 76, widowed for the last 11 years after 45 years of living in the metropolitan area of New York City.  

I trust in the unfolding path, even when I am wrestling with the unknown, reassuring my ego that the way forward will be revealed when the time is right. Where will I be next year? Where was I five years ago, ten?  This life has turned into a spiritual journey beyond my expectations or plans.  

As Antonio Machado said in one of this poems: 

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking…

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road

only foam trails on the sea. 

additional background

 I earned a BA and MA in English from the University of Idaho.  My first career was teaching English in a country high school and university. When I switched careers, I learned all about  book publicity business at Ballantine Books, eventually working free lance, and finally creating a publicity department at a full service advertising/marketing firm, Barnum Communications, where I handled public relations for companies in the medical field. After five years, I let go of my title, Vice President, to become a full-time nursing mother, wearing overalls instead of a suit and heels, and wondering who am I?  It was a challenging choice between taking a baby to work or being a full-time mother.  I was 38 years old: she was the fulfillment of a lifelong desire to be a mother; I had prepared by diligently saving enough money for what I thought would be two years, but turned out to be enough supplementary income to my husband’s growing career through the birth of our second daughter and for me to make the transition to being a spiritual psychotherapist.  

I was an active member of the Pathwork for 20 years. In NYC, I led the publicity committee for the Institute of the New Age, the outreach part of the Pathwork. In New Jersey, Michael and I co-led process groups and a weekend workshop in Luxembourg.  At the Pathwork retreat center in a secluded valley near Phoenicia, NY (The Center for the Living Force) I led a bi-monthly dream group, a summer camp for toddlers, and later when they were preteens, a weekend group for the kids twice a month. This sacred place is now called Menla, owned by Tibet House US— the Dalai Lama’s cultural center in North America. 

In 1988 I learned MariEl energy healing from the creator Ethel Lombardi, one of the first Reiki Masters in the US. 

In 1990 I began studying with the Center for Intentional Living, taking courses in early childhood development, object relations, depth psychology, waking dream and imaginal therapy. That same year I began supervision with a buddhist-oriented psychiatrist in New York City, which I continued for five years.

For many years I taught courses and workshops for Interweave, a holistic interfaith center in Summit, NJ, including dreamwork, kabbalah and meditative poetry salons.  I created a 12-week introductory course on Kabbalistic Healing for A Society of Souls, and an intensive training on how to teach it to the general public. I taught dream/imaginal work in Quebec, in Italy at an International Pathwork conference, and at the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference in Hawaii.  Along with parenting, I wrote children’s stories and plays, made art, and painted sets for community theater productions. When my husband started his industrial public relations company, I became the business manager and advisor. Together we ran his business out of our home for fourteen years, while also teaching Pathwork classes  and giving individual spiritual counseling sessions. It was a busy household, if you add in music lessons, theater and dance activities of our daughters.