Shasta Summer Stargate Recap

Photography by The Sabrina Photo

As you may already know, I was lucky enough to travel to Mount Shasta in early August for the Shasta Summer Stargate retreat. The retreat was lead by my reiki teacher, April, who is a Mount Shasta expert and the experience was rejuvenating, transformative and heart opening… basically all of the things my soul and my body were craving.

2020 has really been a rollercoaster for me… and I know I’m not alone. Trips have been cancelled, many of us have been working from home since March (with no end in sight), we’ve seen racism hit a boiling point, watched entire cities be destroyed, and life is just… different. Personally, I reached a point in July where I just felt… out of it. I couldn’t motivate myself to do much of anything when it came to work, I was burnt out, frustrated and just over everything. So, when my best friend Natalie asked me if I wanted to go to Mount Shasta for this retreat, a place that we’ve been dreaming of going for a few years now, for an epic weekend in nature filled with ceremony, healing and all things woo-woo, wellness and spirituality… of course my answer was a resounding “YES!”

If you’re not familiar with Mount Shasta, it’s wayyyyy up in Northern California, just 50 miles south of the Oregon border. The town of Mount Shasta sits just outside of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and Mount Shasta herself is an active volcano. The town is very small, with around 3,300 residents, and the place is just… magical. The scenery is beautiful, the town is quirky and quaint and there are endless outdoor activities… but the main thing that draws people to Mount Shasta, myself included, is not something that can be seen, but rather something that’s felt. Let me explain…

Mount Shasta has been a spiritual Mecca of sorts for years, as it’s known to be a vortex (or energy portal) between our inner and outer worlds. People travel from all over the world to experience the metaphysical powers of Mount Shasta, and the spiritual “tourism” is what draws about 50% of all tourists to the area each year.

On a more woo-woo level, Mount Shasta is known to be an energy portal because it’s considered the root chakra of the Earth, regulating universal life and sending that energy up from the center of the Earth out into the world around us. If you’re more scientific, the energy portal can also be attributed to the fact that Mount Shasta is an active volcano, and the electromagnetic fields below the surface of the Earth and in the mountain directly impact the energetics of the land itself. And that’s just the short version!

I know it’s a lot to take in, and many if you are probably thinking what the f*ck is she talking about… but hang in there! Now that you have a little bit of background… I’ll dive into my personal experience in Mount Shasta. There are SO MANY THINGS I want to write about here, many of them hard to put into words, but I think I’ll just start by summarizing the weekend with a few details here and there, and I will most likely talk more in depth about many of these things in the coming months here on my blog, and also on my Instagram for anyone who is interested in hearing more.

Glamping tents at Guru Shasta // Photography by The Sabrina Photo

The retreat was hosted at a beautiful private property (that is available to rent!) called Guru Shasta. It’s exactly what you would want in a retreat space… surrounded by trees with lots of outdoor space, a yoga room, a reading room with shelves full of spiritual books, a beautiful back patio, hammocks, a fire pit, and even 2 outdoor showers and an outdoor tub! My accommodations were in one of the many glamping tents on the property and every single amenity was thought of throughout the weekend. April is truly a gem and made sure that we had everything that we might need. We arrived on the first day to find welcome bags on our beds full of aura sprays, CBD and all natural self-care products, among other things, and from the moment we arrived I truly felt at home.

On top of that, all of the women who attended instantly felt like family, like I had known them for years. You could feel the loving energy radiating from everyone, and immediately knew that there was no judgement, and that this would be a safe space to just be. (If anyone is concerned, while it’s really none of your business, every person was required to take a rapid COVID-19 test before arriving at the retreat.)

After our opening ceremony on the first day, where we shared our intentions for the weekend and pulled oracle cards, we spent time getting to know one another, exploring the property and settling in. In the evening, we shared a beautiful home cooked meal (all meals were vegan!), and then had a fireside drum circle and stargazed into night (the stars were insane up there). It was really the perfect way to acclimate to space and the mountain, and begin to form a bond with the other women.

The next day, after a little morning yoga, meditation and breakfast, we spent about 8 hours in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest with Paul of Mount Shasta Spiritual Tours and… I really don’t even know where to begin! First, it should go without saying that the forest is absolutely beautiful. Just being in nature is always so rejuvenating for me… the trees, the air… everything just breathes so much life back into my body and my soul. But in Mount Shasta, as you might have already guessed, there is so much more than meets the eye.

Throughout the day, Paul took us to three major portals so that we could experience and tap into Mount Shasta’s energy. The day we were there also happened to be August 8th, better known in the spiritual community as the Lionsgate Portal (this is basically a holiday in Mount Shasta, and astrologically speaking this is when the Sun in Leo, the star Sirius, Orion’s Belt and the Earth all align) so the energy was certainly amplified.

Serenity Portal // Photography by The Sabrina Photo

We visited the Serenity Portal, followed by the Love Temple and ended at the Stargate Portal, stopping to ground ourselves in the Earth with a meditation at each place (this definitely qualifies as the spiritual tourism I mentioned before). The energy at the Serenity Portal was exactly what the name suggests… serene. There was this intensely peaceful feeling in the air that just overcame me from the moment we arrived and after our meditation here I felt like I was floating on a cloud. The Love Temple had similar energy, and the meditation we did there was so expansive… but the Stargate Portal… that was much different than the other two.

At the Stargate Portal, the energy really shifted and I felt it physically. First we had to walk across a large sand flat, which in hiking boots took a lot of energy out of me and I felt drained. By the time we found ourselves under the trees, getting situated for our meditation, I felt this intense headache starting to come on up the back of my neck and into the back of my right eye. I tried to hydrate and breathe through it, but it became more intense the longer we sat there, and eventually it was impossible for me to focus on the meditation. I also felt extreme pressure in my sinuses… but had no congestion or stuffiness. During the meditation, Paul said that if we felt any sinus pressure or had a headache, it was normal and just a side effect of the energy portal we were in. If there was any doubt in my mind that the energetics of Mount Shasta were not real… that allllllll went away in this moment.

Stargate Portal // Photography by The Sabrina Photo

Unfortunately my discomfort carried on into the evening, even after returning to the house, and I had no choice but to turn in after dinner. I woke up the next day relieved to no longer have any pain or sinus pressure, but wow was that an experience I will never forget.

After leaving the forest that day, we made a quick pit stop at one of the most special places I have ever visited… the Sacramento River Headwaters, the exact place where water comes out of Mount Shasta to create the Sacramento River. The water is the coldest, purest water I have ever tasted (yes, you can drink the water straight from the mountain!) and the energy there was so peaceful, grounding and healing (much needed post-Stargate Portal). The water is full of natural minerals and probiotics (unlike our purified bottled water that is stripped of all of its minerals or our tap water that’s pumped full of fluoride) and you can truly feel it bringing new life into your body as your drink it. We filled up our water bottles, put our feet in the water, and just soaked it all in. And you better believe I brought some of that water with me back to LA!

In addition to all of the magic already mentioned, we visited a few other special places throughout the weekend, including Faery Falls… a beautiful waterfall set in the forest that falls into a few small pools of ice cold water… another place that can only be described as magical. We stood under the falling water and soaked in one of the pools that was deep enough for swimming/soaking (nature’s own ice bath). This felt like a portal of cleansing, flowing energy, and the name could not suit it more perfectly.

At the Headwaters // Photography by The Sabrina Photo

We also spent a few hours at the beach at Lake Siskiyou, which is surrounded by thousands of trees and Mount Shasta is off in the distance, her presence like a guardian watching over you as you swim in the lake.

We also spent a little time in the town of Mount Shasta, doing some shopping at the crystal shops (added an amethyst to my collection!), and grabbing lunch at Yak’s (their veggie sandwich is the best sandwich I have ever had in my life). It’s also worth mentioning that the night we arrived (before the retreat began) we had dinner at Hari Om Sri Ram, a family owned Indian restaurant that was also very good (we went with the vegan thali).

The final part of the retreat that I want to mention but won’t go into detail about just yet was the soundbath ceremony that took place the day after our tour on the mountain. There is so much to be said about this experience and this post is already wayyyyyyy longer than I planned on it being, so I will save that for a potential future post. I’m still processing a lot of the shifts that I experienced and the realizations that I had, not only from the ceremony, but from the weekend as a whole, and as I do that I’m sure that I will feel called to share more. But for now, I will leave you with this:

If you’re curious at all about Mount Shasta… its wilderness, its energy, its spiritual community… GO. If you’re skeptical… also go. I promise that no matter how you feel about all of the woo-woo, you will have an experience that you will never forget… at the very least, you’ll be off the grid, out of your every day routine and surrounded by nature… something we could all use a little more of these days.

xo,
Kelsey