Hillary Bittman is…

I have spent 33 years developing my skills as a healer, workshop leader, spiritual counselor, coach and inspiring teacher. For many of those years I helped thousands of people to heal through Safe Haven, our chiropractic healing center, and at Unity at the Lake, a spiritual center at which I was Co-Spiritual Leader and Minister. Although I am no longer affiliated with either of those, I am still dedicated to helping others on their spiritual/healing journey. I now offer my services on a one-on-one basis.If you want to “get to know me” more in depth, read “the rest of the story!” You might be interested in how I got “here.” For me, it was pretty fun to write this, and to see how I became the person I am now, who I’ve learned to love very much. It’s cool because I never thought this would be my life if you’d asked me 40 years ago.

What I am passionate about: People living from their wholeness, connected to their heart’s wisdom, living out their dreams and being confident to share their unique gifts knowing they are more than enough and that they matter. I am passionate about inspiring people to access and bring forth their strengths, as well as to accept and make peace with what they might call weaknesses, thereby turning them into strengths. I am passionate about each of us living our most fulfilled life, deeply and intimately connected to their innermost, truest Self and to the people and world around them.

I am also passionate about being outside (for me that means hiking in the woods and mountains of Lake Tahoe, especially along its rivers and to the hundreds of lakes here) and revering the natural world. So...being quiet to hear the sounds of Life happening all around me...ready to catch moments of awe...catch glimpses of the animals going about in their lives, having Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom moments...water in all forms, quiet lake ripples & powerful waterfalls reminding me of my own inner quiet & power...immersing (as often as possible without clothing) in as many rivers & lakes as I possibly can in our short summer season...season changes...invoking my inner child with its joy in sledding and cross-country skiing...ecstasy of surrounding myself in a field of my friends, the flowers...sunsets (sunrises would if I got up more often to see them). I am also passionate about music...the Celtic tunes that break open my heart, the Grateful Dead that has me movin’ and groovin’, the World beat that has me twirling, the blues that asks me to join in belting out the song. I’m also really passionate about my husband and my daughter and the multitude of ways we connect so deeply and enjoy each other so much, healing generational wounds. I’m so proud of mine & Stew’s relationship & how we’ve nurtured it so that we can each celebrate ourselves in it God and Goddess

The rest of the story…

In 1986, my husband Stew became a chiropractor and we bought an existing practice. Over the next few years we noticed that chiropractic wasn’t only about “fixing backs” but that there was a principle of Life involved. It turned out to be the same principle that has been talked about through the ages in all great traditions of religion and healing: that all the important things in life are an “inside job.” As we learned about this principle and opened up more to it, we eventually became Safe Haven Chiropractic, a place that supports healing. We tended not only to our practice folks’ physical needs but to their accompanying emotional needs. We learned that one’s mental state can’t be separated from the physical state, and that negative mental states often kept someone in a state of imbalance. Positive thoughts and beliefs went a long way in helping someone return to well-being.

I started to work with each person before the adjustment to remind them of the power within them that did the healing. I encouraged them to be willing to release what no longer served them and instead focus on their intentions for their well-being on all levels.

As we continued to serve in this way, we recognized Life was abundant and that the energy we put out always came back. We stopped taking insurance and put up a Box, into which people paid what they could. We never knew what that was. Amazingly (but not really), the principles worked and we were always well taken care of.

We learned a lot about these principles on chiropractic mission trips. Over the course of six trips we went to Panama, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. We were able to do all of that as a family because we had decided to homeschool our daughter Ari. Incidentally, Ari homeschooled all the way through high school and went on to get a BA from UC Santa Cruz.

Around that time, I also started training as a spiritual midwife at births. I was there to support the birthing family in their choice to birth at home, physically and mentally. I helped to co-create it with them as a sacred event, helping to maintain a peaceful, loving and respectful environment space.

I attended a mystery school and Stew and I started to attend personal development programs every 3 months. I did sweat lodges, vision quests and lots of forgiveness work to clear out things that were no longer serving me. I learned a lot of intuitive skills and gained more confidence in myself to share those skills. Eventually we both became teachers in the personal development program we had been attending.

I had become a certified massage therapist while Stew was studying chiropractic, and started my own healing practice. In 1997 I became a Reiki Master, and added Reiki, guided meditation and visualizations with healing affirmations to my healing work. In 1999 I attained level 4 Master Practitioner status in “Zenith Energy clearing” and added that as well.

Stew and I began offering workshops on Maitri Breathwork and Spiritual Life Skills, which included meditation, visualization, gratitude and mindfulness tools.

In my private life I began immersing myself in the local flowers and a variety of herbal booklore. This complemented chiropractic care for the well-being and health of my family, with a more natural, holistic earth-based way of living and taking care of ourselves. We used these both to maintain health and also when we were “getting well” (what most people call “getting sick’). I now consider myself a baby green witch.

I also became a community activist. I joined a grassroots organization that started out protesting nuclear energy and then branched into education about other environmental topics of concern. I am especially proud that I got arrested at the nuclear weapons test site in Nevada and that I organized the first Earth Day celebration in our community. I’ve always cared deeply about the earth and about people, and I came to the realization that while activism has a valid place, it wasn’t enough. The seeds of violence and greed are within all of us, and I decided to help people water the seeds of love and compassion instead. I became a founding member of the local SPNV (Season for Peace and Non-Violence) - a global grassroots campaign dedicated to raising awareness about the transformative power of nonviolence. This all led me to developing a passion for Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC) work, also known as Compassionate Communication, and for Rita Marie Johnson’s Connection Practice. My passion grew from learning these things to teaching them.

In 1997, I became the co-Spiritual Leader (along with Stew) of Unity at the Lake, a New Thought, non-denominational spiritual community (if that seems a strange path for 2 folks to follow, who were born Jewish and later abandoned any organized religion, welcome to my life). After selling our chiropractic office, it was the perfect vehicle for us to continue teaching the principle of healing from the inside-out, based on consciousness and positive thought. In this role I gave talks, taught classes, and reminded everyone how special they were and that they had unique gifts the world needed. I became an ordained Interfaith Minister in 2013.

Finally (and you get tremendous points for reading this far!) my main mentors over the years, in addition to Marshall Rosenberg and Rita-Marie Johnson, have been Jeanine Parvotti and Susun Weed. I also love Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Og Mandino, Jerry Garcia and Tom Robbins.