Sea soul blessings

To keep focused, you’ll set intentions for this journey on an opening zoom call. You’ll be inspired to continue with three quarterly online community get-togethers to reflect on our experiences.

You’ll also receive weekly love letters by email that include simple tools and activities to explore each theme.

For example:

~ To cultivate the power of your intuition, you’ll receive an ocean meditation and audio oracle card reading each month.

~ To find a deeper clarity about who you are and why you’re here, you’ll reflect with guided journal prompts.

~ To honour your relationship to Mother Earth, and awaken and strengthen your voice, you’ll receive two Shining Songs to use as medicine every month. Listen and absorb their healing gifts. Or learn and sing them as a nourishing daily practice.

~ To embed and embody what you learn, you’ll respond to 3 sweet invitations into action every month. These guide you to create change for yourself, for your loved ones, and for the wider community. Side-stepping overwhelm, we move gently through these, wave by wave.

~ To stretch into your edges, knowing that you’re held with compassion, you’ll have access to me, Pippa Best, by email throughout our time together. Get in touch whenever you have a question to be answered, or simply want your experiences to be lovingly witnessed.

On 10 September 2026

You receive a love letter by email on 10 September to introduce the month ahead. This includes:

• A welcome video
• A love letter introduction to our theme for this moon cycle
• A recording of sea sounds (to sound and sing with, or simply listen)
• Ocean Altar PDF – a simple guide to setting up an ocean altar at home

If you’re available, you can also join our zoom call on 10 September*.

Every moon cycle from September 2026 to May 2027

• An introduction to our theme for this moon cycle
• An audio oracle recording – to go deeper into the wisdom: what does this theme mean to your life right now?
• 2 Shining Songs as MP3 recordings – to listen and sing as healing
• A 10-15 minute ocean meditation to develop your intuitive connection with the theme
• 3 gentle invitations into action to embody the theme and take small steps forward
• Journal prompts to go inwards and reflect

Every week:

• A new love letter by email to help you remember, reconnect and reclaim your capacity for change

* Zoom call time to be confirmed based on the location of participants – most likely at either 1pm or 7pm BST. These sessions will all be recorded for those who can’t make it.

That’s entirely up to you. You could spend less than an hour a week connecting with the materials in Shining Song. Reading each week’s love letter, and then spending 10-15 minutes a few times a week with the songs, meditation, calls to action, or journal prompts.

But if a theme or Shining Song resonates – if it’s the healing that you need – you might find yourself letting that song and theme weave their magic through your cells more often.

Listening to an ocean meditation or oracle reading at home, at your altar, in the bath, in the car. Singing yourself through a challenging emotion or situation. Taking yourself off into nature. Or stepping further into action.

I have some bursaries available. These are £33 per month, and can be made as 3 quarterly payments of £99, or 9 monthly payments of £33. (20% of this is still donated) Email me here to request this.

You don’t have to have participated in any of my previous offerings to join this one.

If you have, that’s great too. Past participants of programmes like the Sea Circle, Ocean Altar, or Songs to Sing with the Sea will definitely appreciate the themes and practices that are shared here in new ways. There is always rich wisdom to be gleaned in revisiting these themes at a different point in your life, with new resources and inspiration. Especially with Shining Songs to support your journey.

Shining Song is a nine month programme, so it’s not possible to join for just a month.

It makes it possible for me to continue offering this work when people can commit to the whole nine month payment up front. But for those with limited resources, I am also offering a payment programme that allows you to pay make monthly or quarterly payments.

The next nine months are likely to be a particularly tumultuous global period, and Shining Song provides vital ongoing practices to sustain you through this.

With this 9 month programme, I’m actively calling you to make a long-term commitment to yourself and to the practices of Shining Song. Because something powerful shifts when you decide to show up consistently for YOU – and the world around you. Not just for a month, but for the length of time it takes to grow a whole new being.

Getting clear on your purpose, while building resilience and hope, doesn’t happen overnight. You need time to remember. To reconnect. To reclaim.

Nine moons provide a nine-month gestation period for your connection to deepen, your voice to awaken, your vision to become clear. The healing liminal waters of Shining Song are the amniotic fluid in which you can grow a new way of being in the world over time.

Nine moon cycles allow space to sink deeper into your understanding of nature’s cycles. To explore how to work with these cycles in new ways. To develop patience, consistency and expansiveness.

As these moons pass, you begin to recognise your recurring patterns. You sense when you have energy, and when you need to rest; what is ready to change and what you are resisting. You have time to move out of denial into truth.

Over time, you come to notice how the moon continues to be present for you, even as its shining light waxes and wanes. Mirroring the peaks and troughs of your own life, the moon guides you to witness your journey with greater compassion and faith. As we move from Autumn, into Winter, and back out through the Spring together, filled with new vitality and hope.

Yes, absolutely. You don’t need to sing at all if you don’t want to. You will still be deeply nourished by listening and receiving these Shining Songs and their medicine. You’ll also be deeply supported by the ocean oracle guidance, journaling prompts, and weekly encouragement to return to yourself.

Personally, I found it really difficult to sing myself, (especially in a public place!) just a couple of years ago. So I totally get that. I questioned why I was receiving songs when I didn’t have a “good” voice or any experience of singing…. until I came to understand that all that matters is that the voice comes from the heart. And how it feels when you release judgement and simply let yourself sing.

Eventually, I accepted that these songs were coming to me because I’m not a professional singer. Or constricted by rules about what makes a “good” song or a “good” voice. I’m open, and deeply feeling. I’m compassionate enough that my inner child can let a song through without critically stifling it before it arrives. And that’s actually perfect.

Over time, I have learnt that however fearful or embarrassed or inadequate I may feel about singing these songs, they want to be sung. So who am I to judge why and how I have received them? All I need to do is share them.

If you’re anxious about singing, my gentle invitation would be to take yourself a tiny step closer to your ‘edge’ here, but not to the point where this overwhelms you (or prevents you from receiving the gifts of this offering). The very fact that I am here, offering you Shining Song, is testament to the power of stepping into these edges.

I do feel that these songs are a kind of medicine.  They sing awake the hidden parts of us that shine when we feel safe, and when we love. When we share ourselves with the earth, the waters – with all that loves us unconditionally. They awaken our true selves and our capacity for healing.

But culturally, the term “medicine song” often has another specific meaning, one that comes from a specific lineage and practice. I’ll share more on medicine songs in a follow up question below.

Unlike many of those working with the tradition of medicine songs, I am not a shaman, nor am I trained in shamanic practice – other than in shamanic journeying which I do regularly. I do have animist beliefs (for example, I connect to the spirit of the sea, and I sense trees and stones as distinct beings). I feel myself to be in conversation with the waters especially. That’s the source of these songs’ magic, not me. And my sense is that Shining Songs can come to anyone who truly listens, and sings with love.

For me, the practice of receiving, singing and listening to these Shining Songs burnishes the soul. As I sing them, I feel my heart, my essence, my true self begin to shimmer and shine. And as I open to listen and receive them in every cell of my being, I feel myself become the shining sea. I am the light glinting on my body as an ocean. I am morning dew on the earth.

(All of that sounds much more conscious than it actually is when I sing – I simply shift state. I’m not in my head, I’m in the moment itself. I’m in the song. And I’m shining…)

So instead, I’m calling the songs I share here, ‘Shining Songs’. Perhaps because I see the songs shining through those that sing and receive them. Perhaps because I live in the Shining Lands.

Despite colonialism stifling our shining connections to the land and to each other, I believe that everyone has the capacity to live their life as a Shining Song. I have faith that the more hope and resilience we build within and around us, the more we create the conditions to make that possible for all.

My sense of these songs as medicine is deeply rooted in my previous experience of receiving the Sea Soul Blessings, and Sea Soul Journeys Oracle Cards. I’m fortunate enough to get to see daily evidence of the healing that has rippled out from those first creations – all around the world. Far beyond my understanding or expectations.

In creating those, I simply trusted in the medicine, and let it lead me forward. Just as I am doing here.

I’ve been receiving a lot of songs. But not every song I receive is a healing song. So firstly, I assess the impact that the song has on me. This is a knowing. Sometimes I sense an immediate healing in the moment at which they arise. Sometimes, I witness their healing power at a later time. Often, that’s when I suddenly discover that a song I have received is exactly what’s needed to respond to a particular situation.

Like the oracle cards, my faith in these songs has deepened with witnessing their impact on others. We know that music and sound in general have a powerful healing vibrational impact on the body. And yet there is something more happening here. I can feel them being received. And the energy shifting as we sing.

The words, repeated and received, bring a healing medicine as they sink a little deeper each time. These Shining Songs bring us softly into the questions. Into the possibilities and yearnings. They are invitations, not answers. As something clears and opens to receive them, there is a learning, an expansion.

They hold more than the words you hear me sing (or that you sing yourself).

The words are just the surface, like paint strokes of waves that imply a whole ocean beneath. In the words, I am only sharing the bits I could put words around. But there is more – in the spaces in between, in the unspoken and unsung. In the receiving of your own body, heart, soul. In how your own energy weaves through the energies of the song.

My sense is that partly the medicine comes through my voice and the frequency I channel as I do this. The feedback from others is that this brings a potency to the singing. However that doesn’t mean that the songs need my voice in order to have healing properties – you can bring that quality to them yourself as you sing them. And you can receive your own Shining Songs, just as I have done.

Of course I questioned the healing – and myself as a vessel for this – at the beginning. Because it was completely new and unfamiliar to me. But – while I’m neither shaman nor trained singer – I do have the capacity to connect easily to what I would describe as a channel of love. A love that can be felt both as heart-swelling compassion and heart-breaking grief.

I’m also amazed and encouraged to hear how my voice has changed and strengthened the more I have stepped into this practice. I now have a completely different range and capacity – and that is rippling out into how I use my voice in my wider life.

In ancient cultures all around the world, songs have been sung as part of rituals, ceremony and healing practices. They were – and still are, for many – an integral part of a sacred life lived fully, in community, with the land and spirit.

Some of these songs we might define simply as “sounds” – if they aren’t as tuneful or harmonious as we traditionally understand a “song” to be. But they hold so much more than the “songs” we know from the popular music charts, or hear as the backdrops to 10 second TikTok dance clips.

In contemporary shamanic practices, sacred songs or vibrational medicine act as a form of spiritual communication or transmission of intelligence – a living prayer of sorts. In Amazonian cultures, these are known as “icaros”. Each has a specific purpose or healing power, itself received from the plants or from the ancestors. Icaros are often connected with the use of plant medicines in a ceremonial setting.

These icaros are gathered over lifetimes. They are only received when the shaman has spent deep reverent time working with these spirit allies. These songs are also responsive, dancing with the energy of the space and bodies in and to which they are sung – a practice built on years of training. An icaro might be received and shared to help the shaman to see what needs to be healed, to vibrate the energy fields to clear or repattern, to call in spiritual support, and of course, to facilitate healing.

The genre of ‘medicine songs’ has widened as songs have been shared beyond their ceremonial or ritual settings – from music festivals to online streaming. And as different cultures have interpreted the ancient practices, sometimes with respect, and sometimes without.

Songs in this wider medicine genre are most often still inspired by the connection with nature, come from spirit and the heart, and bring a message of healing – albeit often a diluted form, without the ceremonial context or lineage.

While much of which I have learnt about medicine songs and icaros resonates with me (see question above), I have received the songs I share here as ‘Shining Songs’ in a very different cultural context and community.

Many of these Shining Songs have arrived almost fully formed – their tune coming as I sing, or as I hear them within me (I often hear high or low notes that my voice can’t yet reach!). I feel that they arise from the spirit of the sea, or the land, or the love that flows through me – which is in itself, also spirit. Sometimes they are an immediate response to something I see or experience – in ‘real life’ or in a shamanic journey.

Sometimes I catch just the essence of a song, and then I have to connect my heart and mind, and spend a bit more time trying to understand and interpret what I experienced in order to create the full song. A simple image sometimes accompanies the songs I receive – and this is part of what I translate into words. But not always. The latter is similar to the process of how the Sea Soul Journey Oracle Cards came.

I love sounding, humming and toning, and that’s something I use as a healing process too for myself and others. When words come, I feel I’m being used as a translator of a message or idea that is in itself healing. But, most often, these songs come in English – itself a limiting colonial language.

I know that I can’t help but filter these songs through the being that I am. So I’m trusting that despite those limitations, these have come through me for a reason – as the cards did. And though my translation is always going to be insufficient, my vessel is as close to love as I can make it.

Mostly the experience feels naïve – an emptying of self, rather than having a clear intention to write a song about something. It’s often necessary to bring my mind into the ‘song-writing’ process at some point – but this can easily over-complicate and dilute the power of the song. And then I find myself having to edit it back to its simplest form…

I sing my Shining Songs at my home altar and out in nature most days – and often new songs arise in these spaces. Often, I sit with the beech and horse chestnut trees nearby, and my practice here (learnt from Dra Rosales Meza – see below) is to connect with and honour Mother Earth, offering thanks. I consistently connect with the roses and rosemary in my little garden here – and am grateful for them every day. I love to sing to the moon.

But I have not undertaken any formal ‘dieta’ (working closely with an individual spirit or plant over a long period of time to receive an icaro). My daily practice for nearly 10 years now has been to enter the sea with consciousness, love and respect. Each morning for the past few years, I also pray at my altar, often with water and cacao. I call to be a vessel for love, and ask to clear away anything that stands in the way of that.

For that, we need to jump back to 2017. I was an over-stretched mum, mostly working in the film industry as a script editor and mentor, coaching, and running creative retreats for other mothers.

I started sea swimming.

Each morning, I would emerge from the water with a new gift: a deeper faith, a sense of my own courage, the experience of allowing myself to be held…

Returning home, I would capture those gifts or blessings in words.

When the idea of creating a set of sea blessings cards from these also arrived on the tide, I had no knowledge of how to create oracle cards. And no thought whatsoever of being an oracle card creator.

But before long, I found myself stepping into a whole new way of being, guided by the sea. This process became the much-loved Sea Soul Journeys Oracle Cards.  

So there I was in 2024, with a beautiful oracle deck sold all around the world. My childhood dream of publishing an interactive book (the Sea Soul Journal) also fulfilled. Running a business built around my love for the sea and the blessings it offers. None of which I would have found if I hadn’t listened, and trusted something unexpected and new.

Well, over the past two years, the sea – and these Shining Lands – have started to offer me gifts of song, much as they offered me blessings. 

I didn’t think of myself as a singer at all. Nor did I think I had a voice anyone else would ever want to hear. The songs didn’t seem to care. They just kept arriving and calling to be shared. And every time I asked my guides for insight into what to offer the world in these times – as support, in service to love and the need for change – the only answer I would receive would be… another song.

I would laugh. And keep asking – because apparently, that wasn’t an answer I was ready for.

But this calling was persistent, as they tend to be…

So I sang these songs – to the sea, at my altar, to my friends, to strangers, whenever and wherever I felt the pull of spirit. I recorded them and shared them on Bandcamp. I offered month-long programmes, Songs to Sing with the Sea, to help others build a daily song practice. I hosted some incredible Sea Soul Song workshops in person here in Cornwall – often by the sea.

Finally, I’ve combined the two most recent facets of my work into one offering. A blend of sea wisdom and song. Of mindful transformative practices, and encouragement to rest and tend to ourselves in the chaos. An offering that calls us all closer to that question – What can we each offer the world in these times – in service to love and the need for change?

So we may all live one vast beautiful Shining Song.

In nature, the elements with the most significant influences on my Shining Song practice would be the waters, the moon, the trees, these Shining Lands, rose and rosemary, cacao and sea salt, seals and whales. Sometimes in the songs, I have sensed a calling in of a particular spirit being – Brigid, for example.

Most of all of course, I am guided by the sea – the relationship that has been most tended to and honoured in my life and work. I feel deeply connected to the Shining Lands and waters of Penwith – and also those around Sannox on the Isle of Arran, where I first built connection with the sea as I child.

I am also deeply grateful to all of my human teachers (and their lineages and teachers), some of whom I will name here.

In 2023, I began a journey into Decolonial Shadow Work with Dra Rosales Meza, (along with many other of her invaluable teachings), who is a medicine woman of the Q’ero Inca lineage. This work continues to unfold as understanding in the Shining Song of my life, and the wider song of responsibility as a white person in a colonial world. I also highly recommend her Divine Alignment programme if you are seeking support to decolonise the way you work and share your gifts.

Connecting with the beautiful work of Michaela Harrison, and having the opportunity to participate in her whale whispering cohort in 2025, I have deepened my connection with the waters through song, and now more actively connect with the whales. Michaela’s gift of Omi O, a Yoruba blessing for the waters, sustains me daily.

For the past 18 months, I have been studying the Medicine Wheel with Rachel Smart, who is trained in Lakota teachings. This wheel – and the relationships nurtured here with the elements, directions, ancestors, animals, plants and cosmos – has become a consistent part of my daily practice.

In 2025, I had the privilege of birthing a drum with Dorrie Joy, and this water buffalo spirit has been a huge influence on this journey. I have also received powerful voice activation trainings from Lyndz LiquidLight and Grace LightLooper. And been inspired into recording and performing by the shining spirit, Gabrielle Green.

I regularly participate in community and spirit-led ceremonies of many kinds here in Cornwall, many of which have also had a transformative impact on my voice and capacity to connect.

In 2026, I participated in The Bear Awakens, lament training with Alexandra Derwen and Tuomas Rounakari. This experience offered powerful insights, a deeper understanding of how I had been receiving and sharing grief songs, and included transformative teachings from the Salish and Mesqueam peoples. 

My experience prior to all of this was primarily in film and TV development, running the local media development agency, and then hosting retreats here in Cornwall, especially for mums. My children, now teenagers, continue to be two of my most challenging and fulfilling teachers. As is my husband…