Shirley Lynn Martin is passionate about helping people experience the inner peace and joy that comes with awakening and embodying the “gracious and infinite Presence” that is the essence of everything. She nurtures her passion in the friendships and friendly exchanges of kinship she encounters in her everyday life and work.
Shirley Lynn finished her MTS at CGUC, her MDiv with AMBS and then went on to become a Reiki Master/Teacher, a certified life and spiritual development coach, and ordained (Rev) with the Bancroft Centre for Spiritual Awakening. In her years as a psychotherapist, Shirley Lynn was introduced to Restorative Circle training and then went to complete her conflict and mediation certificate at CGUC, with an emphasis on peacekeeping circle. She further trained in the Circle Way with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea to bring opportunity through her Peace Circle where people could gather to share heartfelt stories and deepen spiritual community in a ‘friendly’ manner.
Shirley Lynn works with clients and teaches workshops supporting people in deepening their connection to Spirit and their understanding and embodiment of ‘oneness’ in the everyday relationships of their lives and community. She enjoys helping people find and create new meaning beyond the traumas, conflicts and chaos that have derailed them. Unity and diversity is a way to engage with others, to re-discover community and heal the brokenness through new friendships and acts of service. Her more recent experience of living out this unity and diversity is with being a core helper and ally and core walker with the ALL NATIONS GRAND RIVER WATER WALK, 2018-2022, led by Mary Anne Caibaiosai, an Anishinaabe Elder, Bear Clan originally from Manitoulin Island. The GRWW is an Anshinaabe ceremony in the footsteps of the late Josepine Mandamin, an Anishinaabe Elder. She has honoured the water by walking around all the Great Lakes. This ceremony of walking is to help the water (Nibi), to sing for her, offer her good words and prayers, that she/Nibi will become clean.
Shirley Lynn recently completed her certification as a professional dog trainer (CPDT), a side career, and along with walking in ceremony for the water, seeks to understand what it means to live in unity and diversity, in community ‘with all our relations’, respecting multiple species’ purpose and need for well-being that expresses itself different from our human ways, though they have been asked to live as members of our families and communities.