What I Learned About Becoming a Portal for Transformation
- Alana Keddie
- Dec 20, 2025
- 2 min read
Reflections from Healing in the Highlands
When I first envisioned Healing in the Highlands, I thought my role was to lead a retreat.
What I’ve come to understand—through the land, the people, the tears, the laughter, the release—is that my role is something far more subtle and far more sacred.
I am not the healer. I am not the transformation itself.
I am the portal.
True transformation doesn’t happen because we push, fix, or force change. It happens when the nervous system feels safe enough to soften, when the body exhales. When the soul feels seen without being rushed.
The Highlands taught me this in ways no training ever could.
The land does not hurry. The stones do not explain. The wind does not ask permission.
And yet—everything shifts.
Becoming a portal for transformation meant releasing the need to perform healing and instead learning how to hold space so fully that healing remembers how to happen on its own.
Scotland is not just a backdrop—it is an active participant.
There is an intelligence in the earth here. An ancient remembering that lives in the hills, the moss, the standing stones, the waterways. When people arrive, something in them recognizes this frequency.
I watched it happen again and again:
Shoulders dropped without instruction
Tears surfaced without stories
Truths were spoken that had been buried for years
Not because I guided them there—but because the land met them where they were.
My job was simply to open the door.
I learned that the most powerful ritual is safety.
Before any breakthrough, before any catharsis, before any awakening—there must be safety in the body. Safety in the group. Safety in the unknown.
Transformation isn’t dramatic when it’s real. It’s quiet. It’s grounding. It’s deeply embodied.
When people feel safe enough to be exactly who they are, transformation becomes inevitable.
This may be the hardest lesson of all.
To be a portal for transformation, I had to:
Release control
Trust what was unfolding
Stop trying to anticipate outcomes
Let the experience shape itself
The retreat didn’t need me to direct it. It needed me to anchor it.
Presence over performance.Listening over leading. Trust over structure.
Healing in the Highlands is not a retreat where I promise to change your life.
It is a space where you remember how to change it yourself.
A space where the land holds you, the group mirrors you, and your own wisdom rises to meet you.
I don’t walk you through a transformation. I walk beside you as the doorway opens.
And every time I witness it happen, I am reminded:
Transformation doesn’t need to be forced. It needs to be invited.
And when it is, everything knows exactly what to do.
Healing in the Highlands is not something you do. It’s something you enter.
If something in your body softened while reading this…If the land feels familiar, even from afar…
You may already be listening.
Spring 2026 priority holds are quietly open
limited number of spaces are being held for those who feel the call early.
April 19–25, 2026- Scotland
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