Greetings Friends!
I’m Sam Bullington and I am a writer, teacher, public speaker, healer, counselor/coach, and founder and director of Phoenix, Colorado’s Transgender Community Choir. I’m here to transform human consciousness and have many ways I go about that. I spent much of my career as a college professor, in Gender Studies and Geography, but left that behind when Donald Trump was elected to take my teaching to a broader world really in need of transformation.
One of my main tools as a teacher and counselor is the paradigm shift—meaning I help people to think differently. This is really important because our emotions and our experience of life—what we think of as “reality” (both our personal “reality” as well as our collective “reality”)—are determined by our thinking and our framework for life. When we shift our framework, we change everything and create new possibilities for ourselves and the world.
I am a cultural worker and a shadow worker, meaning I help people to see the impact their cultural training has had on them and bring to consciousness the aspects of life we’ve been taught to keep unconscious. This allows people to make more empowered choices in life. My job is to help free people from the limiting beliefs we have about ourselves and what we can expect in life that we tend to take for granted. My hopeful message for the world is that we can do better and I have a lot of ideas about how we can get there, individually and collectively. Change doesn’t have to be hard or take decades. One profound moment, one new tool, can turn everything around in our lives instantaneously.
Welcome to my site! I hope that you will discover something here that inspires you, reignites your hope, expands your thinking, and helps you to feel more connected.
My Story:
I’ve been there. I know both the terror and the excitement of big transformation.
I come from a long line of change-haters and spent much of my life standing on the side of the pool wanting to jump in but afraid to. As a transgender person, I waited 11 years to go on hormones because I knew it would be disruptive. I remained in multiple romantic relationships for years after I should have left. And I stayed in an academic career that was trying to kill me because it was a partial match and I couldn’t imagine better for myself.
Initially hesitant to take seriously the yearnings of my heart, now I have gone through the shamanic experience of death and rebirth numerous times, starting over in various areas of life and each time stepping into a better happier version of myself.
The shamanic path is the wounded healer path–meaning through learning to heal yourself, you cultivate tools that you can then use to help others. So wherever you are currently stuck, you can rest assured that I have likely been there myself—and that I probably have tools that I have discovered along the way that can be helpful to you as well.
Healing my aversion to change has given me a lot of freedom and made me a powerful teacher and leader, especially during a time of massive collective upheaval and evolution. What I needed during my years of struggle–and what we are currently needing in our nation–is a paradigm shift, a new way of seeing the world and our place in it. It is my calling to help take people over that crossing, to offer much needed fresh perspectives and new possibilities.
If your old way of seeing and being is no longer working for you, reach out and see if I have what you’ve been looking for. I work with individuals and groups in various settings–doing talks, workshops, classes, trainings, and counseling, healing, and mentoring sessions with individuals, couples, and organizations. The world needs what you have to offer now more than ever so don’t let fear stop you from sharing your gifts and your beautiful uniqueness.
My Guiding Principles
1. The world as it is currently structured is unbalanced, unjust, and needs healing and progressive social change.
2. Those who are most privileged in the current global structure are actually the most sick and in need of change.
3. What is most needed in the world is right relationship, that is, forms of relating that embody principles of balance, harmony, and oneness—with ourselves, with one another, and with our natural environment.
4. Living in a culture rooted in separateness and competition, most of us are alienated—from ourselves, from our creativity and passion, from our bodies, from our natural environment, and from one another.
5. What we have been taught in western culture about happiness, success, and power is inadequate and dangerous and in fact leads us away from happiness, success, and real power.
6. Both our attention and intention are important ways of focusing our energy; bringing more consciousness and greater skill to how we use these makes us more effective change makers.
7. A new paradigm for social change is called for that acknowledges our interconnectedness and draws upon the healing power of love, empathy, and forgiveness, replacing metaphors of warfare and struggle that have predominated in activist strategizing.