Sami Bass

“It’s important to get each individual person back to their own sense of trust and to see everyone as an individual channel. It's just reconnecting to what's within each and every one of us. “

What is your offering?
I like to describe it through how I experience it. I think a lot of people have this experience of seeing signs or getting a sense of some sort of texture in the universe, where they feel a special moment and realize that it can’t be a coincidence. So what I do in my practice, is translate these moments and connect those lines and communicate them in a way that becomes conversational.

How can that help someone?
By connecting to the unseen and the subtle, we can find pathways into what is already being communicated. Then we start to see that it's not just abstract and we can put them into a conversation that feels tangible. 

Have you always had this ability?
There has always been some sort of foundation that I was working with. I think as kids we assume that everyone is experiencing things the same way. So for me the process of understanding and relating to other human beings has helped me realize that not everybody sees the world quite the same way I do. 

Are these gifts part of your lineage?
Yes, it’s a lineage gift. In my house it was common to relate to the world this way and my dad very frequently expressed how he understood the world through his gifts and lineage. Part of it has also been my own healing process, because a lot of our gifts can get trapped in our trauma and survival mechanisms. When I was dealing with mine, I sat in a lot of tribal spaces, and being surrounded by lineage elders that had language for what they saw me doing helped me to hone my gifts and understand them.  

What is your lineage?
I'm mixed, so I have slave lineages with a lot of voodoo magic in that and I'm also indigenous. My tribe is Kanien'kehá:ka, it’s a Haudenosaunee tribe.. And I have Scottish in there. These are all fairly magical lineage spaces to pull from. 

What is a session with you like?
There aren’t necessarily words to describe what is happening. After people book, I already start getting a sense of them - I'll start having dreams with these people. Then I gear my morning routine toward this feeling of energy that's been introduced to me and see what comes through. I say “see”, but the concept of seeing is not visual since I work with my eyes closed. It's hard to explain because in a way it feels like not me and in a way, it feels more like me, because I’m somehow operating beyond my ego.

What do you see?
There's this different world of energy and textures and languages and this availability. When people arrive in the session, they bring what's in their energy field, and it's almost like knots asking to be untangled. In a way, it's a reading, but it's almost more like a clarification process. 

Are the ancestors that are coming through specific or general?
The way that most of my lineages use the word ancestor is that an ancestor is everyone and everything. We are all relatives, so if something has an energy, it is an ancestor. Sometimes it is their lineage showing up, but I've also had things like divinities or ascendant masters in that space.  

What can we learn from our ancestors?
They have a lot to say about how to heal the planet, and about how to come together and how to heal together. 

How can we communicate with our ancestors?
I think we underestimate the five senses and their capabilities. I encourage people to lean into whatever sense is calling to them. And then I think it’s trusting that the guidance is not specific. 

Are we all channels?
I personally believe so. 

Does everything have meaning?
There's no arbiter of what matters or what has meaning. It’s important to get each individual person back to their own sense of trust and to see everyone as an individual channel. It's just reconnecting to what's within each and every one of us. I think we can get carried away in assigning meaning because our ego wants to make something out of everything, but if we're looking through the lens of medicine, there's medicine in all of it, right? 

Why is this type of work important?
Just speaking from my own human experience, it's very easy to get myopic with the headiness of the world. I hope that the channeling has an expansion beyond that, it allows people to lift their gaze and start seeing the bigger picture, and potentially what’s behind it. 

What is the other work you offer?
I also work as a filmmaker, which I don't see as very different from the healing arts. Story is such an integral part of who we are as humans, and it's also part of how we heal. I've been working with people doing what we call story rewilding, which is essentially channeling for a story. It's kind of letting go of the ego, and letting in the energies of the story.  

What does healing look like to you?
I think reflection is the first word that comes to mind. The ability to reflect more deeply on our actions. For me it's meant just carving out space for grief, which I think in all of my work I'm finding is really an element that we're deeply missing. So for me it's weaving grief into my life and allowing that part of me to be seen and to accept that I'm never going to be what capitalism wants in a human.

What are your own personal rituals? 
Bathing in nature or getting in the ocean, even if it's cold and freezing. Learning how to vibrate with nature, with trees or with the ocean. I'm really committed to my Kundalini practice, it's such a good way to get the prana moving and get the chakras clear. I highly recommend Life Force Academy. 

What books do you recommend?
Sacred Instructions by Sherry Mitchell or anything by Angela Davis. I am a big fan of her work. A lot of what I do comes from a place of decolonization and is rooted in decolonized practices and the evolution of dismantling structures of oppression.

How do you see channeling as a decolonized practice?
We've been at chalkboards our whole life and we kind of expect it to be spelled out for us. I think sometimes people don't understand how they're receiving until they have this moment of wait, that reminds me of this time that I was just listening to the water and I had this idea. It can be those very subtle things. 

What do you keep on your altar?
It really shifts with the season, but there's always rosewater and some kind of plant. Right now I'm working with eucalyptus. My pipe is usually on there. My tobacco. Something from my little inner self that feels like play and laughter. 

What words of wisdom do you always find yourself sharing?
You can't unhear the truth. Truth has a different frequency, it’s the same frequency as love, so if someone's telling you the truth, they're telling you the love

Photos by Katrina Sorrentino