I recorded a conversation recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. My guest was Maritza Schafer, founder of Bruja School and the creator of the Liberation Magic Method, raised in Chile in a family of witches, and her grandmother initiated her into brujeria when she was young.

I went into this conversation curious but not totally sure what to expect, and came out of it with a new way of thinking about power, about healing, and honestly, about myself.

One of the first things Maritza and I talked about was the word “witch” itself. For a lot of people, that word carries a heavy, negative charge, but Maritza doesn't see it that way at all. She grew up understanding it as a normal, good thing, wherein her mom was a witch, her grandmother was a witch, and magic was just part of everyday life.

So why does the word scare so many people?

Maritza's answer was simple and a little startling. She said it isn't because there's anything evil about witches. It's political. Witches, in her words, are people, and especially women, who know how to work with power and understand how reality actually functions. If everyone had access to that kind of self trust and connection, a lot of systems that depend on people staying small, scared, and easy to control would fall apart.

We talked about the Salem witch trials and how women throughout history have been scapegoated and punished for exactly this kind of power. Maritza pointed out that this isn't just history. She called it a peak period of misogyny, right now, in real time. It was a sobering moment in the conversation, but also a clarifying one.

One part of the conversation that I keep coming back to is how Maritza defines power as simply the ability to act, which is just the capacity to do something.

She pointed out that we all have this kind of power already. Reading this sentence right now, you're using it. You had the capacity to open this page and keep reading, that’s power. It sounds almost too simple to matter, but I think that's exactly why it matters so much.

So many of the people I work with have a complicated relationship with power. Maybe they were taught that wanting power made them selfish, or scary, or too much. Maybe they've only seen power used to hurt people, so they've quietly given up their own. Hearing Maritza describe power this simply, as something small and human and available to everyone, felt like permission. Permission to want things. Permission to act. Permission to take up space.

She also made a point that stuck with me, wherein she talked about how tiny power adds up, and that you don't need one big dramatic gesture to matter. Talking to your neighbor matters. Showing up for the people around you matters. If tiny power didn't add up, she said, there wouldn't be so many systems built to keep people feeling powerless in the first place.

Maritza breaks people down into four parts which is your body, your mind, your heart, and your spirit. In her framework, each one makes up about 25 percent of who you are. If one of those parts gets ignored, you end up wobbling.

This lines up almost perfectly with everything I've learned about nervous system healing over the past three decades. You cannot think your way out of dysregulation. Insight alone isn't enough. But you also can't only work the body and skip everything else. Real healing asks for all of you, your physical self, your thoughts, your emotions, and yes, your spirit too.

I loved hearing this reflected back to me from a completely different tradition. It's a reminder that a lot of wisdom traditions, whether they call it magic, therapy, or something else entirely, keep landing on the same truth. We are not just brains walking around on legs. We're whole, layered beings, and healing has to meet us at every layer.

At one point in our conversation, I talked about an idea I come back to often with clients, which I call widening the spotlight. So often when we're stuck, our attention narrows down to one tiny beam of light. We can only see one possibility, one option, one way forward. And it feels like the only way.

But there's almost always more available than that. I like to say there's option A, there's option B, and then there's option C, the one we don't even know exists yet. Maritza built beautifully on this idea in our conversation, connecting it to how magic works when we're willing to stay open instead of locking onto one outcome.

If you're someone who tends to feel boxed in by your own circumstances, this reframe alone might be worth listening to the full episode for.

Near the end of our conversation, we talked about an analogy I haven't stopped thinking about where spiritual practice was compared to a gym membership. You can pay for it, you can believe in the results it promises, but if you never actually show up and do the work, nothing changes.

Magic works the same way, Maritza said. It's not enough to know about it or believe in it. You have to work it, consistently, for it to actually shift anything in your life.

I felt that one in my bones, because it's true of healing too. So many people come to this work hoping for a quick fix, a single session or a single insight that changes everything overnight. But real, lasting change doesn't usually work that way. It comes from consistent practice, done over and over, even on the days it feels small or unremarkable.

I think about a phrase one of my kids' coaches used to say. Practice makes permanent, take note that it’s not perfect — Permanent. Whatever you practice, whether that's a spiritual ritual, a nervous system regulation tool, or an old pattern of shutting down, becomes the thing your body and mind default to. That's not a discouraging thought. It's an empowering one, because it means you get to choose what you're practicing.

You don't have to believe in magic, or call yourself spiritual, or even agree with everything Maritza and I talked about, to take something useful from this conversation.

Here's what I'd invite you to sit with. Where in your life have you been waiting for one big dramatic shift instead of trusting the power of small, consistent action? Where have you let your spotlight narrow down to just one possibility, when there might be an option B or option C you haven't let yourself imagine yet? And where might you be more powerful, more capable, and more resourced than you've been giving yourself credit for?

Give the full episode a listen. Maritza is warm, funny, and refreshingly direct, and this conversation goes even deeper into feminine and masculine energy, the balance between activation and rest, and what it actually takes to make change stick.

And if you're someone who spends your days holding space for others and rarely stops to hold space for yourself, that's exactly who my 8 Week Nervous System Reset for Professionals was built for. You can learn more about it here.