Ecumenical spiritual guide, intuitive reader, ritual facilitator, and teacher.
Bear Medicine by Bear Paw is the independent spiritual practice of Bear Paw, an Oakland-based spiritual educator, intuitive reader, ritual facilitator, and ecumenical practitioner.
Bear Paw’s work is practical, grounded, and deeply human. Through classes, readings, ritual consultations, ceremony support, and hands-on spiritual education, Bear Medicine offers people a place to learn, reflect, trust their intuition, grow spiritually, protect their energy, honor transition, and reconnect with personal power.
Bear Paw brings more than 20 years of experience across private, academic, community, and metaphysical retail settings. Their background includes intuitive readings, tarot, spiritual guidance, dream interpretation, herbology, ritual basics, ancestor-centered practice, decolonialized spirituality, living spiritual practice, candle work, herb and crystal education, hands-on workshop facilitation, trauma-informed ecumenical spiritual care, and continuing study and practice of Ifa under the guidance of their Babalawo.
Known for creating welcoming, beginner-friendly spaces, Bear Paw helps people learn through direct experience. Their classes and sessions translate spiritual ideas into clear, practical tools that people can use in daily life, whether they are beginning a practice, deepening an existing one, moving through transition, or seeking stronger protection, clarity, and personal power.
Bear Medicine is also shaped by a larger spiritual care vision: ritual, reflection, and spiritual care for those deconstructing / decolonizing, reclaiming faith, ancestry, intuition, and inner authority.
What sets this work apart is the teaching. The goal is not only to give someone a reading or spiritual moment, but to help them understand what it means, connect it to their real circumstances, and learn how to live the guidance in a grounded way.
My Approach
Bear Paw’s approach is ecumenical, practical, and consent-centered. Clients and students are invited to bring their own beliefs, questions, cultural background, lineages, spiritual history, and lived experience into the work.
The goal is not to tell you what to believe. The goal is to help you listen more deeply, trust your intuition, protect what is sacred, reconnect with what is yours, and build spiritual practices that support your real life.
Experience & Teaching
Bear Paw has designed and facilitated spiritual workshops and retreats for over twenty years that combine education, reflection, creativity, and practical application. Some classes are hands-on and craft-based, while many of Bear Paw’s most popular teachings focus on living spirituality: how spiritual practice shapes rest, identity, gender, daily choices, family history, ancestry, resilience, and connection.
Popular teaching topics have included rest as resistance, decolonizing spirituality, gender and daily living, discovering one’s lineage, connecting with and venerating ancestors, understanding African Traditional Religions and the diaspora, honoring Orisha with respect, and exploring the relationships and distinctions between diasporic spiritual traditions and Indigenous traditions from Turtle Island.
Bear Paw also teaches that every person comes from people, land, and ancestral belonging somewhere in the world. The work invites students to approach ancestry with humility, curiosity, and respect, asking where they come from, what has been lost or interrupted, what can be repaired, and how to connect with lineage without claiming what is not theirs.
Hands-on class formats have included intention-based candle making, candle dressing, tarot education, spiritual uses of herbs, flowers, oils, and crystals, ritual basics, dream interpretation, shadow-work practices, and spiritual self-care.
In metaphysical retail and community settings, Bear Paw’s classes have helped people understand how to select and use tarot decks, candles, herbs, crystals, oils, and other ritual tools with greater confidence.
Who This Work Is For
Bear Medicine may be a good fit if you are seeking spiritual tools that are practical, grounded, and usable. Many people come for support with protection, cleansing, boundaries, grief, transition, ancestor connection, dream work, intuitive clarity, confidence, or rebuilding a personal spiritual practice after religious harm or displacement.
You do not need to have everything figured out before you come. Curiosity is enough.
A Final Word: Scope & Ethics
Bear Medicine is spiritual education, ritual practice, intuitive guidance, and ceremony support. It is not medical care, psychotherapy, legal advice, emergency support, or a replacement for licensed professional care.
Bear Medicine does not claim authority over all Indigenous traditions, all African Traditional Religions, Ifa, Orisha traditions, or ceremonies belonging to specific lineages. Bear Paw is a student and practitioner of Ifa, continuing their learning under their Babalawo. Bear Paw can offer respectful support to people who work with Orisha, especially around reflection, devotion, ancestor reverence, boundaries, and daily spiritual practice, but does not present themself as an initiated Ifa priest, priestess, elder, or lineage authority and does not perform rites reserved for those roles.