Shakti Durga: From a depressed lawyer to master healer

It’s not often you hear the words ‘high-flying lawyer’ and ‘master spiritual healer’ in the same sentence but for Shakti Durga, 57, the road to purpose and enlightenment has been less than conventional.

However, 26 years ago in 1992, a then ambitious Kim Fraser knew nothing of the colourful journey that was to come. As a successful barrister in Sydney, Australia, she was married and nursing her first born. Happy in some respects but dissatisfied with life in many other respects. As postnatal depression overcame her, she became fragile as the breakdown of her marriage followed. She was propelled to learn new ways to navigate life as the life she had anticipated dissolved.

“I’d gone to the bar quite young and attained a lot of success at a very busy practice. So, that part of my life was going quite well but the personal part of my life was not going very well. I had lots of relationship issues,” Shakti Durga tells Kerwin Rae writer Meaghan Brown.

Issues that ultimately resulted in her 5 year marriage ending in divorce.

For almost two years after her first child was born, anxiety, postnatal depression and sleeplessness pervaded. While Kim still managed her work commitments the darkness inside her progressed to a feeling of no happiness.

“My marriage broke down when I was in my early 30’s, this major relationship breakdown was the catalyst that got me on my path,” she explains.

“It was a very dark time from me, and when you’re in it sometimes you don’t know you’re in it. I could hold it together when I was at work but at home – the ease with which I would cry…”

Her workaholic habits covered up the anxiety and depression to an extent.

“Looking back I absolutely know I was depressed, but at the time I thought this was normal when you had a baby. I didn’t get any help and things just kept getting darker inside me,” she says honestly.

One of her law colleagues told her point blank, “You’re a mess, you should learn to meditate.”

“Meditation was a mechanism to get through affidavits and the acrimony. Sometimes the adversity we have is the catalyst for learning the best things,” she admits.

In retrospect, it was the beginning of an incredible voyage that’s taken her to many countries, many spiritual masters, guru’s, rishis, sages, all kinds of people with incredible perspectives on life. By 1993 Kim was meditating avidly twice a day, it’d become like medicine for her.

“If I fell asleep in the evening while I was meditating I was so happy because I was sleeping, and that alone was such a big deal.”

Continuing with meditation and self development practices for the next eight years, Kim started to experience some powerful changes in her life.

“Meditation had started to pull the band aid off and let the wounds heal, this combined with the personal development was the trick for me. Learning that my thoughts would change things, that whatever is happening in my life has something to do with me and to not be a victim to it.

“That was one of the biggest lessons for me. I was working really hard and being such a good person, thinking, why is all this shit happening to me all the time. The realisation that I could change my own energy, and when I did, I changed my life. When we raise our vibration our experience of everything in our life is different, so it’s not so much what we’re doing – which is our yang, our masculine energy, as what we’re being – which is our yin – which is our inherent feminine energy,” she says.

Still practicing law, Kim moved from Sydney to Newcastle, remarried and settled on the Central Coast of NSW.

Around 1995 Kim started having crystal dreaming sessions, which is an advanced crystal healing technique which uses a unique mandala of crystals laid around the body. The power of the crystals trigger a shift in your consciousness into an ‘altered state’ where a shamanic journey or crystal dreaming occurs.

Kim went on to learn about the energy field and energy healing and the relationship between our energy field and our mind, our soul, and what’s happening in our physical lives.

“I just got so passionate about it all and so enthusiastic, I was a bit like a labrador puppy jumping up and down, I’d say, ‘Come and try this, you’ll feel so amazing’.

People would let me give them healings, and often amazing things would happen to them, and they’d have eyes like saucers and say, ‘What just happened?’”

The time had come for Kim to craft a major career transition; from lawyer to energy healer.

“I started giving healings to my colleagues at work and I started cleaning out the courtrooms energetically, cleaning out the conference rooms where a lot of stress would accumulate in the space. I started blessings all the cases that came in, all the folders, all the notes.”

As Kim brought spirituality into her law practice, the healings went from strength to strength, and she began cultivating a practice.

“I got so swamped with people wanting healings, I thought, this is ridiculous, I’m going to start charging and when I started charging for them, even more people came.

“It took a few years to transition from being a fulltime lawyer, to a part-time lawyer doing one day a week healings to three days a week. Eventually I retired from law in 2001. I was 40.”

From there she also wrote several books; Ignite Your Spirit, Empowering Relationships and Dimensions of Wealth.

“I lived and breathed my spirituality at that time. I became an affirmation machine. I had to put theory into practice to survive that period because my major source of income had dwindled as a result of not practicing law anymore.”

But with the same bold and boisterous traits that made her so successful in the courtroom, Shakti Durga was able to turn her new dreams of becoming a fully fledged spiritual healer to life. She credits visualisation work, affirmations and a strong mindset at the core of her success and encourages anyone, no matter what their age or circumstance to always follow their desires.

At this point there was no going back, and it was time to shed the past and embrace her new identity.

On the 28th October 2006 Shakti Durga experienced an epiphany in which she realised her name and vocation, and from this time onwards Kim was to be known as Shakti Durga – modern guru.

From that point on Shakti Durga and her incredible team of healers have reached feats that the once Kim Fraser, probably never even conceived including: travelling globally, writing a range of spiritual books, DVDs, card decks, music and the establishment of the Shanti Mission – school for the soul, in 2007. The centre is based in Cooranbong valley, 45 minutes from Sydney, on the NSW Central Coast of Australia. It is a registered charity. Shanti means peace, and the mission is to find peace internally.

And while the last 20 plus years have been enlightening for the warm and humble healer, it certainly hasn’t been all ‘zen’ as most people would suspect of a spiritual quest.

From post-natal depression, to divorce, to establishing an ashram and working out how to keep the bills paid, all from donations, an undeterred Shakti Durga says nothing is ever impossible.

“That has been my journey to date, and continuing. Sometimes things seem impossible, and then we do it. I don’t want it to sound like fairyland because we’ve had to meet the usual business challenges. There’s times when the divine is leading you, your own inner being with your own soul saying, come on we’re gonna do stuff different now,” she says.

Blessed to have perspective of both sides of the coin – a commercial business as a barrister, and now in a spirit led practise at the Shanti Mission, Shakti Durga says the key to fulfillment is following your heart – no matter how that transpires.

“For me, it’s always about helping people…

“And I just feel so, so fortunate to have had the path that I’ve had,” she says.