Portrait by Filipia Alves

 

MAR HARRSEN is a Spiritual Teacher and Practitioner. Her work integrates the disciplines of Traditional Spiritual Healing and Craniosacral Therapy, with a focus on pediatric and perinatal care. Mar’s practice is distinctly rooted in prayer and meditation.

She was brought onto her path as a practitioner after healing herself of chronic illness, under the wings of various natural healers, most notably through prayer by two holy women on the north coast of Peru who diagnosed the root of her disease as traumatic shock she experienced in utero and as a young child. Her time in Peru awakened Mar’s innate spiritual sense and led to a personal mentorship with these curanderas. During this time she also led healing retreats in South America and Europe. 

Harrsen’s worldliness allowed her the experience of various cultural traditions where she gained an expansive perspective on healing. Her curiosities led to decades of study in metaphysics and mysticism including Christian Science, New Thought movement, and Kabbalah. She is an ordained spiritual Minister in the state of California. She is Certified in Craniosacral Therapy and Sat Nam Rasayan. Margaret is a faculty member of Esalen Institute, a non-profit holistic educational center in Big Sur, California where she teaches biannual retreats.

From pilgrimages by horse through the Peruvian Andes to sit in ceremony with indigenous elders to periods of solitary retreat in a renowned chapel in the Algarve region of Portugal to water immersions among the aquamarine seas that caress the Pacific and Mediterranean islands, Mar has explored vast spiritual and natural atmospheres that deeply imbibe her work. Her work is healing through prayer, a gentle process Mar explains as, spiritual regeneration and purification. Her individual treatments are scientific demonstrations of love. Her life path is dedicated to uplifting the consciousness of sentient beings and our shared earth.

Mar lives and works in Ojai, California. She lives closely with the natural world and attributes her wellbeing to the spiritual Intelligence and therapeutic aspects of daily visits to the sea and mountains. The heart of her work is her private healing practice that she established in 2013 in Amagansett, New York. In 2022, she moved her practice to the Ojai Valley where she continues to support adults and children both in-person and remotely worldwide. Mar’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, The Telegraph, and Condé Nast Traveller.

Her Substack, The Sea Within, features writings that explore the depths of Self, healing and consciousness as a highly sensitive person.