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Radical Healership: How to Build a Values-Driven Healing Practice in a Profit-Driven World
The countercultural healer's guide for building a sustainable practice: work toward your purpose, grow your client base, and thrive with integrity within an unjust capitalist system.
The time for healing--and the time to be a healer--is now. Within a global landscape of racism, violence, misogyny, mass incarceration, and other intersecting systems of oppression, our society is sick, our communities are suffering, and our relationships with our own bodies and minds are disconnected. But within a mass-market, numb-out culture that's commodified wellness and reduced the political act of self-care to a hashtag, what does it mean to be a healer? And what does it mean to build a sustainable, values-driven practice in an unjust capitalist system?
In How to Build A Successful Healing Practice, therapist Laura Mae Northrup navigates the complexities of being a healer and staying true to your calling in a world built from systems designed to extract, oppress, and exploit. She addresses fundamental tensions that arise for practicing healers working in our late-stage capitalist culture, like how to:
- Maintain your ethical framework while prioritizing financial growth--and reconciling your calling as a healer with the need to take payment
- Market and brand your practice authentically, without feeling like a shill
- Examine your "shadow why" looking honestly at the baggage, unexamined biases, and unconscious motivations you bring to your work
- Resist burnout and recognize your limits within an extractive culture that valorizes overwork
- Connect to your emotional needs and spiritual goals, and honor their place in your healing practice
Structured in accessible, to-the-point chapters with practical writing and reflection prompts, Northrup offers readers real and honest approaches to thriving as healers, going deeper than the promise of a million-dollar practice or a minimum-effort game plan. Written for healers of all modalities--especially those that have been sidelined, underfunded, underresearched, or delegitimized within a Western capitalist framework--this book offers a nuanced, political, and social-justice informed guide to building the practice you want--and thriving as the healer you were born to be.
The time for healing--and the time to be a healer--is now. Within a global landscape of racism, violence, misogyny, mass incarceration, and other intersecting systems of oppression, our society is sick, our communities are suffering, and our relationships with our own bodies and minds are disconnected. But within a mass-market, numb-out culture that's commodified wellness and reduced the political act of self-care to a hashtag, what does it mean to be a healer? And what does it mean to build a sustainable, values-driven practice in an unjust capitalist system?
In How to Build A Successful Healing Practice, therapist Laura Mae Northrup navigates the complexities of being a healer and staying true to your calling in a world built from systems designed to extract, oppress, and exploit. She addresses fundamental tensions that arise for practicing healers working in our late-stage capitalist culture, like how to:
- Maintain your ethical framework while prioritizing financial growth--and reconciling your calling as a healer with the need to take payment
- Market and brand your practice authentically, without feeling like a shill
- Examine your "shadow why" looking honestly at the baggage, unexamined biases, and unconscious motivations you bring to your work
- Resist burnout and recognize your limits within an extractive culture that valorizes overwork
- Connect to your emotional needs and spiritual goals, and honor their place in your healing practice
Structured in accessible, to-the-point chapters with practical writing and reflection prompts, Northrup offers readers real and honest approaches to thriving as healers, going deeper than the promise of a million-dollar practice or a minimum-effort game plan. Written for healers of all modalities--especially those that have been sidelined, underfunded, underresearched, or delegitimized within a Western capitalist framework--this book offers a nuanced, political, and social-justice informed guide to building the practice you want--and thriving as the healer you were born to be.
200 pages, Paperback
Published February 22, 2022
37 people are currently reading
1408 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 4, 2022
This is seriously one of the best books I have read lately. It is very timely for me personal as I work to build a business as an herbalist. I loved her perspective. I found it both challenging and affirming. A must read for healers of all modalities.
February 21, 2022
Being new to running a healing business, this book was incredible! Speaking to all healing professions, its real beauty is how it speaks directly to the intersection between being a healer and living under capitalism.
While I’ve encountered many of Northrup’s insights in some form, I’ve never seen them compiled quite like this. You’ll feel incredibly seen as a healer and solopreneur. Northrup focuses heavily on purpose and intention in addressing aspects of this work. You’ll be asked to get in touch with your personal “why” and use that as a starting point for all the practical aspects.
Northrup honors the healer’s autonomy and intuition (no One Path to success here!) while using stories from building a therapy practice to point out common shadow work opportunities, inner wounding, and blocks to address. She connects observational practice with larger values, speaking to folks with a healing justice intersection in their business. One of my highlights was a connection between blocks to channeling desire in business, societal policing of sexual desire and queerness, and white supremacy’s investment in destroying intimacy. These connections show up throughout, with an explicitly anti-capitalist lens that tangles with class dynamics and isn’t afraid to address things like potentially abusive clients vs. your own shadow stuff coming up in a client relationship.
You’ll get tips on identifying your clients, clarifying your niche, developing pricing to support you and honor your values, and focusing your marketing channels. While you’ll want to supplement with other business resources, Northrup helps you identify where you need the most support. For example, I felt super seen by a section on how creating a website can point to underlying trauma. Haven’t seen this anywhere else! There’s also nuanced discussion of trauma responses, attachment styles, emotional regulation, and spiritual practice development. Each chapter’s “exercises and experientials” will help you dive deeper.
(ARC provided through NetGalley.)
While I’ve encountered many of Northrup’s insights in some form, I’ve never seen them compiled quite like this. You’ll feel incredibly seen as a healer and solopreneur. Northrup focuses heavily on purpose and intention in addressing aspects of this work. You’ll be asked to get in touch with your personal “why” and use that as a starting point for all the practical aspects.
Northrup honors the healer’s autonomy and intuition (no One Path to success here!) while using stories from building a therapy practice to point out common shadow work opportunities, inner wounding, and blocks to address. She connects observational practice with larger values, speaking to folks with a healing justice intersection in their business. One of my highlights was a connection between blocks to channeling desire in business, societal policing of sexual desire and queerness, and white supremacy’s investment in destroying intimacy. These connections show up throughout, with an explicitly anti-capitalist lens that tangles with class dynamics and isn’t afraid to address things like potentially abusive clients vs. your own shadow stuff coming up in a client relationship.
You’ll get tips on identifying your clients, clarifying your niche, developing pricing to support you and honor your values, and focusing your marketing channels. While you’ll want to supplement with other business resources, Northrup helps you identify where you need the most support. For example, I felt super seen by a section on how creating a website can point to underlying trauma. Haven’t seen this anywhere else! There’s also nuanced discussion of trauma responses, attachment styles, emotional regulation, and spiritual practice development. Each chapter’s “exercises and experientials” will help you dive deeper.
(ARC provided through NetGalley.)
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May 14, 2023Absolutely essential healing work for folks in “healing-adjacent” work. Such a refreshing take among all the tired “you can do it” “girl boss” narratives
February 18, 2023
After doing so much healing, I wanted to share my lessons with others but felt so much outer pressure and comparison. This book was a great guide and mentor for me in knowing energy exchange and self worth.
May 23, 2022
A great book to develop a radical practice that survives and thrives within the nightmare of capitalism.
June 16, 2022
So glad I found this book within the first year of my private practice. I suspect I'll be rereading it as I continue down the healership path. Highly recommend for all healing professionals.
August 12, 2022
good not what I wanted it to be but still good
April 26, 2023
AMAZING book to help healers step into their fullest potential. I love the journal prompts and reflections. This book has changed my relationship to my herbal practice and I am so grateful!
February 2, 2024
This book is more than a guide, it’s an initiation. A must read for those working or wanting to work in a healing practice.
December 19, 2025
This book provides the questions that every healer should ask themselves in their quest to help others (and not inadvertently cause harm in the process). It is certainly radical in that way.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews