About Madeline

My name is Madeline Giles (she/her). I am a somatic guide, breath teacher, herbalist and dreamworker. For over a decade, I have led classes, retreats, and mentorships for those called to listen more deeply to the wisdom of body and breath, Earth and dream.

all of my offerings share a simple call:

To help you hear your heart in a world that is breaking open.

When I speak of the heart, I do not mean the physical organ. I mean the presence of seismic compassion that can be felt and instantly recognized - the space within where a generous and steadfast love speaks, sees, hears, knows.

This is the place where those we love across time and space can reach us, where creative stirrings arise amid the commentary of angels, plants, saints, and mysteries. Here, guidance becomes audible ~ less as command, more as a deep and steady knowing.

While connecting with the heart may sound simple - trite, obvious, maybe even a little cliché! - I believe a world that listens with the heart is a world that learns to cooperate with compassion.

This kind of listening asks something of us. It asks patience, humility, and a willingness to move at the pace of presence - a pace often quite different from the one the world around us often demands.

For this reason, my work is less about transmitting formulaic answers and more about nurturing spaces where the heart can be heard.

In a culture that is oversaturated with formulas and outsourced authority, discernment matters deeply to me - both in how I live and how I facilitate.

I don’t resonate with hierarchical teaching styles - with a teacher, mentor, or guide elevated on a pedestal delivering directions from above. I’m far more interested in the wild wisdom that lives and breathes in you and in me - in the kind of learning that unfolds through relationship, listening, and shared presence.

Of course, this kind of listening is easier spoken about than practiced. We can talk until the cows come home about all the ways this world could be different - but what does it look like to actually live in a way that honors the dream seeds within you?

For me, it begins by slowing down enough to hear - so our actions arise from this deeper place. If you’ve found yourself here, something in you likely already recognizes this. Welcome to you! May what you find here support you on this road less traveled.

Learn more about my professional training & teaching experience →

A woman with long blond hair, wearing a flowy dress, is standing amidst lush greenery and ferns in a forest, looking upward with her hand extended toward a large, old tree with thick, textured bark.
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A natural scene with large gray rocks, green foliage, and small plants growing among the rocks.
Painting of a sky with clouds and the silhouette of tree branches.
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How to work with me

If you are seeking intimate support and somatic healing → MENTORSHIP

If you long for communion with like-hearted folks and the earth → THE APOTHECARY

If you’re drawn to decoding and demystifying your dreams → THE DREAMING GARDEN

If you hold reverence for the sainted ones and holy helpers → SUMMER OF SAINTS

If your fast paced world calls for in-person connection and adventure→ RETREATS

If you wish for a bedside companion to dream even deeper → BOOK

If you love to curl up with a cup of tea and an online journal → JOURNAL

My wings
were not born

in the sky

The feathers
found me

In the darkest
depths of sea,

Beneath
sand & soot -

Buried,
like a burden.

A woman with long, curly blonde hair standing in a forest with tall trees and green foliage. She is holding a pink flower close to her face, partially covering one eye, and is smiling.

A glimpse of my inner world…

I am a listener, a lover of small, living worlds -
I am immersed in the beauty of being Nobody.
I tend to my garden and at times, I get to be fully immersed in listening - to land and trees, Fae and bees.

And still, this simple reality
does not dilute, dismiss, or deny
the immensity and travesty of these times.

A president posturing as if governance were a circus,
as if people’s lives were not at stake.

Children playing, learning, laughing -
and also practicing lockdown drills, hiding from shooters & raids, carrying futures they did not choose into a world growing hotter, harsher, more unstable.

The Earth continues to warm…
Oceans heat and swell.
Smoke and chemical haze swallow the sky.
Helicopters ferry water again and again~
to fires that keep on burning.

This is my present view.

I wonder: what is my future? Our future?
How will we meet this moment?
Will we root deeply enough to take powerful personal and collective action?
Many already are - some quietly,
others in ways that ask for great courage.

There are many ways to respond to these times -
protesting in the streets, making meals for those in need,
donating, storytelling, and bravely turning towards the places where this patterning lives within the shadows of psyche.

I believe the sickness in our society takes root there…
and this is where my listening leads me.

No matter what, I refuse to feed this day with doom.
I will keep seeking spaces where little me
becomes regenerative we.
No matter what, I will seek and share ways
to plant prayers of possibility.

madeline xo

Get to know more about me…

A black and white line drawing of a cat with a long tail and pointed ears, sitting upright.
  • The short-long story: how I got here

    I often say I’ve lived many lifetimes within this one - and I can tell you with certainty that I never imagined that this would be my vocation! Below is a sped-up synopsis of how I got here.

    If we rewind to 2009, you’d find me as a rose-colored-glasses-wearing, angel-loving college student, splitting my time between classes, parties, and angel conferences. At the time, I was majoring in journalism, following my dream to become a magazine editor in New York City.

    After graduating, I moved to New York and landed an internship at my dream magazine. I gave it everything and soon after received opportunities to write for the magazine, traveling internationally on press trips, and once even test-drove Bentleys through the Spanish countryside. From the outside, it looked glamorous. Lavish, even...a total dream opportunity. In many ways, it was! And yet, something in me started to feel subtly, persistently off.

    I remember imagining 5 years into the future… 10 years into the future… doing the same thing. And my heart asked a question I couldn’t unhear: How is this actually helping anyone?

    1/6

  • At 22, I walked away from the magazine world with no backup plan and no idea what came next.

    In the midst of that time, behind the scenes, my favorite thing to do was attend angel conferences and read books about angels. I called on them often, secretly attributing every opportunity to their presence. It felt like having unseen friends and guides who wanted the best for me. Still: I never imagined this would become part of my life’s work.

    After leaving the magazine (and turning towards angels in private) I hired a life coach who helped reroute the trajectory of my life. Maybe it was always meant to unfold this way - yet it wasn’t anything I could have planned. She encouraged me to apply to the University of Santa Monica, where I later earned my master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology. That choice brought me to Los Angeles, and into a season I now affectionately call The Nunnery.

    2/6

  • When I moved to Los Angeles, I began practicing an intense form of yoga and breathwork daily.

    My life took on a monastic quality - I was waking at 4 a.m., meditating for hours, praying constantly to be of service, asking to be guided in ways I could easily recognize and understand.

    And then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, the words Angelic Breath Healing arose in my consciousness. I saw myself offering breathwork classes with an invitation to connect with angels. I spent most of 2014 preparing, and on January 13, 2015, I taught my first public class. For the next few years, I taught weekly breathwork classes and offered 1:1 sessions rooted in my spiritual psychology training.

    And after about two years of this, a reckoning arrived. I had been studying with a spiritual teacher for years when I realized - behind the scenes - that the values behind the stage no longer aligned with my own. Leaving that community and world felt devastating. It initiated what felt like a dark night of the soul (or more accurately: dark night for the ego!)

    Even as I continued teaching, the ground I had been standing on began to shift, to fall, to crumble beneath me.

    3/6

  • What followed was a deeper unraveling - revealing how much I had placed authority outside of myself.

    The clarity I once trusted began to waver. The structures I had leaned on no longer held in the same way. I found myself in a space that felt disorienting and deeply honest - where I could no longer bypass my own knowing in favor of someone else’s voice… or follow external teachings that mapped out exactly how to do life.

    It may sound obvious that it was time to walk away - yet for me, there was grief and profound loss in this - of certainty, of identity, of belonging. At times, it was agonizing.

    From there, I grew increasingly disillusioned with New Age spirituality and stepped away from ways of being that dismissed the body and the human experience. I began to see how easily it could slip into spiritual bypassing - reaching for light while turning away from what was real, tender, unresolved. There was an undercurrent of harmful beliefs: that challenge was a sign of misalignment, that difficult emotions needed to be transcended rather than tended, that the body could be overridden in the name of “higher” truth.

    Over time, I could feel the cost of this. The ways it disconnected me from myself, from my instincts, from the very places within that were asking to be met with care.

    4/6

  • Over the next few years, I pivoted my training toward folk herbalism, trauma-informed care and somatic work.

    Body first, Earth first. This shift wasn’t a rejection of spirit, it felt like a truer integration of it. While I continued to teach Angelic Breath Healing classes, the center of my work began to change, orienting more toward somatic care, herbalism, and dreamwork.

    Through every threshold I’ve crossed, my relationship with the Divine has remained central. To me, the Divine is synonymous with the spirit of our hearts. I honor that each of us holds a personal relationship to what the Divine means - some shaped by disillusionment with organized religion, others by disappointment within New Age spirituality… some perhaps a weaving of both.

    I honor that there are many authentic ways of relating to the Divine, and that each person's path may unfold in its own language & path.

    My spirituality is one of relationship and reverence. I have a deep love for Our Lady and the saints, while also finding the Divine revealed through plants, trees, dreams, and Mother Earth. To me, they are not separate paths - they are different expressions of the same sacred presence. And with that said: while my faith practice deeply informs my work, my services are not about inviting others into my beliefs, it’s about creating space for each person to discover the wisdom of their own.

    5/6

  • I’ve learned the most through the hardest seasons. I never imagined I’d end up here - and yet, looking back, I can see how my soul wove the way.

    Amid all the change, centering Spirit has been my constant. What has evolved over the years is the shape of my work - and the depth of my discernment.

    I’ve found that fulfillment comes from living in harmony with what is stirring within. The most miraculous unfoldings in my life have come from following that subtle yet persistent inner guidance.

    I remain a devoted student of life - and 11 years into this vocation, I still hold a beginner’s mind and can also acknowledge that this isn’t my first rodeo! It is satisfying to feel seasoned in my work.

    I look toward the days, months, & moons ahead with humility and wonder.

    With love and respect for your inner voice (even & especially if it differs from my own),
    Madeline

    6/6

Cloudy sky with bright sunlight and soft pastel colors.
A dark painting with small gold stars scattered across a black background, and a view of a bridge and trees in the distance visible through a break in the scene.
Hands holding an open heart-shaped Bible with visible text and a page marker.

Heart Night of the Soul {a poem}

It may feel lonely, at first as you part
Yet you walk not alone,
You walk with your Heart.

The path of the Heart
Has no teachings, no rules.
It only asks:
Are you willing to be called a fool?

Fool of the heart,
Reigns supreme.
In the light of pure truth -
It’s your reason for being.

You walk not alone,
This path of the Heart.

Please trust your becoming,
Your becoming is art.

Ceiling mirror reflecting cloudy sky.
Close-up of an oval mirror reflecting part of a painting with a deity figure, arm, and green leaves on a textured beige wall.