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At My Altar with Dr. Trenda Lee is a podcast that explores the ways everyday people practice their spirituality. Join Trenda and her guests for honest conversations about their pathways to the divine and discover what that might look like for you. Someone else’s story might be your next spiritual practice.
Do you want to feel more connected to the divine, however you define that? Maybe your old practices don't fit anymore, or maybe you've always felt spiritual but never built a practice around it. I'm Trenda Lee, and I'm talking with everyday people about their spiritual practices. I invite you to join me as we explore Pathways to the Divine at my altar. Welcome to the first episode of At My Altar with Trenda Lee.
Trenda:I'm really happy you're here. May you receive whatever is on offer for you in my podcast, and may it bring you some joy. Before I introduce you to my first guest, I'm going to share a story about my personal altar. To begin with, I've only had an altar about two years, and I've actually only known two people who have them. One of them is one of my daughters who's had one for many years and the other is her close friend from high school who I also consider like a daughter.
Trenda:Her altar shows up every Dia de los Muertos and it's a beautiful tribute to her ancestors and her heritage. Up until a month ago, my altar was actually a shelf for shoes. I converted it into my personal sacred space by covering it with a special tablecloth. Initially, I placed on my altar a candle, a wooden box that holds my tarot cards, and a jar of rocks I picked up from the shores of the Azores Islands. Since then many things have come and gone on my altar except this jar of rocks.
Trenda:I went to the Azores Islands on a mission to face my fear of being alone. My marriage had recently ended and I realized at the age of 55 I had literally never lived alone my entire adult life. It was a deeply sad time for me and I knew in order to heal I needed to face this head on and the best way to do so would be to travel somewhere alone and feel all the feels. So off to the Azores Islands I went with my tiny little journal in tow. I'm a runner so every morning in The Azores I would get up and go for about an hour run.
Trenda:Running has always been a way in which I find my connection to the divine. So before my run, I'd put my tiny little journal and a pen in my running belt, readying myself to capture my awakenings about my fear of being alone. About a week into my two week trip, I'm realizing I'm not feeling lonely at all. In fact, I'm feeling exhilarated. So I start thinking to myself, okay, Trenda, you're here to face your fear of being alone.
Trenda:Like, let's get to it. Dig deep. Three days pass and I'm still feeling more alive and centered and deeply connected to myself and my divinity than ever before. Sure enough, three days before I'm about to leave I'm on a run and I have what feels like a panic attack. My heart's racing, I'm shaking, my palms are sweating, I feel like I might pass out.
Trenda:So I find this sweet little bakery and I sit down, grab a cup of tea, grab my journal, and start writing. And then I start balling and this huge revelation comes to me. The revelation was that the only time I have actually felt deeply alone was in my marriage. That it wasn't the fear of being alone that I needed to face but rather the need to not lose myself when I'm in an intimate relationship. The day I was leaving the Azores I went to a shoreline that had become very sacred for me.
Trenda:The Azores are these beautiful islands formed from volcanoes. So black lava rocks called basalt are scattered all over the shoreline. So I asked the earth if I could take home a few small basalt rocks and place them in a jar to remind me of the lesson I learned about being fully present in my divinity and in myself. These rocks have become part of my spiritual practice. Almost like beads are in some traditions.
Trenda:They ground me. They are a veritable mantra or consistent prayer for me. So having an altar is new for me but when I sit at it and I light my candle and I invite my ancestors to join me and I see my jar of Azores rocks my body and spirit know I'm about to begin my spiritual practice. In this first episode my guest is this beautiful soul and he completely surprises me as he becomes the third person I now know with an altar. I can't wait for you to hear all about it.
Trenda:Here's the interview. I am so excited to talk to my guest today, Tyler Smith Coppes. He's a therapist and horse medicine guide with the help of his beautiful four legged friends. Welcome, Tyler.
Tyler:Thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.
Trenda:Let's start off to help me understand your spirituality a little bit. When is a time that you have felt just deeply spiritual or maybe even a first time you've felt spiritual?
Tyler:Yeah, it's a beautiful question. I think for me, I feel the most spiritual when I'm sitting silently in a pasture around the horses, listening, observing, and interacting with them, and just really being a witness to the natural world. To me, when there's a heart to heart connection with a horse, language isn't a thing. To me, they're my greatest teachers, and they continuously remind me to be present.
Trenda:Yeah. Yeah. Everyone has a horse story, right? Mean, at
Savana:some point, you're gonna tell you,
Trenda:I love horses. I'm afraid of horses. What's your horse story? How did this come to be for you?
Tyler:Oh, it was so random. A few years back, I ended up getting a big tattoo on my back, and there's three horses right in the middle. And since then, I just started paying more attention to horses. And so I just started seeking them out. And
Tyler:that's really how it started.
Trenda:I love it. I've watched your TikToks, and one of them was so funny. I just laughed from the deepest part
Trenda:of my belly. I mean, it was
Trenda:so great because when you were saying sometimes they're just gonna start doing what they wanna do when you're recording them. So one of them is, like, nibbling on your shoulder. The other one is just all up in your chest and face. And there's one that you're really being serious, having your conversation is a dead on, straight on shot of the horse, then all of sudden you just pan down and you see that it's peeing and has been
Trenda:peeing this whole It's And
Trenda:the lesson about just finding the joy in whatever the moment comes is just amazing. I can see why you call it horse medicine. Yeah,
Tyler:I mean, horse medicine kind of encapsulates the exchange. They are carrying medicine, and we can learn from that.
Trenda:I can imagine you've done a ton of your own personal healing. There's some people that I've interviewed for the podcast that their work is also part of their spirituality. Is that true for you?
Tyler:Absolutely. Yeah, it's absolutely true. I work in traumatic grief, and my spirituality is really tied in with the natural world. And so I get to be in the setting where I'm interacting with animals and people and being a witness to people's tremendous pain and seeing the ways in which the animals there who are like rescues, they've also been through tremendous pain. But when you get these beings together, there's an exchange that occurs where they see each other, they understand each other.
Tyler:I believe that pain can be such a transmutable emotion for spiritual growth. And so in my work, I'm seeing people in this place and seeing how they're choosing to integrate spirituality into their own lives. I don't know. To me, every day just feels like such an honor.
Trenda:There are so many stories that are coming to my head right now. When I first met you, it was at a wedding, and I had just recently gotten divorced. It was the first outing I went to by myself after almost twenty years of always having a plus one and being with somebody. I just told myself to dig deep and rise up off the knees I had been on for months and brought myself to the wedding. Didn't last very long, but I made it around the room.
Trenda:I remember saying hi to you. I remember talking to you. I went back to my car. I started balling, And then I balled some more, and I balled some more. But I knew I'd met the people I was meant to meet.
Trenda:And so I feel so grateful to be coming full circle with you. And when you talk about that pain and how we heal from that pain, the other story that comes up is I knew I could not be in my house alone. It was getting too emotionally dark for me.
Tyler:Yeah, yeah.
Trenda:And so for the first time in my life, I got a cat. Warmth and heartbeat and goddamn, she understood me the day I picked her up, and I understood her the day I picked her up. I mean, to this day, I am so deeply grateful, I continue to heal with her.
Tyler:I love that. That's so beautiful. And I really do believe that when we care for another being, it's not only helpful to that other being, but it's healing to us as well. And I've always thought that there's something about service to others that feels spiritual in nature. It's like we're transcending the self and making ourselves available to the collective.
Trenda:Tell me a little bit about how you intentionally practice your spirituality. Do you have any specific rituals or practices?
Tyler:To me, it comes down to a few different things, like presence, mindfulness, intention, and awareness. I do have altar space here in my home where I'll light the Palo Santo. I'll light the incense, but what I'm really trying to do is just come back to the heart. And so I love to start my mornings that way. It doesn't work out that way every morning, but I find when I can bring intention to as many moments throughout the day as possible or bring awareness or mindfulness in, that's when I feel the most spiritually full.
Trenda:How do you do that? What does checking in with yourself look like? How do you know, and then what do you do?
Tyler:For me at this point, if I go a long time without checking in with myself, I feel tension. So it's almost like a rubber band is being pulled until it's like, okay. Hold up. I need to take a minute, breathe. Typically, I'll do use a body stick or something simple where I just bring awareness to my fingertips or my toes or any part of the body, really.
Trenda:Say a little more about your altar. I don't think altars are real common. I don't know a lot of people who have an altar, so I am, like, zoning in right now on you. And I'm so
Trenda:excited about it. How do
Trenda:you use it? What do you put on it? What does it mean to you? Where exactly in your home is it? What does it look like?
Tyler:Absolutely. I can describe it for you right now as I'm looking at it. So I've got a nice meditation cushion on the ground. And then there's this two foot by two foot square table. Stands about six inches off the ground.
Tyler:I've got a couple of crystals. I've got a few Buddha statues, some deer antlers, a lot of candles, an incense burner, a lot of things to burn. Got some, like, stone angels, some other little dishes. But I have it in front of a mirror, like a big, tall mirror. And so when I sit at it, I'm face to face with myself.
Trenda:With yourself.
Tyler:Mhmm.
Trenda:Wow. That is powerful.
Tyler:It's really interesting because I haven't had a mirror set up until the past seven months or so. But it's been a really profound experience where I'm face to face with myself and it gives me this new sense of compassion for, like, my own experience.
Trenda:Oh my gosh. I love everything about this right now. Teaching me so much. Thank you. So you said in the morning, you tried to sit at your altar.
Trenda:Is that what you try to do every day?
Tyler:I'd say most days. I would say the time where I'm most consistent with it is after I've been working with others. Like, both after and before sessions with clients. To me it feels important to prepare for that heavy work spiritually, not only mentally, but going into people's deep trauma with them. So I want to make sure I'm spiritually fit and clear so that I'm not impacting their spiritual experience in ways that they might not even see.
Tyler:And then afterwards, since we are going into such deep places, I return home, then that's my turn to clear the residual energy from the day.
Trenda:Just There so is a human in this world that is doing this. I feel so good about it. I've never thought about putting a mirror on the other side of my altar. Wow, is that profound. I think I want to try that.
Trenda:Thank you so much. What an incredible teaching. Sometimes I will put things on my altar that they're just there for a time being. Like, somebody might give me something. I might receive a letter.
Trenda:I found a picture of an old, like, auntie or something. I'll put it on my altar just to let it be in a sacred space for a while. And then I have to decide, when does it come off? And I have started wondering, is there a ritual I could do or a question I could ask to say, Okay, the time is done. I know I had a ton of intention putting it on, but taking it off has always felt a little unceremonial, Yeah, absolutely.
Trenda:Do you do something when you remove something from your altar?
Tyler:I really just follow my intuition when it comes to that sort of thing. I guess now that I'm looking at my altar, I can't remember the last time I took something off. I do love to rearrange it though. I think ritual and ceremony are always helpful, you know, when there's any sort of transition.
Trenda:I'm thanking my ancestors right now for bringing us back together at my altar. So thank you so much, Tyler.
Tyler:Thank you so much for having me. It feels so good to connect. Talked about the conversation we had a while ago, and I was just revisiting that in my mind last night. It's yeah, it feels good to come full circle.
Trenda:All my best to you.
Tyler:Beautiful.
Trenda:Wow. What an interview. I am all goosebumps in love right now. I can't wait to talk to my daughter, Savana, about it. Let's give her a call.
Trenda:Hello, Savana. Hello. How are you?
Savana:I'm doing well. How are you?
Trenda:So good now that I'm talking to you. Okay. I'm gonna tell you a story, and then I'm gonna tell you who I talk to.
Savana:Okay.
Trenda:So I'm a single mom, and I have to find, like, day care opportunities for you during the summer. So the first summer, the only camp that was open was the Concordia Language Village Spanish camp up in in Northern Minnesota. So I send you and Sydney off there for a week. You are miserable. Miserable.
Trenda:Sydney shined, of course. Now she is fluent Spanish speaker. She only speaks Spanish in her home with her kid. All of the things. Right?
Trenda:But you were miserable. And so your grandma told me she needs an animal. She needs to go to a camp with an animal. This camp in the middle of Minnesota had a two week session for your age, and I feel like you might have been seven. I'm really nervous I signed you up, so now it's time to go.
Trenda:And I drop you off at horse camp, and I come back two weeks later to pick you up, and I can't find you. I can't find you.
Trenda:I'm like, Savvy. Savvy. Savvy.
Trenda:I'm just wandering that camp, trying my best to find you. And then I realize you have been feet in front of me the whole time. So here is my little city girl.
Trenda:She's
Trenda:got cowboy boots on, jeans. They're all dirty. You've got a bandana somewhere weird. Your hair is, like, braided in a way. I've never seen it braided.
Trenda:You're kinda dirty, like you hadn't showered in a week. And there you were.
Trenda:You were right in front of me. Was like, oh my god. I saw Savana. There you are.
Trenda:And you were in your element. I mean, you loved it.
Savana:Oh my god. Loved it. I know. My
Trenda:guest my guest's name is Tyler. He is literally your age. He's 33 years old. He has his master's in counseling, and he does counseling with horses.
Savana:No way.
Trenda:Yeah. Way. Way. My gosh. He's one of the most gentle souls ever.
Trenda:And he does TikToks, kind of like thoughts of the day, but he has his horses with him. Oh my gosh.
Savana:He has I love it so much. Okay. Number one, I have to look at his social media because I need to follow that immediately. I went to that horse camp. That was, like, the beginning of my life.
Savana:I would go for three weeks, four weeks, then an entire summer. When I tell people now that I was a horse girl growing up, they they're like, what? What?
Trenda:Yeah. Totally.
Savana:Like, every time I went to the ranch, nothing else mattered. Horses in particular are so striking, and they have such a presence. It's hard not to be, like, in the moment with them. I do miss it. I don't always miss, like, the actual riding.
Savana:Like, I do love riding, but my favorite part of horse camp was actually packing up the horse, which is putting on their blanket and their saddle and their bridle and cleaning their hooves and doing all of the maintenance and preparation for riding. That's where you get to bond and build trust with the horse. I really miss that. Being with the horse and learning their body language, you have to talk to them and soothe them while you're tacking them up, and I miss that piece. That's where you really build the connection with the horse.
Trenda:Can you imagine working with them every day and getting to know them so well and then introducing them to your clients that you're working with? See, bringing those two energies together Yeah. Seems and Tyler's energy. Holy cats. He's the exact right person to be doing this.
Savana:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. There's a term called in vivo therapy, which really just means therapy in real life. So rather than doing it in a confined, space, you are actively practicing therapeutic work in the real world.
Savana:And I think just being in in that experience is so enriching. It can be so healing for a lot of people. That sounds so cool. I need to go look him up.
Trenda:So cool. No. You definitely will want to, and it is spiritual. Even his TikToks or reels are I'm old. I can't remember what you call them.
Trenda:But even when you watch them, it's like a daily devotional.
Savana:Like That's so cool. Okay. I have one more thing, and then I have to go. But I just realized, mom, that, you know, my horse painting that's in my kitchen? And I've had it for probably ten years now.
Savana:I love that painting. It's like a huge painting of a horse's head. And I just realized I was like, oh my god. I haven't been around horses in a really long time. Like, I don't go to the ranch anymore, but I still have this giant horse painting in my house.
Savana:Anyway, I don't know. I just felt the need to share that that it just dawned on me. That maybe that's a spiritual thing for me. I don't know.
Trenda:Yeah. That energy is right there in your life.
Savana:It's it was gifted to me from somebody, and I have always had it as, like, my main centerpiece in every home that we've lived in. I love it even though it doesn't always go aesthetically with anything. Anyway, whatever. My point is I'm having a realization that might be more meaningful than I've realized. Fair.
Trenda:I bet if we all took a look at what we hang on our walls, you know, the things we put on our tables and around us have some spiritual meaning whether we think about it or not.
Savana:Yeah. Love
Trenda:you, mama.
Savana:Love you too, mom. Talk to you later. See you soon. Bye. Bye.
Trenda:Thank you for listening to At My Altar with Trenda Lee. A special thanks to my guest, Smith Coppes. I'm so inspired by him. I'm actually going to try those short check ins throughout the day to keep my mind, heart, and spirit aligned. Living with intentionality is a spiritual practice.
Trenda:I also encourage you to start your own altar, and if you already have one, maybe put a mirror behind it and see how it goes. If you're inspired to try some of these practices, you can find more information about Tyler within the show notes and follow him on TikTok the integrated shadow. You can also find all of my episodes and download my free guide for spiritual practices at my website at myaltar.love. At My Altar is hosted by me, Trenda Lee, with producers Cecilia Stanton Adams, Charlie Mitchell, and me, Trenda Lee. Original music by Charlie Mitchell and website photos and logo design by Irina Toponte at Toponte Studios.
Trenda:Special thanks to my beautiful daughter Savannah. At My Altar With Trenda Lee can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you've always felt spiritual and want to find more pathways to the divine, join me for another episode of at my altar with Trenda Lee. Until then, I'll see you on the love grid.