About the Founder: Daniela Gargiulo
Daniela is the founder of Soul to Soul Harmony Church, a sanctuary dedicated to integrating sacred medicine, breathwork, Tantra, trauma healing, and community. Her personal journey of healing and spiritual awakening led her to establish this church in alignment with religious freedom protections, with a long-term vision to expand access to sacred healing practices for those called to this work.
Daniela was born in London and spent her early childhood in a remote Sicilian village, where her family lived off the land—growing their own food, butchering their own meat, and making wine by hand. At age nine, she moved to the United States, carrying the imprint of three very different worlds. These contrasting landscapes shaped her identity and planted the early seeds of resilience, sensitivity, and depth.
Though she appeared high-achieving on the outside, Daniela’s inner world told a different story. Her childhood and teenage years were marked by sexual trauma, emotional chaos, and the instability of a violent home. These early wounds left her feeling disconnected from her body, stuck in survival mode, and quietly burdened by anxiety and depression.
As a teenager, she turned to fitness and physical discipline as a way to cope. She became a certified personal trainer at 17 and later competed in bodybuilding. While her body grew stronger, her inner world remained fragile. Years of pushing herself physically led to hormonal imbalance, burnout, and emotional collapse. She was surviving, not thriving.
Seeking deeper healing, Daniela began working with a functional health coach to restore her physical health. But as her body started to repair, she realized that true healing couldn’t come from supplements or structure alone. Her nervous system still held the imprints of trauma. Her spirit was still searching for peace.
This realization opened the door to a more profound journey.
She began exploring EMDR, LENS neurofeedback, and somatic psychotherapy. While these approaches offered valuable support, Daniela felt called to a more integrative path that honored the body, the spirit, and the sacred. She moved to Hawaii to deepen this healing, immersing herself in Ketamine-assisted therapy, plant medicine, Chinese medicine, and Ayurveda.
What followed was a deep journey of healing that took her across the world. She became a full-time nomad, living in 13 countries and studying ancient, embodied ways of healing. It was through sacred medicine, breathwork, Tantra, and devotional practice that she finally began to feel at home in herself, in her body, her heart, and her purpose.
Today, Daniela is a trauma-informed practitioner, ceremony guide, and somatic facilitator. With over 1000 hours of accredited training through multiple internationally recognized schools in breathwork, Tantra, and nervous system healing, she offers sacred medicine ceremonies, shamanic and rebirthing breathwork, trauma integration, retreats, and somatic embodiment sessions. Her work is deeply rooted in her continued apprenticeship with sacred indigenous medicines and traditions, honoring the lineages that have guided her path and inform the ceremonial spaces she holds.
Her work is not just a profession. It is a prayer.
Daniela considers herself a vessel for this work and surrenders to the intelligence of these medicines and modalities. She believes that God, Spirit, and the wisdom of the Earth move through her to support the remembrance and restoration of those she serves.
She believes healing happens in safe, sacred community — soul to soul. When we are truly seen, when our stories are honored, and when our nervous systems feel safe enough to soften, we begin to return to the essence of who we are.
To create these spaces is a privilege. To serve these sacred modalities is an honor.
Daniela offers her work in reverence to the mystery, to the body, and to the soul's capacity to heal.
Meet Melissa Gargiulo (Shamama)
Melissa BSN, RN, BA, CHPN, CDS, s a hospice nurse, mother, and woman of deep faith whose life has been shaped by creativity, caregiving, resilience, and healing. Through both her personal journey and her work beside those nearing the end of life, she has developed a profound reverence for compassion, forgiveness, and the quiet courage it takes to begin again.
She was raised in a loving, hardworking family where music and faith were woven into everyday life. Although her family had little materially, their home was rich in gratitude, devotion, and love. Her father worked six days a week to support the family, while her mother lovingly made most of their clothes. From them, she learned that a meaningful life is built not through possessions, but through faith, perseverance, and care for one another.
At eleven, she began studying ballet to strengthen her back after being diagnosed with scoliosis—and to channel the endless energy she carried as a child. She often felt awkward and out of place, but singing, dancing, and acting gradually gave her a language for the emotions she could not yet express in words.
Her love of performing eventually carried her to Europe, where she joined a variety show. Young, adventurous, and openhearted, she approached this new chapter with an unwavering belief in the goodness of others. At twenty-three, shortly after arriving in London, she met the man who would become the father of her daughters. After several years of performing, they married and welcomed Marie and Daniela into their lives.
The family later moved to Sicily, requiring her to leave behind nearly everything familiar—her culture, language, religious community, independence, and support system. The transition was deeply isolating. Because alcohol had never been part of her childhood home, she had little understanding of alcohol misuse or the ways it could affect a person, a marriage, and an entire family. She was unprepared for the instability that followed and did not yet have the language to recognize what was happening around her.
Over time, her marriage became a source of deep emotional pain, fear, and instability. Alcohol compounded patterns of behavior that left her feeling isolated, diminished, and afraid. While she does not wish to speak negatively about her children’s father—and holds grace for the histories and struggles that shape every person—she now recognizes that some of what she experienced was abusive.
For many years, she devoted herself to protecting her family and persevering through circumstances she hoped would improve. Like many people living within difficult relationships, she believed that patience, faith, and determination might be enough to overcome the challenges they faced. In the process, however, she gradually lost her confidence and sense of self.
Eventually, she and her daughters returned to the United States. Following her divorce, she faced not only financial hardship but a profound loss of identity. After years of feeling unseen, shame and worthlessness had become so familiar that she struggled to remember who she was beyond them.
Becoming a hospice nurse gave her life a renewed sense of purpose. Walking alongside people and their families during life’s final chapter taught her lasting lessons about compassion, courage, forgiveness, and what matters most. Raising her daughters remained the greatest privilege of her life. Even during her darkest seasons, they gave her a reason to continue.
Years later, she began working alongside her daughter Daniela and experiencing the healing practices Daniela introduced into her life. Slowly, something that had felt immovable began to soften. The shame, pain, and feelings of unworthiness she had carried for decades started to loosen their hold. Healing did not happen overnight, and she understands that it remains an unfolding journey, but for the first time in many years, she began to feel genuine hope.
Having grown up within a deeply religious environment, she once understood faith through clearly defined boundaries. Her healing journey has expanded that understanding, teaching her that God often moves in ways far greater than she previously imagined. Through this process, she has experienced profound changes in her heart, mind, body, and spirit. She laughs more easily, receives joy more freely, and feels more fully alive.
Today, she chooses to remember every chapter of her life not with bitterness, but with gratitude. The hardships she endured strengthened her faith, shaped her resilience, and deepened her capacity to meet others with compassion. She cannot change the past, but she can honor it by telling her story with honesty, dignity, grace, and respect—especially for the daughters who gave her the courage to keep moving forward.
Her story is a reminder that it is never too late to heal. No matter how long shame, fear, or pain have been carried, restoration remains possible. Sometimes it begins with a single conversation, a safe place to be seen, and the willingness to believe that life can become beautiful again.
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