How to Heal the World in Partnership with Dolphins & Whales with Anne Gordon

Kathi: As promised, I'm with the remarkable Anne Gordon. We're going to talk about whales and dolphins and spirituality and how to really find your way in life doing what you love, because Anne's been a master at that. So thanks for joining me, Anne. I'm excited to have you.

Anne: Thanks for having me, Kathi. It's always a pleasure to hang out with you.

Kathi: Absolutely. So, okay, we have to talk about this backstory. Have you always been hanging out and swimming with the dolphins? Tell me a little bit about your background and why you're doing what you're doing today. And then we're going to tell people what she's doing, which is going to be quite exciting.

Anne: Awesome. Thank you. And we'll try and make this short, the Reader's Digest version. It's not always been dolphins and whales. Well, it started with dolphins and whales, because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, right on the water, in Olympia, Washington. My dad had a boat. Many weekends, every summer vacation, was on the water, and that was watching orca whales. So they'd been in my life since very, very young. But in college, I studied biology, animal behavior. I got a job as a zookeeper at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. I was actually the first woman to work in the carnivore department, mainly not because of anything other than sheer strength. They didn't think a woman was strong enough to lift the big, heavy guillotine doors in the bear grotto. But I managed. I figured out a way. And then I went from the zoo and I started training wild animals and taking them out to schools and doing educational outreach programs to teach people a respect for wildlife. I had a variety of animals. I had a wolf and a raccoon and a fox, but I also had a tiger, a lion, a cougar, and did educational outreach. And then, as I was doing that, I realized there was nobody in the Pacific Northwest providing animals for movies and television. So I became a big fish in a small pond of the film business, where I was the only one, and so I got all the calls.

Kathi: Wow.

Anne: From local little newspaper insert ads to national car commercials to shows like Northern Exposure and Twin Peaks. And then I started getting brought all over. I did Legends of the Fall and Vanilla Sky, Home for the Holidays, Homeward Bound. So I did that for over 20 years.

Kathi: I had no idea, Anne. Wow.

Anne: Well, and so as I was doing that, I got a call to work on a film that was shooting in Panama, and that film was hiring a local tribe of indigenous people to be the actors on the film. So I went down to Panama in January 2004. This tribe of indigenous people still live out in the jungle as they have for millennia, and they were the warmest, most loving people. Everybody on the crew fell in love with who they are as a people. Even the most crusty grips, everybody's heart was touched and softened. And as fate would have it, I ended up marrying one of them.

Kathi: That's awesome. In Panama?

Anne: In Panama. So we met, we fell in love. He was one of the actors on the set that was hired just for that. He and I fell in love, and so I ended up moving back down there to be with him, and I ended up living in Panama for 15 years.

Kathi: Wow.

Anne: And so the cool thing was, spending time in the village with him and his family was amazing. We lived outside the village, because I realized, I'm here in Panama, but there's almost zero film industry. So it's like, I can't do that anymore. But his family, the village, survived on tourism, and I realized pretty quickly that almost every tour was English-speaking, and they were fascinated by my story of being married into the tribe, of course. And as a foreigner, I knew what they were interested in hearing about. The Panamanian guides are amazing. They're really great, and some of them are very dear friends now. But I knew the tribe more intimately than they did, because I was married in.

Kathi: Right. Right.

Anne: I had this really unique perspective. So I started working as a freelance tour guide. And then I thought, well, that was okay, but it wasn't quite enough money coming in. So I started a tour company, the only one in the country that was focused entirely on the tribe, because others were more generic: city tours and canal tours and every other kind of tour, plus the village. So I started doing really well with that.

Kathi: Now, hold on. On the tribe?

Anne: In the tribe.

Kathi: Oh, tribe. Okay, got it.

Anne: But as I was in Panama, I'm thinking, I'm in a country with two oceans 50 miles apart. We've got to have dolphins and whales. What kind do we have? What species? And how do I get out to see them? It actually took me two years of asking to finally figure out that Panama is one of the only areas in the world where you get humpback whales from the northern and the southern hemisphere coming to breed and give birth.

Kathi: Oh, that's interesting.

Anne: Which is really interesting. And nobody was doing whale watching. This little blonde, blue-eyed, green foreigner pioneered the whale watching industry in the country of Panama.

Kathi: Yay.

Anne: Which was a bit of an uphill battle, because nobody knew we had whales.

Kathi: Oh, that's surprising.

Anne: I know. There was an education process, even amongst the locals. I would tell people that I do whale watching tours, and they'd look at me and they'd say, "We have whales?"

Kathi: Now, that's in the Pacific, right? They don't come into the Caribbean?

Anne: Correct. That's the Pacific side.

Kathi: Okay.

Anne: They said, "Aren't they dangerous fish?" It's like, well, they're not dangerous and they're not fish.

Kathi: Yeah. Exactly.

Anne: And so that's where I rekindled my love with the cetaceans, dolphins and whales. And then I realized, after doing the day tours, whale watching, I thought, this is fun, but, pardon the pun, I wanted to dive deeper into connection with my clients as well as the whales and the dolphins we had. And so that's when I created my Whale and Dolphin Wisdom Retreats, in 2007.

Everything I wanted to do, nobody else was doing.

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Kathi: Wow. That was all stuff I did not know about you, Anne. Oh my goodness gracious. Girl, you are the expert of all experts as far as this goes. That's amazing. I've talked to you offline about Panama, too. But what is the tribe that you used to give tours to?

Anne: The tribe that I married into is called the Emberá. It's E-M-B-E-R-A, accent on the A. And they are amazing, beautiful people inside and out. Everybody is touched by them, even if you just go for a day tour. Very, very special people. Now, I am no longer married, and I'm not living in Panama anymore. As you know, I'm just an hour north of you in Southern California. But my ex-husband and I are very good friends. I'm still in touch with his family, as best as we can be, because there's no cell signal in the jungle. But they're still in a very, very special place in my heart.

Kathi: That's amazing. So they're in the jungle, so they're not on either of the coasts, right? So you used to have to go to the Pacific coast to do the tours?

Anne: We lived in the suburbs of Panama City, which is on the Pacific coast, and that's where most people are when they come in as tourists, in their hotels. Pick them up, drive them halfway across the country, and then you have to go up the river in a dugout canoe. You can't drive a car to the village.

Kathi: Love, love, love that. I've been to Costa Rica several times, and it was the same way at one place. You could only get there by boat back when I went there the first time. Love that. That's fantastic. So it sounds like you've really been a serial entrepreneur for a very, very long time, blazing the trails on your own. You've been communing with the dolphins and whales for quite some time, and you said that you wanted to really help people deepen their connection with themselves. What happens on a retreat, when people decide, I'm going to go see the dolphins with Anne, I'm going to go hang out with the whales?

Anne: I'm going to come back to that, because I want to respond to what you said in the first part of that sentence, which was serial entrepreneur.

Kathi: Yes.

Anne: I never had a desire, like many people do: I want to own my own business. No, I had no interest. However, everything I wanted to do, nobody else was doing. And so that was the only way to do it, starting back with doing the educational outreach programs in the Seattle area. Nobody was doing it. So that was when I started my first business, and then I shifted to the film business, and then shifted to the village tours, and then the whale watching tours. And now, of course, as you know, I'm no longer in Panama, but I'm doing my retreats all over the world. I just got back a few days ago from French Polynesia, leading a retreat swimming with humpback whales. We go all over the world. So now, to respond to your question: what do we do on a retreat? Of course, it depends on where we're going and who we're there to be with. But the purpose of the retreat is, number one, experiential. It is to spend as much time in the physical with dolphins or whales, whether we are swimming with wild dolphins in the Bahamas, swimming with humpback whales in French Polynesia or sperm whales in Dominica, or coming to be with the gray whales in Mexico, where they literally come right up to the boat and lift up and let us touch them and kiss them. Or straight observation: I'll be leaving soon to go on my annual Spirit of the Orca retreat, back to where I began. We're all boat-based, observational, with the orca whales. So we spend as much time as we can on or in the water with them. But I also add, because along all of that journey I also became a certified dolphin energy healer. And through that, when I'm working with a client, what comes through for me is a pretty steady stream of visions and messages from the dolphins or whales for my client.

Kathi: Wow. You're a translator.

Anne: I'm a translator. And so I have years and years worth of messages, because I was certified in 2005. So I have decades of messages. They're all written down. I've got them all. I've learned them all. I've lived them all, applied them to my life. So I share those on my retreats. So we get not only a physical but a spiritual connection, learning what I call dolphin or whale wisdom, to apply to my clients' lives. And I lead guided meditations and group energy healings. And so it connects my clients to the dolphins or whales. It connects them to their own soul, to their heart. When you're in the presence of a dolphin or whale, the beauty is it is impossible to think about anything else but that present moment, which is where you reconnect to your passion, to your soul's purpose. And being immersed in nature and in their energy is such a powerful, transformational experience that can be life-changing.

When you're in the presence of a dolphin or whale, it is impossible to think about anything else but that present moment.

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Kathi: I can totally see that. That's so funny that you're a hesitant business owner, although an entrepreneurial spirit for sure, a trailblazer. What have you found that helps you keep your business on track? What kind of tools do you use to stay organized, because you're literally all around the world, all over the place?

Anne: There's a couple things I do. I'm not very numbers-oriented. However, I have taught myself Excel spreadsheets, and so I have budgets for my retreats. I have a participant list. Somebody books, I immediately put them on: what they paid, what they owe, whether they want a single room or a share, all that stuff. I keep all of that. I'm very organized about that. What you don't see here is that on this side I have a yearly planner with all of my 2025 retreats on the wall. Over here is all my 2026. Up above that I have a dry-erase board with a bubble chart. There are circles, bubbles, for the number of places on every retreat. The minute somebody's booked, it's filled in, so I know. And I number them backwards. So I just booked the sixth person on my second week for swimming with dolphins in the Bahamas for June '26, which means I can look at that and it instantly tells me I have 14 places left.

Kathi: Right. Right.

Anne: So I try to stay super organized in all of that. The other thing that I do is this. With a retreat-based business, I can have people book more than a year in advance, and of course they book by paying a deposit or paying in full. And I learned the hard way that if I just had one basic business bank account for all my money, that was not good, because all the business expenses, everything, would get all jumbled up. So I have a separate account for my retreats.

Kathi: Yep.

Anne: And if they're more than a year out, I have a third account for those. And so with all my retreat expenses, I never get shortchanged anymore. The deposits go in there, and they stay there until the retreat needs that money.

They stay there until the retreat needs that money.

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Kathi: Love it. Love it. That's very organized. I love what you do with all of that. Now, what I'm thinking to myself as you're saying all this: what if Anne's not in her office? Where are those charts? Are they somewhere in your digital life?

Anne: The charts? Well, there are also the participant spreadsheets, and the laptop goes with me everywhere except on the boat. So I can easily pull up those spreadsheets. If I get a booking and I'm not home and I can't fill out my bubble chart, then I will put it on the spreadsheet and then fill it out when I get home.

Kathi: Got it. Got it. So you're so accomplished, and you've done so many fantastic things. What advice would you give people who have a passion but haven't really figured out how they can apply that passion to the world? What type of advice would you give them?

Anne: Well, it may sound a little counterintuitive, and a business adviser might think I'm crazy, but number one, from day one, I have always followed my heart, despite lots of naysayers. When I left the zoo to start my own business doing the educational outreach programs, my dad was like, why are you doing that? You've got all the benefits, you've got all the security, the retirement program. And when I said to him, but I'm not happy, he couldn't argue with that. And again, when I moved to Panama and left my busy film career, my ex-husband was much younger than me. He had a sixth-grade education, because that's all that was given in the jungle. We didn't even speak the same language when we met.

Kathi: Wow. That's love.

Anne: It should not have worked. But it really did, for 15 years. It was beautiful. And so, have I had a lot of challenges because I followed my heart? Absolutely. Has it been super easy? No, not always. But here's the thing. I have zero regrets about any of those major decisions.

Kathi: Because you followed your heart.

Anne: Because I followed my heart. And if it didn't work out, I gave it a try. And yes, my marriage did not last, but I had 15 amazing years, and like I said, we're still very good friends.

I have zero regrets about any of those major decisions.

Kathi: That's fantastic. If you had to give your 18-year-old self some advice, what would you tell her now?

Anne: I think the only thing that I would probably change would be at 18, and nobody in high school these days, or when we were kids especially, learns financial planning. I would have loved to have started being smart about investing and saving back then. I've never spent frivolously, and most of my investments have been in myself, in trainings and coachings and so on, and they've paid off. But I don't have a big retirement account sitting there. That would have been nice, had I known how to do that then.

Kathi: That's great advice. I feel the same exact way, and I feel that it's really, really needed and necessary for high school, and absolutely for college. I think high school should have financial planning and budgeting, more so than just Math 101, because we don't know about any of that. The same thing with retirement: who cares, I'm 18.

Anne: Yeah.

Kathi: Talk to them about whatever. Even if you make it current, make it cryptocurrency, whatever it is.

Anne: Right. Exactly. Just be aware of what is coming down the road, and do a little bit of planning, if anything.

Kathi: Yeah. So, I love your calendar, by the way. I know you have a calendar that has some of your wisdom on it. And I know that you have a website that we're going to drop in the show notes. And you also have a meditation that everybody gets to download. So let's talk about the meditation a little bit.

Anne: Sure. Well, if you are intrigued and you love dolphins and/or whales, you're going to love this. This is a guided meditation. It's about 20, 25 minutes or so, where I lead you to meet your personal dolphin spirit guide. And everybody who wants one can have one.

Kathi: Sign me up.

Anne: Yep. It's right there. It's free. It's downloadable, and you can do it multiple times. And I will lead you through to meet them, to find out what their name is, to create a connection, to receive messages. And then you can continue that relationship for as long as you want.

Kathi: That's fantastic. So do you find that you end up with the same spirit guide over and over again, or do they swap out? I guess it depends on where you are in life.

Anne: It does depend on where you are in life. And yes, there are some I have that keep showing up. And then every once in a while it's like, oh, who are you? Okay, let's explore this.

Kathi: That's so cool. I can just imagine that it would just be about joy and love. Those are the main messages?

Anne: Joy and love. That's a lot of it. That's a lot of it. What they like to say is that we humans like to really complicate things.

Kathi: Guilty as charged.

Anne: Yeah. That's just part of being human. But they've been on this planet for 30 million years, living in harmony, and we humans have been here about 250,000. We're the new kids on the block, and there's a lot we can learn from them.

We're the new kids on the block, and there's a lot we can learn from them.

Kathi: I agree with that wholeheartedly. Wow. Okay, I'm going to do that one. So what should I have asked you? What did we miss talking about?

Anne: I would say something that I get asked a lot is if I could share a story of a profound transformation of someone on my retreats. And I have such a beautiful story that I never get tired of sharing it. That is, on my gray whale retreat in Baja, Mexico, I had a woman come who booked the retreat. I had never met her, and that happens a lot. I've got a big list. I got a booking today from someone who wasn't even on my email list. I don't even know how you found me, but okay. So anyway, she came on this retreat, and she enjoyed the retreat. She had a good time, but she didn't share a whole lot about herself until the final day, the closing circle of the retreat. And she shared with us that seven years prior, her husband and the family dog had been killed in a horrible car accident, where the car burst into flames and they could not escape. And she was two cars behind and saw the whole thing.

Kathi: Oh, man. I just got chills.

Anne: I would get chills telling the story.

Kathi: I can't imagine the horror of that.

Anne: But what she told us that day was that this retreat was the first time in seven years that she felt happy again. That's the power of dolphin and whale retreats.

Kathi: I can see that, because they're captivating. And I agree with what you said earlier, that you can't think of anything else. There it is, there it is, where did it go? You're so captivated by watching them that everything just falls away.

Anne: Yes. And now she's a very happy person. She does a lot of traveling. She often comes on other retreats of mine. She's a dear friend. So it wasn't just a one-time quick fix. It's been ongoing for her.

Kathi: Yeah, I can see that. It would be like, I want more, I want more. I'm sure you have a lot of repeat guests that go on your retreats.

Anne: Yes.

Kathi: That's very gratifying and very satisfying for you. It means you're doing something right. Wow. Well, everybody should download this meditation and connect with your spirit guide. So it could be a dolphin or a whale, or is it mainly dolphins that come around?

Anne: This meditation is mainly geared towards dolphins, but if a whale shows up, great. That has happened.

Kathi: It's happened before, I'm sure. Well, I'm putting the link to your website in the show notes, not just the meditation, but the actual website as well, so you can see where the retreats are happening, what's happening in the retreats, what the dates are, so you can start plotting and planning. I don't think I've met a single person that doesn't want to meet a dolphin or a whale. Pretty much everybody, we're all mesmerized. We all want to do it. So those will be in the show notes below. But just in case you are listening, it's whalewisdomretreats.com. Go there, and from there you can find out where the retreats are and what's happening with them. And you can probably also tap into the meditation there somewhere too, probably.

Anne: You can. It's on the homepage. And if you just want the meditation, you can go to dolphinspiritguide.com.

Kathi: Oh, dolphinspiritguide.com. Perfect. Well, Anne, I'm mesmerized by you talking about what you do with your life. I didn't know half of that backstory. Now I'm even more impressed by what you're up to. For those of you who are listening who are branching out, who just aren't happy and satisfied with what you're doing in life, I am in full agreement with Anne. Follow your dreams. Follow your heart. Make it something that you love, that you're interested in, because life's finite. It's too short this time around to just do stuff that you hate anyhow.

Anne: Yeah. Good advice.

Kathi: Well, listen, Anne, if there's anything that you need from me, anything at all, reach out. If you guys like this episode, please give me a like, give me a comment. It really helps me grow the podcast, and give Anne a shout-out as well. And until next week, you guys, I will see you then. And thank you, Anne. Thank you so much for your time.

Anne: Thank you for having me. It's been a joy and a pleasure.

Kathi: Yeah, absolutely. Until next time, we'll see you then, gang.