So how *did* you get into this line of work?
This is a question I get asked fairly frequently. The answer depends on how far back you want to go, what angle you want to take on it, how much time you have...
Here's an arbitrary description:
At the end of highschool I had my heart broken which threw me into an existential crisis. I'd already been doing some meditation and spiritual exploration, and I began practicing a visualizion that got you to imagine energy coming up your spine and out the top of your head. This triggered what I now surmise to be a kundalini opening for me. It was very intense, surreal and hard to describe but it allowed me to get in touch with what felt like REALITY, apart from the circumstances and programming I'd grown up with.
I'd always been sensitive to things like smoke, perfumes and new car smell. After this spiritual breakthrough I was much more sensitive and ended up getting very sick and depressed at university, eventually dropping out. It took me a few years to be able to put a name to what happened - I had multiple chemical sensitivity, sometimes known as environmental illness.
I spent two years in Toronto, exploring alternative healing and my spiritual path while working retail. I learned many things through trying to heal my body from the inside. I found using my attention in different ways could make changes in how it felt. I taught myself how to move energy around my body to deal with the physical pain and fatique I suffered. I also learned to listen to subtle messages about what it wanted - for example, becoming vegetarian for a time.
I moved to Vancouver in 1997 (body's suggestion - it said I needed to be near the ocean) and on the first day there met my energy reading mentor-to-be, Janet. We originally connected through talking about reiki and then later she took me to a healing group where I got to see healers all using different techniques and modalities. I felt like I was in some futuristic setting - one person would be doing toning, another waving their arms over the person, another sitting next to them speaking quietly about things coming up in the future. It was exciting and educational.
When I was in crisis, Janet would do energy readings for me. I was so impressed and surprised because she could help me resolve something in half an hour that normally would have taken me several days to deal with. The more I learned, the more I felt somehow that I would also be able to do this, and one day I told her that. She said 'Oh, I am so sure you could.' She then gave me all of one instruction: "Ok, I'll ask you a question and you look inside yourself for the answer."
I had a cold that day and I remember feeling heavy-headed and congested. I tried to look inside myself and I didn't see anything, but weirdly, my hands were burning - kind of like when I did reiki except my hands weren't on anyone. I was going to stop several times but she'd say, "No, no, keep going. I know you aren't seeing anything but the energy is moving...just keep going." After about 15 or 20 minutes of this, my cold was gone and I started getting images and impressions.
Since that day, I have been able to get energetic information in the form of sensations or inner images, but it took me practice to be able to interpret and express them well. I practiced intensely with her for about a year, reading energy every day and picking her brain. I met other healers through her who did similar work and we'd have all day energy reading/healing 'jams'. A few of those events, coming together with other healers, really took my abilities to new levels. I also gained experience by doing healing readings for friends and friends of friends.
In 1999, I got into a relationship with someone who has been doing chi gung since he was a child and so is quite an energy healer himself. We learned from each other and he was a pivotal resource as I moved into doing healing work for a living. He enlarged my perspective and effected some changes in the way I approached certain things; he supported and validated me as I took a course in clinical counselling and started doing sessions for money.
In counselling school, I got a better understanding of certain dynamics like projection, introjection, subconscious associations and group process. It also gave me a certain amount of conceptual language. A lot of it actually got in my way though, because it was very 'in the head' and didn't mesh with what I knew about healing and REALITY. In certain ways it was actually damaging and invalidating. I have ended up discarding much of the intellectual (patriarchal) framework from traditional counselling, keeping a few things that were valuable. (This topic could be a whole 'nother blog post...)
In 2001 I began studying sound healing which enabled me to understand frequency, vibration & entrainment in more detail (that comes in handy in any healing modality). It also got me back into singing - I found a way to blend the artistic and spiritual sides of myself in my performing and songwriting. It also helped me to connect to my ancestry and the earth energy that goes with it through collecting and performing african and african american spirituals.
I had wanted to run 'manifesting' groups for a long time and the next year I did. They cemented my knowing that we are constantly supported by the universe. I saw time and time again, how we basically block ourselves from receiving. To have what we want and need, all we have to do is open up to having it given to us. Of course that is easier said than done sometimes - mind/ego/identity wants us to keep things linear but the Love that creates isn't linear.
I began to change the structure of the questions I used to navigate during a session. Instead of asking what was wrong or where the problem was, I learned to ask what needs to clear or what needs to happen so the client can receive what they are looking for. A small but significant shift in my orientation.
And the last big change has been birth. It was another kundalini experience - I was rebirthed through birthing. I got to shed some of my "karma" and realized more about human consciousness, it's possibilities, and it's inherent challenges. On the practical side, the form of my work changed - I began to do sessions by phone and with people far away. The type of client I worked with began to change which in itself allowed the work to evolve.
Through having my daughter I've been pushed to own that without a doubt, I do create everything that happens in my life. To live up to the responsibility of being a conscious parent, I've been encouraged to systematically reclaim power from any place I've given it away - ideas and perceptions aound relationship, family, money, community, health, and conventional mothering in general. But paradoxically, my conception of our oneness has been enhanced. And of course, I'm in awe of nature's ingenuity and wisdom. Source is that much closer and I am increasingly able to trust in our co-created adventures.
