What is intuitive healing?
Imagine you are looking through a camera with its lens half under the water, half above. Let’s say something like a tree branch is sticking out of the water. Looking from above the water only, one would see only a few thin twigs poking out of the water. But from our unique viewpoint, half above and half under the water, we can also see the “rest” of the branch. It might, for example, extend down and connect to the trunk of a massive old tree lying felled at the bottom of the river. Or that branch might be the tippy top of a living tree, temporarily flooded. Or it might be long crooked twiggy fingernails of a strange monster lurking underneath the surface. On the other hand, it might prove to be nothing more than a few twigs in the hand of your mischievous brother, who is holding his breath and poking them out of the water to trick you into steering clear of a snag.
The physical symptoms of illness or emotional problems are like those twigs poking out of the water. We can see the tips, the symptoms, but not the whole story. Usually we can make an educated guess about what lies under the water, but we’re not always correct. If you or your animal has a strange or persistent health or emotional issue or imbalance, you should certainly first go to a qualified medical professional. But if the doctors, trainers and vets are scratching their heads, and your situation does not improve, it might be helpful to ask someone trained in looking “under the water” to see the spiritual/emotional landscape underlying the issue or illness. When I facilitate an intuitive healing session for a person or an animal, I in effect, sink down and look at the “underwater” parts of the symptom or behaviour. What I “see” is often strange, symbolic, and richly evocative. I often describe it as living poetry... stepping into the deepest landscape of another’s soul.
For example: Let’s say you call me about your sick cat. You’ve tried everything else you can think of, and the vets are completely at a loss, scratching their heads, while her tests come back normal but her health continues to decline. When I sink down “under the water,” and look at her, I might see a cat being slowly strangled by a menacing, black shadow.
I work with that dark shadow just as I would work with an animal. More and more, it seems to me that everything has a story, even our illnesses, imbalances and wounds. In my experience, our ailments are often tired of being lectured and attacked, tired of having white light beamed at them, tired of being relentlessly “visualized” away-and just want someone to listen! One of my specialties in animal communication is gaining the trust of animals who are guarded, disgusted with or disdainful of humans. In these deeper healing sessions, I work with our physical and emotional illnesses just the way I work with such “difficult” animals. I am curious to understand what the dark shadow thing is and why it is there. I will work to get it to trust me, and tell me its story. Is it the mark of some past trauma still draining her life force? Is it a blockage in her energy system, and if so, what has caused it? Is it symbolic of some stress or imbalance in you or your household? Is there a piece of me that the dark form correlates to, which I can shift or heal in order to facilitate your cat’s healing (strange as it sounds, this interconnectedness is more and more often the case as my work deepens)?
“Everything terrifying is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants our help.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star. ~e.e. cummings
“We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.” ~Anna Jameson
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
~Wendell Berry
Once I establish a trusting relationship with whatever ails you, I step aside, asking for guidance and trusting Spirit to sort out what will serve the highest good for all. Sometimes I sink into a deeply altered state and stuff just seems to happen through me, delicious waves of energy restoring and retuning both of us. Sometimes I get to “do” stuff like retrieve soul parts or retune chakras or relay messages for you from the spirit world. Very often, I have to face and grow through some old wound, fear, or block of my own in order to inspire or facilitate any changes with yours. It is difficult, humbling, exhilarating, mind-boggling work, sinking in to face the part of me that correlates to your cancer or your cat.
“Although each of us obviously inhabits a separate physical body, the laboratory data from a hundred years of parapsychology research strongly indicates that there is no separation in consciousness.” ~Russel Targ
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~Lewis Carrol
Let me make clear that it’s not me that “does” any healing, and I absolutely do not call myself a healer. I set the stage, so to speak. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s my job to become the stage. In the above scenario, your cat is the fiddle (perhaps a bit out of tune). And The Spirit That Moves Through All Things is the musician. If I can create in and of myself a safe, sacred, well lit and useful space for them, these two will make music and do all the tuning and healing that needs to be done. We’ll all benefit. And I’ll sweep up afterwards. I’m sort of the address and the janitor in this whole process, in other words. Your cat and Great Spirit are the great healers.
What is the “shadow thing?” I could make up an eloquent and authoritative answer to that question, but the honest truth is, I don’t know. Nor, anymore, do I really care. I just know that I “see” these things often, and that when I am able to sink inside them and earn their trust, we can often see dramatic improvements in the clients’ health or behaviour. Someone who specializes in energy field work might see a gummed up chakra instead of the dark strangling shadow I perceive. Someone trained in Chinese medicine would feel the chi go sluggish or haywire in that meridian. We should all be sensing the same phenomenon, just using different metaphors to explain our experience, and different tools to try to facilitate wellness in another’s soul.
“Do you remember how electrical currents and ‘unseen waves’ were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.” ~Albert Einstein
Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest. ~Beatrix Potter
“We sit in a circle and suppose; the secret sits in the center and knows.” ~Robert Frost
Facilitating healing is far and away the most difficult work I can imagine. I can sometimes see into the souls of things, which is certainly an honor. But it is also a vast and awe-ful responsibility. Learning how to use this gift in a useful, honorable and concretely effective manner seems to consistently take more wits, heart, faith, discipline and courage than I think I have. This world of ours is volently out of balance, and our animals and our own lives reflect that imbalance. So many, many, many of us are suffering. So much is at stake as this civilization of our blithely lumbers closer and closer to crisis.
And so nothing makes my heart sing more than to have been able to help repair a strand of the sacred web that connects us all. Nothing seems more urgently important. Nothing discourages me more than looking into the eyes of a being whose suffering I’m simply not able to ease or understand. But always I learn, most of all when I cannot help, and my ability to listen, see, trust and be of real service are deepening every day. More and more I understand that my children’s wholeness depends on your healing. Your animal’s wholeness depends on mine. My health depends on that of the dying forests. And the forests can only be as whole as the children we raise.... I see concrete and tangible evidence every day that we really are all so deeply interconnected. So join me, please. There’s much work to be done, and little time!
“Oh, will you come and let me go with you?”
~Carolyn McDade, Compassion Piece
To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed is to be a pilgrim. ~Mark Nepo
“In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don’t want.” ~Marianne Williamson