Shiatsu masseuse and psychic Sam Beamount-Collins tells me, mid-massage, that my back will be healed in three days. She has a vision of me dancing around in pain- free relief. "Does it hurt here?" she asks, touching a point on my neck. It did. I hadn't told her about that.
Sam works in the tradition of Native American shamanism. She says bodily discomfort indicates emotional and spiritual turmoil: lower-back pain represents money-worries; upper-back pain, world-weariness.
After the massage we meditate. Sam describes a forest, mountains, and a circle of gemstones - my 'medicine wheel'. She calls my four 'power animals' into the wheel, each representing aspects of my self: eagle (mental), coyote (emotional), grizzly bear (physical), and white buffalo (spiritual). We run out of time, but Sam promises to return later and chat with my coyote.
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Weird and wonderful
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elaine hake finds lurking with spirit animals more bizarre than she’d expected
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A couple of days later, an email arrives. Sam explains, gently, that my coyote refused to come into my medicine wheel, telling her: "Elaine never listens to me anyway."
Ouch. She decides it's time to visit my subconscious, so we go into my 'Temple of Light', opening a door onto my seven-year-old self. She then tells me a few personal things which make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Then Sam asks the Great Spirit to cleanse me of past emotions before we return to the medicine wheel, where my coyote apparently bounds in, looking "lovely, bright and fluffy". I take that as a good sign.
A few days later something odd happens. My back starts to feel better. I'm not "healed", but, somehow, I get by with far fewer painkillers. Just don't ask me what I think about it. I don't know.
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 11, 2006
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