Natural News

Among the words guaranteed to push people’s buttons in my daily work, are “spirit” and “healing”. Put the two words together in the combination “Spiritual Healing” and you can muster up an even stronger sense of unease.

Interestingly though, the offence often turns out to be a matter of the meanings people make from the words rather than – as they mean to me respectively - an essential expression of higher connection and wellbeing, concepts that most people have no problem with.

Sarah Peters is a definite “button-pusher”, as she’s just launched The Lightworkers’ College, which unashamedly looks at Spiritual healing and other tricky topics like ascended masters, Gaia theory, lightwork, auras and chakras.

She’s no two-headed weirdo however; Sarah came to making Light Work of it (sorry) having suffered with chronic joint and muscle pain for several years which made her “feel exhausted and very low”.

“I underwent various tests and x-rays for arthritis and every time the tests proved negative and the medics were baffled,” she told me. “Eventually, after much personal research, I recognised the symptoms of M.E. and in those days no support was offered for the condition.”

By chance Sarah found new hope: “A friend was clearing out her bookshelves and gave me the best-seller ‘Mind to Mind’ by the late Betty Shine, a spiritual healer,” she explained.

Betty had apparently had success with healing arthritis, neurological disorders and depression, but by the time Sarah made contact, she had given up one-to-one appointments having decided that writing books, giving talks and healing demonstrations would help more people.

“Since nothing else was going to help me,” thought Sarah, “I asked Betty if she would send distant healing through the ether to me. The result was extraordinary - vitality returned, but sadly only temporarily. I wondered why, and decided to do further research into Spiritual Healing and try it out.”

“I practised Betty’s guidance to ‘tune into Spirit’, using our family cat who suffered with a limp. As I carried out the healing, I began to ’see’ streams of grey energy flowing out of the cat’s knee-joint, he jumped into the air and ran off!”

“Fairly soon after that I had the opportunity of testing it on a human - a friend who screamed out with searing wrist pain. I quickly ‘tuned into Spirit’, and placed my hands over her wrist joints and within moments she was saying: ‘look at those coloured balls of light bouncing around the room’.”

“I heard myself whispering to her: ‘there, you’ll feel better now’ and with these words I felt as light as a feather, tall and elongated and felt myself gliding out of the room onto my bed. Both of us fell into a deep sleep and I awoke to see a huge glowing being of light by the side of my bed, that literally made me gasp for breath - then it disappeared,” added Sarah.

After that her “sensitivities” and spiritual experiences came thick and fast. They were “always fascinating, but very mysterious”. There seemed little explanation for them, so Sarah continued to investigate further by attending workshops and courses all over the UK.

“My life was to take a most unexpected turn at the turn of the century,” she revealed. “New Year’s Eve, 1999, resulted in me leaving my marital home, my friends and my work, to arrive in Devon. A new life, out on a limb, with plenty of time for self-reflection and re-training in various alternative therapies and metaphysical studies, interspersed with ‘tuning-in’ and meditation.”

“A variety of fascinating, but much more balanced, spiritual experiences continued to occur, but still I remained puzzled as to what it was all about. I tried to find answers and continued to seek out those that could help.”

Being far away from specialist college’s and courses left Sarah floundering for a reliable point of reference from where she could continue to explore the “fascinating phenomena of Higher Consciousness”.

“I can now see that by undertaking years of reseach, education, training and practice in an attempt to demystify my personal experiences and gain an understanding of them, I have been taking steps towards creating a credible focus for the exploration of Higher Spiritual consciousness here in Devon,” declared Sarah. Its name: The Lightworkers’ College

To find out more visit: www.lightworkerscollege.com

Dawn Ireland, a 43 year-old vegan with “no kids, 3 cats and two allotments to organise”, grows her own herbs, fruit and vegetables, organically of course, and has made her own natural toiletries and cosmetics, avoiding chemicals, artificial ingredients and vegan, for many years. Now she’s sharing her secrets…

“I spent nearly 20 years working in offices and being bored and stifled but not knowing what else I could do,” says Dawn. “One day my sister said I should look into training in complementary therapies. I first did a basic herbalism diploma by distance learning, then a herbal horticulture and botany diploma.”

“I perfected a few handmade toiletries, had them safety tested by a lab and began selling them in my local health food shop under the trade name of Green Wych,” adds Dawn.

“I realised there were lots of people who wanted to make their own products too, so I began a series of short practical workshops teaching others how to do it. They became quite popular and I expanded them to include soap-making, toiletries, household cleaning products and basic herbal remedies.”

Soon after, Dawn discovered iridology and decided she wanted to learn more about this fascinating subject and time-honoured diagnostic tool. She searched on the internet and found a course run by Devon-based holistic therapy school Kevala.

“It was perfect as it allowed time to study at home, along with practical tutorials to fit in with existing commitments,” Dawn explained. “I had a very good teacher with a huge knowledge and admin staff always willing to help.”

Eventually, Kevala asked Dawn if she would be interested in writing a short course on Natural Product Making, similar to her workshops, but more in-depth. She did this, and after taking a basic teacher training qualification, now teaches at the college.

“The past few years of study have given me the confidence to enrol for Herbal Medicine degree,” says Dawn, who works in her local health food shop, where she is able to promote her courses. “This is something I would never have believed possible a few years ago. My advice to others considering changing careers, or wanting to start something new, is - go for it, be positive, you become what you meditate upon!”

You can find out more about Dawn’s Natural Product Making course at: http://www.kevala.co.uk

“The course transformed my thinking, made me braver, more positive and less fearful about making changes,” says Claire Morrissey, a Kevala Holistic Stress Management student who has started a new business.

Claire, 35, who lives in London says: “I was in a very stressful time in a previous job and did some internet searching around the word ‘stress’, looking for information on the subject as I knew I needed help”.

“The course is amazing as it exposes you to such a wide variety of thinking and experiences regarding health and well-being. I have found it invaluable, bearing in mind I’ve been in high-stress business roles involving management and frequent global travel. This is just what I’ve been looking for,” she adds.

“The course has inspired me to follow my passion and launch my own business, which is a luxury ethical shopping website - www.nocows.com – which I launched in on 1st Feb 2007, my birthday.”

Claire intends to incorporate her stress management studies somehow into her business, “although exactly how I will do this I have yet to figure out,” she tells us.

Particularly interested in the meditation, yoga and NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming), Claire says the course has introduced her to subjects and authors that have “transformed my thinking, made me braver, more positive and less fearful about making changes”.

Through her business and website, Claire wants to impact the world in a more positive way and hopes to share the knowledge she’s gained with more people.”

The idea of going for a scan can create anxiety. Whether for the purposes of routine screening or to double-check a medical suspicion, scans also tend to be rooted in the physical body. So the idea of a metaphysical or holistic scan – to look for energetic blockages – caught my interest.

It’s Kimberley Jones, a Torquay born and bred Art Historian turned healer and artist, who offers this insightful and unusual service under the banner of Quantum Coaching and Healing, and for anyone remotely interested in the connection between the emotions, the mind and health – she’s a must-see.

Sure I was intrigued to learn that Kimberley “reads” bodily energy with her hands and can feel colours - red, blue and green - which reveal different types of energetic information all over the body. But I was relieved to be greeted by a very normal looking and sounding person when I went for my initial consultation.

“I have sensed ‘energy’ since I was a child - although I wouldn’t have called it that,” Kim told me when I quizzed her about her background. “I just knew what people were thinking and feeling.”

“Growing up I found my sensitivity made it hard to be in the world so I started numbing myself with alcohol and cigarettes at a very young age. I convinced myself I could get a respectable job and perhaps be a ‘businesswoman’, whatever that meant,” Kim revealed.

“Nothing satisfied me and I moved jobs regularly. I buried my abilities deeper and deeper until I forgot about them. I got more and more stressed,” added Kim whose mother it turns out was also highly psychic.

Following her mother’s death in 1997, Kim started experiencing violent psychic events and her abilities were blasted wide open again, far stronger than before.

“I went into a ’spiritual emergency’, a crisis that often leads to a breakdown of some kind,” Kim told me. “I also became physically unwell. Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2000, I became unable to function in any normal way and had to stop work.”

“The one thing that had a strong effect on me during these years was healing. Whether spiritual healing or Reiki, each session led to a huge improvement in my condition and my reawakened extra-sensory abilities.”

“Eventually I was strong enough to start my own research and training, using myself as my own guinea pig,” she explained. “I began by studying Reiki and am now a Reiki Master.”

Soon after Kim trained in “energy mastery” and the “energetics and spirituality of business”, followed by a voluntary apprenticeship to a leading European re-birthing therapist, which enabled her to learn more about how pain, both emotional and physical, is just energy held in the body’s energetic fields.

“This is when I started to see and sense how energy behaves in and around the body according to what we are thinking. It was a huge breakthrough for me,” she said.

Kim has now developed all of her learning into a system called Quantum Coaching and Healing where she uses her abilities as an “energy intuitive” to scan people’s energy fields and offer guidance and healing according to what she finds.

“I have found this cuts through to a truth that is validated by my clients time and again,” she told me. “People are regularly referred to me by their psychotherapist or body work therapist. Your energy fields never lie. They always speak the truth about the deep issues underlying anything you want help with.”

Kim reckons our masks, inherited beliefs and attitudes are like our ‘words’, and she calls the real us revealed by our energy, our ‘music’, claiming that if our words and music don’t go together we get imbalance and eventually dis-ease of some kind.

“I see my job as something resembling a choir master, bringing your words and music together so you can sing your own unique song in the world with health, confidence and joy,” says Kim who also offers support to those highly sensitive to the energy of others at work or at home.

Her Quantum Coaching and Healing sessions involve clients lying down fully clothed and relaxing on a treatment bed. Kim then passes her hands over and around your body sensing energy fields as though she has “eyes in her hands”.

Kimberley’s approach – after an initial and thorough pre-treatment discussion - is a really interesting blend of off-the-beaten-track energy work and hi-tech methodology. Lying on her treatment table, I was at first aware of her ’scanning’, but soon drifted off into a much-needed snooze, comfortable in the safety of her already-healing space.

Before I fell into too much of a slumber however, I saw how Kimberley transcribed the sensations felt and ’seen’ through her hands into coloured shading on an outline of a human body – representing me and my energy on this particular day - on her laptop screen, for later interpretation.

It must have been around 30-40 minutes, when I felt Kimberley’s healing touch on my arm inviting me to rejoin the conscious world. A little fuzzy still, I returned to the consulting area to be greeted by a pretty map of my metaphysical energy and to hear Kimberley’s insights, findings and ideas about what it all meant.

Depending on what is needed, Kim uses healing, visualisations, breathing, relaxation techniques and energy meditations, drawing on her toolkit of training and experience combined with intuitive and psychic sensing.

She’s good and she’s accurate. Coming from a very loving and supportive place – and not in any way ungrounded or annoyingly new age – Kim really gave me something to think about and a number of useful tips to help me through what she saw as my energetic blocks. I’ve always thought the body never lies, and Kim’s energetic extension of this theory takes things a convincing step further.

Kimberley Jones’ Quantum Coaching & Healing is available in Totnes and Netwon Abbot. Call 01803 868282 for more information or a consultation. Or visit: www.quantum-coaching.co.uk

(From www.holisticlocal.co.uk)

We’ve a neat little e-guide for you this week - The kettle guide to PR and publicity for holistic businesss. The idea here is that in the time it takes to boil a kettle, you’ll get some basic facts on PR and publicity for your business.

http://www.holisticlocal.co.uk/prservices