When I was first told that Mahogany was going to be offering some new wellness healing sessions here in Carleton Place I was pretty excited. My excitement was elevated when I met Waheeda. Waheeda is a Reiki Master and Karuna Reiki Master and has been practicing Reiki for twelve years. She has been initiated into Munay Ki, which are nine Rites of Passage/Initiation passed down by the shamans of the Andes and the Amazon and is also a shamanic practitioner. As a student of Anthropology, I have always been intrigued by the concepts of non-traditional healing methods and their application and addition to modern western medicine.
As I read the list of healing services Waheeda has to offer our clients here at Mahogany, I was particularly drawn to “Power Retrieval” which claims to enable oneself to get back all the power that they believe was taken away from them in their life by people, places, events or situations.
I scheduled my power retrieval service last Sunday afternoon and came with absolutely no preconceived notion of what the service would bring. Having just returned from a spiritual journey to Peru, where she had been advancing her learning with Q’ero Medicine women, we fell into an easy conversation about her trip before we began the service.
Waheeda helped me ease into my journey with some breathing exercises. The breath is used to guide you into relaxation and helps to focus the mind on the journey. Waheeda’s soothing voice led me to the centre of a forest where I visualised a medicine wheel.
In Native American cultures the medicine wheel is a metaphor for a variety of spiritual concepts for health and healing. The wheel is divided equally into four sections representing directions: North, South, East and West; and four aspects: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual.
“Through the medicine wheel, we learn that if we focus on or become stuck in the mental, emotional, physical, or the spiritual, we lack wholeness in all aspects. It is important to work on achieving health, positive change, and growth in each aspect for balance and wholeness.” Ann N. Dapiche, PHD
Waheeda guided me through each of the four quadrants of the wheel spending time in each area on breath and spiritual intention. In the first of the medicine wheel I worked on my resistance to healing. In the second part I identified my inner saboteur and the thing that was holding me back. In the third area I journeyed to the secret I keep from myself that holds me back and honed in on my feelings towards it. Here I worked with Waheeda on choosing and verbalising a new “healed” secret. In the last section of the wheel we worked on the body. In this part of the journey I experienced a heat and heaviness in my lower body which Waheeda worked on with hands free healing.
This same sensation of heat in my lower body was present at different points during the session and it had little to do with the blanket I was under. It was a curious internal heat that felt warming, fiery and tingly. At some points I felt like it was there to assist me in being present in the journey and at other times it was like I needed to feel the warmth to enable a release.
Interestingly, while in the red part of the wheel Waheeda asked me about a guide that was left for me. She asked me to describe it and told me that it might be a person or a thing. I vividly recall a white rock. At that point she asked whether or not I had done any work with crystals or stones – I had not. She encouraged me to find the rock that I saw on my journey and use it in daily meditation. After my session I found the rock from my journey at Soul Scents in Almonte.
What is particularly interesting is that the rock that I saw on my journey was howlite. Howlite stone is supposed to help absorb your own anger – or another’s anger that is directed toward you. It also helps to overcome critical or selfish behaviour. These are things that came up on my journey. If that is not a sign – I don’t know what is.
Once the session was over I asked Waheeda what I could expect to see in the coming hours, days and weeks as a result of the session. She advised that I would be extremely tired after the session and that if I felt like having a nap to do so. She encouraged me to have a sea salt bath which would help clear further negative energy. In the coming days she felt that the new mantra would cause a pendulum shift to an extreme. After this initial phase my body would become used to the mantra and settle back to the centre.
Overall I would say all of those things came to pass in the hours and days since my power retrieval. Will it help moving forward? Only time with tell. As for now I am using my howlite rock and repeating my new healed secret in an effort to take back my power and that is a good thing.
I hope you have an opportunity to book a journey with Waheeda it is an experience you are not likely to forget.
