"So, uh, what is it that you do, exactly?"

Since I’ve been writing about the third eye, it occurred to me that it might be a good time to write this piece, since so very much of what I do looks like it comes straight from the third eye. I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t have a good current connection with my body and at least a reasonable amount of emotional fluency. I also think I’d be less good at what I do if I hadn’t spent countless hours sitting still and people watching, gently eavesdropping and reading loads and loads of novels. Human nature and story are endlessly fascinating to me. Your story is fascinating to me.

I do a bunch of different things, so the “what do you do” part here refers to the one-on-one sessions that I do with people.

There are a few guidelines that I have that seem to make what I do possible. I have learned these along the way, either directly from teachers or from the work itself. I haven’t ever before articulated these as a package. There might be some missing.

I can’t make any assumptions about what anybody is carrying with them when they walk into my healing space. It is really, really hard to tell what is going on for someone unless they tell you or let you look. Our general goal as humans walking about in the world is to look as together as we possibly can. So that is what people want to show when they walk in my door, even if they’re coming to me for healing. Once we get to know each other, this façade drops, but at the first meeting, that “looking together” thing is so strong that I can’t glimpse their underlying heart and emotion aches. This makes it pretty easy for me to turn off my “seeing” when I’m going around out in the world myself, which is kind of a relief.

I am not doing the healing for that person. No way. I would burn myself out in no time. What I AM doing is pointing to the thing that needs looking at, lifting it up to the light of consciousness so that the shape and size and build of it can be seen and taken apart, bearing witness and loving you fiercely for the human that you are.

I can’t be attached to the outcome of the session. If I’m hell bent on impressing you, I won’t be doing my job well, I’ll be caring about how it looks. If I’m stuck on a certain outcome or way that the healing process should go, then likely I will be getting in the way more than I will be helping to clear.

I get to trust that what I’m shown to clear and untangle is what is needed at this time, even if it bears no outward resemblance to the issue that you came to me to clear. I don’t know how the emotional tangles were laid down, and it would be an act of supreme arrogance to assume that I know how the healing should proceed. So trusting that the body will tell me what the priorities are is deeply freeing. Also: I trust my guides and my inner landscape by now to tell me straight up what needs to be done and what needs to be said. If I’m shown that this is how this thing needs unraveling, then this is how we do it. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself…

I get to let go of a session as soon as it is finished and I have closed my third eye and folded up the map of seeing. This way I don’t carry the session or the person with me, trying to manage whatever it is for someone or fix it unconsciously.

I know nothing. I get to see each session with each client with fresh eyes. Of course I know that I know stuff. I just don’t know beforehand what I’m going to know this time.

Nobody has to believe a word I say.

So.

I set up my healing space with song and my own boundaries when I am still alone.

When you come, the first thing that we do is talk. I ask you to tell me why you are here today, and eventually I ask some question like, “How was your growing up?” if you haven't already told me. I write myself a bunch of fairly incomprehensible notes that I then stick in a drawer and forget about. I get you settled on my treatment table, wrapped up in as many blankets as it necessary for warmth and weight.

I begin by taking your hand and getting a yes/no through bio-muscular feedback from your body. I set my seeing boundaries by seeing myself merge with an owl, feeling my eyes access neutrality so that I can see without taking it personally, and reaching up into a space of clear seeing for you. Sometime I ask you to say your whole name out loud.

From here we could go pretty much anywhere. Usually I place my left hand on the your diaphragm and just wait to see what drops into my awareness. Whereas when I began all this I used to go looking for information, now it feels like I just stay where I am and open the top of my skull and images of astonishing clarity drop into my seeing space.

Usually these images are embedded in a landscape, and the landscape itself gives me information about what is going on. At the very beginning I get what I call an anchor image: the thing that sets the agenda for the session. In this landscape there is often something that feels or looks wrong, complicated or out-of-place. For example, once I found myself in a small clearing where three cedar trees stood out on different sides of the clearing. In each one there was a nest that was way too high up to see into or reach, but clearly each holding something of great value. This person had a life set up where what mattered to them greatly and needed tending was very complicated to get to in order to do the tending and also really hard to see. Because there were three nests on opposites sides of the clearing, they never were able to see the whole picture at once and expended large amounts of energy climbing and tending and moving their ladder. We worked on three different but totally related issues, and checked in through the session on this anchor image to see how it was shifting.

Once I have a piece clear in my understanding, I speak it to you. Sometimes more information comes clear as I am speaking and I find myself saying things that are perfect but that had not been a part of the original image interpretation. This sharing of speech and hearing and witnessing helps the stuck patterns/belief systems/whatever-it-is move along. I think the very fact of being witnessed and held and still cared for as a human when that thing has been seen helps the transformation.

I know that we can have huge breakthroughs through work like this, and I also know that some life issues are so complex that they take a lot of time and kind attention to unravel. There is no magical, instant cure. I can’t just take away your anger. I can’t fix your tendency to run yourself down and punish yourself through food in one fell swoop – poof! gone forever! But I can help you digest whatever it is in manageable bites so that it can be an integrated part of your life story and then you can move forwards to the next piece.

So this is how the session carries on: I look, I speak what I see, I look again and nudge things and help them release, and slowly, slowly we make our way to some kind of completion of that session’s work.

Along the way we might use shamanic healing techniques like soul retrieval where a piece of you that went missing due to trauma is brought back home, or pattern collapse where the energy that you invest in holding a certain pattern in your life is released and comes back to you as purely available energy.

We might muck with the space/time continuum by doing healing for your ancestors on issues that still affect you, however many generations down the line.

We might work with your life-timeline in certain ways. Sometimes I see a split at a moment of trauma where some of you seems to have kept on living as though that thing had not happened. We repair the bifurcation. Sometimes it actually is a matter of letting your deep self know that you are here, you have a right to be here, and that your life force goes all the way through from the moment that your bright spark started it’s journey to the body that you are in.

We might get to go to the particular landscape where what I see are buckets and walls, piles of brick and sand, and water. Here I get to see how you are managing your vital energy flow and boundaries. What kind of container have you built for your life force?

We might go into a particular chakra to repair some unworkable patterns there. Often we go to the sacral chakra where we do repair for your emotional/sexual/sensual/boundary-making self.

I see you and what is held in your emotional/energetic/physical body from here backwards through time. I don’t usually get to look very far into the future, unless it’s just to say, hey, this pattern is shifting, there may be these elements coming in, so pay them some kind attention. I look backwards to see what is tangling you up and stopping you from being wholly in your life as it is. Clearing these tangles makes it easier to move forwards and easier to know what it is that you even want to move towards.

Also, I love doing this. My heart fills up with devastating love at how very human we humans are. I am constantly astonished at what people carry around with them while still looking reasonably together. If I hit something deep for someone, my eyes fill with tears. I get to watch their faces soften as they release things that have been holding them for years. I often feel the tension and release of tension in my own body.

People get up from my table wondering how that much time went by, or feeling like something huge was lifted off of them but they cannot articulate what or how. Very occasionally they feel grumpier than when they arrived, but this usually works itself out in about 24 hours. Often they wander away towards the water telling me that they are just going to sit and write or think for a bit before heading back to the concrete details of their lives (or at least before getting in a car to drive).

These same results are available through distance sessions also. When I work this way I have a big stuffed rabbit that lies on my table as the surrogate and we talk on the phone or by Skype. I have clients who I have only met as a voice on the phone.

And honestly, I have no real idea how or why any of this works. I just know that it does.