It has been a curious mixture of circumstances that brought me to a spiritual path. A nervous breakdown, a couple of near death experiences, mine and someone else's and a strange calling to meet the hummingbird! I tried to convince myself I was an atheist when I was a teenager just because I knew it would annoy my very Catholic mother. Actually she was too drunk to care most of the time and when it did occasionally become a concern she would get one of the local priests round who only further alienated me from Catholicism.  I decided however to send my children to a Catholic school. I liked the idea of someone posing the big questions to them, questions like 'where do we come from?' or 'why are we here?' I didn't want to broach these topics with my own children so I let others pick up that slack and crossed my fingers. It is a deeply personal subject in the UK, religious belief, probably dating back to The Reformation when it became a life or death situation to reveal your particular Christian leanings and perhaps even further than that to an era at the very beginning of Christianity when it became dangerous to be be a non believer, a heathen, a witch! So I have kept my beliefs well hidden, so well hidden in fact even I didn't know what they were. Did I believe in God, in heaven, in an afterlife? I honestly didn't not give it much thought for most of my adult life. Yet somehow I always believed in magic, those happy coincidences, the ideas of angels and fairies. Fairy tales and woodland nymphs, I read about the Greek myths and poured over books on the Maya and all the South American peoples who had left their marks on the land and in temples of the world. Did the people from the stars walk among us? Were there plant spirits (with or without wings) living in the trees in the garden? I fervently hoped so, I chatted to them and watched for them, hoping to catch a glimpse of the magic I so believed in. There were always little experiences to keep me hoping, the ghost in a doorway, the whispers of someone passing in a house, the premonitions that were never about anything noteworthy or important but gave me just enough to keep looking for the signs that there was indeed magic in the air.

Nowhere has magic ever been more apparent to me than at a music festival, there really is something in the air and it's not just the bass thrum of a hundred sound systems. There is excitement, you can feel it, there is play, you can experience it. People laughing in all their sparkles, relaxed and smiling and out in the open air, amongst the trees, on the open ground soaking up all that creativity and giving it back to the world. There is a reciprocity to be had, a balance to be enjoyed and fulfilled. I have always loved to be outside in nature, listening to music while looking at the trees with people I love. I have always found that there is magic around if you look for it, it's a bit like hope or maybe they are the same thing. Looking back when I remember all the experiences I have treasured it is not surprising that I stumbled upon a spiritual path that is rather magical, mythological and even astronomical. It probably started with my favourite bedtime stories as a child, I had posters and books about Paddington Bear who had been sent from deepest darkest Peru. I remember trying to conjure up pictures of exactly what that looked like at 4 years old. It would be some 40 years before I was to know for sure what lay at the heart of deepest darkest Peru, indeed it was deep and dark at times but also light and healing and full of magical visions. Mother Ayhuasca heard me calling all the way in deepest darkest Peru and managed to get me out of my bed after some months of nervous breakdown. She managed to get me in a selection of vehicles all the way to a ceremony in Spain. I had been hoping there was a time then I could leave this earthly existence but realised that it was not possible for me to leave my family so I had decided to find a new way to be in the world. It had not helped that I had been through an out of body experience that left me longing for the other side. For quite a few years I had wanted to try Ayahuacsa and just when I needed her most she appeared and completely did my head in! For me there was no denying consciousness of the plant, so there were indeed spirits in the plants at the bottom of my garden however there was not much magic in those early ceremonies. It was mostly pain and hard truths that I had to hear about how my mother had treated me, reemerging memories of abuse that I had dissociated from but needed to acknowledge in order to heal.

The Ayahuasca was just the start however, at a festival in the Midlands I had happened upon a man who appeared to have died in someone else's tent and amid the chaos and revelry I had managed to get the right people to come and look after him. Mercifully he was not dead only exhausted and practically comatose. The way this stranger had been saved by caring people with no gain for themselves other than being kind really touched something in my soul. I wanted to be able to do the same on some level. Memories from an Aya ceremony where one of the participants had been talking about a medicine wheel and serpents and hummingbirds came floating back to me. Yes, somehow this was the dream I had been looking for without even realising. Now, 6 years later and I have met many totems including serpent and hummingbird. I have trained in all the directions of the wheel and learned to offer these beautiful energetic healings. This path has transformed my life, maybe even saved it. Now I have access to all the magic I can handle in the form of beautiful gifts from the earth and animal archetypes. I have adventures up the mountains with indigenous priests at the sacred sites of deepest darkest Peru and the chance to bestow these gentle healings with the loving kindness I had so admired in other people. I am grateful everyday for these opportunities and can't wait to share the magic with the people I meet and who come to me for a healing.

Please get in touch for a healing if you feel called. I will use my mesa which is a bundle of crystals in the tradition of The Q'ero. After talking together we will work out if you need an Illumination, Past Life Work, Soul Retrieval, Karma Balancing or maybe a Despacho to bring balance. You can come to my home in South London / Surrey or we can talk via video call. In some instances I can also come to you please have a look at my website for more details. surreyshamanichealing@gmail.com or find me on Facebook Surrey Shamanic Healing.