Janey Lee Grace had some misconceptions about shamanic healing but found it to be a sweet experience.

Janey Lee Grace“My healer, Dawn Paul, seemed really quite ‘normal,’ but I suppose that I was expecting an Inca tribeswoman using smoke and feathers, not a glamourous lady from Hertfordshire.

Dawn explained that her practice can help all manner of ills, working on both emotional and physical levels. Without making false claims of miracle cures it  seems she has indeed effected the ‘cure’ of many people of all ages around the world with conditions from post traumatic stress disorder to clinical depression.

I went to see her primarily because of hormonal issues but, in addition to talking to me about physical symptoms, much of what she did in the first session was to try to tap into where I was mentally.

She uses biofeedback techniques and some ‘shamanic cards’ to determine what priorities to address. She calls it an energetic assessment.

Dawn’s path to becoming a shamanic healer is fascinating. She was working as a senior consultant for a bank, but while on holiday at Machu Picchu in Peru her life changed dramatically. She climbed to the highest point – the “Intihuatana”- and looked down and saw that she was surrounded by Inca! Dawn says, “With shaking legs, I made my way down the steps to face an Inca who was absolutely radiant with power and covered in golden armour. Suddenly, his arm shot up, he pointed directly at me, and I heard his deep voice say, “You will follow this path, and we will help you!”

And that was the end of Dawn’s career in corporate finance, and the start of her career as a shamanic healer of the Inca tradition. She helps people get rid of their emotional baggage, helps raise their vibration and then assists them to become whole again.

Dawn explained to me that shamanic healing is gentle, yet it works deeply. We all exist on many different levels – physical, emotional, energetic, mental, and spiritual – and we need to be healed on all of those levels. Shamanism can sometimes be misunderstood as dark, but this is not the case. Around 40,000 years old, it is the medicine way of the first peoples of the Earth.

Is it therapy? Well sort of. I’ve had counselling and I’ve had friends who’ve seen counsellors for 20 years and, despite gruelling sessions, achieved limited results. Dawn manages to work quickly on the core issues.

Dawn explained to me the concept of soul retrieval. She believes soul loss can occur sometimes from birth and is a form of protection mechanism, which occurs after severe emotional, mental or physical shock.

Dawn has an excellent analogy to explain this. She asked me to imagine a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, all those segments connected to each other in the foil wrapper. Imagine that the foil wrapper is the body, and the segments are the soul and units of vital energy that can gradually fall away. The effects of the soul loss on the person will range from depression and low energy to problems with the immune system, poor energetic protection and difficulty finding their place and purpose in the world. In short, they will feel like something is missing, because something is missing, those aspects of the soul. Often when people go on a “big search” – perhaps for the perfect partner or their purpose or spiritual path – what they are actually looking for is their soul parts, those aspects of themselves.

So how did I find the experience as a whole? Profound, in truth. During the first session Dawn asked me to lie down while she took me on a guided visualisation to connect with my “inner child.” Yes, she does use smoke and feathers, but trust me this is no hippy charlatan at work. I genuinely feel like I have uncovered deep layers but better still she has helped me to heal them, and in two sessions. I can honestly say that in the style of that Chocolate Orange I now feel I have all my segments intact.