Gratitude

Photo by Taryn Elliott

“I’m beaming ear to ear,” my mom texted me. 

We had just gotten off the phone after I told her what happened in her shamanic energy medicine session. Because we were having trouble finding a time that worked (I’m in China, 12 hours ahead of her), she asked me to do a session while she slept.

“I have my rock here and I’ll blow my intention into it before I go to sleep. When you start, please use your blue rock.”

Shamanic illuminations always start with the client blowing their intention into an initiated rock, called a cuya. It’s part of the empowerment process–you as the client set your intention. You as the client blow it into the stone. The practitioner (me in this instance) offers you tools that help with your healing, but you’re steering the ship.

So my mom (Earl) blew her intention into her stone before going to bed in New Jersey and I picked up a different stone to do the session a few hours later in China.

The next morning, she woke up flooded with gratitude. She took her coffee out to her porch and watched the sunrise, basking in the beauty of the moment. “How lucky am I?” she thought, reflecting on her good fortune.

She’s been stressed about going back to work after an extended injury leave and was feeling a bit down. But out on her porch, watching the sunrise, she didn’t feel down. “Sure, I have to do this thing that I may not want to do, but look at my life. I can still spend four mornings a week at the shore, watching the sun rise over the water.”

Gratitude, appreciation and awe flooded her every cell.

After her coffee, she called me. “Tell me what happened in the session,” she said.

“I found a pocket of grief,” I told her. “Grief and sadness. So I cleared it. It was pretty dense and felt like it’d been there for a while.”

“Then, when the grief and sadness were cleared, I filled that space with gratitude and appreciation.”

I proceeded to tell her more details about what I saw. In these sessions, I go into a mild trance-like state and usually bring back a dream-like story.

“But basically,” I summarized, “It’s all about gratitude and appreciation. The session was about attuning you to that frequency. Making it possible for you to live more in that space. To live in embodied feelings of gratitude and appreciation.”

Then–and only then–did she tell me about her morning. Her wave of gratitude. Her expansive appreciation.

So my mom, in New Jersey, blew an intention into a stone without ever telling me what it was and I, in China, shook a rattle and visualized grief pouring out of her body, then held her in the frequency of gratitude. I prayed for that to be her state, for her to experience it at a deep level. I asked Spirit, on her behalf, to replace grief with gratitude.

Then she woke up flooded with gratitude before I even told her what happened in the session.

“This is so freaky,” she said. “It’s so weird how you tap into things I’m already feeling or contemplating without me telling you about them.”

Remotely. 12 hours apart. A zillion miles apart.

So yeah–interesting, huh?

My mom had a great day and a great weekend. The energy attunement stuck and she’s been enjoying frequent occurrences of being flooded with gratitude and appreciation. She even feels grateful for Shrek, her son who is an ogre, which is a lot. Imagine being grateful to have an ogre for a son?! (Said ogre may or may not be getting mentioned here because that’s the only way he gives my posts a good score.)

That’s what I’m musing today—how wild and fascinating this all is.

Thank you to the indigenous wisdom keepers of South America for developing and protecting these sacred teachings. Thank you for choosing to share them with the world. Thank you to Four Winds for training me in this healing modality. Thank you for the beautiful unfolding. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This way of living—it’s something else.