A Healing Journey

by Roxana Valea

Seven years ago, following a sports injury that resulted in my collarbone being shattered in five pieces,  I started a healing journey. It was not the first healing journey I had undertaken in my life. But it was my deepest one. It led me to many amazing healers, people that have changed my life forever. The following fragment from my book "A Horse Called Bicycle" tells the story of how I met two of these healers, an Ayurvedic doctor In India and a Buddhist shaman in Thailand. Both of them are today part of the group of therapists at The HEAL Institute.

"The good thing about breaking a bone is that you must make time to heal. And once you start on this journey there’s no way of knowing where you’ll end up.

I went to India thinking I was there to heal my shoulder. The Ayurveda sanatorium felt like a small boutique resort, nestled up a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea. I met the three resident Ayurveda doctors and gave them my latest X-ray. They looked at it briefly then put it aside and started on a long list of questions. I laughed out loud when they asked me if I had any addictions, and answered polo as if it was really funny. One of the doctors smiled kindly and told me it was just a standard questionnaire. I liked her instantly, with her beautiful coloured sari and long gold earrings. She had a red dot on her forehead and smiled continuously, just like my doctor in Argentina. I decided to call her Lady Doc.

I spent the next three weeks being massaged and bathed in oil. I drank weird potions. I had oil poured on my forehead for hours with rhythmic movements that managed to bring any thoughts to a standstill. I was washed with what they called medicine water, and my shoulder was soaked in green oil and bandaged every day under the careful supervision of Lady Doc. She told me to stop worrying and that Ayurveda means the Science of Life.

“Trust it,” she said.

I did. I let them do all they needed to do and I trusted it was for my benefit. And when the time came to go, Lady Doc walked into my treatment room as I enjoyed my last massage and asked me how everything had been. I told her everything was great and my shoulder much improved. I would have liked just one little thing to have been different. She asked me which one.

“The massage. It’s lovely, but I would have preferred it to be stronger. I asked for a stronger massage but never got it.”

“Yes, we know,” she assured me. “Your therapist has been given very clear instructions. We told her she was to be gentle with you. We also told her that you would ask for a stronger massage. And she wasn’t to listen to you.”

“You knew this?” I asked, astonished. “You read my thoughts even before I had them?”

She smiled. “You’re here to heal. And we’re here to look after your body.”

Even if I didn’t, I added silently.

I left India refreshed, restored, and with a fully functioning shoulder, able to cope with the most difficult yoga poses, which I diligently repeated each morning just after sunrise, under the careful supervision of a yoga teacher. He had a funny phrase he kept on repeating every morning. “Past is history. Future is mystery,” he said. “Present is gift.” I left with this phrase still ringing in my ears.

I went to Thailand afterwards. Why here? Because a lady I met at the Ayurveda sanatorium told me there’s an excellent yoga resort on the island of Koh Samui and I wanted to continue my yoga recuperation. I contacted the place but it was fully booked, so I searched for other yoga places instead.

This is how I came across Eve’s site. She was a healer, she said. She also said she had a yoga class each morning and did karma clearing ceremonies. This caught my attention immediately. Maybe I should clear up this bone-breaking karma, I thought, as I booked a one-week stay, not anticipating where this experience would take me.

Mama Eve welcomed me with open arms. She lived in a small house at the end of a street in a village on the west side of the island. She had five dogs, just like my Argentine family. She had another client, a young blond guy who went there for the same rituals. Maybe he had troubles with his karma, too.

In the days that followed I slowly got it. You lose something, you get something. The Universe is always fair. I might have lost my Argentine family but I found a Thai mother. And a Norwegian brother.

William and I stayed with Mama Eve for a week and diligently followed all her instructions.

“You will both get better,” she said. “You came here because you were meant to. It’s part of your journey.”

Mama Eve knew about these things because she was a shaman. This would qualify her as a new lady with a crystal, except she had no crystal. Just a very strong-smelling and incredibly bitter detox drink, which she made sure we drank under her careful supervision every morning at 5:30 precisely and then again just before dinner.

She prayed for us every day, just before the yoga, and we listened in silence to the words of the ancient language we didn’t understand, sitting cross-legged on the floor behind her, in front of the Buddhist and Hindu altars she kept in her yoga room.

It was there that I dared to get on a bicycle again, because she said that I should. I told her about the falls and the broken bones. She said it happened because I had no balance in life, but it was time to get it back. So I learned to ride a bicycle again, slowly, behind William, on the road that led to her place. We rode them every day and when the week was done, my fear had gone."

(Fragment from "A Horse Called Bicycle")

Both Arya (Lady Doc) and Eve (Mama Eve) are currently offering their services through The HEAL Institute. You can find them through the Online Clinic, the Retreats and Experiences and the Traditional Shamanism pages. Become a Basic Member of the HEAL Institute and access these resources for free!

More details here: https://www.thehealinstitute.com/store