Extract from "Becoming The Medicine," Chapter 1 (Energy Healing), work in progress. To be published in Spring 2024.
During a year spent abroad "in search of the miraculous," my journey was unexpectedly halted as I walked in the foothills of the Himalayas, in the thrumming streets of Dharamsala, where the air vibrates with the never-ending spiritual hum of seeking souls and echoing prayers.
A man I later discovered was a Sufi Master Healer and will call "teacher," with his presence both commanding and serene amidst the chaos, locked his eyes with mine and, in a voice that sliced through the cacophony, loudly declared, "You are a healer." The claim, enigmatic and unsettling, made my heart skip a beat. It should've been easy to brush off as the ramblings of yet another street mystic charlatan, quite common in India, yet something in his unwavering glare stopped me.
Before our paths crossed, my outlook on healing was one of a seeker and admirer but something reserved for "others." Energy healing—that elusive art—was a world I looked into with a skeptic's caution due to my scientific medical background but also the curiosity and naivety of a novice. Within that Sufi's gaze, skepticism seemed to become irrelevant in the presence of a divine pull towards "the impossible to resist unknown."
He keeps repeating, "You are a healer," while I try to avoid him and walk towards my long-planned 10-day Vipassana silent retreat. He keeps repeating it. At some point, something within me stopped me and invited me to listen, and a few minutes later, I was on my way to his house "to sit and have some tea," as he explained.
Arriving at his place, a modest house with thin walls, cheap furniture, and too many cats and dogs to count, I entered a very different space than the town's busy, noisy, and smelly streets.
The room was covered in shadows, allowing only the shy sunbeams through draped windows. It was infused with a potent aroma of rare incense, thick and embracing. The Master, after inviting me into his "consultation room," started to sing an unknown, haunting hymn. My heart opened with love, my skin warmed, my pupils dilated, and I felt a strange ecstasy. Honestly, for a second, I thought the voices were coming from heaven and not him. I was a stranger here; the songs were unfamiliar, yet they somehow echoed the deepest intimate parts of me; it felt like I knew them. I think I even had a tear rolling down my face.
He introduced me to a man, a sturdy figure with the rough attire of a traveler yet with an aura that seemed dimmed by sadness and pain. His French accent lent a soft melody to his voice, starkly contrasting his physical appearance. The weight of his problem and reason to be here lay hidden beneath the surface—constant fatigue, a knee robbed of its strength—despite his evidently healthy and wanderlust-driven lifestyle.
The Master told me: "You are doing the healing; I will step back." I had yet to learn what that was supposed to mean. I approached the task with the trepidation and fear of a novice. Yet as I followed the Master's only guidance—to breathe, feel, and trust—I noticed my hands humming with a strange sensation. The Sufi chant melted with the rhythm of my breath, and I felt my heart sync with an ancient voice of healing. My fingertips seemed to paint invisible strokes in the air, tracing the pathways where the man's energy lay stifled.
The emotional release came like rain; tears emerged, and pain receded. It was as if my hands on the man's knee were conduits for sorrow that needed an escape, a pathway carved for relief to flood through. His sobs were a testament to the release that had taken place, and the look he gave me—one of disbelief mingled with profound gratitude—was an image that would stay engraved in my memory forever.
What ensued was not only the healing of a knee and the meeting of an amazing master I studied with but the awakening of my soul to a heritage long whispered about in my family's secret stories. The revelation of my lineage as a healer came forth, stitching me to a past woven with tales of ancient saints and blessings given to my forgotten family ancestors in the magnificent mountains of Corsica. It skipped a generation, my grandfather had told me when I was very young, and I had forgotten, but our family has had a man healer for 1000s of years. I am one; you are one.
My grandfather once recounted that this was a gift infused into our bloodline, an ability to mend not just the body but the spirit, a connection to the divine entrusted to us since the dawn of Christianity. And here I was, in the heart of Dharamsala, re-awakening or re-learning a gift two thousand years in the making, one I had unknowingly prepared for my whole life to receive.
My identity evolved from that defining moment; I was no longer just a curious traveler searching for the miraculous. I had met the unexplained, the magical, the mystical, and the divine. I became a committed seeker, a student of those ancient arts of healing, a call to become a bearer of light carrying a tradition that had transcended time and geography. The story—my story— still unfolds to this day, reaching hearts and inspiring minds as I offer my hands to those in need, restoring faith in the unseen and in the power that dwells within each of us, waiting for the day when it too can be revealed, embraced, and shared by everyone.
Angell Deer
Extract from "Becoming The Medicine," Chapter 1 (Energy Healing), work in progress. To be published in Spring 2024.
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