LIVIN G WITH S PIRIT


HEALING OURSELVES, HEALING THE EARTH


The earth can help us in ways we can hardly imagine… so why don’t we just head into the bush and, well, be healed?


Words and photos by Phoenix Arrien


I AM SITTING with Big Bill Neidge (now passed on) outside his house in Kakadu in the Northern Territory. Big Bill is speaking of his land and his life, a life connected to the wild country in which he was born, the traditions of the Bunitj clan to which he belongs, and a culture ancient and threatened. “Do you like my country?” I am


startled, not expecting the question. I think of the magnificent towering escarpment bordering Kakadu. I think of the emerald greens of the wetlands and the wildlife and the orange sunsets firing across aquamarine skies. “I love it. It’s beautiful.” He nods,


looking at me. I feel a strange but not uncomfortable sense of falling into those eyes of dark brown with red around the pupils. The face is criss-crossed with creases and the black skin shines with sweat. I shift uneasily under this scrutiny. Then, I am taking a deep breath… …and the land is suddenly alive and I


am existing in a very different yet oddly familiar space. And so began my initiations into the indigenous way of perceiving the


16 OCTOBER 2015


world around me. This developed into something I know call Healing Ecology, based on indigenous and shamanic viewpoints along with the research going into how we can heal the earth and the earth can heal us. There is plenty of research into


how we can give and receive healing with nature and the earth, including Dr Masaru Emoto’s research into how different water crystals look before and after they have been prayed over; and the positive research into ‘earthing’ – connecting with the Earth’s permanent, natural, and subtle electric currents and fields – but here I want to be personal with you because there is nothing more powerful than lived experience. A client, ‘Mary’, found herself in a


psychiatric hospital deep in extreme despair and suicidal. One afternoon she decided to end her life and started running towards a busy road with the full intention of throwing herself in front of a truck. ‘Something’ she remembers, ‘tripped’ her and she found herself flat on the earth with strangely reassuring figures surrounding her.


“They seemed to rise from the earth”, Mary recalls. “All I could do was surrender to the earth, make a choice to live or die and be reassured by these earth spirits that I was meant to live.” Traditional medicine men and women of indigenous cultures have known for thousands of years that the earth has powerful healing spirits, and that the role of the healer is to put people in touch with those energies. We in the West have forgotten this and often connect with the earth only during crisis or by chance.


As Mary experienced – and Susan whom we will see later – the earth can help us in ways we can hardly imagine… so why don’t we just head into the bush and, well, be healed?


Perhaps it is because we have lost sight of our connection with the earth and truly being part of her. Along with identifying with the illusion of separation


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52