In this episode of The Healers Cafe, Manon speaks with Maggie Kelly, a spiritual counselor and shamanic energy medicine healer, discussing her transformative journey, sparked by her youngest child's cystic fibrosis diagnosis at age 30. Initially coping with stress through drinking, she turned to meditation, which led her to become a Chopra Center meditation teacher and open Satsang House.
For the transcript and full story go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/maggie-kelly
Highlights from today's episode include:
Maggie explains addiction is about pain, not the substance – the real issue isn't alcohol, shopping, or porn, but the unhealed pain underneath.
Maggie speaks about spiritual bypassing – even meditation and spirituality can become another way to avoid feeling and processing trauma.
Manon explains Limited bandwidth & dropping blame – as parents we have only so much capacity; the real growth comes when adult children move from blaming to learning from their experience.
ABOUT MAGGIE KELLY:
We never grow unless or until we are challenged.
Most come to Satsang House in the midst of one of life's challenges or while at a turning point in their lives. Intuitively, I believe they already know they are ready for change or some sort of an upgrade to their current circumstances and life.
I have created Satsang House Meditation and Spiritual Center around my own healing journey. Over the past three decades, I've spent time studying under meditation experts, Eckhart Tolle, Alberto Villoldo and the Inkan Shamans of the Andes. Most recently I've been immersing myself with the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza which has become the perfect compliment to the way I teach and practice meditation as well as to the energy healing side of my work.
I have been extremely blessed to marry my personal experiences into my life's work at Satsang House as a Meditation Teacher, Energy Healer, Spiritual Counselor and Life Coach.
Core purpose/passion: My mission is to help people all over the world cultivate emotional well-being, increase their capacity to love and care for others, and participate in the creation of a more interconnected and compassionate world.
Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube |
ABOUT MANON BOLLIGER, RBHT, FCAH:
As a retired Naturopath 1992-2021, I saw an average of 150 patients per week and have helped people ranging from rural farmers in Nova Scotia to stressed out CEOs in Toronto to tri-athletes here in Vancouver.
My resolve to educate, empower and engage people to take charge of their own health is evident in my best-selling books: 'What Patients Don't Say if Doctors Don't Ask: The Mindful Patient-Doctor Relationship' and 'A Healer in Every Household: Simple Solutions for Stress'. and What if Your Body is Smarter than You Think? I am the Founder & CEO of The Bowen College Inc. which teaches BowenFirst™ Therapy and holds transformational workshops to achieve these goals.
So, when I share with you that LISTENing to Your body is a game changer in the healing process, I am speaking from expertise and direct experience".
Mission: A Healer in Every Household!
For more great information to go to her weekly blog: http://bowencollege.com/blog.
For tips on health & healing go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips
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* De-Registered, revoked & retired naturopathic physician after 30 years of practice in healthcare. Now resourceful & resolved to share with you all the tools to take care of your health & vitality!
00:00:00
Introduction: Welcome to the Healers Cafe, the number one
00:00:03
show for medical practitioners and holistic healers to have
00:00:08
heart to heart conversations about their day to day lives
00:00:12
while sharing their expertise for improving your health and
00:00:17
wellness.
00:00:20
Manon Bolliger: Welcome to the Healers Cafe. Today I have with
00:00:25
me Maggie Kelly, and she has created Satsang House Meditation
00:00:31
and Spiritual Center around her own healing journey, and over
00:00:37
the past three decades she spent time studying under meditation
00:00:42
experts like Eckhart Tolle, Alberto Villaldo, and Incan
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Shaman, Incan shamans of the Andes, and most recently she's
00:00:54
been immersing herself with the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, which
00:00:58
has become the perfect complement to the way she
00:01:03
teaches and practices meditation, as well as to the
00:01:06
energy healing side of her work. So, I think I might just cut it
00:01:13
right there, and you know, so you're a spiritual counselor, a
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shamanic energy medicine healer, and a meditation teacher, and
00:01:23
you, you run your own center, so well, that's what we're going to
00:01:28
talk about today. So, welcome.
00:01:31
Maggie Kelly: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
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Manon Bolliger: So, I guess my first question is, I know it's
00:01:40
always step by step, but what led you down this journey? You
00:01:46
know, some people, they're hit with something that changes them
00:01:50
profoundly. Other people, it's just like little things that
00:01:55
they pick up and they go, "huh, and then they're down a path.
00:01:58
So, what is your path what was your well,
00:02:04
Maggie Kelly: I would say, I mean, I, I've been on the
00:02:06
transformational path since I was 30, I'm now 63 but I think
00:02:14
the biggest hit was when my youngest child was born
00:02:18
chronically ill with cystic fibrosis, 24 four years ago, and
00:02:25
I already had a child who was three years old at the time that
00:02:28
my dog, the second daughter, was born, and it kind of just threw
00:02:33
me off. I didn't fit the pictures I had of my life,
00:02:38
cystic fibrosis, chronic progressive life shortening
00:02:41
incurable lung, mostly lung disease, and in my head, and in
00:02:47
those days the average life expectancy was about 27 to 35
00:02:55
Manon Bolliger: Mhmhm
00:02:55
Maggie Kelly: much higher now, and the medications are much
00:02:57
better, and she's doing very well, but in the days that she
00:03:01
was born was a thought process of I'm going to watch this child
00:03:07
die, and there's only so much I can do, and instead of really
00:03:13
rising to that, I decided that I would check out, and that I
00:03:18
wasn't going to participate, and I did that by starting to drink
00:03:24
too much. There was a day in there where I, I just looked at
00:03:29
myself, and I said, "You know what? Not okay. Yes, it doesn't
00:03:35
fit the pictures of what you have of your family and what
00:03:38
your family is supposed to look like, or what you thought it
00:03:41
might look like, but this is what it is. Time to take a new
00:03:45
picture and pull yourself together and put your ass on the
00:03:48
line and get in the game as this parent. Otherwise, you're going
00:03:52
to miss what life this child does have. And that was when I
00:03:57
remembered having read some books written by Deepak Chopra,
00:04:01
when I was in college, still have some on the shelves,
00:04:05
grabbed one, didn't realize he had at the time a center right
00:04:10
here, 20 minutes from my house in San Diego, so I put myself in
00:04:15
one of his retreats, and these were the days when Deepak wasn't
00:04:19
even a name, I mean, one of 15 people in the class,
00:04:24
Manon Bolliger: right? Right
00:04:25
Megan W: now it's 500 1000 in a room, and he himself taught me
00:04:30
how to meditate, and it was meditation that started to
00:04:35
really transform my life. So I spent years working through
00:04:41
Deepak and doing a lot of his other things, and ultimately
00:04:44
decided to become a Chopra Center meditation teacher. And
00:04:49
then I opened Sat Singhaus the day after I was certified, so
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that's how it satsang House came into being 10 years ago.
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Manon Bolliger: Wow, okay. Right, and so I'm just putting
00:05:03
myself in your mindset at the time, which you know, the
00:05:07
checkout, which is not uncommon, right? It's like, if it's
00:05:11
overwhelming, you don't, you don't know where to start.
00:05:14
Checkout is kind of a common response, right. How long were
00:05:20
you in checkout mode?
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Maggie Kelly: Three years,
00:05:25
Manon Bolliger: three years. Okay,
00:05:27
Unknown: three years.
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Manon Bolliger: The first
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Unknown: child's life.
00:05:30
Manon Bolliger: Wow. And then to go into meditation, because I
00:05:36
mean, not much else had changed, except that you realize that you
00:05:40
can't go on like this, right? So, how does one meditate
00:05:44
through the mindset that you, you had at the time, the
00:05:51
checkout? Like, how, how, what was, you know, how well? No, let
00:05:57
me not answer my own question. Go ahead.
00:06:02
Megan W: Well, I think it was less about meditating through
00:06:07
the checkout time and more about bringing my nervous system down
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and and settling my physiology, because in those days I was on
00:06:21
the phone with doctors and pharmacies. She had 16 different
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medications at five different pharmacies, and they're all
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coming at different times, and clinic visits every three
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months, lung treatments twice a day, every day, 45 minutes each,
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and that's when she's well, and then I started tube feeding her,
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so here I am tube feeding her overnight. I essentially became
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a nurse.
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Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
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Megan W: and inside of that, the oldest daughter was sort of put
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over to the side, because obviously
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Unknown: the one
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Megan W: who's sickest, right?
00:07:00
Manon Bolliger: Well,
00:07:01
Maggie Kelly: so I think when I was meditating, I know actually
00:07:06
when I first started meditating in subsequent years after, it
00:07:10
was more about restoring my central nervous system to a
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ground state of being manageable, where I wasn't
00:07:20
hyperventilating through my life, always waiting for the
00:07:24
next shoe to drop, constantly anxious and worrying,
00:07:29
Manon Bolliger: and
00:07:30
Maggie Kelly: just spinning, spinning. So, more about that,
00:07:35
and that's how I say to people that meditation saved my life,
00:07:39
is because I'm not, you know, that was untenable, an untenable
00:07:44
way to live. There's no way.
00:07:50
Manon Bolliger: So, I mean, in a sense, I mean, correct me, but
00:07:53
when you were drinking, it was a not the best way, but a way of
00:08:01
seemingly to calm down that whole nervous system, so you
00:08:05
could function, and you were in a sense replacing that with
00:08:10
something healthy, and that would have permanent positive
00:08:14
impacts.
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Maggie Kelly: Yes, and you know, I've done a lot of work with
00:08:18
Gabor Mate, who is an expert in trauma healing,
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Manon Bolliger: yeah.
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Maggie Kelly: And his biggest mantra is it's never about the
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addiction, it's about the pain underneath.
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Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
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Maggie Kelly: so we could be out there addicted to shopping on
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Amazon or smoking pot or porn or whatever,
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Manon Bolliger: anything,
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Maggie Kelly: and it's not about that, it's about can you access
00:08:44
the pain and actually heal, and honest, honestly, I did not see
00:08:51
that until very recently that I actually ended up in, in a kind
00:09:00
of spiritual bypass, so instead of drinking, I replaced it with
00:09:06
meditation and spirituality, and then teaching, and then creating
00:09:10
a center, and everything I do, and it took me until very
00:09:19
recently I had a big, you know, big thing happen, and a really
00:09:26
big meltdown, and I, you know, the support I had, the trauma
00:09:31
therapy I had was were the people who, who introduced the
00:09:38
idea of this spiritual bypassing I've been doing all these this
00:09:43
time, and so going back to Gabor, it's never about the
00:09:48
addiction, whether it's meditation or drinking or
00:09:52
whatever.
00:09:52
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
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Maggie Kelly: it was about the pain unprocessed and not
00:09:57
certainly not integrated, right.
00:10:00
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:10:01
well, it's courageous of you to admit that, because I mean it's
00:10:05
like a lifesaver, and yet it's a big band aid, you know, and and
00:10:12
it's, it's, you know, spiritual bypass is not that commonly
00:10:16
talked about, you know, but it, I mean, I agree completely with
00:10:21
Gabor Mate on that point, but you also, in your bio, you said
00:10:26
we never grow unless or until we're challenged, you know, and
00:10:31
so that's what made me think, you know, this, so yeah, so the
00:10:37
challenge then is, I mean, you were coping and coping way
00:10:42
better, but what actually opened everything up, where you could
00:10:48
feel the pain and heal the
00:10:50
Maggie Kelly: pain. Oh gosh, that is what I'm writing my book
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about, and it's a spiritual memoir, and it literally is
00:10:58
about the last year of my life, having been the most painful,
00:11:05
yet the most transformative, and the most healing of my life, and
00:11:09
where I've been in a relationship with someone for
00:11:12
about three years, and an avoidant type personality that
00:11:18
the closer we got, the more fearful he became, and when the
00:11:24
relationship shifted into a really beautiful connection, he
00:11:31
disappeared out of thin air. No response, no text, no call, no
00:11:40
explanation, and what that did was activate every last one of
00:11:46
my abandonment wounds.
00:11:48
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:11:48
Maggie Kelly: from my childhood that I had never, honestly, I
00:11:53
knew I had an inkling, right? I got a little abandonment thing
00:11:56
going, you know, but I didn't have this understanding until I
00:12:04
was literally taken to my knees from this experience, and
00:12:10
realized there was all of this unhealed childhood trauma that
00:12:16
needed attention, and that me, as a healer, as a, you know,
00:12:23
spiritual counselor, someone who meditates, someone who works
00:12:28
out, someone who does hypnotherapy and acupuncture,
00:12:31
and all these other modalities, there was nothing I had in my
00:12:35
toolbox that was going to help me help myself.
00:12:39
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:12:40
Maggie Kelly: and I finally was literally at my final moments
00:12:46
when I reached out and put myself into a trauma treatment
00:12:50
center.
00:12:51
Manon Bolliger: Well,
00:12:52
Maggie Kelly: literally, wow,
00:12:56
Manon Bolliger: yeah, that's yeah, it's, I mean, when you're
00:13:00
seeing somebody else's life, as you know, as is your daily
00:13:05
practice, it's a lot easier to see when you're in it, and I
00:13:09
know, yeah, it's not you interviewing me, but I know what
00:13:13
you mean, so, but it's funny how, yeah, with your, your own
00:13:17
child, it's almost there you had the opportunity that life
00:13:22
created for you to go through the abandonment issues, right?
00:13:27
Maggie Kelly: Yeah,
00:13:28
Manon Bolliger: there was resistance, right?
00:13:30
Maggie Kelly: Exactly on the back end of this, I have
00:13:36
actually thanked that man,
00:13:39
Manon Bolliger: yeah,
00:13:40
Maggie Kelly: guarding me,
00:13:41
Manon Bolliger: yeah,
00:13:42
Maggie Kelly: and let him know that it was the greatest gift of
00:13:45
my life,
00:13:46
Manon Bolliger: yeah,
00:13:47
Maggie Kelly: and that there's no words in any language that
00:13:50
can convey my gratitude to him, because he literally saved my
00:13:54
life in all different ways, physically saved my life, but
00:13:59
emotionally completely healed. I mean, he didn't do it, I did it,
00:14:05
but
00:14:05
Manon Bolliger: of course, with
00:14:06
Maggie Kelly: the catalyst, right?
00:14:08
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:14:08
Maggie Kelly: yeah, and we do need to have a catalyst in our
00:14:12
lives, some sort of event that shakes the rug. Most people,
00:14:21
nobody wants to deal with pain, right? You're about, you're
00:14:24
about to fall, you put your hands out, right? Nobody wants
00:14:28
to fall on their face, and that's no different than, you
00:14:32
know, somebody wanting to let's just dredge up all this complex
00:14:37
childhood trauma, and let's just deal with it. No, it's not fun,
00:14:42
and it's very painful, very difficult, and it cannot be done
00:14:51
lightly, and it needs a safe container where there's
00:14:56
tremendous compassion and. Expertise, right, because
00:15:03
looking back, I was until this point a wounded healer, trying
00:15:09
to heal,
00:15:10
Manon Bolliger: right, right,
00:15:11
Maggie Kelly: right now on this side I am a much more effective
00:15:18
and profound healer as a result of what I've just experienced,
00:15:23
Manon Bolliger: yeah,
00:15:24
Maggie Kelly: so the healing I have to give is is far and away
00:15:29
different than anything I've ever
00:15:32
Manon Bolliger: done before,
00:15:33
Maggie Kelly: because it's our depth that wasn't there,
00:15:36
Manon Bolliger: right, but now you're going to attract the
00:15:38
people who are ready for that, you know, it's like before, you
00:15:42
might have attracted people that needed, you know, a simple
00:15:47
solution, just a change, you know. So I do think, you know,
00:15:52
at least I've chosen to look at my life as effective all the
00:15:56
time, just for different people,
00:15:59
Maggie Kelly: right?
00:16:00
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, you know, as I do my own deeper work and
00:16:05
releases of that, then I can, yeah, now I feel like I'm, I'm
00:16:11
really good now and open to the world, you know.
00:16:16
Maggie Kelly: Well, I looked at, you know, Satsang House in 10
00:16:19
years of my business, and all you know, I went from the
00:16:23
meditation to then becoming a spiritual counselor,
00:16:29
Manon Bolliger: and then
00:16:30
Maggie Kelly: moved into the shamanic medicine, medicine
00:16:34
healing more recently, and I look at that progression, and
00:16:41
sure we can talk about it as spiritual bypassing, but on the
00:16:45
flip side of that, I am 100% certain that if I had not had
00:16:51
that foundation underneath me, I may not today,
00:16:56
Manon Bolliger: yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, I mean, it
00:16:59
Maggie Kelly: saved my life, whether it was a bypass or not,
00:17:02
to get me there doesn't matter, right?
00:17:06
Manon Bolliger: No, I think so. I mean, that's the idea of the
00:17:08
journey, you know. I think we're given a journey that is for us,
00:17:14
you know. It's like, and you can't, I mean, you might go
00:17:17
faster, but you, you've got to have something that, in my mind,
00:17:21
too, kind of propels you, or or something that you choose to
00:17:26
notice, or that you can't help but notice, like in your case,
00:17:31
that you know what can you do without your, you're absolutely,
00:17:35
you know, shocked by it, so you're going to go to the next
00:17:39
level, right.
00:17:40
Maggie Kelly: Well, that's part of why meditation is so
00:17:43
profound, because literally all we're doing in meditation is
00:17:47
training ourselves to notice,
00:17:50
Manon Bolliger: right?
00:17:50
Maggie Kelly: We're strengthening our noticing
00:17:53
muscles. I'm going to notice when my thoughts want to hijack
00:17:56
me and take me off, and I'm going to keep bringing myself
00:18:00
back, whether it's through breath or mantra, whatever it
00:18:03
is, whatever modality meditation you use doesn't matter, it's all
00:18:06
the same same thing, and it's that training in noticing that
00:18:15
is the part where you're I always tell my students, look,
00:18:19
we're in formal meditation practice. Here, the real
00:18:22
meditation is out there in the world. You're interacting with
00:18:26
others, that's when you're going to know if your practice is
00:18:31
working, because that's when you're going to notice how you
00:18:35
interact with the grocery store clerk, how you interact with
00:18:38
your best friend, how you resolve your differences,
00:18:41
whether you even bother to repair, you know, and that's the
00:18:46
noticing that matters right now, and that's all the practice in
00:18:52
really
00:18:53
Manon Bolliger: exactly. Yeah, so how.. how has it.. I mean,
00:18:59
it's very new and all that, but how, or has it changed your
00:19:03
relationship to your daughter, or or anything at this point?
00:19:09
And how old is she now?
00:19:11
Maggie Kelly: So, I have two daughters. I have one that's 28
00:19:14
and the one with cystic fibrosis is 24
00:19:17
Manon Bolliger: Okay,
00:19:18
Maggie Kelly: and she and I are extremely close, which makes
00:19:22
sense. I've been her caregiver, her nurse, all of it in and out
00:19:26
of the hospital with her for
00:19:28
Manon Bolliger: years. Yeah,
00:19:29
Maggie Kelly: the relationship with the older one is actually
00:19:31
quite strained, because by all intents and purposes she
00:19:37
inherited my own abandonment trauma, right? The
00:19:41
intergenerational trauma wound is hers now, unfortunately, and
00:19:46
for the past two years, she and I have not even spoken by her
00:19:50
choice, not mine.
00:19:52
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:19:52
Maggie Kelly: she has no idea the healing I've been through
00:19:55
and what I've been through since she has not spoken to me, so.
00:20:00
She has no idea where I am, and that's okay. She'll get there
00:20:05
when she gets there, if she gets there, and I just let go
00:20:10
Manon Bolliger: mhmhm
00:20:10
Maggie Kelly: of that outcome. It's unfortunate, but I
00:20:14
completely understand why she would feel abandoned in her own
00:20:19
right by me for sure, because yeah, we only have a certain
00:20:25
amount of bandwidth that excuse me, accountable, and I am
00:20:32
responsible for not having given her what she needed when she
00:20:36
needed it. I, and I have apologized and tried to make
00:20:40
amends for that.
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Manon Bolliger: but it is, it does point to, hey, Mom is human
00:21:57
too, yeah, right, but I think it takes time, like you know, if I
00:22:02
look in my own situation, there's certainly times of
00:22:07
abandonment on my part, and I was also dealing, you know, with
00:22:12
stage four cancer, that can be, it can be a little
00:22:16
all-encompassing, you know, so just a tiny bit, anyway. But,
00:22:22
um, you know, it's like it's things still impact and affect,
00:22:29
you know, and and you're still the one who did it, you're still
00:22:33
responsible for it, you know, and it's only really when they
00:22:38
kind of go through, really, like, you know, forgiven, I have
00:22:44
been, but to really get that, if, if they were in the same
00:22:49
role, could they have done anything much better or
00:22:52
different, or you know, and then it's like back to humanity, I
00:22:56
mean, there's only so much bandwidth, you know, like what
00:23:01
else can you do, right? And so it's, I think, when we remove
00:23:05
that, the blame and all that stuff, when, when they are no
00:23:10
longer victims, which, you know, I think we're there now. You
00:23:14
know, my youngest is 28 so 27 now, sorry, eight. Anyway, I
00:23:22
can't remember. she just had her birthday now, much.. I'm not
00:23:25
sure, but you know, on the other, they're older, right? So
00:23:30
it's.. it's interesting, you know, it's.. there's a point in
00:23:33
which it.. it's everyone's journey, and we choose how. how
00:23:40
much of that journey we're going to fault others for, rather than
00:23:47
just learn from, and go, hmm, yikes, that must have been
00:23:52
weird, or tough, or hard, or, you know,
00:23:56
Maggie Kelly: right, and I think you know that points to self
00:24:01
compassion, because without self compassion it's impossible to
00:24:05
have compassion for someone else,
00:24:06
Manon Bolliger: exactly.
00:24:08
Maggie Kelly: And very few of us, especially women, give
00:24:12
ourselves a break and define compassion for others when we're
00:24:18
so busy beating ourselves up.
00:24:20
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, yeah, and that's no example, because if
00:24:23
they see you beat yourself up, where are they going to learn it
00:24:26
from? It has to be a full new experience, but it could just
00:24:30
come from you, like going, gee, how, how can you be loving and
00:24:35
love yourself, and yet you were such a, you know, abandoner, or
00:24:40
you were whatever you know, and it's like, well, because you
00:24:43
have to get through to the other side of it, you know,
00:24:46
Maggie Kelly: yeah,
00:24:46
Manon Bolliger: and, and I think that's a really good lesson, you
00:24:50
know, when we can be an example as well of what we've learned,
00:24:55
Maggie Kelly: for sure, absolutely, absolutely,
00:24:59
Manon Bolliger: and
00:24:59
Maggie Kelly: it shows. Up in a myriad of different ways that
00:25:02
you wouldn't expect, you know, just in conversation and passing
00:25:06
moments, and one simple interaction. I mean, I see the
00:25:11
huge change in me since a year ago, because all the healing
00:25:18
that I've done, and it's,
00:25:21
Manon Bolliger: yeah, and
00:25:22
Maggie Kelly: writing a book about it, just, you know, brings
00:25:26
it all up, whatever, still, you know, there's little edges to
00:25:31
some of that trauma that's still there, whatever that is, then it
00:25:37
shows up again, like, oh, there's still a little bit of
00:25:41
charge on that one. I think I need to work a little more here.
00:25:47
I need to not just process but integrate, and so there are
00:25:51
moments during the writing where I've said I gotta put this over
00:25:55
here so I can process and integrate the process of
00:26:01
writing, though, itself has been quite an integration.
00:26:05
Manon Bolliger: Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, you're.. it's hard
00:26:09
to not turn every stone eventually. Yeah, you were
00:26:17
saying shamanic healing was five. five DMO, what, what, what
00:26:27
type, or music, or
00:26:30
Maggie Kelly: I do not do plant medicine ceremony, I do
00:26:37
illuminations. I work with the chakra system and do
00:26:40
illuminations.
00:26:41
Manon Bolliger: Okay,
00:26:42
Maggie Kelly: um, clear the energy body. I do journeying to
00:26:45
the past. I do soul retrievals, extractions of negative
00:26:50
energies. I do death rites, so if you know to be able to clear
00:26:56
in chakras and send you to the East, and I do cord cuttings, so
00:27:04
all of the very ancient practices I'm part of the
00:27:07
lineage of Machu Picchu, so the Karen tradition.
00:27:12
Manon Bolliger: Okay,
00:27:12
Maggie Kelly: I also do fire ceremony, so each shaman group,
00:27:18
I guess, depending on the region and depending on the lineage
00:27:24
uses a particular element in their healing, so some might use
00:27:29
water, some might use wind. My lineage uses fire,
00:27:35
Manon Bolliger: so
00:27:36
Maggie Kelly: fire ceremony as rapid transformation, which is
00:27:41
one of my favorite things to do. In fact, we have a fire, we're
00:27:45
always at a full moon, so we have one Saturday. So that's the
00:27:51
work that I do is energetic healing. So I'll pretty much
00:27:56
start by diagnosing your chakras and going.
00:28:01
Manon Bolliger: mm. interesting, good. Can you expand a little
00:28:04
bit more on that, just for people who don't? I haven't.
00:28:08
I've never done a ceremony of that type, but so what. Let's
00:28:14
talk about the chakra one and the fire involved in that end,
00:28:19
and because you said you, it was, it was that it was that
00:28:25
those ceremonies, right, that really brought you, sorry, that
00:28:33
really brought you to that deeper seeing or understanding
00:28:39
of what.
00:28:40
Maggie Kelly: Yes, I went down. I traveled to Chile. Alberto
00:28:43
Villongo, who you mentioned in the intro, is a Cuban American
00:28:49
shaman who has brought the Caro tradition lineage of shamanism
00:28:54
to the United States. For the most part, he has a retreat
00:28:58
center down in Chile, where he brings shamans from Machu Picchu
00:29:05
to train other people in their practices, and these are ancient
00:29:09
practices from way back before the conquistadors.
00:29:14
Manon Bolliger: Yeah,
00:29:14
Maggie Kelly: and just like the, you know, burning the witches in
00:29:21
Massachusetts, if at the time of the Compista doors, they arrived
00:29:27
on shore, and they found shamans, they probably would
00:29:31
have killed all the shamans. So, when the shamans of Machu Picchu
00:29:36
knew, well, they weren't of Machu Picchu then, but the Caro
00:29:39
tradition shamans were originally down by the coast,
00:29:43
but the Coquis Coquistadores came, and they knew they were in
00:29:47
danger, so they ran up into the Andes, and that's how Machu
00:29:51
Picchu was built, and the reason built.
00:29:55
Manon Bolliger: Okay,
00:29:55
Maggie Kelly: and that's where all the ancient healing
00:29:58
practices,
00:29:59
Manon Bolliger: yeah.
00:30:00
Maggie Kelly: Place was in Machu Picchu up in the Andes, and so
00:30:06
these shamans that Alberto uses come from Machu Picchu down to
00:30:11
his retreat center in Chile to train people like me to in those
00:30:16
practices, and so I spent a month down there in and we did
00:30:22
fire ceremony every day for 30 days and I learned all these
00:30:26
ancient practices and the rites and rituals and all kinds of
00:30:30
beautiful, beautiful healing practices, and shamanism uses
00:30:35
the medicine wheel, and they use the four directions, so you
00:30:41
start with the South. In the South direction, the archetype
00:30:44
is the serpent, and the reason she is the serpent and the
00:30:48
archetype of the South, and where you begin is because the
00:30:52
serpent sheds her skin. So, the work of the South is for us to
00:30:56
shed all these old stories that no longer serves. Then we go to
00:31:01
the West, and the archetype of the West is the jaguar, and the
00:31:05
reason it's the Jaguars, the Jaguar can see six to seven
00:31:09
times better than human beings in the dark. The work, the West
00:31:14
is the dark work, the shadow, the shadow sides of us want to
00:31:19
confront, and once done the work of the serpent and the jaguar,
00:31:24
then we moved into the north, and the archetype of the north
00:31:28
is the hummingbird, and it is the hummingbird, because after
00:31:32
we've been slithering on our bellies, and then we're stealth
00:31:35
in the dark, we're now starting to take flight, we've released
00:31:40
some of that fast, and we're starting to take flight. Well,
00:31:44
hummingbird can fly to Canada and South America on one flight,
00:31:49
and all they're looking for is the nectar of life. So, the
00:31:53
work of the North is ancestral. We start to look at our
00:31:57
ancestrals, our grandparents, all of that, but also, where's
00:32:01
the beauty of life now that I've gotten rid of some of this past?
00:32:05
What's where's the beauty?
00:32:08
And look for the beauty, then the work of the East is the
00:32:12
eagle or the condor, and the work of that direction is now
00:32:18
that you've done all that other work, you're flying high above
00:32:21
the mountain tops like an eagle, and you're looking at the world
00:32:24
from a macroscopic point of view, instead of what's in it
00:32:28
for me, and it's all about me. How can I be of service to the
00:32:33
world, and why am I even here? That's a very rudimentary way to
00:32:38
describe the most
00:32:39
Manon Bolliger: Yay that's great.
00:32:40
Maggie Kelly: of the four directions, and so that's a lot
00:32:47
of the work that I did for myself, and then became part of
00:32:51
the lineage, and then inside of the lineage, then I, they, I
00:32:56
call on them to work through me to you,
00:32:59
Manon Bolliger: right. Right.
00:33:00
Maggie Kelly: So, in chakra system that you asked about,
00:33:06
that's primarily an illumination, and what that
00:33:09
looks like is I will help put you into a trance using pressure
00:33:16
points behind your head, and when I know that you're in a
00:33:20
sort of trans state, then I know you're a little more
00:33:22
suggestible, just like a hypnotherapist would do that,
00:33:26
moving you into a gamma brainwave state, and once I know
00:33:31
that, then I have you look around for energy. Our energetic
00:33:36
body is about six to eight inches off of our physical body.
00:33:40
I liken it to like a plate glass window, and any trauma or event
00:33:46
that may have happened to you as you were growing up is sort of
00:33:49
like a wet mud clod from that window, and it sticks on our
00:33:56
energetic body, and if we don't, that trauma or that experience,
00:34:01
and if we don't clean the window, so to speak, that will
00:34:05
move and manifest into our physical body as disease, heart
00:34:10
disease, or cancer, or you know, thyroid issues, or bone issues,
00:34:15
depending on which chakra is affected, so I diagnose the
00:34:19
chakras and we always work from the bottom up. The first chakra
00:34:25
being the base of your spine, we work from the chakra closest to
00:34:30
Mother Earth. Then we move up, because the higher you go, the
00:34:36
closer you are to your spiritual self.
00:34:38
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, the
00:34:39
Maggie Kelly: lower three are usually the ones that are
00:34:42
tripped up for most of us, because they're all about our
00:34:45
will, our survival, our primal instincts, our, you know, all of
00:34:55
our adrenal glands, each chakra is managed by a particular.
00:35:00
Organ in your body, it also has a particular element that is
00:35:05
associated with it, like wind, fire, water, air, and each one
00:35:13
has an age. So, for instance, the first DACRA, anything that
00:35:18
may have happened to you between the ages of zero and seven years
00:35:21
old retains its energy in the first chakra.
00:35:27
Manon Bolliger: Okay, then
00:35:28
Maggie Kelly: it's seven to 1414, to 2121 to 2828 to 35 and
00:35:34
so on. So we have to, we have to keep those bottom three clear,
00:35:40
so we can get to the heart chakra, which is fourth chakra,
00:35:45
the center of our energetic system. If we don't pass, get to
00:35:51
the heart chakra, we can never get to our center of creativity,
00:35:56
our psychic center, our spiritual center. So primarily I
00:36:02
work with the bottom three, because that's just how we are
00:36:05
as American, and those are usually the ones that are stuck,
00:36:09
or go, the pendulum will go backwards, or not even move when
00:36:14
I'm back.
00:36:14
So I will open that one, that chakra up, I will illuminate it,
00:36:21
you will set an intention for that chakra. I'll close it back
00:36:26
up, move energy down and out through back to back to Mother
00:36:32
Earth. That's an illumination process.
00:36:36
Manon Bolliger: Amazing. Yeah, well, sounds.. um, that sounds
00:36:39
great. I mean, you know, what a wonderful thing to have such a
00:36:43
variety of insights and tools, you know, to be able to well,
00:36:51
and also for you to actually have grown through it on top of
00:36:54
that even more. That's very interesting. Yeah, yeah,
00:36:58
Maggie Kelly: sometimes I feel, you know, I have no idea where I
00:37:04
got the sense of the shamanic piece. I do remember reading a
00:37:09
book and hearing about Alberto Center, and then looking it up,
00:37:14
and then right on the screen it said,
00:37:17
When spirit calls answer, oh my god, I guess I gotta go, but
00:37:25
that's how it works, right? It is
00:37:27
Manon Bolliger: how it works. Yeah, I don't know if you
00:37:29
noticed lights when we were talking. That's kind of okay.
00:37:37
Very interesting affirmation.
00:37:41
Yeah, affirmations,
00:37:42
Maggie Kelly: I, you know,
00:37:42
Manon Bolliger: it's up to us to see it or not see it, right?
00:37:45
Maggie Kelly: That's right, that's right.
00:37:47
Manon Bolliger: Anyway, so, and that's it, right? I mean, yeah,
00:37:52
guts are not paying any attention to our intuitive
00:37:55
voice,
00:37:56
right?
00:37:56
Maggie Kelly: Your intuitive voice is right every single time
00:38:02
I've had my daughter ask me questions, she's starting her
00:38:06
business, and she asked me questions about the lease, and
00:38:10
etc, and I, instead of answering, just say, What does
00:38:15
your gut tell you, because that's who you should be
00:38:19
listening to, not me,
00:38:21
Manon Bolliger: yeah,
00:38:23
Maggie Kelly: it's always right. If you feel like something is
00:38:26
off, something's off, right?
00:38:30
Manon Bolliger: Yeah, that's that's certainly been one of my
00:38:33
biggest, like, less, not lessons I haven't learned yet, you know?
00:38:40
Like, that's the truth. It's like I've come to the
00:38:43
distinction between instinct and intuition. I think those are
00:38:48
different. I know where they're coming from, so instinct being
00:38:55
much more primordial, and you know, like fight-flight,
00:39:00
knowing, oh, I need to move from this street, or I.. I'm not
00:39:05
gonna get.. I'm gonna lock the door before I get out of this
00:39:10
garage, or whatever the story might be, that would be an
00:39:13
instinct, but an intuition comes differently to me, you know,
00:39:19
and. and it's funny, it's like the levels, a lot of the work I
00:39:24
did with Gabor Mate actually was on intuition for about 10 years,
00:39:30
I kept needing to understand that deeper and deeper, and I
00:39:38
would say that at this stage I'm just beginning again, like it
00:39:42
feels.. I felt like I got this, and then it's nope. We gotta go
00:39:48
deeper anyway, but I think it's easy for us to second guess
00:39:53
ourselves,
00:39:54
right?
00:39:55
Maggie Kelly: Question our own thoughts.
00:39:58
Manon Bolliger: Yeah. Oh yeah.
00:40:00
Maggie Kelly: Yes, it's, it's best if we don't.
00:40:03
Manon Bolliger: Well, it gets messy, right? Or if you use a
00:40:09
pendulum, or you use something that you say that you imbue with
00:40:13
power, like, or that you're where you're coming from isn't
00:40:18
exactly as clear as clean can be, because you really want to
00:40:23
know the answer. If there's attachment, like the moment
00:40:26
there's anything else, it's.. it's not a reading,
00:40:31
Maggie Kelly: right?
00:40:32
Manon Bolliger: Right. And they
00:40:33
Maggie Kelly: bring up a really good point: is the attachment
00:40:37
Manon Bolliger: right?
00:40:38
Maggie Kelly: Because when we have the attachment to the
00:40:40
outcome, it's never going to happen,
00:40:43
Manon Bolliger: and then you're not reading your intuition,
00:40:45
Maggie Kelly: right? Right. And just having this conversation
00:40:49
with someone I was teaching meditation with this morning
00:40:52
about, you know, being able to just plant the seed and let go.
00:40:58
Manon Bolliger: Yep, yep,
00:40:59
Maggie Kelly: I don't - none of us go out there and plant
00:41:01
flowers, and go out every day, and dig it up, and see if it's
00:41:04
growing. See, it is sprouting right, and if we do that, we're
00:41:09
interfering.
00:41:10
Manon Bolliger: Yep,
00:41:11
Maggie Kelly: we have to be able to just plant the seed and water
00:41:14
it as best we can, and back off, and trust that the universe has
00:41:21
your back. The universe is taking care of all of it. It's
00:41:25
the grand orchestrator,
00:41:28
Manon Bolliger: exactly.
00:41:29
Maggie Kelly: And gratitude is, you know, it's the only place we
00:41:33
can stand on a daily basis with any fundamental stability and
00:41:39
gratitude for the things we don't have that we think we need
00:41:43
or want, it's gratitude for all that we do have. Yep, you know,
00:41:48
and even gratitude for the difficult times.
00:41:53
Manon Bolliger: Yep. Well, that's, you know, certainly in
00:41:55
house, that's learning to be grateful for, you know, this
00:42:02
disease is, it's quite a, quite a step, but Maggie, we are so
00:42:07
past our time, but like we could easily have a second
00:42:10
conversation, yeah, but yeah, I'll, I'll keep it at, you know,
00:42:17
a little over half an hour, because that's what people are
00:42:19
used to, but Thea, thank you so much for sharing, and if you do
00:42:24
want to come back again, maybe when you get your book, or if
00:42:29
you want to talk about the different elements, like we
00:42:32
talked a bit about fire, but that would be, you know,
00:42:38
Maggie Kelly: happy to come back, has been a delight. Thank
00:42:41
you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
00:42:43
Manon Bolliger: All right, thank you.
00:42:45
Ending: Thank you for joining us at the Healers Cafe. If you
00:42:48
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00:42:58
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00:43:03
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