It was 2001, she was living in her current home.  She had just learned that her Aunt –  the Aunt who was like a mother to her – had cancer in one of the salivary glands in her jaw.  The biopsy results had just come in; the surgery date was scheduled for the next week.

She was home alone and the house was quiet, so she gathered her medicine items. She lit a candle, filled her pipe with prayers, and dropped down into her body. She allowed the energy from the earth and the stars to cleanse her aura.  She encircled her body with layers of protective energy.  She visited her sacred place, an underground cave with red walls and woven carpets. She focused her mind on her Aunt – visualized her face, listened to her voice, felt the love that she held for this woman – and then channeled energy from the earth up through her body and out to her Aunt in the form of white light – “to be used for healing, in whatever form that may take, if her Aunt so willed it”.  She came out of this ceremony feeling that a connection had been made; that she had dropped deep inside herself; that her focus had been strong.

A week later, her Aunt had the salivary gland surgically removed.  Two weeks later, her Aunt learned that the post-surgery biopsy found no cancer.  When the doctor re-examined the original biopsy results, he concluded that an error had been made; that there had never been a cancer; that the tumor had been benign and may not have required surgery.

Her Aunt was enraged by this error; that she had undergone surgery for no reason; that she would live with the side effects all her life.  Her Aunt’s sister wanted to sue the doctor and the hospital for their negligence.  She calmed her Aunts; asked them to see this as a gift; asked them not to dishonour the gift with legal action.  But secretly, she wondered: “is this how it works?  If a healing had truly happened, is this how it would look?”

With time, this event has lost its power.  She has slipped back into her “western mind”, thinking of it as only a medical error that had a good turn out.  But every so often, she gets a glimpse of it through her Shamanic mind and she feels awe.  In the power of the mind.  In the power of the teachings.  In the beauty that connects us all – to one another and to the planet – when we open our minds to the possibility.