My love of acting and theatre arts is really where I trace the beginning of my healing work back to.
As a teenager, I don’t remember having a lot of access to my emotions. I used to say, “I just don’t get angry!”
I spent time in nature, and wrote a lot of poetry, but I was very introverted and living in the mask of the “good girl” who got good grades and was very appropriate.
This ‘role’ did award me the ‘part’ of valedictorian of my grade 8 graduating class! I had won some competitions for speech writing and performance, so I was able to give a really motivating valedictorian address for my big ‘stage performance.’
My next attraction to acting was when my brother, who is 3 years older than I am, got into theatre in High School.
He joined the improv team. The Canadian High School Improv games were really big at the time. It was like a sport, where teams from different high schools competed, and there were finals at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
Inspired by my brother, I got into improv too when I started high school.
My most vivid memory is being on stage in front of an audience, and sticking my ass up in the air as a skunk toward my improv partner. The crowd went wild with laughter! I was forever hooked!
My brother went on to study theatre at college in Toronto. I got an opportunity to commute from our rural home to the Canterbury School of the Arts in the city to attend their drama program for my last 3 years of high school.
Canterbury was fun, but very competitive. Everyone was really serious about their art! In the drama program, we were all really into “Method” acting. This was about tapping into deep and authentic emotions to make characters really evocative.
This was where I started diving into my teenage angst and bringing it out emotionally through acting.
I see it as the beginning of my healing work and the world of our human emotions. It was expressive therapy!
I got to play ‘the fairy’ in our high school production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My best friend Eve won the part of Titania. It was set in the 60’s with hippies! It was magical.
I loved theatre so much, I longed to become a professional actress and keep playing!
This was the first moment in my life where I remember being too afraid to follow my longing.
I was afraid I couldn’t compete for all the ingenue parts I saw as being in my age range. I felt I had to make a career out of it, and thought I would end up a starving artist. I didn’t even audition for theatre schools when I graduated from Canterbury.
I had to wander and wonder for a while after high school before my true calling as a healer came. I had to be lost before I was found.
The summer after I finished high school, I saw a poster for Reiki classes and signed up.
Reiki rocked my world. Learning to feel energy and understand that the whole world was made up of energy fields made everything make sense.
I also discovered the deep and precious communion with another that is present in energy healing that is still a sacred honour to experience to this day.
Around that time, I had a boyfriend who was a massage therapist. He introduced me to Craniosacral Therapy. I also loved this hands-on work and have been taking modules of training with the Upledger Institute for CST ever since! It is part of my work with you.
Finally, I got a copy of Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan and it lit me up! Barbara was naming healing techniques that resonated with what my hands were figuring out naturally as I continued to practice Reiki with friends and peers from my workshop training.
I took the plunge and flew all the way from my remote summer job with Outward Bound in Thunder Bay, to Long Island, NY for the introductory workshop for the Barbara Brennan School of Healing (BBSH). It was 1995. Barbara was leading the workshop. There were 200 students!
I started my training at the BBSH in the autumn of 1995. I graduated in June 1999.
At school, the 4 training departments were called Professional Development, Awakening Skills, Healing Science, and Creative Arts.
The creative arts department was SO FUN! It kept feeding my inner theatre geek.
Our 2 teachers, Bruce and Andes Bell, were artists from New York city. They were so cool.
We got to do ecstatic dance and really embody the energy healing we were learning.
There were big rituals with the entire school where we went into deep waves of energy expression.
This lit up my interest in sacred theatre, ritual arts, and the re-enactment of sacred stories that is part of the history of each of our indigenous traditions. (And the current practice of unbroken traditions).
I particularly love mask work and clowning, where you really get to use your whole body for expression and channeling the character to bring it alive!
Those of you who have experienced my teaching in the energy healing courses I’ve shared, have seen me ‘act out’ concepts I’m talking about! I get very animated.
For my 4th year project at the BBSH, I went back to Canterbury H.S. and worked with senior drama students who were preparing audition monologues.
I helped them connect with their ‘Core Star’ or their creative spark within to make their acting more authentic, lit up and connected to their essence. It was really moving to work with the students.
Once I graduated from the Barbara Brennan school, things got pretty busy making my way in the world.
Alongside my growing healing practice, I became a yoga teacher.
Teaching yoga also meant standing in front of an ‘audience’ and using my voice and physical gestures to guide students through an immersive experience. It was always more than just an exercise class for me. I loved getting students connected to their inner flow of energy and breath.
I retired from teaching yoga in 2021 to focus full time on my healing work.
Now I am blessed to live in a community that is full of artists and healers.
When I moved to the Wakefield area in 2000, I discovered our local theatre company. I made friends and built community connections for myself by meeting people through joining theatre productions as an actress or helping backstage.
Is acting still a part of my life now?
I just got a part in an upcoming production of Theatre Wakefield!
I’m really excited to get back on stage this March 22 at the Wakefield Community Centre. You can come see me and the other players if you like! Tickets will be on sale here soon.
My role in the play I have been cast in is a more serious emotional one. As I looked over the script for the first time, I started to see where the nuances of different emotions would need to rise and fall.
So I’m still exploring my own emotional range…in life…and in theatre!
When I do healing work with you, I get to help you explore your emotional range.
Where does the energy of your emotional life flow? Where is it blocked? How did it get blocked? How do I help you flush out old blocked feelings and learn to love your emotions as more flow of your creative energy returns?
If you want to explore where your own creative spark gets stuck, expand your emotional range, or examine the roles you are playing in life and your Life Purpose, I’d be happy to be your ‘director’ as you ‘rehearse’ for your big role in life.
Start here to see the ways we can work together.
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